Humanity faces a host of health & wellbeing challenges. A gargantuan amount of effort, time and money is being expended globally on developing technologies to solve these problems.
However, the success rate of developing, launching and scaling new technology is abysmally low in all sectors – ventures, corporate, government, social and academia. Most new technologies hit fatal snags at some point between discovery, incubation or scale mainly due to lack of leadership skill, poor process, or inadequate management resources. Most of these “snags” are predictable and avoidable, but decision makers keep repeating the same mistakes out of hubris or inexperience.
The model is based on a 22-year study that has distilled, codified and implemented the underlying disciplines behind scaling new ideas.
These disciplines include the power of purpose, behavioral dynamics, inspiring communication, social connections and the structural integrity of the organization and its culture.
Harnessing these disciplines have enabled leaders to dismantle empires (Gandhi), transform civil rights (MLK) and build transcendent brands (Apple, Nike, Harley-Davidson etc.)
This pattern is unintuitive, and not intrinsically difficult, but one has to have the passion to dream massive, the wisdom to start tiny, and the integrity to scale conscientiously.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Irrational fear and self-limiting mental models prevent us from making the greatest impact …more
we can. We unmask your fears, liberate your imagination, and unleash your leadership skills. You will learn to Dream Massive, Start Tiny and Scale Wisely. You can change the world.
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2. Craft A Holistic Value Proposition
Why do you think Apple commands higher loyalty at higher prices than its competitors? …more
Competitors try to beat Apple by offering superior features and attributes at lower prices. And they still lose!
We help you emulate Transcendent Brands that design to the human limbic system (emotions), not just the neocortex (logic and thoughts).
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3. Cultivate Your Adoption Curve
Leaders kill transformative ideas by asking a classic 20th century question: “What’s the market for this?” …more
If there isn’t a market, why bother? Right? Wrong. The better questions are, “Who needs this, why and how badly?”
Transformative innovation doesn’t target big markets – it creates markets by meeting big needs. Nothing big started big. Ever.
Being the “firstest with the mostest” is a fatal mistake most 20th century leaders insist on making. They fail even if they succeed, because fast followers get better returns. We segment and seed the market according to an old but ignored theory of the dispersion of innovation. Starting small isn’t a niche strategy. It ultimately improves your odds of ultimately gaining universal adoption for your ideas and innovations.
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4. Build A Purposeful Business Model
Existing business models rarely enable transformational change. They restrict it because legacy systems …more
are designed to preserve, not transform.
Most organizations assume that they must leverage existing infrastructure, assets and core competencies, even when they seek to create transformational change. This prevailing doctrine is one of the biggest reasons why so many Fortune 500 companies fail to create transformational change, and become irrelevant, or worse, obsolete, as smaller firms overtake them in value creation because they are unencumbered by legacy systems.
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5. Communicate Your Highest Truth
This is potentially the most unintuitive of the disciplines. With a few notable exceptions…more
the advertising industry has spent trillions of client dollars helping to rapidly commoditize their brands.
Ironically, advertising executives understand that change is emotional more so than most technocrats that lead large organizations in all sectors.
However, they add emotion to a rational message, instead of supporting an emotional message with rational back-up. They have it backwards. Which is why only a tiny handful of companies in the history of commerce have built truly transcendent brands.
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6. Develop Transformational Leaders
It is a fairly well understood fact that when a visionary founder/leader leaves an organization …more
because of retirement, death or being forced out by shareholders, many great organizations see an alarming dip in their fortunes. It happened to Starbucks until Howard Schultz returned to the helm. It happened to Apple when Jobs was forced out, and there’s a risk of the Apple brand being diluted after his death.
It is critical to decode their decision making processes, their vision and cascade these through the organization at all levels.
Additionally, most big organizations have the ability to attract great talent. The question is, how many of the potential change-makers inside these organizations are truly being empowered and enabled to fulfill their highest potential? Why wouldn’t an organization want to identify and create more transformational leaders? It can be done. Gifford Pinchot, Blue Earth’s Intrapreneurship mentor, has seen it and helped nurture intrapreneurship inside incredible organizations like Dupont, 3M, GE and others. He is credited with coming up with the term “intrapreneurship” and wrote a seminal book on it in the 1970s.
Management doctrine is obsessed with things like control, tracking, resource management and incentives. What is needed is alignment of purpose, skill and freedom. Contrary to conventional wisdom, transformational intrapreneurs don’t need more resources – they need to be trained in the skills and given the freedom to operate with minimal resources and bureaucracy.
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7. Champion Holistic Sustainability
Conventional wisdom talks about the triple bottom line. …more
This ignores some critical nuances. For 9 billion people to enjoy the basics of life within the known limits of the planet’s resources, to reverse ecological degradation, and to survive the increasing pressure for transparency and conscious business practices, Transcendent Organizations of the future need to integrate sustainability into every aspect of their business. Blue Earth imbeds all five domains of sustainability as espoused by Michael Ben-Eli into our processes of discovery, invention and adoption.
The five domains of holistic sustainability (as adapted from Michael Ben-Eli’s work):
Economic: There has to be real value creation to make transcendent organizations and their stakeholders viable. A vast majority of S&P 500 companies are creating less than 1% real value after deducting the cost of capital. Finding ways to innovate with lower upfront investment and risk is crucial.
Social: With more of the world’s population increasingly armed with multipurpose communication devices, the day is not far when the impact of an organization’s value-chain on its global stakeholders will be instantly visible, available and usable by people who make decisions on whether to engage with you or not. Sooner organizations take the lead in making their valuechains sustainable and above reproach from concerned citizens the better.
Bio-diversity: With science beginning to catch-up with nature’s sophisticated and delicate ecological balance, it may soon not be enough to use a catch-all phrase like “environmentally responsible.” Putting in place steps to get ahead of the curve on ensuring an organization’s impact on the increasingly visibly interconnected ecosystem is the wise way to go.
Materials & Energy: This is the more obvious aspect of environmental sustainability. Use as little as possible in as renewable a way as possible. This is critical to safeguard an organization, and ultimately the planet, from potentiall fatal shortages.
Personal: This is the invisible elephant in the room. Sustainability programs focus so much on community that they often ignore the fact that individual humans play a disproportionately large role in all the other aspects of sustainability. For transcendent organizations of the future to succeed, they need to remember that humans are feeling animals that think. Millennials, in particular, are unwilling to sacrifice their values as they make purchases or make a living. Helping all stakeholders live a better, more fulfilled life, is the hall mark of success for the best organizations on the planet.
