Impossible is Nothing: The Best of Both Worlds is the Future

Returning from an exceptional week at P&G's annual Signal Conference in Cincinnati, where the best minds from across the brand-building and technology industries gather to discuss and debate the future of business, I am truly inspired by the range of companies represented by leaders on the stage – from the biggest corporations in the world to the newest, start-ups pioneering new models and new innovations.

Much of the discussion surrounded how the two worlds can interact and learn from each other. This is near and dear to my heart after my 10 years in Israel – the start-up nation. Ever since this experience, I have advocated for and championed the world of start-ups and the critical role they play in the future success of every industry.

What if the new industry standard is about both unprecedented scale and entrepreneurship? How a $65 billion company, with 100,000 employees and 5 billion consumers can win like a start-up.

Some say it is impossible. But, Impossible is Nothing…

This starts with a mindset and a culture. It is rooted in innovation and the rejection of the status quo; a spirit of entrepreneurship and exploration; and daring to push for more… It’s embracing the power of possibility like the late, great Muhammad Ali.

My 10 years in the start-up nation transformed me and my approach to my business and organization.

Israel is a remarkable place: 24h/7, vibrant, a melting pot of 70 nationalities, a land the size of New Jersey with 8 million people creating 1,400 new technology start-ups in a year (2016). In 2015, $9.2 Billion Dollars were spent by foreign & local companies to acquire Israeli tech companies. There are more Israeli tech companies listed on NASDAQ than any country in the world except US and China. And then there was me, working for P&G – the biggest FMCG company in the world, 170 years old, but totally unknown to the rest of the country… a country less than 60 years old at that time.

Your training & instincts take you to the fundamentals:

1. Win market leadership
2. Recruit the best talent and ignite business growth
3. Give back to the community – create a prosperous community around you

On the 1st priority, P&G Brands are #1 in most of the categories we play in. On the 2nd priority, you need a disruptive idea. And on the 3rd, my community was the start-up nation. So, the question I faced was how do we create a mutual benefit for P&G and an ecosystem of start-ups and innovators? At that time, nobody in FMCG was truly considering start-ups!

Like all great collaborations, the partnership is founded on mutual value: the win-win.

• We could offer start-ups the intellectual rigour and discipline of our people and their experience of understanding consumer tensions and formulating winning business strategies.
• We help them assess the viability of ideas and prototypes through the lens of the billions of people we serve with our brands and the complexity of a global business operation.
• And we offer them the opportunity of scalability and access to market that often represents the final step in a project which they’ve dedicated their professional lives to.

From our side,

• We benefit from pioneering new ideas for accelerated growth, not burdened by the status quo or the limitations of traditional models/thinking.
• We find concrete business solutions to some of the biggest consumer challenges, at pace, powered by data and technology.
• We take inspiration from their obsession with the consumer

10 years ago, we founded P&G Israel House of Innovation, a first-ever partnership established around a shared vision and passion for innovation, at scale, inspired by entrepreneurs.

10 years later… these exciting young start-ups have matured into global suppliers. Technologies from video optimization, business intelligence, advanced analytics, dash board solutions and cyber security have been devised, perfected and put to work. We co-design products, services and capabilities tailored for real-time business needs.

Today, we push new boundaries, scaling up IHI to create the P&G Europe Digital Innovation Accelerator, a multi discipline open innovation capability to accelerate growth, drive productivity, create new Digital Brand business models, working with new partners and involving all employees in the innovation process, leveraging a full start-up ecosystem, while applying Lean organization principles. Each of our Brands like Gillette, Oral B, Braun and Pampers are actively engaged.  

The recent creation of P&G InQnet campus at our Brussels Innovation Center stimulates innovation via co-locations with partners, to work with the most innovative start-ups and to co-create cutting edge innovation through methods like Hackathons.

Start-ups are a vital component of our ecosystem of external partners. Alongside more traditional cohorts like consultants, media and communications agencies, and retail customers, they play a pivotal role in the future of our business and, particularly, in our relentless pursuit of breakthrough innovation and our efforts to make the digital transformation work for our billions of consumers. We learn from each other, we support each other and we innovate and pioneer together.

OBSESSION WITH THE CONSUMER 

It all starts with a job to be done, a new problem to be solved, a friction that you remove before and better than anyone else in the market.

It is about the USER: The consumer or customer at the centre. 

Oral B Genius is the 1st power toothbrush with Blue tooth technology. It uses digital technology and position detection to give users detailed feedback. The app lets users know whether they are brushing too little or too long in one place or if they have missed an area completely. The feedback leads people to change their behaviors. On top, with the data from inertia sensors in the brush handle and images from the smartphone’s camera, the smart analysis software can tell not only the consumer where and how well he/ she brushes but their dentist too, if they like. The dentist can play a coaching role and upload a personalized teeth-cleaning program. This innovation would not have been possible without digital simulation and modelling.

NO RIVAL FOR EXPONENTIAL IDEA 

Here I refer to the Waze Vs Nokia story, as Salim Ismail describes in his book, The Exponential Organization. In 2007, two months after Steve Jobs announced the Apple iphone, at the very moment where everything in high tech changed, Nokia spent $8.1 Billion to acquire Navteq, a navigation and road mapping company. Nokia assessed that controlling those systems would allow them to dominate the in-road traffic sensor industry. The intent was to compete with Google and Apple.

At the same time, a small Israeli company called Waze was founded. Instead of making massive capital investments in road sensor hardware, the founders of Waze chose to crowd-source location information by leveraging the GPS sensors on its users’ phones to capture traffic info. Within 2 years, Waze was collecting as much info as Navteq and, within 4 years, 10 times more, essentially at zero cost.

By June 2012, Nokia’s market valuation collapsed from $140 billion to $8 Billion and, in June 2013, Google acquired Waze for 1.1 $Billion. At that time the company had no infrastructure, no hardware and no more than 100 employees. What it did have was 50 MILLION USERS.

Nokia used linear thinking and Waze leapfrogged the world of physical sensors by piggybacking on its users iphone’s.

Infrastructure alone is no longer a competitive advantage or barrier to competition. Superior Consumer understanding and creating a friction free experience is. 

IF YOU’RE NOT WILLING TO FAIL, YOU’RE NOT ABLE TO SUCCEED

We used to say the ‘only failure is absence of learning’ --- this needs to evolve. It still suggests failure is a bad thing to be worried about. We must get comfortable with failure, even embrace it. It is necessary. If you’re not willing to fail, you’re not able to succeed. 

Not everything is a success and it’s OK. The key is how you react and put the failure to work the next time.

Much of this relies on the culture you nurture in your organization. We have to encourage creative confidence – not dampen this spirit. We must produce a fertile and conducive environment for people to grow the seeds of an idea into a beautiful flower. Corporate risk aversion and excessive process & structures are the enemy of innovation and stifle creativity. This takes courage and brave leadership. It takes vision and conviction. And it demands that we embrace the power of possibility.

These are the lessons I learned from the start-up nation and that will drive our business forward in the future.

They taught us to dare to do more… to reach for the impossible. 

We must harness the science and technology available to drive our innovation, to power our operations and to transform the consumer experience in a digital world.

We must raise the bar on our performance --- on our creativity --- on our culture. 

We must be courageous, be willing to fail, be open to learn, and believe in the power of possibility. 

When you see the capability, the talent, the scale, the resources, the brands, the budgets and the reputation and influence we have… and you fire that up with a start-up mentality, a culture of innovation and a spirit of exploration and discovery… when you combine the best of both worlds and unleash the power of possibility…. you can do amazing things.