(upbeat music)
- In today's rapidly evolving markets,
it's crucial that
businesses are future fit.
That can mean getting the balance right
between time you spend in your business,
to time you spend on your business.
And it's important to
get strategic planning
at the top of your agenda
to make sure you're ahead of the game.
And in this episode today,
I've got a panel of experts
and we're gonna discuss
collaboration, innovation
and joint ventures,
to see where businesses
like yours can create value.
(upbeat music)
Today on the panel I'm
joined by Neil Bellamy.
He's head of technology, media,
and telecommunications sectors at NatWest.
And in his role,
he gets to work with lots
of scaleup businesses.
I'm also joined by Phil
Young, from Digital Catapult.
This is a government
supported innovation centre,
focused on driving the early adoption
of advanced digital technologies.
And also joined by Aalok Shukla,
he's a CEO of Straight Teeth Direct.
This is the UK's first digital,
at home cosmetic teeth
straightening business.
And finally, Charlie Thuillier.
He's the founder of healthy
ice cream company, Oppo.
So Neil, let's start with you.
Do you think businesses are,
they're ready for this change?
- In a word Piers, I don't think they are,
but I don't think that should
be a surprise to any of us,
because, you know,
we're right in the middle
of a fundamental change
in the UK economy.
You know, as we're transitioning
from an industrial age,
to this increasingly digital age,
and it's very confusing
for people, you know.
The innovation and technology
behind all this change,
is more and more rapid, it's
confusing, it can be expensive.
So I think people need help
with transitioning with the economy.
- So from your role, you
can see a lot of businesses,
especially in their technology,
media and telecoms sector.
- Yeah.
- But which are the ones that
you see have the most impact?
The ones that are embracing this change.
- My technology customers are
growing at a fantastic pace,
I think we did some
work the other day that,
they're growing an average of
10% organic growth in the UK,
which is six to seven times
the average of a GDP in the UK.
They're helping customers
from all sectors.
But the best I think,
the best of my clients are the ones
that don't focus on the technology,
they're focusing on
what businesses and
their customers achieve,
and kinda demystify the technology,
and that's why they're
being so successful.
- And Phil at Digital Catapult,
you're working at the leading edge almost,
like the cutting edge,
and so a lot of it's not
just about technology,
it's about mindset.
How would you define
this leadership mindset
that's required?
- To touch on your point
about being very leading edge,
actually these technologies
are already here,
they're already interwoven into, you know,
your search engines when you do a search,
or you're watching something online
and you wanna get a recommendation
of something else to watch.
There's a lot of these technologies
that as we've rightly pointed out,
need demystifying, for industry.
And people really need to
understand what they can do.
But they're also generally,
they're quite reticent,
because you hear a term like
artificial intelligence,
or virtual reality, or Internet of Things,
and it sounds like a buzzword,
it sounds like something
that they're a million miles away from,
in terms of deploying
it and working with it.
Some of these companies that we work with
in the industrial space,
don't even have websites sometimes.
You know, there's been
absolutely no reason to have one,
and just by thinking outside the box
about what these digital
technologies can do for them,
and being quite fearless
I suppose, in many ways,
embracing the disruption
of digital technologies,
they can really take strides
to get ahead of their competition.
Really going out and understanding
what the market looks like.
And at Digital Catapult we work with
in the majority, small
technology companies,
and a lot of the supply sites
for industry are small
technology companies.
You know, the digital
sector is typically startups
and scaleups,
and being able to understand who they are,
how to work with them,
speak the same language as them,
is also quite daunting
but at the same time,
if you take the steps to do it,
to understand what those
technologies can do,
even at a base level.
You really prepare
yourself for the future,
to really position yourself
and your strategies moving
forward to be fully informed,
and make really sensible
innovation strategy decisions, so.
- And I guess if you're
an industrial company
that's put it's first website up,
who has actually embraced this,
you very quickly can create
a competitive advantage.
- Absolutely.
Competitive advantage is
not even just in the UK now,
it's an international thing.
And for a manufacturer
or an industrial company
who have very tight margins
and things like that,
they might think investing
in something like this
is too high a cost.
But actually it's a bigger cost for you
if you are completely
paced out of the market,
by not just people in your own backyard,
but people in other companies
all around the world.
So you do have to remain competitive,
and you really have to
push yourself further
to be that nowadays, so it's crucial.
- Aalok, you started off as
a normal offline business,
working your sector.
- Yeah.
- And now you've sold that
to fund a business which
is completely digital.
- Yeah.
- Talk us through it.
- Sure.
So digital technologies are
happening for everybody right?
Mobile phones are in everyone's pocket,
people have the same behaviours
but they're interacting in
new ways through technologies.
So we discovered when we started offering
online consultations and online booking
in 2013 in our practise,
we had massive inquiries
from all over the UK.
Even though, and even abroad,
even though we were
just a clinic in London,
in South West London.
And we were quite surprised
at the volume of interest
for affordable, accessible solutions
for cosmetic teeth straightening.
We grew the clinic, we doubled it.
But then I very quickly started to see
that the cost of 3D
printing was coming down,
and at the same time
there's a global demand,
and the question is focusing
on what won't change,
and I don't really think too
much about the technology,
I think about,
people want things which is
gonna be accessible, affordable,
convenient and high quality.
So then the question is
you think in reverse,
how can I use technology to
make those things happen?
So we sold the business,
and we digitalized and
vertically integrated,
so that we could offer at home
cosmetic teeth straightening,
through an app,
through manufacturing
ourselves with 3D printing,
and then delivering and
supervising from there.
We have customers in 50 countries now.
- So initially you were
doing the consultations,
but you were delivering the
product the old fashioned way.
- Exactly.
- And then you realised
well hang on a minute,
if I can use this new technology,
3D printing in your case,
I can now do the consultations online,
I can deliver a product,
I'm assuming, at a cheaper
price than the competition.
- 30% of the price and higher quality.
Because we have continuous monitoring.
Before if you go to a clinic,
you go monthly for an appointment
and they might have a look and
see how you are progressing.
We have tracked photographs coming through
into our platform,
we can compare against
the predicted position
for 3D for that month,
and we can get a percentage
of various comparisons,
so now we're leveraging
artificial intelligence, computer vision,
to track and improve qualities further.
So you've got the opportunity
to create experiences and qualities
that you couldn't do physically.
- I'm assuming the competition, as such,
they can't keep up with you,
'cause you're moving very quickly.
- So I think the key thing is,
that's one thing absolutely,
but I think if you redesign
your entire business structure,
so that you are lean,
effective and efficient,
and you can deliver high
value and high quality
in what the customer cares about.
So in terms of experience,
in terms of product quality,
and you strip out everything
which they wouldn't
necessarily care about.
Then you can be very competitive
and have a long term view.
- So Neil, just give your view of
how important it is to think disruptively.
- Yeah I think, probably best
is to give you an example.
One of my clients previously
were in selling hardware communications,
and moving into sort of consultancy.
And they were at the university campus,
trying to help them to be
the most digitally connected campus.
So student satisfaction we
were talking about customers,
what they need,
and their customers, their students,
were trying to get to the
nub of their satisfaction.
And they looked at the surveys
and it's quite a you
know, funny complaint,
but they were saying
queues in the launderette
is what they were really upset about,
you know, the most about the campus.
So traditional thinking is,
well let's buy lots more
industrial machinery,
lots more laundry machines, you know,
it's kind of like the old industrial way
of thinking about it.
But the digital mindset said,
"Well no let's put a camera
"in the corner of the launderette."
Put some visual aid, you know,
visual recognition AI on that camera,
so we can know how many
students are queuing
for those laundry machines.
And the customer thought
well that sounds great.
And it's then connected to an app,
that tells the students when you know,
how many are in the queue.
And of course, the students
absolutely love this, you know,
thinking digitally
rather than the old industrial
economy about problems.
- So moving onto Charlie.
Essentially you make healthy ice cream.
How by embracing this,
the leadership, growth
mindset and new technologies,
how has it helped you stay ahead?
And how will it help you stay ahead?
- When we first launched Oppo,
we were the first healthy
ice cream globally.
Five years later,
there must be 35, 40
companies around the world,
all fighting really, really
hard for the same space
and all using the same
category cues as each other
on packaging et cetera.
So, this space has become
massively congested,
incredibly quickly,
therefore as you say,
it's really, really
crucial for us to make sure
we do stay ahead, and we stay innovative,
and we stay interesting for
consumers at the same time.
I think it's really important
to welcome the competitors into the space.
And I don't mean physically
going and shaking their hand,
but I mean using their might,
in a way that's going
to support your company.
Within six months of Unilever
and various other competitors
coming into the marketplace,
they'd managed to educate many,
many millions of consumers,
that we hadn't been able to in four years.
It was amazing for us.
Our sales doubled overnight
when they launched in the
supermarket next to us.
Just because they were
ploughing so much money
into above the line advertising.
So the second where we've done it
is by making sure we keep innovating.
And I guess that's the
benefit of a small company,
that you can,
you can be much, much more agile,
and move much, much faster
than anyone else can really.
And I guess the third thing
we've done is by focusing.
The more you can focus
on what you're doing,
bang the same drum about
what makes you different,
and what makes you interesting
and important to consumers,
the easier you'll find success.
So, larger companies,
typically fall into the trap
of being all things to all people,
and actually as a small company,
you have the luxury of
not needing to do that.
The risk of that is that it
would polarise consumers.
And some consumers
would absolutely love it
and others would absolutely hate it.
And actually that's a really great thing,
'cause then they do
your marketing for you,
they'll do a lot more chatter about you.
- If you listen to these
great entrepreneurs,
what they've done is they've
lengthened their horizon,
rather than just working in
the business day after day.
And by lifting yourself
and seeing the broader
horizon, I think, you can then,
not focus on these tech buzzwords
that we've kind of mentioned,
but what they do for people,
and they kind of, I call
them mega trends, you know,
what are the five or six mega
trends that are out there?
And how do they effect me and my customer?
And how can I sort of
pivot and position myself?
To take, 'cause, some
of these mega trends,
they've got so much money
and capitol behind them,
in social media, or
computing power, or cloud,
you know, they're just a
train that's gonna keep going,
so if you can align yourself
with these mega trends,
I think you're gonna be in a good place.
- It's a wave right?
Like, so a massive wave is
coming, the question is,
are you going to wait for
it and get on top of it?
Or are you gonna be crushed
by it essentially right?
You know, at home personalization,
direct consumer, you know, apps.
These are just happening.
So the question is like,
how can you figure out how
is this relevant to me?
And then how can I position
myself to get there?
In our manufacturing
process, we manufacture,
we 3D print the models,
and then we like pressure
form aligners on top of it,
but we're looking into,
how can we print the aligners directly?
How can we do different things?
There's always ways
you can improve things.
- So Phil I don't know
if this is a mega trend,
but one of the key things is networks.
So, you know, not too long ago
you were in your own sector,
you'd be going out with ice cream people,
and that's where the people would bid.
Whereas now it doesn't work anymore.
You have to, 'cause these things overlap.
And because of the
software driven businesses,
just talk us through how
important networks are.
- Typically, really successful
businesses in digitalization,
don't just typically work
with the same players
that they've always worked with.
It's about breaking free of that silo
that you've found yourself in,
because you're only gonna innovate
once you break free of that.
Because the innovators aren't,
as you've rightly pointed out,
these big companies are not
the innovators in the same way.
They can be innovative, you know,
you do get innovations
that emerge from them.
But actually a lot of the time,
that even those big companies
buy smaller companies to innovate.
And the expectations shouldn't be
that you have to build all
the capabilities yourself
in-house as well,
it's actually that if
you go out to the market
and you speak with people
who can solve your problems,
you can actually work
together, collaboratively--
- It's about partnership.
- To create solutions.
And it's through partnerships that really,
you come to conclusions
and actually solve those
long standing issues.
So engaging with startups, scaleups,
engaging with other innovators,
sometimes even at really leading edge,
you can speak to universities
and research institutions,
'cause they've got some solutions
that they can apply to your problem.
And taking those steps to
really get ahead of the game
is crucial to being able
to be successful I think.
- Networks, you're right,
they are crucial when you start up.
But at the same time, how
we use networks today is,
I guess from a practical
sense, and also a mental sense,
so practically
we do try and frequently
bring our network together
to solve problems together,
if you can come and brainstorm a solution
and coach each other through a problem,
and indeed help each other
leapfrog over potholes
that other people have already faced.
- Then you may think about
human's sharing ideas basically.
- And it's amazing what
innovation you can find
from other industries,
ideas from other industries.
And if we can support each other in that,
and constantly learn,
then of course that's
always gonna be supportive
and gonna help.
- Neil you hate this phrase, "Scaling up".
So a lot of businesses now,
they're at the point where they you know,
they've got the customers,
they can see a growth opportunity.
A lot of people watching this,
probably quite concerned about
how you go about doing that,
and there's issues like
skill, leadership, capitol.
From you're experience, what
advice would you give them?
- When I was speaking
to the most successful scaleup businesses,
and you ask the founders
and the CEOs you know,
"Any regrets? Or any
advice you'd pass on?"
And most of them would say to me,
"You know what?
"I had a gut feeling that I
needed to change my business,
"or invest and go in this direction,
"pivot this way,
"and I felt it in my gut, that
it was the right thing to do,
"and I wish I'd gone bolder,
"and I wish I'd gone
harder and quicker at it."
- And that's a mindset thing isn't it?
- Yeah, be confident.
I think we could be a lot
more confident in this country
about investing in our businesses,
and that's not just technology,
that's people and your infrastructure.
- And that's where networks
kick in because then--
- Yeah, well it's networks,
but it's also understanding opportunities
and seizing them on all fronts,
'cause there are initiatives
that can help support
organisations and companies
in de-risking this.
'Cause from their point of view,
it seems very risky,
you know, thinking about,
oh I've gotta put a bunch of money in
and I don't really know what
I'm gonna get out of it.
Why should I do it?
Nobody else is doing it.
What's the point?
I'm happy to just keep going
in the direction I'm going,
but the value for them to break free
of that mindset would be
that they can really
completely change and transform
their business for the better.
Increase their profit
margins, productivity,
all of those aspects of it.
And you know, government
have a number of initiatives
that do help to de-risk,
there's match funding initiatives,
there's R&D, where you can
produce proof of concepts,
you can work and connect
with startups or innovators
from all across the spectrum.
And sometimes even with larger companies,
you help, as you say,
unlock larger challenges
and solve them together.
So coming together collaboratively,
it's the mindset coupled
with the mechanisms
that exist out there,
the delivery mechanisms.
It's really about driving forward and--
- It's being future fit now.
- [Phil] Well exactly yeah.
- If that something ever ends.
And I'll say
that not having a plan or
a growth plan these days,
'cause of the way things
are moving very quickly,
it's a bad plan.
- Yeah absolutely, you're
gonna get stuck in a rut,
and you're not gonna break free of that
unless you break yourself free of it.
- You have to have a vision for your life
and for your business.
And by focusing on that you can then think
okay, what capabilities do I have now?
What capabilities do other people have,
or would I like to acquire?
You can then tap into networks,
you can tap into partners,
or you can figure out how can I add that?
Or hire someone with that capability,
who can then help us get
to where I want to get to.
- Also how could you be disruptive?
'Cause people will do what you do,
they're looking at you now thinking,
hang on a minute, he's doing
what we do at half the price.
- Exactly.
So you always have to rethink
and just think from the
customer's perspective.
What do they really want?
What do they really value?
And then just keep working backwards
and trying to improve from there.
- Let's go down the line
maybe give one tip of
advice to the audience
about how you manage that constant change,
that constant need to look
ahead, look into the future.
Because it can be daunting for many,
and even tiring for some.
- I think one tip I would say is read.
So there's some amazing
books, one book I'd recommend
is called "Exponential Organisations",
and it talks all about companies
which are ten x and
outperforming other ones
in their industry.
And it gives a really simple framework
how to embrace digital
technologies to do things,
so if you look at things like that,
you can get inspiration.
- Remain fascinated in your industry.
That's one thing.
'Cause as long as you're
interested, fascinated,
enjoying it and intrigued still,
then embracing change would come naturally
'cause you'd be excited.
- Don't be complacent.
- Exactly.
Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
- Phil?
- I think it's about
being brave to be a leader
in your sector.
I think sometimes with a
lot of these technologies
you really have to take the first step,
be a first mover,
be a trail blazer so to speak.
And someone's going to do it, why not you?
That would be my one tip.
Be that person, be that company.
- For me I think it's don't panic.
You know, we can get obsessed with looking
at some consumer industries
that are really fast-paced.
But actually quite a lot of B2B
is much slower paced isn't it?
So look out for those overall trends,
don't try and react to every single fad.
Just try and see the overall trends
and play to those strengths.
- And there's gotta be a
business reason for doing it,
not just doing it
for the sake of spending
money on innovation.
- Yeah there's a lot of buzzwords and hype
around AI at the moment, for example.
And it's you know, the old saying of
everyone is gonna overestimate
the effect it'll have in the short-term,
but underestimate it in the long-term.
And I think you just gotta
look at technologies like that,
and some of these guys
have said, you know,
"What is gonna be the effect on my company
"and my customers?"
Don't get confused about
the technology itself,
just think about the impact it could have.
- The risk of change is that
you can be dragged off course,
and you can get a little
bit confused with actually
what are you good at?
And what are you here to do?
- That's why you need
a planned destination.
- [Charlie] Gotta have focus.
- Technologies help you get
there in a more efficient way.
- And focus on what won't change,
customer desires will,
well they'll want things like effective,
you know, like timely shipping, low costs,
like Jeff Bezos says, focus on
what won't change basically.
- Well I wanna thank the panel
for a fascinating conversation there
on the importance of being future fit.
And if you want to know more,
search NatWest Business Hub.
There's loads of information,
advice and tips on there.
Thanks very much.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
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