Growth is in the air!
I’ve spent eight years thinking about how corporates can capture massive growth opportunities by being entrepreneurial. And the last year’s disruption has only proven the rewards that go to companies that can anticipate and create new customer behaviours. So (drum roll) we’ve just released our whitepaper where we outline our framework for Entrepreneurial Growth in large organisations - what it is, how to create it, actions to take now. Read all about it here.
I am going to be bringing it to life at the Innov8rs ‘Unconference' on May 11 at 4PM UK time. If you’re interested in tuning in, and the wider Uncconference agenda that is kicking off next week, get in touch, we’ve got some discounts and passes to share. The Innov8rs Community includes 4,000+ others with “innovation” in their title, and the Unconference will include 70+ interactive sessions with innovation leaders from the likes of Google, Citi, Dupont, Airbus and ING (and me).
But that’s not all folks: we also put our heads together with SoftBank Investment Advisors to better understand how to accelerate diversity in tech ecosystems - read our findings and some very practical actions to take here.
See you all very soon,
Rob & the Founders Intelligence Team
Entrepreneurial Growth - Creating Growth After Covid
COVID-19 has created massive growth opportunities as consumer and business needs, expectations and behaviours shift. But most large organisations will not capture those opportunities: growth in our changed world requires the creation and scaling of new propositions and business models rather than the replication of existing ones.
This article outlines a framework for you to set your organisation on a sustainable and inspirational path to growth by unlocking entrepreneurship within your company. It provides you with:
A set of principles with which to rethink your approach to growth
Case studies showcasing this approach
Practical actions to take immediately
Download the full whitepaper here.
🗞 What's grabbed our attention this month 🗞
Brought to you by Ezra Konvitz & Daniella Loftus and Hendrik Jandel
CGI-love you - Knitwear label PH5 gained a new employee, AMA, as ‘Chief Decision Scientist’. If AMA seems a bit uncanny to you, it’s because she’s a CGI-rendered personification of PH5’s aesthetic and ethos. While CGI models have been around for a while (Lil Miquela now boasts 2.9m Instagram followers and a YouTube channel for her songs — her creator used to manage popstar Banks) this is the first time a brand has created a CGI influencer who is also personalised. Apparently, AMA will not only be responsible for educating around sustainability but also to negotiate upcoming collaborations - a potentially interesting way to ensure that no one holds all the cards in a meeting.
So what? In the coming years, brands will increasingly leverage CGI and deepfakes tailored to their ethos to boost customer engagement. Digital modelling agencies like The Diigitals (responsible for the world’s first CGI supermodels) will increasingly be brought in-house until every brand is repped by their own AMA (negotiating power may vary). If all goes to plan, consumers will find themselves resonating more and more with the faces of the brands because these actors are programmed to resonate with their interlocutor. Whether that’s Rosebud AI’s Deepfake models, who respond directly to consumer data to morph around what a consumer will find appealing, or Hour.one AI’s Deepfake chatbots, the customised avatar programmed to please might change the whole nature of ad creation and customer service.
Tell me more - Apple added two new voices to Siri, moving away from the female default after facing criticism about submissive responses to insults and gender bias built into AI. Alexa, Cortana, Google Home and Siri are all exclusively female or female by default and the use of the female gender for robotic service workers can perpetuate the idea that assistants are exclusively women. Worse than that, it can reinforce sexist behaviours across speech. And given that research on unconscious bias shows the gender associations people adopt are contingent on the number of times they are exposed to them, knowing that Siri handles 25B requests / month on 500+ million devices across 21 languages... well, you do the math.
So what? The last year saw detrimental blunders in algorithmic bias spanning everything from exam results to policing. Tools are now being developed to interrogate the biases that go into our tech, but what about what comes out of it? Just as tech inputs can maintain stereotypes so can its outputs. Be it through hardware or metaverses, technology allows you to define user behaviour with far reaching repercussions (e.g. VR headsets are built around male physiology making women more likely to experience cyber sickness, significantly impacting the quantity of female gamers). Where human centric design still means white-male centric design, big tech needs to acknowledge that a shift from UX to UXX is needed.
Gorillas Gone Wild – On demand grocery delivery startup Gorillas became a unicorn, 9 months after launch. Their pitch? Get groceries and household items delivered to your door within 10 minutes. What’s different to ‘incumbent’ delivery options? It’s hyper local, dark store only, and fair(er, at least - no gig economy). Dark store grocery startups are just so hot right now: competitor Flink just raised a $52m ‘seed’ round, US-based goPuff raised over $1bn, and then there are the many local superstars like Cajoo (France), Getir (Turkey), Jiffy (UK).
So what? Dark store startups are starting to look like the new e-scooters: local winner-take-all markets with questionable unit economics. But, as with scooters, the winners have the potential to fundamentally change the urban landscape (with e-scooters, this included the biodiversity of riverbeds..): as lockdowns and e-commerce have accelerate the emptying of the high street, expect micro fulfilment centres to become a lot more present in your life (we worked with parking operator APCOA on some pretty groovy concepts). There are still questions about the unit economics - but if those delivery fees and the narrow range of SKUs work out, big grocery chains and convenience retail alike are going to face some shareholder questions (without serious VC cash to work it out). We’re ordering popcorn to watch.
📸In Focus: Accelerating Diversity - Building Stronger Founder Ecosystems 📸
The U.S. and European tech industries fail to represent the societies they serve and operate in. These inequities span every stage of a founder’s journey. From navigating opaque information networks on how to build start-ups most effectively to securing the financing to scale businesses, the entire tech ecosystem has a duty and an opportunity to drive tangible change to rectify the imbalances.
We developed a whitepaper on improving diversity in the tech ecosystem, speaking with 27 VCs, founders and accelerator leads to understand how to make a better top of the investment funnel and building on our experience running accelerators for BP, Facebook and ITV. A few top tips:
1) Be loudly, transparently open to underrepresented founders
2) Share your social capital and facilitate connections
3) Don't expect founders to 100% commit to their concepts with no income - give actual financial support so they can
That’s all for now. If you enjoyed reading this, share the joy.
PS: We’re also contributing insights to Founders News, a new personalised tech newsletter with info on your network and lots of this content too hatched out of Founders Forum - subscribe here!