I believe this business model is the interaction field model. There are three features that distinguish interaction field models from platforms or digital ecosystems.

First, interaction fields are interactional and not just transactional. Platforms are known to be a powerful force of competition. They build an infrastructure to orchestrate transactions between providers and consumers, between riders and drivers (Uber or Lyft are examples), between hosts and travelers (Airbnb), between buyers and sellers of books, for example.

Platforms learn a great deal from the frequency and number of transactions, which is why they are kind of obsessed with frequency numbers like MAU or DAU. They make markets more efficient; they remove frictions and create value for customers and consumers. They are so successful in competing against incumbents, they disrupt swaths of categories and industries.

In New York City, where I live, driving a taxi used to be a way to make money for many immigrants. It was a way to establish a new life and earn a living as an entrepreneur. Long hours were required to catch enough fares, but there was also the value of the license, called the “taxi medallion,” that would go up in value. A driver could sell this license at the end of his career, much like an entrepreneur could sell his or her restaurant, retail store, or small business after many years of labor.

If you started early in the 1960s, you could get a taxi license for $25,000. By 2005, the license cost $325,000. Five years later, it was $600,000 and in 2013, the value was over a million dollars. Then, suddenly the value of the license dropped by 45% over two years. By 2019, a medallion license was worth nearly nothing. In one auction, sixteen medallions were offered, three sold for less than $140,000 and 13 medallions had no bidders.[i]

What happened? Uber, Lyft and other ridesharing platforms had come to the city. There are now about 80,000 for-hire vehicles on the road. Two-thirds are from ridesharing platforms. 13,500 are traditional medallion taxis.[ii] There is now a lot more congestion in midtown New York City, and most drivers don’t make enough anymore since there simply aren’t enough fares out there. Economists call this phenomenon “negative externalities,” a cost that is suffered by a third party due to an economic transaction. Taxi drivers have lost their investments. If you now need to make a living in the city by driving a for-hire car, you join the gig economy. That means, minimum wage if any at all, and no benefits. As Douglas Rushkoff writes, they turn lifelong jobs into the temp jobs for the gig economy.[iii]

Uber and the other ridesharing companies of course have moved on and have become digital ecosystems. There now exists Uber Eats, which delivers food from restaurants and dozens of other businesses, for example. What is your best guess what will happen to many restaurants?

Platforms are about disruption. They see opportunity in frictions and inefficiencies or lack of innovation. It is often said that taxis were not innovative. The last innovation in the taxi industry was the taxi meter, which was introduced soon after World War II.

Platforms do two things when they are done with an industry. For one, they evolve toward ecosystems like Uber and either look for disruption in adjacent markets or they move on to another market. I could tell the same story about Amazon starting with book retailing, and when that industry was kaput, it moved to other categories one after the other. Some people say that’s the nature of business. Tough luck.

But I don’t think that is correct. Platforms and digital ecosystems can be good when they are interaction field models. Interaction field models build on collaboration and participation. They are not just transactional but interactional. An example is Alibaba. Alibaba’s mission is: “Our mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. With our platform model, we are bringing buyers and sellers from all over the world together, and are best placed to partner with them to meet the needs of the nearly 700 million users on our platform.”[iv] Alibaba is not in the business of disrupting small retailers – they are in the business of making them efficient, removing frictions and enabling them to sell more. In China, there are 6 million small retailers, mom-and-pop shops who sell locally and operate at a relatively basic level. Alibaba offers them a retail management software, Ling Shou Tong, for free. This software helps the stores to become more efficient, optimize the assortment, and sell more across many more parts of China.

Everyone gains – Alibaba gains valuable data from millions of small stores and earns a fee for any online sales. Hundreds of thousands of merchants also can now sell their millions of products locally. Alibaba builds on collaboration, not disruption, it is interactional and benefits everyone.

Interaction fields solve new problems that are often intractable challenges or pain points that often haven’t been solved before. Platform and digital ecosystems also do that, but they typically focus on narrow, often existing, problems. GM tried it with Maven, a subscription service to compete with Zipcar. It started in 2016 solving for more flexibility of transportation or mobility. It closed the business in 2020. GM is not an exception; I could now spend the rest of my day describing other car companies’ attempts to do the same. There are several hundreds of meal kit solutions like Blue Apron and over 175 mattresses companies like Casper, many of them solving the same problem.[v]

Tesla is, in my mind, a company that isn’t about a platform or a digital ecosystem. It wants to be an interaction field company. It solves for a lot more than just electric cars, as you know. Besides, it is not even just a car company. It solves for some degrees of autonomous driving; it solves for lower CO2 emission. It is well known that a car is 95 percent idle and so it built the Tesla network where you can post your car while you travel globally. Others can pick up the car and use it during that time. It solves for better utilization, lower cost of ownership of a car, and so much more. I don’t need to tell much more; the story has been told so many times. Some things are still vision some are reality, but the direction is apparent. If Tesla has it, it will have a much more significant share of our lives, solving for multiple problems and challenges we have daily, rather just selling us another lease of a new Model 3 every three years.

Third, interaction fields are platforms and digital ecosystems that are open and welcome other participants. They propagate being inclusive rather than being exclusive. In today’s discussion of digital ecosystems, the term “ecosystem competition” has become popular.[vi] Ecosystems compete now against other ecosystems, and you as a company need to decide which ecosystem you join if you can’t build your own.

This idea is exactly what was the old idea of competition between firms, and the notion that existing companies in industries and categories need to be disrupted. In other words, existing competitive companies need to be driven into bankruptcy or some form of demise and the same logic applies to platforms and digital ecosystems.

We should be wiser. Is it really about competition between ecosystems? Is it really all about who wins and who loses? Should we really, in this day and age, just think about capturing or extracting value, driving more shareholder value through ecosystem competition? Marshall van Alystne, Geoffrey Parker and Sangeet Paul Choudary have spoken so many times about how platform firms are skilled at creating and capturing value, but not all of them are really good at sharing value or dividing up value among participants.

An interaction field company builds the governance in such a way that there is fair value distribution. As Marshall van Alstyne says, a situation where you create more value than you take.[vii]

Flatiron Health, a Roche Pharma company, enables an interaction field that brings together patients, care providers and even competing pharmaceutical companies and regulators like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in continuous interactions between millions of patients and care providers sharing data about every single instance of cancer treatment. The interactions are rich exchanges of learning with a depth that has enabled a larger open network of companies like pharmaceutical companies, competing drug companies, and life science companies to collaborate with the FDA to approve therapeutic solutions faster and to more effectively treat cancer patients.

Everyone in the interaction field benefits – in Flatiron Health’s case, mostly patients because the organization has made it possible for everyone to learn from the interactions that its platform captures. This has allowed for faster approval of drugs for certain cancer conditions by the FDA. Trust me, when you are one of the 1.8 million Americans who will be diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and you know that over 600,000 American die (six times more than COVID-19 deaths) this year and every year thereafter, faster approval of a cancer drug is enormously good news for you.

So, let’s stop building self-serving platforms or digital ecosystems that seek to compete, to disrupt and enrich distant shareholders, and let’s start building interaction fields.

For more details on interaction field companies and business models, I recommend my book: https://www.amazon.com/Interaction-Field-Revolutionary-Businesses-Customers/dp/1541730518

[i] Wikipedia entry: Taxi Medallion, accessed June 6, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_medallion#:~:text=The%20price%20rose%20steadily.,around%202013%20at%20over%20%241%2C000%2C000.

[ii] https://www.wired.com/story/new-york-city-flexes-extending-cap-uber-lyft/

[iii] Douglas Rushkoff, Team Human, W.W. Norton, New York, 2019.

[iv] Statement by Terry von Bitra, General Manager, Europe, Alibaba Group, Germany, page 9 of this excellent report

http://reports.weforum.org/digital-transformation/wp-content/blogs.dir/94:/mp/files/pages/files/digital-platforms-and-ecosystems-february-2019.pdf

[v] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/18/there-are-now-175-online-mattress-companiesand-you-cant-tell-them-apart.html

[vi] https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/competing-in-a-world-of-digital-ecosystems

[vii] watch is excellent four minute video by Marshall van Alstyne. This point here has been made around minute 4:07 https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6674110820328243200/

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You’ll be hard-pressed to find an industry that’s carrying a heavier load during the COVID-19 pandemic than the healthcare industry. Health systems globally are cracking under the pressure of extreme utilization and exhaustion of resources (e.g. healthcare personnel, ICU beds, ventilators, PPE, test kits, etc.) with over 2.4M confirmed cases worldwide and counting.[1] Here in the US, depleted storages, lack of early intervention, and the inefficiencies and inequalities of our health system have already led to tragic health outcomes.

During this difficult time, a notable bright light shines from the number of “unlikely” brands and cross-sector partners that have stepped up in response. These companies are leveraging their massive reach, technology, data, and business assets to join in the fight alongside healthcare systems. Once rivals in business, these brands are coming together when it matters. For example, 15 global pharmaceutical and biotech companies (i.e. Novartis, Sanofi, J&J, Eli Lilly, Merck (MSD), Pfizer, etc.) have committed to sharing proprietary assets and expertise to find a vaccine through the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator led by the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and Mastercard.[2]

Furthermore, we’ve seen a rise in brands outside of “traditional healthcare” pool resources to contribute to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, a past Vivaldi client, ABinBev is producing and distributing hand sanitizers as well as redirecting $5M in sports and entertainment ad spend to support the American Red Cross in getting more blood donations.

This surge in collaboration across sectors, ecosystems, and organization is not only an inspiring tribute to the ingenuity of humankind and our ability to come together, but also a prime example of why Platform Thinking prevails as the new model of value creation.

Simply stated, Platform Thinking is a fundamental new way of doing business – from when businesses focus exclusively on competition (or disruption) to when businesses center on collaboration and mutual value creation to solve big, complex problems. Problems like a deadly, extremely contagious pandemic.

Platform Thinking companies are focused on leveraging their interactions (engagement, collaboration, data) and not just transactions (which stems from the old industrial era model) at the core of their business – between two or more participants.

Companies that leverage Platform Thinking are the ones that know how to leverage their Interaction Fields – creating, facilitating, and motivating interactions, collaborations and connections and in turn creating value for all those involved.

Here is a short list of notable initiatives or companies that exemplify Platform Thinking:

• Pharmaceutical and biotech companies working together: Pharmaceutical companies are coming together during this global pandemic in several ways. As aforementioned, by aggregating scientific, development and manufacturing resources, pharma and biotech companies are racing together toward therapeutics. Many public-private partnerships are popping up in collaboration with government, public health, digital health, and pharma companies like this partnership set up with the NIH, FDA, Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, and 16 pharma companies. Additionally, pharma companies are freeing medical professionals and employees who are registered healthcare professionals to join the front lines while providing pay and job security for them.
• MIT COVID19: Beat the Pandemic Challenge – MIT affiliates launched a series of Hackathons that bring together global partners, including payers (payers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, startups, innovation accelerators, digital health companies, universities, etc.) with the sole purpose of collaborating to solve the world’s most pressing challenges around the COVID19 outbreak. Collaborators included Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Amazon Web Services, MIT Hacking Medicine, Merck (MSD), BCG Digital Ventures, and more. During their first weekend virtual hackathon, the initiative had 1,500+ participants, 250+ mentors, and 40+ partners working together from 100 countries to focus on two challenges:

(1) Protecting Vulnerable Populations: How to protect vulnerable populations from the effects of COVID-19?

(2) Helping Health Systems: How to support hospitals with shortage of staff, supplies, and resources?

• Privacy Preserving Contact Tracing: Apple and Google—once staunch adversaries in the Android vs iPhone mobile game—are coming together to bridge the gap and leverage their network of 3.5 billion active phone users to tackle contact-tracing for COVID-19 with collaboration with developers and government / public health organizations. (source)
• Uber’s “Helping Move What Matters” initiative: supporting local restaurants with UberEats, and moving supplies through UberFreight, and working with Uber Health’s efforts to provide 10 Million rides and deliveries to healthcare workers and those in need.

It’s critical to understand that the companies or organizations that are the center of these initiatives – like MIT Hacking Medicine, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Apple and Google – have been in part successful due to their ability to (1) identify who are the players in their interaction field, and (2) how to best leverage their interaction field.

Brands that are teaming up to aggregate data and technology, or provide ancillary services to pandemic relief efforts demonstrate us how the age of Platform Thinking is not only here, but also that brands that leverage their interaction fields best are the ones that are most impactful in solving big, complex challenges.

If you’re interested in learning more about Platform Thinking, Interaction Fields, and our Platform Thinking Workshop (or how your company can think about best identifying and leveraging your interaction fields for business impact), please email us at hello@vivaldigroup.com.

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Sumia Shaikh joins Vivaldi after working for years at the intersection of Corporate Innovation and Biotech at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. She also spent several years supporting partnerships and growth for early-stage startups at MassChallenge. Sumia has a Bachelor of Science in Allied Health Sciences with a concentration in Public Health. She’s particularly interested in how digital health and wellness brands leverage new technologies, data, and innovation strategies for impact.

[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019

[2] https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2020/03/26/Gates-Foundation-partners-with-industry-on-coronavirus

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The current COVID19 situation is a double-edged sword – clearly it has changed many things forever, but it has also brought out some of the best innate creativity we have ever seen, something that many brands and companies can learn a lot from. 

I recently wrote a piece about the creativity and invention that I had observed in the last few weeks – from those supporting the effort to creating digital connections to using levity and connection to those using empathy and education there are many brands getting out there carrying and not hunkering down. 

As we have moved from the immediate to the medium term the creativity of this approach offers inspiration for how brands and companies can plan for what they do now and move beyond the reactionary to the creation phase.

Her are few immediate areas that brands could consider looking at:

1) Social Media Channels offer a great opportunity

If, like me, you have experienced a huge increase in Whatsapp messages from various friends and colleagues stuck at home wanting to communicate and share you will know that social media usage has skyrocketed. Brands have been taking advantage of this from conducting virtual events, educational and informative videos and hosting get-togethers to lift spirits. 

One great example is Nike. The brand launched a new message, supporting social distancing and health at the same time: “Play inside, play for the World.” They made the use of their premium training apps free for 90 days. This has meant that usage of the training app has increased by 80% which has contributed to an increase in 30% for digital sales.  

2) Influencer marketing has become all about ‘homefluencers’

When it is no longer about showing holidays, nights out and perfect outfits, influencers across channels from Instagram to YouTube to Tik Tok and Snapchat have been looking for new ways to connect with their followers.

At the heart of great influencer marketing is working with people who understand intrinsically where they fit into a consumer’s life and during a crisis many have been great at adapting to new situations. As a result, homefluencers can be highly effective in educating audiences on social impact initiatives or simply entertaining customers while promoting a brand that they use.

3) Think about how you can pivot the message

A recent piece in Adweek highlighted Visa’s 1 week turnaround from focusing on content from their Olympics sponsorship to working with their roster of Team Visa athletes British skateboarder Sky Brown; Kenneth Tencio, a BMX freestyle biker from Costa Rica; and Greek pole vaulter Katerina Stefanidi to film new spots using their phones at home showing superhuman feats such as washing hands and sanitising. Interestingly to the point above they used their social channels to launch the campaign and decided not to put any media behind it but rely on WOM and sharing.

4) Making the physical virtual

Like Visa there are a number of brands for the whom the backbone of their 2020 plans was built on live events – whether that be sponsorships, festivals, sampling or experiential marketing activity these plans are now in need of a fast pivot and we have developing solutions to make this happen. From holding virtual events to working with influencers and from hosting live feeds of activity to re-imagining a creative campaign brands everywhere are busy looking for alternative solutions. 

The Fashion industry which relies heavily on live events in particular have shown great innovation after the cancellation of various up and coming key shows and have been exploring pivoting to digital, a move that could become increasingly common.

“This is a huge focus of everyone working in immersive technology — creating a sense of ‘presence’,” says London College of Fashion’s Matthew Drinkwater, whose Fashion Innovation Agency has worked on a number of projects that use augmented, virtual and mixed reality, a group collectively referred to as cross reality, or XR. In particular this year, YouTube’s new fashion vertical, /Fashion, live streamed more than 40 runway shows, including newcomers Bottega Veneta, Jonathan Simkhai, Tod’s, Marni and Lanvin. YouTube’s fashion month livestreams garnered over four million views.

Live sports are another area looking for new virtual solutions with stadiums closed and all events cancelled, organisers are generating advertising revenue by streaming virtual sports on various social media sites. From Italy’s Mugello motorcycling circuit, which would have attracted 200,000 people for its MotoGP weekend on Sunday, attracting more than 10x that figure with a live-streamed virtual race promoted as “The stay at home GP” and Boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who died in 2016, was even brought back in action, beating Sonny Liston again on Friday in a virtual bout with 35,000 YouTube viewer it seems that live might never be the same again !

5) Add value to your audience 

McDonalds and Burger King recently inspired at home cooking as it released previously secret sauce in their production of their iconic Sausage and Egg McMuffin and Whopper products. Similarly Gregg’s in the UK just launched #Greggsityourself  to help you If you’re craving a Sausage, Bean and Cheese Melt right now – they also promised more easy-to-follow recipes on the way asking followers on their Instagram channel to share their gifs.

In a time when we can’t be with our friends and family Netflix launched Netflix Party bridging the gap by letting you and your friends simultaneously stream shows and movies on your desktop, so you’re always watching the same thing at the same time.  

Finally The German software giant SAP announced in late March that they have launched a new digital learning initiative which offers “innovative, interactive educational content to support students, professionals and anyone wishing to continue to learn during this challenging time.” Added to this, SAP have also rolled out a number of free initiatives to support the business community, including Remote Work Pulse, which enables employers to remain connected with their staff at a time when over 85% of workers surveyed in the US said that they wanted more from bosses to help them adapt to and manage their new situation. 

This is just a selection of the options available to brands and companies right now, the overriding principle seems to be that if brands approach this situation with an open mind solutions such as these will help not only understand the innovation opportunities that are on offer they could also conceivably discover whole new engagement and commercial opportunities.

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As millions of learners had to adapt to new ways and technologies crossed the chasm to mass usage, it quickly became apparent that there is no going back to the world as it used to be. Covid-19 is changing education in profound ways, just as in its time the Black Plague changed the world.

A thread became popular on Facebook, amid all the worries that the kids will fall behind. “What if, instead of falling behind, our children ended up ahead?” The thread generated quite a bit of controversy, as tired parents wrote about the impact of loneliness and unprocessed trauma, and yet it kept being shared. Just as those affected by the Black Plague would be startled to learn about the new, flourishing culture that the Renaissance was to bring about, today’s educational companies, institutional leaders, educators and parents may have in front of them, in the lingo of Erich Joachimsthaler, opportunities hidden in plain sight. In many ways, Covid-19 simply accelerated changes already under way, in a world of platforms and multifaceted learning. What the crisis did is dramatically alter the technology development curve, moving technology usage to mass and creating new opportunities poised for exponential growth. What are some key vectors of change likely to shape the world of education after the crisis?

1. A New Wave of Learners

As expectations of a 2021 baby boom have become commonplace, a new generation of learners may be about to enter the scene, dwarfing both baby boomers and millennials. This will create new demand for education, in a world where transition to middle class in many emerging economies was already creating considerable demand and strain on the system. It may be next to impossible to meet this growing demand for education through the old model, highly labor and capital intensive. Economies that were already under strain to devote resources to education may be unable to continue doing so as resources continue to be diverted to healthcare and other priorities. This may concern state-run education in many countries of the word, but also private institutions that rely on individual giving through donations and tuition, where past rises increasingly seem unsustainable. New learning models and business models will need to be found.

2. A Learner-Centric Education

This new wave of learners will have the power to pull the blanket to its side in a dramatic way, shifting away from learning organized around educators and institutions to a learner-centric model. The shift to learner centricity was well underway even before the crisis, with players who missed it increasingly losing ground, and it is by no means unique in the big scheme of things – it is no different from the shift to patient-centric healthcare, that Michael Porter analyzed already many years ago, or shift to customer centricity across so many different industries and players. In education, this shift is likely to be accelerated now that millions of learners are called upon finding a way to learn that works for them, with little support and (perhaps with freedom from?) oversight by teachers and educational institutions.

3. The Empowered Learner

As learners increasingly yield more weight in assessing how education is structured and delivered, they will be able to shape things in unexpected ways. Specifically, social media is split between reports about kids bored and disengaged, and those taking ownership of their learning process – by doing creative projects after school-mandated work, finding and cultivating new interests and pursuing their curiosities as they have the time to go deeper. It becomes apparent that learning does not have one flavor or a one size fits all model – but rather can, and needs, to be bent and adapted to everyone’s individual needs and interests. Just as the Renaissance brought about a newly well-rounded individual, we may now be at a time when basic encyclopedic knowledge yields little practical value. Instead, an undying curiosity and an ability to dig deeper, willingness to engage with complex problems that have no easy answers, may be more conducive to success in life, rather than knowledge of facts that have no practical application.

4. New Educational Outcomes – the End of Testing?

Indeed, the very notion of the outcome of a successful education may be changing. Forbes already called the Covid-19 time the official end of the testing era. Indeed, there are many practical problems around testing that create immediate headaches for institutions, educators and parents – will the students complete requirements for their current year? Will they be tested? How will gaps be addressed? Will they simply be moved to the following year, negating the purpose of testing? Will they have to complete this year in the next  academic year? With so many unclarities, we might expect that students come back vastly different levels – in higher ed, they may have had the time to explore a favorite research subject, neglecting required coursework. In K-12, some may have spent endless hours reading, while others chose to dive into coding and robotics, leading to dramatically improved STEM skills. It may prove challenging, as a society, to bring everyone back down to the same line in the sand across subjects, as required by testing. This will mean an increased opportunity for adaptive learning systems that allow learners to move at their own pace – going faster in some areas and slowing down in others until mastery is attained.

5. The Power of Data

However, the need to measure outcomes will not go away – indeed, technology can serve the need for deeper measurement than afforded by high-stakes testing at a discrete moment in time. Today’s technologies create an opportunity for measuring student engagement and progress throughout the learning process rather than at the end of it – studying correlations between various factors (from time to login to time spent on each section etc.) that ultimately allow for an understanding of patterns leading to success. As the use of technology becomes more prevalent, there may be no need to submit students to periodic testing that they resent – but rather measure their progress along the learning journey, allowing to raise flags and address problems as they arise. Ability to interpret and make usable Big Data that is generated by educational technologies will continue creating untapped opportunities – especially as a standard way to store, interpret and present the data provides a much better chance for cross-market comparison and insights extraction, favoring the emergence of platforms in EduTech.

6. Technology Adoption Curve

The opportunity for a platform to emerge that puts together all different market participants to leverage data that improves performance across the board is now becoming a more viable proposition as technology adoption has made a huge leap. Indeed, received wisdom that learning can only be done through face-to-face teaching is quickly turning on its head – the current experiment became a de facto forced technology training for reluctant millions. Yes, in-person interactions will continue to be missed, but necessity is the mother of invention – it becomes increasingly apparent that technology can enhance and transform learning in profound ways.

7. Learner Engagement

No, technology cannot replace personal interaction – it will always remain priceless. Nor should it. Institutions that were able to build successful online learning programs have long known that the worst way to create an online learning system is to try to transpose and replicate in-person learning. Instead, it is much more powerful to leverage technology’s intrinsic power to enhance the learning process – not only through continued loops of evaluation and performance improvement, but also through opportunities for deeper engagement of an increasingly fickle and demanding learner audience, who expect a smooth and glitch-free experience that they find in video games and social media. The holy grail will be to keep this audience engaged in the learning process the way social media keeps them glued to the screen – the race, from the likes of BrainChase to Night Zookeeper, is already on.

8. Learning accessibility

Technology is not simply making learning accessible to different types of learners, beyond the traditional conceptual academic learner – from hands-on learners who love learning by doing, to visual learners or those who thrive on gamified competitions – it is simply making learning available to many. Even before the crisis, as employers such as Google started offering their own educational courses, news stories emerged about young people from all corners of the world completing these courses to land a coveted job at the technology giant. Now that technology usage becomes more enduring and commonplace, this will lead to a massive breaking down of barriers, as it will not be necessary any more to show up on a campus to receive an education (or indeed apply for a job). This will be good news for learners with disabilities – technology offers help in a way that physical environment may not – but also for non-traditional learners, from veterans to mothers, who were already changing the demographic composition of campuses prior to the Covid crisis. As geographic barriers further break down, this will also mean an ability to take any course from anywhere in the world on a topic of interest, as already evidenced by the opening of most of the world’s cultural institutions and museums to learners from around the world. Without the need of physical presence, learners today can already explore collections at the Louvre, listen to the Vienna Philharmonic, or interact with experts at NASA. This will lead to the emergence of global excellence centers; learner and researcher communities around the globe will in turn offer more opportunities to sharpen skills by interactions with the best. As barriers break down, opportunity – both educational and economic – will become available to many, creating more open markets and global competition.

So, what will this mean for education? In the short term, a need to adapt to the new reality of creating a digital educational ecosystem, truly leveraging the power of technology to enhance the learning process. In the medium term, the opportunity for platforms or networks to emerge that will leverage the power of data to enhance interaction and improve performance. In the long term, an opportunity for exponential growth, fueled by breaking a breaking down of barriers in an increasingly open field. And for learners – opportunity for an education on their terms, to truly harness their unique talents.

Just as peasants moved into Renaissance cities to create a new class of merchants and seize opportunities previously unavailable to them, who knows what new barriers will today’s learners, hunkered in their houses, break down? Who will be the partners – companies, technologies and institutions – who will help them shape their new world?

How do you see the world of learning changing?      

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In a world where everyone wants more, business as usual tactics have lost their effectiveness. Customer satisfaction depends on a more sophisticated and immediate experience. The market calls for more innovation. Companies seek more accountability and a greater impact on the bottom line.

Market intelligence is the answer to each of these challenges which puts CMOs front and center. Businesses will expect them to rise to the challenge and capitalise on new opportunities for value creation.

New rules demand new skill sets and fresh approaches

Download The New CMO Game Plan and discover:

• Three key capabilities for CMOs intent on leading from the front in a connected world where strategy is determined in real-time.
• How to transform five core business functions to deliver long-term equity that focuses on customer value.
• How platform thinking can put your brand in a different league to the competition.

Today’s business challenges demand unconventional thinking about business strategy and brand positioning. In this age of disruption, product and service innovations are not enough. Brands need to think like a platform business to connect more deeply with diverse partners. They also need to rethink their category and relationships.

The power of platform thinking

Platformization presents a clear opportunity for brand leadership. By harnessing technology and data, a platform creates an ecosystem that facilitates interactions and collaboration at an unprecedented scale. Platforms fuel innovation and generate customer insights that spark value creation.

Marketing is the fulcrum of the platform economy. It extracts the intelligence required to uncover the organization’s next play and enables customer experience management. Technology makes it easier than ever to measure customers’ data and track their progress through the customer journey. However, more data doesn’t automatically confer greater insight.

Tasked with being cognizant of the bigger picture, CMOs have their finger on the pulse of developing customer needs. From their position at the centre, the CMO’s analytical acumen is critical.

Their customer data is not only vital to the marketing plan. It can uncover new growth opportunities, direct corporate culture and shape mindsets as the game evolves. A focus on generating business-building competitive advantage will naturally shape the strategy and agenda of the management team.

Platform thinking requires all the diverse capabilities of an organization to be in play and moving in the same direction. Success depends on an organisational culture that celebrates cross-functional collaboration and integration.

Build Your Business, Not Just Your Brand

CMOs who have set their sights on building the business, not just the brand, will need to transcend traditional silos. Without a willingness to lower barriers, the benefits of big data cannot permeate throughout the organization. Their job is to enable and orchestrate, using real-time observations and predictive analytics to inform and inspire. Empowering their C-suite colleagues, and other internal and external partners, to exceed customers expectations  is a top priority.

When activated by collaboration and well-honed commercial instincts, marketing’s continuous flow of intelligence makes CMOs vital for value creation and revenue growth.

It is time to rip up the playbook and redefine the field. From transaction to interaction. From competition to collaboration. From broadcast to participation.

Vivaldi has created brand strategies, experiences, innovations and platforms that have answered the questions posed in The New CMO Game Plan for some of the world’s most forward-thinking brands. If you have questions for us, we’d be pleased to hear from you.

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Businesses need to transform from the inside out, yet learn that in today’s market value is generated when you bring outsiders in. Closed off and siloed firms with rigid hierarchies that stifle innovation and efficiency are no longer fit for purpose in an agile and connected world.

In our report, Vivaldi’s brand building experts share winning approaches to tackle these challenges and unlock growth opportunities in five key areas:

1. Brand Leadership

Presented with a sea of uniformity, 86% of B2B buyers cannot discern a meaningful difference between supplier offerings. B2B companies need to reconsider what they stand for and how their firm is really perceived.

Brand-led transformation offers a clear opportunity to stand out. Brands that can articulate their value proposition and differentiate their positioning will cut through. Those without a purpose driven brand strategy and corporate identity will lose the ability to form human connections with employees and customers.

2. Marketing Performance

B2B marketers need a performance measurement system to improve marketing effectiveness. Omnichannel demands marketing effectiveness and operational efficiency. And yet, 53% of B2B marketers fail at measuring the output of their activities.

The challenge of keeping up with a rapidly evolving digital revolution has, to this point, been a reasonable explanation for why so many B2B marketers have yet to develop performance measurement frameworks. Marketing transformation has instead been concentrated on enabling greater sophistication of communications strategies and campaigns. But businesses need both executional sophistication and performance measurement.

Planning and execution only gets businesses so far. Executives are looking at a challenging global marketplace and want proof that the marketing budget provides an ROI, and not just in terms of the bottom line. Marketing led innovation can steer corporate strategy but not when its performance is opaque. When we can’t identify our successes and failures efficiently, it not only effects our response time in tailoring our marketing tactics. It can slow down the whole company.

3. Experience Innovation

B2B buyers’ expectations are driven by their B2C experiences. B2B buyers expect a consistent brand and user experience at every touchpoint. However, B2B is widely accepted to be off the pace when it comes to delivering on the promises of digital transformation.

This gap between expectation and reality provides ample opportunity space for companies with innovation and platform strategies to thrive. However, inventive product and service design will only take you part of the way.

Buyers expect to be enticed into your brand world and guided through a personalized customer journey. They demand a coherent and seamless customer experience, and superior UX design. An ‘always on’ approach that integrates every touchpoint across all channels is vital.

With 57% of the buying process completed before the prospect first comes into contact with a salesperson, there’s a lot of room for error. However, when properly designed and executed, the online customer experience can be unbeatable.

4. Platform Thinking

The conventional pipeline is obsolete. By 2025, 30% of the world economy will be platform-based. Companies that don’t take steps now to create a customer-centric business model that can connect with and truly understand its users, risk both their relevance and their survival.

Platform thinking represents a great opportunity for B2B companies. By facilitating interactions between users and providers, platform design and development creates a competitive advantage.

The benefits of connectivity extend beyond that which occurs between a brand and its customers. Links between suppliers, even competitors, can also enable two-way value creation and generate insights that fuel growth.

Platform thinking, and the blurring of boundaries enabled by interaction fields, are radically changing what we understand brands to be. Grappling with the challenges of platformization readiness now is the key to future performance.

5. Organizational Strategy

Companies that exist in siloes are inefficient, and the demands of our increasingly complex world can only be met by more agile organizations. An aligned strategy is crucial to optimally guide marketing, sales and IT in their daily activities. Purpose-led brand strategies can catalyse organisational alignment, establishing shared values, motivating co-operation, shaping decision making with a revitalised sense of strategic direction.

Developing new business models, accelerating business transformation and executing on growth strategy requires a fundamental commitment to co-operation. Companies wanting to meet the challenges presented by a platform-based economy and the omnichannel customer experience need to break down internal barriers and eliminate rigidity. Rigidity in thought; rigidity in process; rigidity in practice. They have to become cross functional organizations that are built on a corporate culture of shared interests and trust.

Vivaldi’s unique approach to the business ecosystem and interaction fields is helping inspire change for global brands. Our experts work to create cohesive strategies capable of driving the business transformation, brand leadership and experience innovation required to meet today’s B2B challenges.

Download our report now to see best-in-class examples, advice and case studies for how businesses can meet key B2B marketing challenges and change from B2B to H2H.

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Does one generation alone warrant a new brand strategy? We think so. Gen-Z influences 93% of household purchases. In the U.S., 82%  of parents admit that their children influence their purchasing decisions. Win over Generation Z and you win over older generations of Gen Xers and baby boomers too. 

Our audience is changing—rapidly. Growing a business in today’s world means building a brand strategy that engages the unique expectations of Gen-Z.

Understanding Gen-Z Consumers

What makes this generation of consumers so different? While social media, smartphones, work from home, and other digital trends entered our lives as teenagers or adults, that is all Gen-Z has ever known. These young people are digital natives,  born into a world of online experiences—from social interactions to purchasing—and that is where they spend much of their time.

Gen Zers spend an around of 3 hours per day on social media, far more than any other group. They expect instant results; quick responses from friends, family, or businesses; and media that inspires.

Not to be confused as a generation that only seeks instant gratification and beautiful products, Gen Zers are conscious consumers. They were raised in a recession and are keenly aware of the social, political, and economic tension that has pervaded their young lives. Their decisions are not flippant, although they do value flexibility, change, and risk.

Finally, it is important to understand that members of Gen-Z value progress—politically, socially, and environmentally—and are willing to support businesses that are doing their part to drive change.

All of these distinguishing characteristics of this generation should play a role in the way we develop brand strategy. A strong brand strategy  doesn’t simply “appeal” to this new audience of consumers but engages them. In fact, there are 5 key insights into Gen-Z that must be acknowledged in order to build new business models that empower our brands to grow and expand.

Key Insights to Build a Better Brand Strategy

Our goal is to help brands look beyond basic marketing tactics and instead create brand experiences and strategies that reach the most influential audience: Gen-Z.

Innovative solutions to meet the expectations of a generation don’t always come easily. In fact, a new business model and innovation strategy require that businesses shift away from thinking in silos and pipelines and towards an integrated model. Brand strategy must be consumer-led, valuable, and seamlessly integrated. This approach allows brands to more effectively engage new audiences on every level, from the foundation of the strategy (consumer-led) to brand-consumer relationship, customer experience, and communication.

These 5 insights help us delve deeper into the Gen-Z audience, how to engage with them, and how to become trustworthy, customer-first brands.

Access Over Ownership

Gen-Z seeks access to products and services that will make life easier, but they don’t always pursue ownership. What does this look like tangibly? Gen-Z consumers are more likely to use platform-based products that allow them to rent—not own—the things they need. For example, electric scooters that allow them to get from point A to B without actually purchasing a scooter, or streaming services that establish a month-to-month purchase agreement and no long-term commitment.

For businesses, this requires enabling direct access to products. In particular, many brands are shifting to utilizing platforms and subscription-based services to make their products more easily accessible. By 2025, it is predicted that 30% o f the world economy will be platform-based. 

This challenge to the conventional pipeline of delivering products to consumers is especially important to businesses today. Taking the time now to develop platform and digital ecosystem strategies will prepare your brand to meet these changes head-on.

Hyper-Personalization

Growing up in a digital world means Gen-Z is accustomed to products, services and customer service experiences that are tailored to their specific needs. Having become accustomed to personalised music playlists, this generation will expect personalised shopping experiences and travel planning. More than half of Gen Zers are willing to pay more  for personalized options, which is significant for a generation that also values cost savings and financial planning.

Generic products and less attractive designs are having minimal impact on this up and coming generation. Adjusting a brand strategy to meet this expectation means exploring segmentation axes around the needs, values, and experiences of the consumer. It also means finding a way to either customize a product or personalize a service around the consumers’ values.

Anchored in Ethics

It should come as no surprise that Gen-Z values ethics. Growing up among climate change, the #metoo movement, and an increasingly global call for ethical manufacturing standards, they have taken up the call for change on almost every level of society. And they expect our brands to do the same. Gen-Z consumers are more willing to engage with brands that are sustainable, authentic, and pursuing a higher social purpose. 

In fact, a majority of Gen Zers refuse to purchase from a brand that is involved in a scandal. Our product and service branding must not only capture their attention, but our entire brand strategy must be established on trustworthy and ethical practices. Not only that but value propositions must look beyond the simple value of a product and focus on the value of the brand as a whole.

Seamless Experiences

If there is one thing Gen-Z has made clear, it is that they don’t have time for long, drawn-out processes. They live in a world that is constantly on the go, and they expect brands to meet them wherever they are in the world. Seamless experiences mean building branding solutions that are fast, smooth, and easy to use. If making a purchase or interacting with a company’s service is slow or has too many barriers, Gen Zers will move on quickly. 

A branding strategy that utilizes innovations and creates value-driven customer experiences, however, will keep them coming back again and again. The way we view value propositions must shift. Brand value lies in the overall experience of the consumer, and not only the value of our unique product or service. This transition impacts every layer of business and brand strategy, including the way we choose to build our platforms and interact with our customers.

Capturing Attention

Gen-Z decide in mere seconds if a brand is worth their time and attention. Short, to-the-point content that drives a conversation is how many brands are choosing to engage with Gen-Z. Think TikTok or Instagram Reels. These short video-based social media solutions quickly capture the attention of a young audience. 

Other social media brand strategy examples include Oreo’s “Show your playful side” campaign on Snapchat, which invites consumers to be part of the conversation and the brand as a whole.

The challenge brands face is establishing that they are worth the attention of their Gen-Z consumer audience. Building a dialogue with your audience is about more than just great digital marketing. Brand leadership starts with a business model and brand strategy that is integrated, micro-targeted, and tailored to meet the unique needs of your consumers.

Building the Future of Your Brand

Gen-Z is a force to be reckoned with. Understanding their unique consumer behaviors is a significant key to growing and building an effective and innovative strategy for even an established brand. Vivaldi helps companies hone in on the purchasing and lifestyle trends of Gen-Z—and other target audiences—to develop brand strategies and new business models that create extensive opportunities for growth. To build the future of your brand, download our in-depth guide the 5 challenges brands face in engaging Gen-Z, and how to solve them.

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Every few decades, the principles and rules of brand strategy get more than a facelift. Today, we stand at the brink of yet another fundamental change – one that comes from the very foundation of our industry.

The workshop will introduce how platform thinking has become the ultimate source of value creation for modern business success – where the value is created not by means of production but by means of interaction. We’ll discuss the modern advantage of facilitating interactions – and the growing imperative to leverage the global infrastructure of connectivity and collaboration, shifting power instead of struggling to control it.

Using Vivaldi client LEGO as a case study, we’ll discuss what makes a platform successful and the three platform types that succeed in today’s demand landscape. Participants will identify the best platform approach for their own brand and gather into breakout groups where we will help outline key steps brands can take to navigate in today’s current world of platforms.

Please email media@vivaldigroup.com to RSVP for the event.

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The session started out with Dr. Markus Zinnbauer, one of the authors of Vivaldi Partners’ “Always-On Consumer” study, explaining the new consumer behaviors: One in two consumers can be characterized as ‘always-on’ today, but there are still important differences between consumer groups. The study introduces five segments ranging from highly socially connected consumers, or “Social Bumblebees”, to retargeting-averse “Ad Blockers”. These types of new consumers illustrate why it is people, not technology, that is changing today’s markets.

The event’s participants, all marketing experts, then engaged into a lively debate on how to effectively target the Always-On Consumer in the future, when classical demographic-based media planning will not be sufficient anymore and context-based mechanics will become crucial.

Mirroring Vivaldi Partners’ broader outside-in view, Vivaldi Zurich’s Roland Bernhard then explained how marketing executives need to respond to those changes. The good news, he said, was that the new, digitally empowered consumer does not only bring about change but also new opportunities. In other words, as Prof. Kevin L. Keller (a member of Vivaldi’s advisory board) put it: “It’s not just the consumers who are empowered these days. Companies are too!” Roland elaborated on the three vital core capabilities, which he had previously outlined in our recent CMO study: Analytical Acumen, Collaborative Mindset, and Commercial Instinct. The latter especially led to a great discussion on how operational a CMO needs to become in order to provide added value for consumers beyond marketing communications.

A set of inspiring case studies from Vivaldi Partners illustrated how companies can leverage digital means in order to create added value for customers and consumers along the whole value chain from business model to actual delivery of services.

The presentation seamlessly fed into an open dialog for the rest of the evening, where members of the Marketing Club, friends of Vivaldi Partners, and the Munich Vivaldi team also enjoyed finger food and a selection of drinks.

We want to thank Norbert Gierlich, board member of the Marketing Club’s Munich chapter, for organizing and moderating the evening. He will also feature the CMO study in the next issue of the member magazine.

Curious about “The changing role of the CMO”? The study is available free of charge here.

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