Innovations and Thought Leaders (Day 2) Adobe Summit EMEA 2015

Those of you who read last week’s blog post will recall that the mis­sion I was giv­en with regards the Inno­va­tions & Thought Lead­ers Track at Sum­mit was to pull togeth­er a group of indi­vid­u­als that will inspire the audi­ence and pro­vide lead­er­ship insights and strategies.

I also shared the details of the speak­ers and ses­sions that will fea­ture on Day 1 includ­ing the likes of Andi Gall (CTO of Red Bull), Jez Framp­ton (Group CEO of Inter­brand) and Bri­an Solis.

I am delight­ed to present to you below a sum­ma­ry of what we have planned for Day 2:****

Lim­it­less – the six strengths of lead­er­ship that endures

2 years ago, Ajaz Ahmed deliv­ered a huge­ly pop­u­lar keynote along­side his co-author, Ste­fan Olan­der, VP of Dig­i­tal Sport for Nike on the top­ic of Veloc­i­ty. I am delight­ed to wel­come Ajaz back to Sum­mit to coin­cide with the planned release of his lat­est book in Octo­ber. This ses­sion will focus on his belief that teams and organ­i­sa­tions should focus on six spe­cif­ic strengths in order to achieve suc­cess and make a con­sis­tent con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety. Thus, busi­ness­es should Democ­ra­tise; Rev­o­lu­tionise; Organ­ise; Sim­pli­fy; and focus on Author­ship and Values.

The Empa­thy Rev­o­lu­tion in business

Empa­thy is per­haps a qual­i­ty not most read­i­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the cor­po­rate world. Com­pa­nies often believe that they don’t real­ly ben­e­fit from empa­thy, that the qual­i­ty will not pay off in terms of prof­it, and that indeed the notion is fluffy and neb­u­lous. Yet in today’s ethics-dri­ven soci­ety, empa­thy and social con­science are increas­ing­ly being demand­ed from brands.

Lucie Sarif, Head of Strat­e­gy and Plan­ning at Lady Geek, will explore this con­cept in a vision­ary talk which under­lines the com­mer­cial val­ue of empa­thy for com­mer­cial enter­pris­es, and pro­vides exam­ples and excla­ma­tion of how to embed this with­in every lev­el of your busi­ness culture.

If you’re inter­est­ed in this ses­sion I would rec­om­mend read­ing: Quick Chat: Lucie Sarif, Head Of Strat­e­gy And Plan­ning, Lady Geek on CMO.com.

The Con­nect­ed Human

Con­nec­tiv­i­ty is an absolute buzz­word in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing today, and one that cuts across numer­ous indus­tries and facets of human behav­iour. As increas­ing num­bers of peo­ple become dig­i­tal­ly con­nect­ed there is an onus on mar­keters to embrace a more human­ised expe­ri­ence. In this sort of cul­ture, atten­tion is the new cur­ren­cy mea­sured by time and engagement.

Build­ing on these con­cepts, David Shing, the Dig­i­tal Prophet at AOL, exam­ines how con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal trends are affect­ing con­sumer behav­iour, and offers his prophe­cy on what may be next on the dig­i­tal jour­ney roadmap which cus­tomers all over the world are jour­ney­ing on. This will be a par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing and valu­able ses­sion for inno­va­tors and thought lead­ers with­in organisations.

Mak­ing the com­plex sim­ple: why sto­ries mat­ter more than ever in the tech­no­log­i­cal age

Justin Cogh­lan, one of the Founders of the Movem­ber Foun­da­tion, deliv­ered what was arguably the most inspir­ing and def­i­nite­ly the most emo­tive keynote at Sum­mit 2014. I am thrilled to wel­come him back this year in a ses­sion which exam­ines the impor­tance of sto­ry­telling in mod­ern com­merce and mar­ket­ing. Cogh­lan will par­tic­u­lar­ly draw upon exam­ples and expe­ri­ences that he has encoun­tered in the process of build­ing a move­ment span­ning 21 coun­tries that has mobilised 4.7 mil­lion par­tic­i­pants. Not only is this a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment, but the Movem­ber Foun­da­tion specif­i­cal­ly chal­lenges atti­tudes and behav­iour towards men’s health, and has raised near­ly £1/2 bil­lion for the cause in the process.

Dr. Clare Turn­bull, Team Leader in Pre­dis­po­si­tion and Trans­la­tion­al Genet­ics at The Insti­tute of Can­cer Research, will join Cogh­lan on stage for this ses­sion. Turn­bull has been instru­men­tal in a break­through in the inves­ti­ga­tion of the genet­ics of tes­tic­u­lar can­cer. Her aspect of this ses­sion will exam­ine the chal­lenges that sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal pio­neers face in attempt­ing to engage impor­tant audi­ences in ground­break­ing med­ical work.

140 char­ac­ters on TV

Despite the threat posed by stream­ing and on demand ser­vices, tele­vi­sion undoubt­ed­ly remains a huge­ly impor­tant medi­um. But the way that we con­sume tele­vi­sion in the 21st cen­tu­ry is rapid­ly evolv­ing, and it is now par­tic­u­lar­ly com­mon to pass com­ment via social media in par­tic­u­lar. Where­as once upon a time con­ver­sa­tions were con­fined to a liv­ing-room or the water cool­er, today we can be con­nect­ing with mil­lions of peo­ple poten­tial­ly watch­ing the same pro­gram in a mat­ter of seconds.

James Mar­tin and Bar­ney Wor­folk-Smith of That Lot, the com­pa­ny that helps brand and broad­cast­ers be bet­ter at social, will run this ses­sion that delves deep­er into the con­cept of the ‘sec­ond screen’, and the enhanced TV expe­ri­ence it can pro­vide. This dis­cus­sion will par­tic­u­lar­ly attempt to answer the ques­tion of how brands fit into this tele­vi­su­al future. Addi­tion­al­ly, this ses­sion aims to demon­strate how brands can place them­selves at the cen­tre of such con­ver­sa­tion, get­ting them­selves heard more effi­cient­ly above the deaf­en­ing din of social chatter.

The 6 key chal­lenges of Dig­i­tal Transformation

The dig­i­tal sec­tor is a very com­plex and diverse struc­ture, but one can­not deny that a hand­ful of elite cor­po­ra­tions exert a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence over it. Thus, the acronym GAFA was born, acknowl­edg­ing the impor­tance of Google, Ama­zon, Face­book and Apple in con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal business.

This quar­tet of super-com­pa­nies is forc­ing tra­di­tion­al brands to rethink the way they are doing busi­ness and how they are organ­ised. Adapt­ing to change and con­nect­ing with the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion are now crit­i­cal pri­or­i­ties for all businesses.

Emmanuel Vivi­er, co-founder of the HUB Insti­tute and a Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Expert, will present this ses­sion that will help dig­i­tal mar­keters to under­stand the six key issues involved in this rev­o­lu­tion and how brands can inno­vate to com­plete­ly rein­vent their busi­ness­es in this shift­ing climate.

Vivi­er will also reveal a con­crete frame­work which enables busi­ness­es to make sense of the most impor­tant buzz­words, and adapt in an effi­cient and coher­ent way to changes in the dig­i­tal land­scape which will occur in the com­ing years.

Dri­ving a Dig­i­tal Tal­ent Revolution

This final ses­sion of the event will be pre­sent­ed by Dominic Field, Part­ner and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Boston Con­sult­ing Group (BCG). Accord­ing to a sur­vey recent­ly car­ried out by BCG, the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of major UK mar­keters in fact strug­gle to acquire a sat­is­fac­to­ry lev­el of dig­i­tal skills to work with­in par­tic­u­lar brands.

In order to address this appar­ent skills gap and expe­ri­ence deficit, BCG has teamed up with Google and oth­er major indus­try play­ers includ­ing Adobe to cre­ate a new ini­tia­tive. The ‘Tal­ent Rev­o­lu­tion’ is intend­ed to assist com­mer­cial enter­pris­es with the often chal­leng­ing process of trans­form­ing dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing capa­bil­i­ties into a more holis­tic and effec­tive approach.

This ses­sion will take an exclu­sive, insight­ful and intrigu­ing look at this Tal­ent Rev­o­lu­tion, and out­line some of the major insights which have been gleaned from the process of par­tic­i­pa­tion thus far. By the end of this ses­sion, par­tic­i­pants will have an inti­mate under­stand­ing of a strong dig­i­tal frame­work of skills, the impor­tance of self-assess­ment and how to car­ry out, and the best and most effi­cient ways to close gaps in dig­i­tal under­stand­ing with­in an organisation.

That brings me to the end of my pre­view of the Inno­va­tions Track. 18 sen­sa­tion­al speak­ers across 16 inspir­ing ses­sions each to inspire and ignite inno­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty and busi­ness improve­ment. If you are attend­ing Sum­mit, I encour­age you to reg­is­ter ear­ly for these sessions!

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