Futureworld brings you Mindbullets: News from the Future, to spark strategic thinking about leadership, innovation and digital disruption. These fictitious scenarios aim to challenge conventional mindsets and promote understanding of the future context for business.
Dateline: May 27 2027
A traditional business typically starts with a product or service and finds customers to buy it. In the information age, an enterprising business starts with the customer, and figures out how to add value by meeting their needs. Sales or revenue from delivering value is the lifeblood of the business in both cases, but working backwards from the customer gives better results — just ask Amazon.
Now there’s a business that’s taken the concept of “innovating to zero” — zero waste, zero friction, zero mistakes — to a whole new level; they’ve got zero customers. And they’re not the government.
ZeroX has turned the business model inside out, and dispensed with the idea of customer sales altogether. Instead of customers, they have members, who collectively own the business. It’s a platform business that caters exclusively to the needs of its members, delivering maximum value with zero wasted overheads.
Think of it as an Uber where the riders are the members, and ride at cost, as they don’t have to show a profit. Or a personal Amazon-type store that always delivers what you want and need at the lowest price. With “free” delivery. Magically aggregating and sourcing what every member wants.
That’s a radical idea, and just wasn’t feasible without smart home devices, huge data, artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed blockchain technology. And people who were willing to live the ultra-connected life. But ZeroX has pulled it off, and now boasts millions of members.
But no customers. They’re not required.
Date published: May 27 2021
Whose business is it anyway?
Customers dictate the course of business
Dateline: February 1 2023
Change is inevitable, but many businesses don’t like or want change. Not when they’re on top, and milking the cash cow; if it’s not broke, don’t try to fix it! But just because you’re making super profits, and your customers adore you, doesn’t mean it’s going to be that way forever, even if you’re Apple or Coca-Cola. Just ask Kodak.
Shareholders and employees like to think it’s “their” business, but it’s not much fun running or owning a business with no customers; a bit like a morgue, except that even a morgue has customers, someone paying the bills.
In these days of collaborative pro-sumption, it’s increasingly difficult to tell the stakeholders apart. Take my golfing assist group for example. Run by an AI messenger bot, it gets us the best deals on golf balls, gear and clubs, group discounts on green fees, and automatically schedules tee-off times among golf buddies, even arranging pool rides to the golf course, and recruiting new players when someone cancels.
It’s a virtual organisation, with no employees or headquarters, and no central locus of control. And because it’s blockchain-based, anyone can join or retire, with no penalties or fees; a non-profit “business” delivering real value only to its members.
So whose business is it really? Anybody’s and everybody’s, but mainly the customer’s.
Date published: January 31 2019
• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
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