What's next: Big Bold Thinking

What’s the largest ever event as ranked by the number of attendees who were live at that event?

That was a question asked last week by the speaker to a room with some of the biggest boldest leaders you could wish to meet.

The answer was a concert in the Metaverse. 

Inside the Fortnite game/ecosystem. 

Some interesting statistics

It was for a live event by one music artist.

12.5 million people live at the event via the Metaverse.

Entry fee - zero.

The amount of money made by the artist - £20m.

The money came from selling virtual merchandise - baseball hats that each persons avatar could wear.

Some interesting insights

The feedback from attendees was that they felt like they were live at an event. It was very different to watching something on the internet as we know it. 

When challenged as to why people spend money to buy a baseball hat for their avatar, the speakers response was I don’t understand why someone spends £5k on a Gucci handbag, but they do. Someone’s avatar is a part or an extension of their identity I imagine.

Why do I share this?

The world is changing and disrupting at an incredible speed. And at the same time it’s hard to comprehend some of this unless we make the effort to go out and find out what’s happening, to explore it and take a view on it. 

Simply put, I want to provoke you to explore what’s happening out there and to take a view on how it could affect you or better still how can you harness it to disrupt yourself and your sector.

Last week, a very dear friend Oli Barrett was one of the organisers of a tech safari - a gathering of brilliant minds, of big bold leaders - amongst them the creators and entrepreneurs behind a raft of billion dollar businesses across many sectors. Our safari was to Bath and Bristol to see some of the latest innovations in science and technology. 

There were some truly world class businesses - for example one is designing devices to track hand movements so that our digital worlds are powered by hand movements not hardware. Link - https://www.ultraleap.com/

Another (the person sharing the story above) is creating Metaverse experiences, another designing learning and development experiences inside the Metaverse. 

A different segment of the day was visiting Science Creates (link - https://sciencecreates.co.uk/) and speaking to different entrepreneurs who are creating incredible innovations, all backed and supported by this Bristol-based deep tech ecosystem that serves to help scientists and engineers accelerate their ideas and build disruptive businesses from scientific discoveries.

In short a day full of peering into the future and debating these disruptive innovations with leaders who have at their core challenging the status quo and finding new big bold ways to disrupt. Whilst I could speak for hours on the energy and insights, I want to simply plant one thought for you:

What are you doing to disrupt you and your business? I promise you that if you don’t think like this, someone else is. As Jeff Bezos famously said, your margin is my opportunity. 

Can you find ways to get insights into what’s coming next, spend time with people who are thinking big and bold and challenging the status quo. We’ve all heard the saying that you get the life of the five people you spend most time with - what fresh thinking could you bring into your world by seeking out the change and the change makers?

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