We have been following the movements of the brand world for over 25 years. And we always talk about the need for brands to be integrated into... Wave 3 of Branding and the importance of Brand strategy to be aligned with building a clear purpose with the aspiration to change the world we live in.

*We detail this idea in a study we conducted in partnership with Officina Sophia, called TIP – Transparency, Inspiration and Purpose, which can be found [here/at this link]. here

Wave 3 of Branding also describes the alignment of two other strategies: that of Communication, which seeks customer engagement around the ideas the company believes in, going far beyond building affinities between products/services and potential customers, and which may eventually lead to a purchase; and the one of Business, which builds a value ecosystem. Yes, ecosystem.

Imagine a reef in the ocean. The slightest temperature variation can completely change it or even kill it. It's a system as complex as it is fragile. In the business world, we also encounter this type of complexity, which even has a name: VUCA – acronym for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous.

*To delve deeper into the challenges of the world we live in today, read here.

Our ecosystem, that is, the world, has changed so much that every year more consultancies emerge that launch trends for the following year. At the end of 2017, I managed to identify at least three of the most relevant. I recommend those from... TrendWatching, which present cases that are already happening around the world to illustrate these signs of change.

To understand these changes, we need to base ourselves on some point of reference, something that gives us some clarity about what doesn't change or what changes more slowly, for example. I took Maslow's pyramid, which structures people's basic needs, as an immutable factor over time. Although this diagram is open to discussion, I will use it as a reference, a "fixed point" for observing the rotation that has been occurring before our eyes in the last two decades.

If we stop to think about it, it is from certain immutable characteristics of people that we design products and services. It is primarily from this point that... innovations, ...directly linked to the connections between basic needs and a constantly moving world. It's like throwing a dart at a target that spins incessantly. It becomes almost impossible to hit the desired spot. However, some tips can indicate a truly transformative way to hit the target.

A study of Doblin List 10 types of innovation distributed across 3 areas of knowledge: innovations from the configuration, usually taught in business schools; innovations from the offer, taught and researched in engineering schools; and experience-centric innovations, pursued by designers and sociologists. This same study, richly illustrated with real-world cases, says that truly transformative companies are those that pursue at least 5 types of innovation across the 3 knowledge areas simultaneously.

So here's the challenge: How do you achieve transformation in any market in this VUCA world by connecting all these innovations across areas of knowledge that don't even relate to each other? I have 3 tips.

Tip 1: Create platforms
Your product or service cannot be isolated from the world. It needs to be independent and, at the same time, dependent on other products and services. Platform thinking means that other offerings need to constantly emerge to keep a business healthy.

This is the case with Amazon and Amazon Prime, a subscription service that has experienced aggressive growth in its six years of existence and now has more than 25 million members. A business model that, at first glance, could be identified as a loss for the company's accounts.

It provides access to a huge amount of online content (movies and books) in addition to free shipping on all items purchased from the company's website. According to company data, this represents a cost of approximately U$90 compared to a monthly fee of only U$79, meaning a loss of U$11 per customer. However, these same customers, who benefit from free shipping, now consume 150% more per year and have an average spending 2.4 times higher than customers who do not have Amazon Prime. In the end, the return on investment with this subscription plan is U$78 per member. This is one of the factors that has led to significant growth in the company's stock value in recent years.

Tip 2: Create integrations
Modern innovation lies not in inventing a new product, but in the integration of different existing tools and applications. Just look at our cell phone screens, at the apps we have and those we don't even use. Who hasn't ever needed to delete things because they wanted to take another photo or download a new app? This space is increasingly competitive, as new applications are launched daily in virtual stores. That's why the logic of integration is becoming increasingly important.

Airbnb built a simple platform to offer a service that connects to people's needs. This is how the world's largest "hospitality" business was created without owning a single room. To achieve this, they use around 20 applications to manage data, 16 dedicated to assisting their development team, 13 tools to handle various day-to-day business activities, and another 8 applications that help manage the business. In short, they have 57 apps, and of all of them, only 7 are proprietary to the company.

Tip 3: Focus
Innovation is closely linked to agile and lean development. Creating, testing, and doing again should be a mantra. But creation needs focus. And that's what these two companies mentioned earlier do so well.

Every new product or offering created by Amazon is linked to a single objective: to offer the best shopping experience. While it may create other business models, such as Amazon Web Services – one of its most profitable – this offering only came into existence because the technology and stability of its servers were critical in building this online sales experience.

Similarly, Airbnb continues to develop new offerings within its core focus: providing the best travel experience. This is reflected in the new services they offer on their app and the professional photos they take of the rooms listed on their platform.

Indeed, one of our (few) certainties is that understanding and keeping up with the world is a challenging task, and this is reflected in the ecosystems in which companies operate. Trends and forecasts help, but long-term planning always needs to be reviewed. This doesn't mean we shouldn't make plans anymore; on the contrary, a strategic and analytical perspective will always be fundamental, but in our planning vision, constant adjustment and flexibility should be pursued attributes. In this context, creating platforms, integrating functionalities, and focusing on a clear and relevant offering can help to have a more accurate aim when preparing your company for our VUCA world.