Celebrating Disruption & Breaking Eggs

I love disruption. It’s where true transformation comes from. Thinking big picture. Committing to your big bets. Harnessing those moonshots. Being steadfast and resilient in pursuit. I have built my career on it. So the story goes, when discussing candidacy for my current role a couple years ago, my previous leader smiled and simply told Winpak: “he’s going to challenge the way you think about things”. Winpak’s response: “our CEO may actually like that”. The match was made. The alchemy continues.

This is my third Winpak blog article and we’re rolling off the Madness of March, right through spring break season, and head-on into celebrating United Nation’s World Creativity and Innovation Day (WCID) on April 21st. This occasion is of course symbolic but also an irresistible opportunity to thread the needle between this installment and my first two blog articles recapping layered value creation, technological advancement, and the power of human ingenuity merging to overcome complex problems with innovative solutions.

What a whirlwind these past few years have been! Post-COVID, we have managed through supply chain constraints, Texas freezes, global unrest, energy crises, soaring inflation, and now the daily EKG of trade wars. It’s difficult to remember what normal feels like. The world today is trying to find balance and with that, forces us to be better, faster, stronger, and more adaptable than ever. To take new approaches, assume new risks and employ alternate strategies. Businesses face ever-evolving challenges at global scale requiring nuanced blends of creativity and strategic thinking to stay out front. This state-of-flux can make progressive organizations smile and companies stuck in a time-warp dusting off the same old playbooks cry at the same time. The script must be flipped. The “tried-and-true” models blown up. Time to prop up all that represents WCID and fully embrace our inner disruptors. To lean-in on creativity and new technology not only to navigate market challenges successfully but trail-blaze new value layers for our clients in the process. To stay firmly planted on our front foot. To let the best offense be the best defense. Time to get comfortable on the razor edge of business school sanity.

I am privileged to be part of an organization teeming with natural curiosity. An organization that exemplifies all that WCID stands for. As a matter of fact, we are often so eager to get to the “how to solve” a problem we risk overshooting the introspective question of “is this actually a problem we need to be solving”. Oh, what fun indeed!  Wonderfully brilliant colleagues with the creativity accelerator perpetually pinned and that unique ability to see beyond the obvious and conceptualize ideas divergent from conventional thinking.  Applying innovative processes with technological exploration and converting these into tangible solutions that unlock and drive value creation. Front-run by robust go-to-market strategies, these concepts become the very essence for organizations creating impactful innovations transcending tradition and punching a hole through the proverbial status quo.

Technological accelerations, changing consumer behaviors, competitive pressures, and new geopolitical entanglements are ever-shifting sands that also provide a fertile playground for companies like ours committed to WCID theory. Winpak plays as a heavyweight but leads with creative agility and these market dynamics offer silver lining for nimble organizations in a state of constant readiness. Volatility - with volatility comes opportunity for leverage. Leverage dictates advantage. Advantage leads to new forms of value. Needle threaded.

The immediate challenge of course is differentiation. Elbowing one’s way out of the peer group mosh pit. Look a little deeper. Creating layers of client value goes beyond simply solving the superficial problem but helping clients win by solving for their clients’ challenges. It means understanding the holistic market landscape, identifying key pain points across the value chain, and exploring innovative approaches to create enduring solutions. A layered approach ensures that solutions are not only effective in the short term but also scalable and adaptable to future shifts. Newsflash to organizations which believe their “unique value proposition” is quality and on-time-in-full: that’s not unique value. That’s barely table stakes; the costs to merely play the game. That’s the recipe for directions to the wasteland of pricing purgatory. An exhausting existence of fighting daily over fractions of a cent.

There are of course some core creativity and innovation tenets:

Embrace the Journey
Creativity is broad. It can feel chaotic and amorphic, hard to pin an immediate ROI against. Creativity is the sum of the collective. It is communal and not owned by specific market, industry, nor nation. It builds common bridges. Solves challenges. Furthers our advancements. Turbocharges entrepreneurship. Creativity brings people together. Harmonizes global problem-solving. It powers GDP. Drives EPS. Informs policies. Creativity draws out innovation and reflects the very best of our diversity and uniqueness.

Deliver Differentiation
Galvanize brand. Spend some time around me, I talk about brand experience. A lot. Creativity allows businesses to create separation in crowded markets. Separation is life in a sea of wannabe me-toos. Become an advocate of client brand and an ambassador. Companies can deliver compelling value propositions through unique experiences embedding emotion to value layers. Emotion can be a powerful motivator. Nike’s customizable sneakers are a great experiential example. They enable sneakerheads to personalize self-expression while elevating brand and pumping loyalty all over social channels.

Be Future-Ready
Future-proof. Continuity and adaptability merge to form new levels of stability in our volatile business environment. No shake of the Magic 8-Ball here. What could possibly go off the rails in the most extreme of circumstances and how will we come together to solve for?  Think pre-mortem, not post. If you’re in post-mortem, you’ve already been washed out. Pre-mortems are a fantastic way to inform strategic architectures around “nuclear” market threats. Innovative organizations leverage these opportunities and get creative in anticipating future market disruptions designing in value chains that provide for the long-term drawing out competitive advantages along the way.

Do it with Minimal Environmental Impact
Be sustainably thoughtful in both innovation model and processes. Modern consumers increasingly expect businesses to operate with sustainability as an embedded value of their social mission. They also demand cost-parity or better. Creative solutions that solve for environmental and societal concerns enhance brand reputation while overcoming critical challenges. Sustainability these days is integrated into business models and vision statements virtually everywhere. Actually delivering on it meaningfully is to differentiate.

Lastly, be BOLD
Learn to appreciate failure and uncertainty. Create meaningful value and demand to share the value created. Be confident in your value proposition. Disruption means forging the path, making new markets, and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Deploy creativity and promote innovation to reengineer and rewrite tired old scripts and start to pull up the value layers where creativity begins to force multiply value. Develop your moonshot bets and provide latitude for teams to hunt them relentlessly. This is the marker of truly being a transformative force in the markets you choose to serve.

At the end of the day, WCID principles begin and end with culture. Delivering meaningful layers of sustained client value means business leaders need to become champions of creativity and innovation. Addressing market challenges creatively requires environments that foster experimentation and embrace disciplined, healthy risk-taking. In the true spirit of WCID, I expect us to get the bat off our shoulder. To connect the dots. To take calculated swings, and to swing hard. We won’t always get it right. We’ll break some eggs along the way. Failing fast is part of the formula. Accept it. Afterall, playing-to-win is a much different mindset than playing-to-not-lose.

And, playing-to-win is exactly Winpak’s game. We value creativity and exploration as core competencies. We create empowerment amongst our ranks to explore unconventional ideas without fear of failure. We promote our 2500 Innovators crowdsourcing platform harnessing the power of our diversity, bringing together the ideas and perspectives of our greater team and feeding our powerful Client Innovation Journey. This is as embedded in our organizational identity as Google’s “20% time” dedicated to employees spending part of their working hours ideating on passion projects. Guess where Gmail and Google Maps came from…

Lest we forget at the core of all of this is deeply understanding client perspective. Hard to be uniquely valuable and groundbreaking without depth. What keeps stakeholders up at night?  Short of rich meaningful insight we risk creating wonderfully innovative solutions-looking-for-problems as opposed to delivering value. Let’s also remember innovation extends well beyond R&D and product development. It encompasses business models, client experiences, organizational structures and values. Successfully creative companies like Winpak continuously innovate across multiple dimensions. Innovation then should not be viewed as a sporadic effort but as a thoughtful, disciplined, strategic process. Companies like ours harnessing these tools alongside the best and brightest creative minds in the business are well positioned to tackle whatever challenges the market can throw our way with fresh, innovative perspectives.

World Creativity and Innovation Day is a call to action for all of us. A reminder that creativity and innovation bring out the very best of our society across all corners of the globe. These are not abstracts but an orientation and practical drivers of growth, problem-solving, and client value creation. In an era marked by uncertainty and rapid change, businesses that leverage creativity to innovatively address market challenges can build layers of value that are robust, dynamic, and sustainable. By embracing creativity and innovation, organizations can not only navigate the complexities of the modern market but also redefine the very standards of client value.

I hope you’re listening, because we are Winpak and we’re breaking some eggs.

Remember, It’s Our Nature to Protect™.

And, it’s our DNA to WIN.

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