“Crisis is a new norm in which a specific way of thinking not only saves business but also makes the world a better place,” Dominique Piotet, CEO UNIT.City

2020 can reliably be called “366 days without travel.” But when some borders are closed, completely different and new ones open. Dominique Piotet, CEO of the innovation park UNIT.City, at the Terrasoft online conference for business and IT leaders ACCELERATE Global, announced his journey through space and time. He spoke about the way of thinking in a new era where there are no rules, but the transformation is the only way to survive in a crisis and a time of insane acceleration of our world.

A journey to the valley

• The Apple Quarter in Silicon Valley is a futuristic building surrounded by ordinary American homes. Architecture indicates a way of thinking that is radically different from the usual.
• Steve Jobs, who was involved in the construction, wanted to do something incredibly irrational, so he created a spiral corridor. It isn’t easy to meet a specific person when you’re walking through it, but this idea is the essence of networking. You meet hundreds of different people with whom you have the opportunity to collaborate in the most unexpected directions.
• Silicon Valley is a machine for creating only one type of startup — a monopoly leader. Of the insane number of companies in the innovation park, only 13% of businesses are successful, stable and independently profitable. The only thing that made them so is the way of thinking of an entrepreneur, for whom the crisis is an ordinary course of events. Even if a company has a revolutionary idea that can change the usual way of life, it will still die without adapting quickly and continuously dare.
• The tech sector is very “fragile”. It rests on three main pillars: talent, money and culture. Money is almost the main factor here. But in the world of startups, this is a specific matter, where the goal is not just their number, but where they come from.
  An investor should have the same mindset as you. And yours should be like his, and always — flexible and innovative.

A journey through the time

• In 2001, the world was led by companies from various sectors: Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, General Electrics, Exon, Citi. Since 2016, the largest conglomerates operate in the tech sector – Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google. They are concentrated in one geographical location – between San Francisco and Seattle. It was the local culture that made them mega-successful at the very beginning of the journey.
• In the ’70s, the hippie movement coincided with the invention of the PC. It was a time when people started building things differently. There was a way of innovators’ thinking — people who are open to new and ready to cooperate, where motivation is not money, but an idea.
• Today, an example of nonconformity thinking is the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada desert. An event where entrepreneurs from all over the world come together to interact differently from the usual way of cooperation in the world. There is no money or names here. All the goods in the desert are available for free. Some people have an idea, others have hands and others have a resource to implement it.

A journey to leadership

• When we talk about the CEO, we represent a white collar and an expensive suit. Silicon Valley has offered the world a different image. The leader is not about luxury items. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey are black turtlenecks, rubber slates and beards. They inspire, you want to follow them because they look like an ordinary person, making the dream closer to the plan’s real realization.
• There are no rules at Netflix. No vacation policy and every manager is the owner of the department. Here, the best day for a CEO is when you don’t have to make decisions. The team accepts them. It is so important in a crisis because it allows you to make more than a hundred decisions in one second.
• Crisis, unfortunately, or fortunately, is a new reality where life has incredible speed. Technology is growing 10 times faster. Not rational thinking, but intuition, reflection, manoeuvrability become critical skills. Exactly what made it possible to put the human mind’s power on the phone we are used to.

Learn more about travelling to a new reality with Dominique Piotet via the link.