Event Highlights
Disruption: The New Economic Driver
April 14, 2021
By Bloomberg Live
Returning global economies to healthy growth will depend largely on businesses’ ability to proactively adapt to our disrupted reality. Will companies choose simply to focus this year on tending to their Covid-19-inflicted wounds or will they decide to shift gears, lean into innovation and reposition their business models for the future?
The pandemic has brought about an unparalleled global reset that has required new approaches, but it is by no means the only disruptive challenge that companies are facing. We heard from a range of leaders as they shared what keeps them awake at night and how the pandemic is a reminder of the need for a continued mindset of self-disruption in order to drive success.
Click here to view video of today’s event.
Speakers included:
- Mitchell Baker, CEO & Chairwoman, Mozilla
- Joanne Crevoiserat, CEO, Tapestry
- Richard Gelfond, CEO, IMAX Corporation
- Mark Hoplamazian, President and CEO, Hyatt Hotels Corporation
- Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies, Yale University School of Management
Bloomberg Moderators:
- Carol Massar, Anchor, Bloomberg Businessweek TV and Radio
Event Highlights:
- On developing entertainment trends: Richard Gelfond, CEO, IMAX Corporation, said, “I do think that streaming and distribution patterns for specialty content are going to be different. I think if there’s a movie geared towards a small demographic, or a foreign language film, then I think it’s better and more efficient to stream that to targeted audiences.” However, he said, “people are anxious to get out of the home in greater numbers and there is pent-up demand”. Gelfond used the recent example of the movie Demon Slayer, which he said, has become by far the biggest grossing movie in the history of Japan — even as cinemas were only at 50-75% of capacity.
- On becoming a leaner and more agile organization: Joanne Crevoiserat, CEO, Tapestry, said,“the operative word over the past year has really been agility. We had very little visibility coming through the pandemic as to what the trends would be. Our focus as a company has been to get closer to our consumer, to lean into digital and data and analytics. We were seeing some of these disruptions happen pre-pandemic and now we are embracing that.” Crevoiserat concluded: “our customers are optimistic and are looking forward to getting out and embracing the physical world again.”
- On developing a better internet: Mitchell Baker, CEO & Chairwoman, Mozilla, said, “we’ve seen in the last year a change of people’s habits online. Both the good and the bad of the current state of the internet have been magnified. In the larger picture, we’d say we’ve succeeded as we are all doing things online that we never imagined before.” Baker went on to say: “with Firefox we try to address things like content that is worth your time, not clickbait, and how to test out ways of engagement that aren’t about building outrage for more engagement so that the better side of human nature can be more reflected in online life. That is a work in progress.” she said.
- On the future of travel and hospitality: Mark Hoplamazian, President and CEO, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, said, “rumors of the death of business travel have been greatly exaggerated. We’re seeing remarkable interest among corporations for getting back to meetings. I think there are some basic issues that a lot of tech company executives who are talking up their own book with respect to the digital platforms that are now commonplace, miss, which is that the power of human connection remains significant and essential to life going forward — that’s true on the leisure side and the business side. Do I think the general volume of travel will be similar to 2019 or better? The answer is yes. There is a basic human need to go and explore, that’s on the leisure side, and companies really rely on building culture and differentiating who they are through the way it feels to people more than the paycheck or the career path. Most of our customers are big employers and all of them are expressing concern on how they maintain a sense of community and culture with more remote working going on.”
- On how CEOs adapt to change: “Dropping the cheerleading, giving straight talk, keeping the lines of communication open” are qualities that CEOs should exhibit coming out of the pandemic according to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies, Yale University School of Management. Sonnenfeld continued, “CEOs have good ideas of how they can reinvent themselves going forward into the new normal. It’s just not going to be the same and we are not going to drop backwards in a nostalgic type of way when all this passes.”
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