How to Find Growth When Everyone Says There Is None | Rob Weston

Can I just say, I love those two questions.

And the second one, it's so intuitive and yet for most people counterintuitive.

You're absolutely spot on in every space and place there is an opportunity.

It's just that it's almost like you get lost in the common rhetoric of it all.

The doom and gloom of a space and then you don't dig down for where the gold could be.

That's just...

And again, if I look back even at the time I was at M&S, one area which I would have loved to see the company jump into faster was the big yoga pilates trend.

Because M&S was known for leggings, so there's a reason to go there.

But the yoga trend, the rise of the Lululemon, it was there.

There was an undercurrent that was rising fast and the ability to jump quickly.

I think this is back to where M&S food is incredible, absolutely brilliant.

The developers there are unbelievable at looking at trends and jumping as fast as possible on them.

And, you know, while I was there, it was the move from calorie counting through to protein and feeling sustained.

And so, you know, the Simply Fuller longer range when I was right there.

But it's ingrained in that business to look at the trends first and then be really quick to find the running rivers.

So that for me is, and they continue to this day to do it fantastically well.

Okay, so how, great example.

I've now got my go-to trend spotting into innovation example if ever asked that question.

How do they structure for that? Do they do anything different intrinsically in the way that they trend spot and translate? I think that there's

a piece of it which is just the DNA of the business.

That is, while we were there, um we that the line we used the advertising was you know 100 100 adventures in imagination and it was 100 new ideas every month to capture the idea that you know i mean there's always something new and different and exciting um i do admire that sharing the business for going back to this is not just oh i think that's also a brilliant move but but back to innovation that there's just something when a business knows what it's about that works for the entire business.

And I think the way I observed them starting was that every year they came up with a trends Bible and that's where they started.

But then they also weren't afraid to jump on the leading edge of a trend.

And again, the M&S shopper is probably more prone to enter, I don't know, Japanese cuisine earlier than maybe someone at one of the different areas.

that that ability not to be afraid to jump into something which is on the cutting edge and maybe not see it sell as well as it might do, but to keep going, keep going, keep going.