Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ FinTech Across Scotland
This has been especially evident in the last two weeks as I have had the opportunity to see, hear and discuss the fintech progress in a number of cities and regions, all of which are advancing Scotland’s global ambitions.
Dundee
Meeting Fraser Edmond, chief executive of the newly formed insurtech enterprise Broker Insights was a fantastic way to start the week and hear how data driven innovation is very much alive in Dundee.
Applying new approaches to the use of data in the traditional world of commercial insurance is already setting Fraser and his team on an exciting path to revolutionise how the sector operates.
Brilliant to see the Broker Insights innovation being led from Dundee and I can see them following in the global footsteps of a more established successful Dundee international fintech, NCR.
Of course, NCR are one of the world leaders in applying new technologies to payments and transactions, something they have been doing in Dundee since the 1940’s!
Mickael and I had a fantastic meeting with the senior team of this very important employer in the area but who are also redesigning the world of payments at a global level.
We are very fortunate to have NCR in the Scottish ecosystem and from our conversations on Monday there is much we can progress together. We have already introduced the NCR team to a couple of new emerging Scottish fintechs to develop collaboration opportunities.
Fife
Just down the road from Dundee is the region of Fife, which has a long track record of using new technology in the financial services space to be at the very forefront of innovation.
Meeting up with the very knowledgable Iain Shirlaw, the economic development adviser of Fife Council along with serial entrepreneur Gordon Povey of Trisent and Euan Stillie IT director of Ingenico (another long standing fintech enterprise) made it a fascinating afternoon.
There was much to learn about the creativity being driven from the Fife region and we got particularly excited about bringing the potential opportunities alive with blockchain as a significant game changer in Scotland and in our global reach.
The opportunity to connect up some of these developments with the wider ecosystem would even further demonstrate that fintech can play a key economic role across all of Scotland and wider afield.
Glasgow
I am certainly seeing a thriving ecosystem in Glasgow and there are numerous people and organisations making fintech happen across the City.
This was very much in evidence at the fintech event on Thursday where I had the privilege to share the platform with the brilliant Callum Murray, the founder and CEO of Amiqus ID , a fantastic enterprise leading the way in addressing some of the regulatory friction in the financial sector.
There was much to learn from the comments of the attendees, particularly in respect of the importance education and skills development. A big well done to Steve Chown and the RBS team for putting on a terrific event and to the great sessions by Juliana and Lal of Whitecap Consulting.
Of course, Glasgow is also the home of some very prominent global financial institutions who have a significant base in the City. For example, really enjoyed meeting up with Khalid Rafiq and Robert Keenan of Morgan Stanley to hear how they are embracing this age of innovation and how we can share insights to put Scotland even more on the global fintech stage, especially back in the USA.
Whilst talking of Glasgow, I must mention the University Of Glasgow FinTech Society team who I met at our event on Thursday evening.
Fantastic to hear how the team had grown the Society to over 100 in a short period and being embraced by students from all disciplines and nationalities. Really motivational to hear and it gives me great optimism about our future on the global fintech stage.
Edinburgh
A massive thank you to David Fergusson and the terrific team at Nucleus Financial for hosting our first ever Fintech Scotland symposium on Wednesday evening.
The theme was collaboration and the real value of working together came through in the excellent presentations by David along with Michael Roe of Origo Services, both of which demonstrated the huge role they play in fuelling the innovation of the pensions and investment sector.
It was also great to have expertise of David Dalton Brown from TISA along to share his examples of how the combined effort can help fintech enterprises can address the regulatory and policy challenges our sector sometimes faces.
I came away from this inaugural symposium reflecting on the diverse range of people all committed to making fintech a success across all of Scotland.
My thoughts on this were then reinforced the following night at our second symposium, this time with the theme of innovation. Two fantastic businesses driving change in the lending space, Ultimate Finance and Orca Money. From different start points, Ron and Iain were just brilliant in showing how to use technology and innovative engagement to meet customers needs.
This was vividly brought to life by Anneli Ritari-Stewart , the wonderful director of Dentsu Aegis iPropect and Keira from Ultimate Finance who explained the importance of innovative and data-driven marketing to to really focus on meeting customer.
Global Scotland
Denstu Aegis team were great hosts for this second event. They also bring some excellent international perspectives into the ecosystem that I believe all fintechs, established and emerging, can learn a great deal from.
There has been a strong international element to the conversations and opportunities wherever I have been since being in role and this bodes well as we seek to help fintechs across Scotland grow their global footprint in working with major global players.
Insightful meetings with Mick James of RGAx, one of the world’s largest reinsurance firms, and Yvonne Dunn of Pinsent Masons, the well respected European legal authority on open banking, reinforced this to me.
The international dimension was very much on the agenda last Thursday, 8th March, for International Womens Day. I had the privilege to join the inspiring Jackie Waring for the Investing Women Ambition and Growth conference. What a magnificent way to celebrate the importance of inclusion.
Alloa
After the snow put paid to my first race of 2018 a few weeks back, the Alloa half marathon this Sunday is long anticipated.
I’m far from peak fitness but it will be amazing to be with a couple of thousand runners from across at least twenty different countries on the roads of Clackmannanshire, putting Alloa very much on the international stage.
This will then set me up for the Global Fintech Summit in London with Deloitte on Monday and Tuesday where we’ll be sharing Scotland’s fintech story on the stage. A story I’ll also be sharing with guests from Hong Kong and Singapore later that week when back home in Scotland.
I’ve certainly got lots to say on this global stage about what Scotland can do and is doing in the fast moving fintech world and I’m looking forward to sharing opportunities across other regions of Scotland in the coming months. Until next time.
Stephen
Fortnightly FinTech Fuse – Inspiring FinTech
Inspiring is one of the most frequent words I have used over this last fortnight to describe the wide ranging conversations with people who are making things happen in the Fintech world.
Inspiring because their ideas that are driving innovation across Scotland are in themselves fuelling even more creativity and the possibility of additional new initiatives.
Inspiring Enterprise
Inspiring Talent
Some of our innovative enterprises in Scotland have been demonstrating their inspirational performance for a good number of years, talking with Lorraine Straiton, Commercial Director at FNZ and their twelve year journey is a good example.
The chat with Lorraine was very much on the skills and talent required to help financial and technology enterprises strive forward to create sustainable and inclusive growth.
This is where FinTech Scotland’s bridge’ role with the universities across Scotland is going to be crucial in helping to ensure we have a diversity of talent and expertise to take forward the thriving and innovative ecosystem
So, progressing the development of specific Fintech leadership programmes with Douglas Graham, Frances Green and other key colleagues at the University of Edinburgh is going to be a crucial focus in the coming months.
I’m looking forward to meeting up with the exciting academic teams at Stirling and Strathclyde in the coming weeks to hear how we can also support their valuable work in developing FinTech talent.
To add to this, the brilliant Steve Tigar, CEO of Money Dashboard shared with me some great ideas of how experienced people within some of our larger financial institutions could play an active role with emerging FinTech enterprises. We will look to progress this.
last week, and with the risk of embarrassing them both, they are very much role models to me on how to inspire talent and put it into action.
Inspiring Leaders
On the subject of inspiring leaders, this is an imperative across the whole ecosystem to drive collaborative actions in the FinTech ecosystem.
A great example of inspiring leadership was meeting Graham Smith, from Glasgow City Council this week to talk about his role at Tontine, the incubator and accelerator hub.
My colleague Mickael Paris had the opportunity last week to catch up with the inspirational Steven Morris to hear about how he is working with Stirling Council to establish a digital hub with the support of a new EIS growth fund. Please read more on this terrific initiative
Recent days have also involved conversations with Paul Lawrence of Edinburgh City Council and then with Douglas and Lindsay at PWC, all of whom are quietly but powerfully enabling actions to help a thriving fintech ecosystem.
There is a great deal of inspiring leadership such as by those mentioned that goes on behind the scenes and from people in many different roles that is often underestimated.
This was very evident to me when sharing the emerging plans for Fintech Scotland with the Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International teams this week. The wintry journey through the snow to Glasgow was more than worth it and I came away enthused on how we can drive new innovations through collaboation.
Inspiring Meet Up
Thursday was due to be my first FinTech Practitioners Forum and the opportunity to hear from thirty or so entrepreneurs and innovators but unfortunately the blizzard conditions meant it turned more into an inspiring meet up of four.
I was joined at Codebase by Stuart from Wallet Services, Stuart from Comcarde and Stewart from Allatus Unity for a very insightful conversation on what needs to be done to drive better collaboration and business growth.
From my point of view, it was more than worthwhile to brave the wintry conditions and be part of the discussion as well as enjoy the coffee treat that Stewart Pitt brought in to warm us up. Thanks guys for joining me even if the meet up was cut a little bit short so I could go to dentist and get a replacement tooth!!
Inspiring at Scale
One of the key objectives of Fintech Scotland is to facilitate productive collaborations across the Fintech eco systems, particularly in bringing together developing Fintech enterprises and established firms.
I have been encouraged by the opportunities on how we can do this following very constructive discussions with organisations such as IBM, Atos, Sopra Steria who have the capabilities and scale to help Scotland develop innovative environments to help small and large firms grow.
Alongside this, my meetings with global professional services players such as Deloitte, EY and Accenture gave me some very helpful insight on how we could learn from others around the world to develop fintech in Scotland
Innovation can be done at scale over time, as mentioned earlier FNZ have demonstrated this in Scotland and over a longer period and also the global player NCR with its important Scotland presence showed me how innovation through technology is an ongoing journey, or should I say an endless marathon!
Inspiring Running
Talking of marathons, it is due to be my first running race of 2018 this weekend, a half marathon round the Meadows in Edinburgh organised by the University’s students. I’m hoping the snow will have cleared to some extent to allow a safe and inspiring run!!
This will be the first of eight races leading up to the Edinburgh marathon in May and I am hoping to build up the pace over this coming months, I guess just like my ambition for the fintech pace in Scotland.
The next four weeks is going to be about starting to prioritise where the focus of activity and pace with stakeholders from across the ecosystem. More on that to come
Keep warm and keep inspiring!
Digital transformation in the financial services: where to start
1. Customer-driven innovation
Customers value their time as much as firms do, so delivering on efficient communications is a valuable plus point for clients.
2. Efficiency in internal processes
In the face of the demands of MiFID II and KYC regulations, automation is no longer an optional nice-to-have ”“ it’s essential for any firm to continue to thrive. The sheer breadth of the requirements would be all but impossible to achieve in any cost- and time-effective way were it not for the power of technology to automate processes such as onboarding and communication tracking.
Automating essential communications allows you to effortlessly maintain contact with clients, which means you can spend less time sending emails and more time working to give clients your best advice. It also makes it easier to stay compliant as tools such as Appointedd’s CRM suite automatically records all communications around appointments between firms and clients for an easy digital paper trail.
3. Security and data
When you help clients with their money, you need to know their sensitive data is safe with you, and embracing automated tools doesn’t have to mean more risk for your firm or your clients. Source tools with excellent security credentials, that are compliant with Cyber Essentials standards, and which have a proven track record of robust data security. This will put both your and your clients’ minds at ease and improve the appeal of your services.
Jenny Campbell in Edinburgh to address business women’s event
One of the top UK business women will be in Edinburgh in March at this year’s Ambition & Growth Conference dinner which will take place at the Sheraton Hotel.
Jenny Campbell, the Founder of YourCash Europe will be sharing her story and passion towards helping people succeed in business.
More about Jenny Campbell
Aged only 16, Jenny joined the banking fraternity. At 23 she had completed her banking qualifications and been awarded a Chartered Institute of Bankers prize.
In 2006 she joined Hanco, a cash machine company
owned by RBS, as director of operations.
In 2010 she took charge of a management buyout
of the business. She renamed it YourCash Europe before impressively expanding the business’ operations.
In 2013, she took the business through a secondary buy-out which allowed her to obtain full control of the business. She sold the company in October 2016 to Euronet Worldwide Inc.
Vitalise Business Woman of the Year in 2014 she was then welcomed as a Freeman to the Guild of Entrepreneurs in the City of London.
Very experienced public speaker she also spend a lot of her time helping entrepreneurs launch their business.
Most people will know her best for her role as a dragon on the BBC programme Dragon’s Den.
Jackie Waring, CEO and Founder of Investing Women, the organisation behind the Ambition & Growth Conference, said: “We are delighted to welcome Jenny, a high profile and hugely successful businesswoman, to the third annual Ambition & Growth Conference. Along with
her formidable track record in the global banking sector, Jenny really stands out for the work she does to support young people in business and promote a positive message about entrepreneurialism.”
Ambition and Growth Conference
Ambition & Growth 2018 is set to inspire, motivate and inform aspirational entrepreneurs as well as business angels and professionals in leadership roles.
Other speakers will include:
Professor Heather McGregor CBE, Executive Dean,
Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Watt University and
Mary Harper, Affluent Customer
Director at Aviva.
For more information visit:
http://www.investingwomen.co.uk/ambition-growth- conference/
RBS FinTech Accelerator goes national ”“ but Edinburgh remains core location
RBS and fintechs?
After a successful trial at the Entrepreneurial Spark Hub in Edinburgh last year, RBS is expanding its FinTech Accelerator programme across three more locations in the UK – London, Manchester and Bristol ”“ but attracting FinTechs to join the programme based out of their Gogarburn head office is still seen as vital.
We spoke to Steve Chown who leads the FinTech proposition for the Bank:
“Having the Entrepreneurial Hub in our head office in Gogarburn over the last few years has transformed the feel of the building. The layout has been designed to really encourage engagement between Bank staff and Entrepreneurs, with the Hub and our Innovation teams next door to each other and even sharing an event space. It’s a big building, with coffee shops and even a Tesco Express and you often see Entrepreneurs in the queue for their Latte next to Bank Execs!”
“We’ve got 6000 staff based in Gogarburn alone, from every function within Banking you can think of and that’s a key part of our offering for FinTech businesses – linking them up with staff who can add value to what they are building ”“ for example if you are a payments business we’ll endeavour you a linked in to someone from our payments team who talks your language and can give you advice and feedback. Our staff are really keen to engage, I’ve even had our Analytics and Modelling team offering to help, hands on, with businesses struggling to manage their data or with large analytics problems”
“The Banks attitude to dealing with start-up businesses has really changed over the last few years ”“ we now realise that sometimes we don’t know best, and there’s massive value in partnering with specialist businesses with ready made solutions”
So what does a FinTech Accelerator involve?
Steve explains more:
“At the core of our offering is the coaching and mentoring from Entrepreneurial Spark alongside office space in our Hub but we really wanted to ensure FinTechs got real value from joining our programme so asked them what their main challenges were. Based on what we were told we have arranged additional content around IP protection, regulation, partnering with Corporates and raising investment alongside technology and sales strategy reviews from our partners at Dell – plus of course connections into relevant Bank staff and will end the programme with a Demo day event to pitch their ideas. We are really looking forward to welcoming some more FinTechs in to our head office.”
If you’re interesting in learning more about this or if you’d like to apply for this programme contact us below or via the contact us form.
Fortnightly FinTech Fuse – getting started
Welcome to the first Fortnightly Fintech Fuse!
This will be my regular blog sharing some of the insights, learnings and engagement with people form the diverse range of fintech participants across Scotland and globally.
To Fuse’ means to bring together and blend two or more things. This is exactly what FinTech Scotland is seeking to do with the aim of driving growth and creating jobs, hence the name for this blog.
The fusion arising from the changing world of financial services and technology presents enormous opportunities and through this blog I hope to share how Scotland is advancing on these.
The blog will be a cross between an open diary and informal ramblings that hopefully highlight the progress being made in fusing together the skills, resources and capabilities that make the potential fintech growth and job opportunities come alive.
The style will be chatty and quick read. It is not intended to be a formal report nor exhaustive of everything happening in our dynamic and thriving Scottish fintech environment.
Hopefully it will be a catalyst to the many people directly engaged or looking to be involved in delivering the enormous benefits for all of fintech developments.
Engaging Response
The start of the new role in January can be best described as a whirlwind of activity, with the announcement sparking a very positive response from the diverse range of fintech participants. I’ve very much appreciated all the feedback and comments in these early days and the task has been to get out to see as many people as possible to hear thoughts and share insights.
During this initial three weeks, I’ve clocked up over 70 actual face to face meetings with over 160 people in total as I have sought to immerse myself in understanding the needs of different stakeholders. This is in addition to being involved in four workshops and participated in a couple of local events.
The overwhelming enthusiasm and commitment to creating growth and jobs through fintech developments is very powerful, going forward I am hoping we can channel this high energy into productive results and outcomes.
Big thanks to everyone who has been in touch and reached out in since the start of the year, there has been a hugely enthusiastic response from all quarters of Scotland as well as all corners of the world, from New Zealand to Africa to Europe and the USA.
During this early flurry of activity, I am endeavouring to keep up to date with the positive flow of engagement and arrange the meeting and call requests as they come in!
Although managing the diary to meet and talk to as many people as possible has, I must admit, been a challenge and will be as I embrace the strong appetite for people to be involved.
Thankfully, I’ve only missed one appointment so far, with my dentist for a checkup!
Key Foundations
Amongst the many meetings, I have had very constructive discussions with key people from Avaloq, Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC, University of Edinburgh and Scottish Enterprise who have already strategically committed to getting FinTech Scotland of the ground.
This enables FinTech Scotland to start on a journey with confidence, which was very much reinforced when meeting Paul Wheelhouse, Minister for Business,
Innovation and Energy.
The Scottish Government’s very real and practical commitment to creating a thriving fintech environment in Scotland was a key factor for me in taking on this new challenge.
I must add that this fast start could not have been achieved without some key foundations being in place.
In this respect, an enormous thank you to the Edinburgh Innovation (EI) team at the University of Edinburgh, who have provided invaluable support in these early days of establishing FinTech Scotland’s operations.
It is fantastic to be working with the EI team to ensure we put the right foundations in place for the FinTech Scotland enterprise in order that we can maximize the
emerging opportunities.
Opportunity Knocks
One thing that has been really encouraging in these early days, is the contact from half a dozen fintech enterprises who are looking to move to Scotland, either from other parts of the UK or wider afield.
These entrepreneurial firms are all at various stages of their growth and scaling up but they all share a common interest in being part of Scotland’s fintech environment to take their innovative enterprises to the next level.
Explaining to the various firms how we and others in Scotland can support them in their growth and job creation aspirations is hugely motivating and something we will be building on in the coming months.
Running Around
I am hoping that scribbling this blog over the coming weeks will give me the opportunity to reflect on whether I have been focusing on the right priorities for FinTech Scotland and consider whether upcoming actions will enable us to make progress.
My other way of finding reflection time is to just get out and run, whatever the weather! Running is my other passion, alongside fintech, being a wonderful way take time out from the fast moving working life to consider the journey ahead and what can be achieved. More on this to come.
This fintech journey is going to be a marathon’ rather than a sprint and I am looking forward to sharing the experience with you through FinTech Fuse!
Seed Haus ”“ open for second cohort
Seed Haus, the Scottish pre-seed tech accelerator, are now accepting applications for their second cohort. If you’re interested you have until 30th December to apply for £30,000 of equity investment from Scotland’s top-tier tech investors.
Who are Seed Haus?
Calum Forsyth, CEO, and Robin Knox, Chairman founded Seed Haus after identifying a gap in the startup support system. They decided to create the only incubator in Scotland which provides entrepreneurs with start-up capital as part of the package. On top of office space and the capital the pair also designed a solution that provides mentoring, peer meet-ups and investor sessions.
The first cohort launch early 2017 with 5 of the most exciting start-ups in Scotland: Drinkly, Kindaba, Sansible Wearables, Security CTRL, and Taka.
The selection process
Out of all the applications, 5 startups will be selected and offered a place in the programme. Seed Haus is working with renown partners: Alistair Forbes, James Watt of BrewDog, Gavin Dutch, Paul Walton, Judy Wilson, Rob Dobson, Paddy Burns, Chris van der Kuyl, Paul Davidson, and Sir Tom Hunter.
Calum Forsyth declared: “Our deal terms are incredibly founder friendly. The founders backed in cohort 1 were originally looking to raise around £100,000 with very little traction. Based on the current investment climate in Scotland, that would have meant selling a big part of their business, at a formative stage, hampering future growth and fundraising. Pleasingly, they saw the value in aligning with Seed Haus which allows them to hold on to a greater portion of equity and lay the foundations for a truly scalable business”.
Who can apply?
Most entrepreneurs can apply but Seed Haus is most interested in people with domain expertise. Seed Haus provide investments which allow entrepreneurs to cover their living costs. It therefore removes some of the risks that could have stopped some entrepreneurs making the leap. Transitioning from full-time work to entrepreneurship can be hard, Seed Haus take some of the fear away.
Edinburgh Hosts Event On Personal Data And Open Banking
New rules demanding a new approach
The EU’s PSD2 legislation that is closely aligned with the work of the Open Banking Working Group is going to make a significant difference to the operation of financial services both in Britain and in Europe, effecting far-reaching changes for years to come.
As of 18 January, consumers, SMEs and even corporates will be offered the opportunity to consent to having their personal data shared securely with financial institutions other than their own bank, with the option of choosing new products and services.
If this were not enough, the General Data Protection Regulation that comes into force across Europe in May will place far greater demands on companies to protect their customers’ data than at present and gradually raise customers’ attitudes towards the management of their personal information.
It would seem that the traditional and emerging finance communities as well as consumers are going to have varying expectations on how the new rules and ways of operating are going to work.
Why do Open Banking and GDPR matter now?
The urgency for innovation has rarely been more felt and is going to become a pressing need, if it isn’t already.
The good news this week at least is that Edinburgh, where much of this disruption is going to have significant impact, will be discussing these issues and more in a one-day event hosted by the Trust in Digital Life association, The ID Co. and the School of Informatics University of Edinburgh.
The objective of Whose Data Is It Anyway? is to achieve a fresh perspective on how potential conflicts of interest can be avoided in the future, particularly in the context of open banking, and what the landscape might look like in a few years’ time for banks, businesses, SMEs and the rest of us.
Whose Data is it Anyway? takes place at the Informatics Forum, University of Edinburgh, starting with breakfast from 08.30 to 09:30 and finishing at 15.15 on Thursday 14th December 2017. Attendance is free when you register in advance.
(Once you’ve registered, tweet to #whosedata)
About TDL
The Trust in Digital Life (TDL) community comprises leading industry partners and knowledge institutes that hold trust and trustworthy services to be an essential ingredient of the digital economy.
TDL members are committed to enabling a trustworthy ecosystem that protects the rights of citizens while creating new business opportunities. To this end, TDL researches, pilots and incubates trustworthy ICT services and technologies in an innovative environment.
TDL forms the bridge between citizens entitled to the best possible services and an industry that develops devices, applications and services that protect them from Internet threats and provides them at an affordable price. A major focus is on the research and business agenda of the European Union.
From banking to healthcare, driverless cars to online shopping, every aspect of our 21st century digital world is dependent on varying degrees of trust between consumers and suppliers, governments and their citizens.
The continual threat of cyber-attacks has the potential to undermine our confidence in taking full advantage of the opportunities available to grow the digital economy, not only in Europe but across the world.
The objective of this community of industrialists, entrepreneurs and academics is to provide the tools and awareness that the wider community can benefit from in their daily digital lives. Their mission is to create a trusted ecosystem based on innovative and trustworthy ICT products and solutions that protects the data and assets of European citizens and enterprises.
www.trustindigitallife.eu
What’s the value of fintech?
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Improvements to financial inclusion
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Enhanced customer experience offerings
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Greater transparency
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Modernised security and compliance solutions
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Additional support and guidance.
Fintech – what does the future look like?
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a strong understanding of current business operations
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a keen awareness of the signals of change
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ability and appetite for change and understanding of the potential barriers
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aligning business objectives to the fintech strategy
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innovation activity focused on large scale paradigm shifts as well as incremental improvements.
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What will we be famous for?
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What role(s) do we want to play in our customers’ lives?
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Where should we play?
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How can we win?