We are proud to support PEAS (Promoting Equality in African Schools) and were delighted that they accepted our invitation to speak at the 2024 Paraffin event. A charity that drives secondary school education in Sub-Saharan Africa, it’s fair to say that the PEAS team – CEO Laura Brown and Head of Partnerships Emily Goulborn – were the ‘odd ones out’ in our room of brand and private sector specialists. Laura and Emily embraced our topic of Disruption and Transformation Against the Odds as a lens through which to speak about PEAS’s journey from a startup to an organisation influencing education systems in Uganda, Zambia, and Ghana, reaching hundreds of thousands of children.

The team presented us with ‘3 Ps’ – 3 areas of challenge in the organisation’s journey, which felt very relevant to our innovation and capability work:

Perseverance: The Backbone of PEAS

PEAS was born out of frustration with the fact that 75% of Ugandan children were denied access to secondary education due to a lack of schools and high fees. The founders aimed to build a not-for-profit private school offering high-quality education at an affordable cost. Despite their best efforts and hard work, the initial school was not a success due to factors beyond their control, This setback felt like a bereavement for the founders, but they did not give up. They learned from their experience and continued their mission, embodying the perseverance that remains a cornerstone of PEAS’s ethos today.

Our learning: Never give up in the face of adversity. If it seems too hard then it might just be the right sort of challenge.

Politics: Navigating the Complexities

As PEAS grew, so did its ambitions. Today they have 36 schools serving 20,000 students annually. But for PEAS that’s not enough.. Recognizing the need to scale their successful education model, PEAS decided to integrate their innovations into government systems. This shift required an understanding of the political landscape. Initially, they struggled to gain government support, learning that results alone were insufficient. Success came when they framed their proposals in terms of governmental priorities, demonstrating the importance of aligning with political contexts to achieve broader impact. And this paid off. PEAS are now operating in over 300 partner schools reaching 175,000 students outside of PEAS schools.

Our learning: Identify your influencers, understand them and find out what gets them going

Patience: Cultivating Lasting Change

Patience emerged as another critical lesson. Despite their rapid growth and ambitious targets, PEAS understands that some changes, particularly those challenging deep-rooted social norms, cannot be hurried. The organisation is committed to disrupting harmful practices, such as corporal punishment and gender biases, which need cultural sensitivity, strong local leadership, and trust. Laura shared a heartwarming example of a male student proudly displaying a reusable sanitary towel he made as part of a new business competition, reflecting significant progress in changing attitudes towards menstruation and female education.

Our learning: Major change such as cultural shifts can be slow to arrive – it’s a long game but the final rewards make it all worthwhile.

As Laura noted, the mission to reimagine and disrupt education in some of the world’s most challenging contexts is not supposed to be easy – but it is undeniably impactful. PEAS closed the speeches with amazing food for thought and we thank them so much for coming.

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Only 1 in 3 children in Africa has access to secondary education – you can help change this. We urge you to find out more about PEAS and support the great work that they do: www.peas.org.uk or partnerships@peas.org.uk

In a room filled with Innovation, Insight, Marketing, and Capability experts, Shafik Saba busted some myths about disruption and transformation at our summer party.  As Global Lead of Front End Innovation at Haleon, Shafik explained that, when it comes to over-the-counter (OTC) healthcare, though major breakthroughs like bionic limbs and brain-computer interfaces capture headlines, the real impact often lies in subtler changes that touch not 1000’s but millions of everyday lives.  For example, developing daily topical pain-relief that allows millions of arthritis sufferers to manage their pain.

As the manufacturer of leading brands such as Sensodyne, Haleon’s transformation of the oral care category starts with the courage his organisation has taken to make the most of emerging technologies, underpinned by consumer intelligence, to maximise innovation.

Using brilliant examples from fashion, sport and automotive, Shafik gave us four learnings for disruption and transformation:

1. Harness big data – Look to the TRIZ methodology to leverage pattern and trend analysis from over 100 million patent filings, it might just predict the next evolution in your category. This gives brands the all-important North Star to work towards – an end point that will result in true disruption & competitive differentiation. 
2. Experts change behaviour – In the OTC industry specifically, trusted experts, such as dentists and pharmacists, play a pivotal role in driving consumers to their products. 
3. Anticipate environmental change – shifts in the environment can naturally speed up adoption. COVID, for example, made us more aware of our immune systems and the need to take our health into our own hand.  Keeping an eye on such trends is vital for innovation. 
4. AI accelerates ideation – Without discounting the importance of people along the way, AI is an invaluable tool for Design Thinking. Effective AI prompting can give both simplify huge amounts of data fast, and inspire through generative creative ideas to accelerate and enhance your ideation process.

We constantly learn and are challenged by our clients, and it is a privilege to work with leading edge methodologies and visionary innovators like Shafik.

What do you do with a centuries old industry that’s been stagnating for years and catering to an increasingly ageing consumer? Change the rules and evolve it positively for a new generation. 

Launched with a vision to rejuvenate the sport, LIV Golf is a new global golf league that targets a global audience of 360 million fans, breathing new life into the sport. With 13 teams, a 14-tournament schedule, a faster format, events that are fun, noisy and exciting, and some of the world’s best golfers, they are ‘Golf but Louder’.  Radically redefining the sport, changing the traditional format and disrupting the incumbents, LIV Golf is also enhancing the game’s societal impact as it grows. Have a look at their event films to see the difference.

Ross Antrobus, LIV Golf’s VP of Insight, Analytics & Loyalty shared with us 5 ways to be a positive disruptor:

1. Overcome resistance to change: If you’re going to change things up, you will need to educate people about what you’re doing to bring them along with you and solve problems they didn’t even know they had.
2. Know your market: Being specific about your audience and make sure there is an appetite for your brand, including having a clear consumer purpose and bringing people along at every point.
3. Don’t underestimate the competition: Understanding your competition’s ability to adapt and challenge is essential, which means planning for a range of scenarios and deciding when and how to respond.
4. Be meaningfully different: Being different should be for a reason, and the excitement around challenging the norm helps you to create a connection with fans – they become your fellow collaborators for change.
5. Be a positive disruption: Being seen as a ‘disruptor’ or a ‘challenger brand’ can have negative connotations, even for your own team.  Instead, focus on being an ‘improver’ or ‘evolver’, a brand that changes things for the better and adds value and growth to the whole category.

Even the non-golfers among us were keen to book our spot at the next LIV Golf event to see their positive disruption in action.