Patrick Dixon advises many multinationals on global trends and risk management, drawing on material in his books "Futurewise" and "Building a Better Business" which in turn are based on comprehensive research.
Through the 1990s he wrote roughly one new book every year, covering a wide range of issues and trends including risk management, digital society, geopolitics, consumer shifts, health care, biotechnology, social issues, politics and business ethics. Several of these achieved significant media coverage and resulted in many invitations to speak to multinational corporations about future challenges.
In 1997 he was invited to be a Fellow of the World Economic Forum at Davos, where he presented the Six Faces of the Future described in the book "Futurewise". This led to further requests for lectures, seminars and consulting, particularly from banks and insurance companies, but also including energy, travel, tourism, manufacturing, distribution, pharma, telecom and IT companies. By 1999 he was teaching on a range of business school programmes, and his web TV site had become an often quoted source.
Most of his work is with the senior teams of larger multinationals, as well as their clients, helping them identify new business opportunities, and to develop new strategy responding to new technologies, rapid changes in customer expectations, demographic shifts, competitor innovation and changes in emerging markets. He also works with corporations on other issues such as corporate ethics, corporate responsibility, winning the war for talent, team leadership and motivation. He is a frequent contributor to radio / TV current affairs and news programmes around the world, commenting on a wide range of trends, with a cumulative audience reach of more than 400 million people.
His thesis is described in the opening sentences of Futurewise:
* "Your company may have a reputation for brilliant leadership, outstanding innovation, clever branding and effective change management, but the business could fail if the world changes and you are unprepared."
* "The larger the corporation, the greater the risk that you are flying blind."
* "Institutional blindness is a major threat to the future of all corporations."
Futurewise describes Six Faces of the Future (FUTURE) which will impact every large business: F ast, U rban, T ribal, U niversal, R adical and E thical.
His most recent book Building a Better Business is a guide to management, marketing and motivation, covering issues randing from team leadership and change management to corporate governance, branding and marketing.
* People will only follow you if they see you're ahead, are convinced you know the route, trust you, and want to get there too.
* Life's too short to sell things you don't believe in.
* The future of marketing belongs to honest information, accurate data and clear claims based on truth.
* Every product and service is sold on the promise of a better future. The purpose of business is to deliver on the promise, and profit is the reward for doing so.
* Business strategy is the battleplan for a better future.
* You can have the greatest strategy in the world, but what is the point if no one cares?
* Connect with all the passions people have—for themselves, their families, their communities and wider world—and they will follow you to the ends of the earth, buy your products and services with pride, and may even be willing to work for you for next to nothing.
* When you have been close to death it makes you think about life.
* Give people a convincing reason and they will lay down their very lives.
* All the most powerful speeches ever made point to a better future.
* You cannot have strong leadership without passion.
* Mission is at the heart of what you do as a team. Goals are merely steps to its achievement.
Intellectual capital
Patrick Dixon is well known for his relaxed attitude to his own intellectual capital, choosing to give almost all of it away online in the spirit of Wikipedia. Hundreds of recent presentations are available for free access, together with hundreds of articles, over 200 videos of which some are an hour long, and the entire text of six books—more than a million chapters downloaded.
* Trying to protect or copyright your own management ideas is a last-century nonsense: absurd and illogical. Even if you could do it in a web-based world, why bother? The only ideas really worth having are those which make the world a better place, and such ideas only reach their potency when widely released to influence and shape our future. Real genius is not just having an idea, but knowing how to apply it to a person, a group, an organisation or an audience.
