The next wave of strategy - with Ben Valenta

Building long term value through community centred strategy

As part of our ongoing series “The next wave of strategy”, ReD partners Millie Arora and Charlotte Vangsgaard speak to Ben Valenta, SVP of Strategy & Analytics at US sports broadcaster FOX sports, on building long-term value through community-centred strategy. They delve into how to build strategy from on-the-ground insights, parsing data to build a worldview, and how the sports media industry gets fandom wrong.

Watch the video below.

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THE NEXT WAVE OF STRATEGY

At ReD, we have been developing a new perspective on strategy in collaboration with Roger Martin, one that extends beyond economic optimisation and user-centricity. Building on these two pillars, this new approach to strategy also incorporates understanding complex social dynamics in order to sharpen a company’s perspective on the culture or “world” they’re operating in, and in turn, unlock growth. In this video series, we hear from leaders on why this is the way forward.

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“Understanding where the next generation of fandom will come from, I think is of utmost importance. It’s the thing that most people in this business spend most of their time thinking about. And at the same time there's no strategic rigour applied to the question.”

“When we say fandom is about family, about belonging, when we say that to someone who is a fan, they instinctively recognise that what we’re saying is true.”

“All these metrics are directional. And no one thing is going to be the answer. We’re not trying to piece together a set of metrics. We're trying to piece together a worldview.”

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