Diversity Fuels Disruption

Speaking to Peruvians in Chicago about creating value across culture

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I traded my last week in the South of France in June for a week in hot, humid Chicago. Crazy?  Perhaps. The bigger picture is that I was asked to speak to a $10B Peruvian company, Intercorp, about disruption in the era of AI. While I am not an AI specialist, I know a thing or two about disruption. Disruption can occur from stimulus inside the company–innovation or new ways of seeing something–or from the outside, like A.I. or a pandemic.

My life and career have been full of disruption, and I don’t mean leaving my beach life a week early. I’ve learned to appreciate an unexpected turn of events, even when it hurts. (More on that bittersweet pain in my memoir, which will follow my business book, Brand Global, Adapt Local, due next Summer.)

I’ve built my career disrupting companies, frequently disrupting my life along the way. I was hired by brands like Louis Vuitton, Nike, Hyatt and Babbel to disrupt from the inside, to think different to build new businesses, enter new markets, and confront new challenges. I’ve worked in five different industries, across three continents, speaking three languages daily. This cognitive diversity allows me to leverage insights and best practices from one industry to disrupt another.

I opened my lecture illustrating how cognitive diversity fuels disruption in a story about my first trip to Peru. At 16, I went to Peru to visit friends I’d met in the US. One was a young Peruvian woman living in the capital, Lima, and one was a graduate student studying Quechua, the ancient Inca language spoken by only a few village tribes in remote terrain of the Peruvian Alps. After flying to Cuzco, taking a train, riding on a bus and in the back of a pickup truck, we reached the end of the paved roads. A young 10-year-old boy from the distant village met us at the trailhead. He said it would take about four hours to hike over three Andean ridges to reach the village. 

We started out well enough, though I felt the elevation. After crossing one 7,000 foot summit (2000 meters,) I needed to rest. After a second ridge, I didn’t think I could keep going. I was exhausted, yet we still had two more peaks to cross. I feared I wouldn’t make it and leaned against a tree for a twenty-minute break.

Seeing my weariness, the little boy figured out what was a simple solution to him, but an innovative one for me. He reached down & picked green leaves off a low plant on the trail, rubbed them together & told me to eat them. As I chewed the grassy leaves, my mouth started to foam. I could no longer feel my tongue. But I sensed new energy in my body. I stood up strong on lighter-feeling legs, and we completed our journey over two more sky-piercing peaks.

I told this story to illustrate how the boy knew things I didn’t about living in high elevation locations. Never in my life would I have guessed that coca leaves serve as a natural energy booster in the Peruvian Andes. I might have seen the green leaves as a plant, or, knowing they were coca leaves, a dangerous substance. But locals recognized the plant for its beneficial properties, seeing opportunity where I didn’t.

The simple story about a hike illustrates how people from different backgrounds can see things differently to create new value. There are three kinds of value: functional, monetary, and emotional.  In this case, the coca leaves provided me with a functional benefit, helping me overcome fatigue. To create value, you must provide at least one of those benefits uniquely.

I had left my husband solo in France, but I gained a few days with my son, who happened to have work in Chicago the following week. Lucky me! I stayed at Park Hyatt Chicago, my former employer. Those who read the last blog will recall that while in Austria in May, I stayed at Park Hyatt Vienna, which I had helped open ten years prior. Park Hyatt Chicago is the original Park Hyatt, the one the brand was named for. I know, because by asking questions and thinking different, I solved that riddle.  

What makes Park Hyatt different? Those who know it know the brand offers a different kind of luxury, understated luxury, not flashy or heavily branded. Where did that come from? What makes Park Hyatt Park Hyatt?

I had been hired to figure that out some years back. I scoured Chicago trying to find the answer. Viewing Chicago’s fantastic skyscrapers on the architecture tour, I wondered if that was what united Park Hyatts worldwide. I spent days at the Chicago Art Institute looking for clues in the art exhibits and galleries. I asked everyone, but no one knew why Park Hyatt. 

I was told to speak with Tom Pritzker, the founder of Hyatt Corporation.

Tom said there was no story, that he and his father simply needed a small hotel to host the owners of an increasing number of hotel properties. They wanted a place that would welcome people with the things they enjoyed, like an extension of their home: great food and wine, museum-quality art, and, above all, treating people like friends and family. They bought a boutique hotel for sale along Michigan Ave and named it after the Watertower Park in front of it.

Tom repeated that there really was no story. I begged to differ, to say that was the authentic story, and he agreed to let me share it internationally. Thinking different can indeed create value, so keep your mind open to new ways of seeing the world.

Happy summer trails to all, wherever your feet, and bikes, trucks, buses, and planes may take you, Katherine