The empowered consumer
The empowered consumer
For some time now, companies have claimed to be ‘customer-driven’. But with consumer choice, information and awareness skyrocketing, customers are putting these claims to the test like never before.
Brands must demonstrate their purpose and rapidly innovate their products and services to reach their customers in new ways. Take Wildtype, a start-up developing sustainable lab-grown salmon. Together, we created a brand strategy that grew their market recognition by educating consumers about how they can enjoy salmon without harming the environment.
Brilliant design is integral to meeting the evolving needs of consumers. That’s why our work to design an emblematic electric vehicle (EV) chargepoint to increase EV adoption centred on user experience. Working with the UK’s Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) and the Royal College of Art, we unveiled an intuitive, elegant design on the global stage of COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021.
Customers are making more socially conscious choices – they want to understand the ethical and environmental impact of products or services before they buy. So, we partner with clients to find innovative ways to prove this social value to customers and grow their business. For example, our global consumer study highlighted the need for financial institutions to focus on sustainable finance products if they’re to establish themselves as positive social actors and retain customers.
Client story
Wildtype
Enabling the future of food with sustainable salmon production
OZEV
Using the power of design to accelerate the adoption of zero-emission road transport
Insight
Financial services can change the world
Uncovering consumers’ thoughts, motivations and barriers to sustainable finance
Shaping the future of work
Shaping the future of work
The future of work is now.
As we’ve all adapted to living and working in a state of flux, purposeful leadership, agile business models and smart ways to support and inspire teams are key to thriving. Leaders everywhere are asking how the state of today affects their current and future workforce.
We build operational resilience and agility in our clients’ leadership teams and across their people processes: from culture and talent to career progression, learning and development, and performance.
We enabled global health technology giant Philips to accelerate innovation for consumers and healthcare professionals around the world. We applied the latest thinking on organisational agility to change how they manage their IT portfolio – the backbone of the business that enables them to drive innovation.
And we supported cloud-based communications leader Cloud9 Technologies to define a next-generation financial trading experience. Our industrial designers and user-experience specialists designed a hybrid console that allows institutional traders to make better decisions faster.
As industries continue to contend with unprecedented turbulence, organisational agility matters more than ever. Drawing on our experience, we published a new report that unpacks how successful leaders across sectors achieve and sustain true organisational agility.
Client story
Phillips
Developing agile skills to achieve faster and more focused innovation
Cloud9 Technologies
Creating the financial trading desk of the future
Insight
The Evolution of the Agile Organisation
Unlock the secrets to delivering organisational agility at scale
The sustainability and climate imperative
Climate action is truly at the forefront of the global agenda. Consumers are demanding bigger and braver initiatives from governments, brands and employers. This creates the perfect case for action, and we’re delighted to work with clients seeking the right path for their businesses.
For example, our team of experts partnered with leading Danish wind turbine builder, Vestas, to bring innovative wind turbines to market faster, supporting their goal of ‘powering a brighter future’.
And did you know that cleaning up after oil spills uses 25 tonnes of plastic every day – that’s the same as 57 million plastic bags? Innovative start-up Green Boom has developed a sustainable solution for preventing, reducing and cleaning up oil spills. Our data analytics and commercialisation experts collaborated with Green Boom to speed up time-to-market for this game-changing solution.
Organisations have a great opportunity to look closer at the sustainability of their business practices and consider how they use resources and move goods through their entire lifecycle. Our research revealed how leaders can better utilise the most precious of these resources – water – to reduce carbon emissions and support supply chain continuity.
Client story
Vestas
Driving clean energy innovation with new ways of working
Green Boom
Building a robust strategy for environmental clean-up technology
Insight
The Big Drop: Untapped potential of water
Discover the four actions leaders can take to better utilise water and reduce their carbon impact
The quest to lead healthier lives
The quest to lead healthier lives
Recent times have been a stark reminder that health is our most precious commodity. And it’s been incredible to witness the healthcare and life sciences industries dramatically accelerate the pace of life-saving product development and distribution.
We work with healthcare, life sciences and medtech companies to find new ways of adopting innovative technologies, and ensure the systems and infrastructure are in place to deliver quality care.
Research projects supported by the UK’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) involve thousands of researchers in organisations across the country drawing on a wide range of data sources to advance their understanding. Yet locating data within this complex ecosystem can be difficult and time consuming. We partnered with the NIHR to implement the first-ever large-scale deployment of Google Cloud Search in the UK public sector. The new search functionality is making a dramatic difference to productivity, enabling the rapid launch of urgent public health studies.
Our work with Bearpac Medical, an amazing medical device start-up, shows the possibilities for innovation in patient care – fast delivery coupled with patient centricity. Together with our medtech experts, Bearpac developed a single-use drainage device for patients who suffer from malignant pleural effusion to improve comfort at the most difficult of times.
And within life sciences, we saw the full potential of cell and gene therapy (C>) during the fight against COVID-19. mRNA vaccines showed outstanding efficacy and have saved many thousands of lives worldwide. Using our proprietary approach to scenario planning, we published a report exploring four potential futures for C> that will help propel the industry forward.
Client story
NIHR
Accelerating urgent health studies with digital innovation
Bearpac Medical
Developing a medical device to improve end-of-life patient comfort
Insight
Cell and Gene Therapy in 2040
Seizing today’s moment to propel the industry forward
Protecting people and organisations
Protecting people and organisations
Every day it seems as if the challenge of keeping people, organisations and nations safe from physical and digital threats gets tougher.
We work with government security teams and advisors, defence professionals, regulators, and corporate risk and security teams to mitigate threats and embed best practice. We’re at the forefront of technology development at our Global Innovation and Technology Centre, and have experts skilled at designing resilient and adaptive organisations.
Together with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), we created a virtual reality ‘Museum of the Future’ that helps senior decision-makers grasp the reality of possible scenarios and make better choices.
We also joined forces with Unilever to secure their operations in the face of COVID-19. We designed an artificial intelligence system that monitors and forecasts trends in the spread of the virus, providing real-time and predictive intelligence at global and regional levels – as well as for individual Unilever sites.
And as the threat of financial crime continues to grow, we drew on our extensive work within the private and public sectors to publish new research into how banks, law enforcement and regulatory authorities across Denmark, Norway and Sweden can better collaborate to fight it.
Client story
Dstl
Experiencing the future through virtual reality
Unilever
Predicting the spread of COVID-19 to safeguard Unilever’s global ecosystem
Insight
Striking back against financial crime
Closer public-private collaboration is needed to fight financial crime in the nordics
Life
at PA
Our future starts with our people. They are the inspiration for our purpose and live it every day. Growing and supporting them is the best investment we can make.
In this section, we look at the ways in which we are growing and supporting our teams. From how we are shaping an inclusive culture that prizes diversity and wellbeing, and recognises individual and team achievements, to the opportunities we offer to support our communities.