The Twenty Twenties will be one of the most significant decades in recorded human history. This is because the decade when humanity migrates from the current Trade-Industrial epoch in place since the 1780s to the next epoch, the Scientific- Cybernetic epoch.

This new epoch will be marked by incomparably more ambitious, sustainable and faster human development vectors on all levels: technology, society, economics, politics and business. Because this "migration" will be a giant re-ordering and redistribution of global power, wealth and influence, the coming decade will also be heavily contested by a wide range of vested interests, the Twenty Twenties will be an extremely turbulent time, with multiple crises, crashes and black swan shocks.

Despite (or maybe because of) this turbulence, we believe that the 2020s will mark the true coming of age, at scale, of the visionary entrepreneur: strategically
mission-driven yet operationally resilient and tactically agile. It will be the era of tens of millions (as opposed to hundreds of thousands today) of small businesses with big ideas. The so-called Roaring Twenties (1924-1929) of the twentieth century were a period of unparalleled economic growth, value creation, value destruction and fundamental technological and social change in western economies, following a major war (1914-1918) and a global pandemic (1919-1922).

We expect similar transformational change, but at far greater orders of magnitude, to happen in the Roaring Twenty Twenties 2024-2029 period, in all economies: western, eastern and southern.

In this section we explain why, and what it all means for Latvian entrepreneurs:

(A) Business Climate: deep recession, everything-as-a-service, pervasive connectivity, shift from artificial intelligence to augmented intelligence
(B) Strategic Context: Kondratieff wave 6, stagflation, wars, crises and crashes, shock therapy, chaos engineering
(C) Geopolitics: multipolarity, deglobalisation, reshoring and localisation, hyper-intensive business, technological and competition, sanctions
(D) Technologies: 5th & 6th industrial ages, MBNRIC combinatorial technologies, IP/R&D, analog revolution following digital revolution, all "implementation" automated, analytics from predictive to prescriptive
(E) Economics: new hybrid economic models state socialism + state capitalism + private capitalism, macroeconomic programming
(F) Business Planning: mission-driven, social capital + financial capital
(G) Business Models: 2D linear, 3D platform, 4D & 5D decentralised P2P
(H) Applications: new solutions for new problems, democratisation of luxury
(F) Strategy Implications: "Doing things right" becomes less important than "doing the right things". Required: bold vision + concrete mission + flexible "like water" strategies.

We have seen in section B.1 that massive changes, opportunities and risks are coming in the 2020s for entrepreneurs and investors. As a result, the level and intensity of competition in every developed country and in every market sector will increase by orders of magnitude compared to the current situation. We believe that customer centricity is the key approach to staying relevant, salient and valuable for any and every business throughout the 2020s and beyond. Much of what passes for "competitive advantage" in business today (transaction speed, logistics efficiency, customer relationship management, etc) will be automated away and become hygiene factors. Businesses will require a more fundamental, sustainable and valuable level of competitive differentiation which is impossible to copy. In this section B.2 we examine how customer centricity works in practice and why it represents the way forward for businesses in Latvia and indeed throughout Europe.

The customer centricity approach to strategy and management, in short, treats customers, both external and internal, as the most valuable financial, technological and strategic (lifetime value 80 years +) assets of any company, and demands an entirely new approach to win-win maximisation between a business and its customers. Over time, a highly productive, inspired and innovative, conceptually differentiated corporate culture evolves which even the best artificial intelligence will struggle to replicate. Customer centricity is the key to sustainable business differentiation in the Roaring Twenties.

Most successful businesses in Europe and North America today are "customer- oriented" but definitely not yet customer-centric. In other words, customer-oriented businesses listen to their customers and give their customers the products and services that their customers say they want. This "customer orientation" is no longer enough to remain competitive in the 2020s. Partly this is because this product- market feedback loop can now increasingly be automated (and is therefore becoming a hygiene factor = zero differentiation), but mainly because customers don't really know what they want until you show it to them. As Henry Ford said over a century ago "if I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said "faster horses""

The challenge for business is the 2020s is how to become fundamentally, successfully and sustainably differentiated for the medium to long term. Customer centricity is the answer to that challenge. Where customer oriented business seek to reinvent their product or service, customer centric businesses seek to reinvent the customer himself: to make the customer himself, herself or itself smarter, faster, healthier, wealthier, stronger. In other words, treating customers as the most strategic assets, investments and liabilities. For these businesses, wonderful customer outcomes are the target metric to radically increase the value of customer assets. Indeed, the quality of customer outcomes, together with the customers themselves, become the critical differentiation factors for the customer- centric business. A new win-win culture takes hold, where value and loyalty to the customer generates value and loyalty from the customer. Customer delight, lifetime value to and from customers and customer success become the new KPIs for customer centric businesses.

We examine the evidence worldwide of where customer centric missions, strategies and cultures both succeed and fail to deliver results, and draw practical learnings and conclusions on what level of customer centricity is achievable and desirable for Latvian entrepreneurs

(A) Show Me The Money: Why is customer centricity the best way forward?
(B) Customer Centricity vs Customer Orientation = Night vs Day – an entirely new approach to corporate strategy, development and planning
(A) B2C & C2B Customer Centric Strategies: Successes, failures and lessons from brands and markets around the world
(B) B2B Customer Centricity: B2B SaaS "Customer Success" methodology sets B2B standard beyond software
(C) Buyers as Customers is one of many segments: the new generation of internal and external customers. Employees as Customers, Investors as Customers, Suppliers as Customers, Sellers as Customers, Competitors as Customers, Planet as Customer
(D) The future of customer centricity: what waves of B2C and B2B and C2C innovation to expect in the coming 3 years. What will absolute cutting-edge customer centricity look like and who will be the key innovators, inventors and inspirers?
(E) Customer centricity in practice:

• (A) KPI, how does success look like
• (B) Segmentation, targeting and positioning
• (C) Promotion, guerilla marketing and demand creation
• (D) Products, services and solutions
• (E) Channels, ecosystems and affiliates
• (F) CX, UX, UI
• (G) Business microeconomic logic, model and system
• (H) Business processes
• (I) ESG and sustainability
• (J) Technology choices
• (K) Investment choices

Irish Proverb: «What's important is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog»

In previous sections, we discussed key business trends and effective, customer- centric business strategies from around the world. In this section B.3, we consider how these trends and strategies do, could and should operate in the specific context of Latvian reality. Therefore, in this section, we show how Latvian customer centricity and Latvian business strategies in general compare with global best practice and where there are obvious Latvian growth opportunities.

If we speak about "surviving" and "thriving" it is clear from our analysis that Latvian entrepreneurs have been world class at "urviving"; but still, as yet, very far from world class in "hriving" Generally speaking, Latvian entrepreneurs and Latvian people in general are star graduates of the "university of real life" Latvian and Baltic entrepreneurs are, compared with other European entrepreneurs ideally positioned to survive in the turbulent 2020s, having learned by necessity to be both highly resilient and adaptable. They had to be, in order to survive the multiple massive Latvian macro-shocks of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, (LV demographic collapse/mass emigration, EU open competition, LV banking sector crisis, Russia sanctions, etc.) any of which, on their own, would have spelt the end for most EU entrepreneurs. Latvia endured all of these shocks together, some simultaneously, some consecutively.

Although the Latvian people themselves are generally modest, and even pessimistic, when discussing the successes of Latvian business, the truth is that the history of entrepreneurial activity in Latvia since independence is, overall, extremely impressive. Latvia's economic growth over the past decades speaks for itself: its income per capita has reached almost 60% of the upper half of OECD countries vs. only 30% two decades ago. Indeed, the total worth of the businesses included on the Nasdaq Riga Top 101 Company list reached EUR 22.5 billion in 2021, an increase of 37% compared to 2020.

Despite the impressive "surviving" skills the Latvian entrepreneurs exhibit, the "thriving" aspect is much less impressive. Generally speaking, as we will
demonstrate in the master class, Latvian companies are either product/technology centric or customer oriented, but very few are customer centric. Indeed, most Latvian companies have no medium / long term planning whatsoever, and the vast majority of those that do plan, plan within a bounded time horizon of 12 to 18 months ahead at most. Although Latvian consumers are extremely open to new markets, technologies and trends, Latvian business entrepreneurs have, generally speaking, been much more conservative than Latvian consumers. Indeed, 8 of the 10 most respected brands in Latvia are from countries beyond Latvia: Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Germany, USA, etc.

In this section, we explore where Latvian business strategies and customer focus are better and worse than global best practice and where the Latvian growth opportunities in the 2020s lie

(A) Business Strategy Best Practice, Latvia vs World: Latvian successes, failures and lessons
(B) Customer Centricity Best Practice, Latvia vs World: Latvian successes, failures and lessons
(C) Startup Best Practice, Latvia vs World
(D) International Growth for Latvian Entrepreneurs
(E) Baltic Lessons: Latvia vs Estonia vs Lithuania
(F) Small Island Lessons: Latvia vs Ireland vs Iceland
(G) Latvian economic forecasts and entrepreneurial opportunities
(A) Sectors
(B) Markets
(C) Technologies

To seize and realise this potential, it follows that brands from small countries like Latvia will need to win with big ideas, and that today's hyperconnected environment offers infrastructures to scale and scope new concepts rapidly even with relatively meagre resources.

Finally, in this last section, we sum up our recommendations to Latvian entrepreneurs and investors. We keep it simple so that you have a simple task list to address the reinvention of your Latvian business for the 2020s following our master class.

1. Customer-centric business purpose definition: practical, concrete steps and instruments/tools
2. Customer-centric vision, mission and ambition discovery: practical, concrete steps and instruments/tools
3. Customer-centric organisation and culture development: practical, concrete steps and instruments/tools
4. Market intelligence functions: practical, concrete steps and instruments/tools
5. Strategic planning functions: practical, concrete steps and instruments/tools (including KPI ambition setting and business model shaping)
6. Customer-centric segmentation: practical, concrete steps and instruments/tools
7. Customer-centric products, services and solutions: practical, concrete steps and instruments/tools
8. Customer-centric sales and service channels offline, online, omnichannel: practical, concrete steps and instruments/tools
9. Customer Centricity: Both Internal and External Customers: practical, concrete steps and instruments/tools