The Big Gig – An Opportunity For Peer-to-Peer Research

Frank Nigriello and Paul Essery invited me to present at the Big Gig innovation event in August 2020. As Founder of AddVantage, I have been a business scale-up coach and market strategist for the last seven years, building on world class marketing and operations experience from working on major household brands including Tropicana, Clover and Ribena, rising through the ranks to marketing director. The Big Gig provided a brilliant opportunity to put the latest thinking on the AddVantage proposition through its paces to support our decision-making for the next phase.

Big Gig Background

My experience of the Big Gig stretches back several years, having attended half a dozen or so face-to-face and (more recently given the pandemic) virtual events.

For the uninitiated, the Big Gig is a skilfully facilitated peer-to-peer workshop. Over the course of two-hours, a business leader shares a thorny challenge with like-minded business professionals from a wide range of sectors to benefit from their collective feedback.

As a contributor, I enjoyed taking part in the Big Gig for three main reasons.

1. The challenges are interesting and varied – Three examples include how to access school venues (School Space), how to diversify a woodland charity into new markets (Sylva Foundation) and more recently how to communicate the partner proposition for a software-as-a-service sales operating system (Nazca).
2. Good peer-to-peer reviews can provide constructive challenge – Comparable to a scientist submitting a paper for peer-to-peer scrutiny, the Big Gig provides a forum for honest, actionable feedback that provides a vital fresh perspective to any business challenge.
3. Meet talented and like-minded contributors – Big Gig-ers are the sort of people I like to partner with, as we have the same desire to help others without any expectation on return and bring a wealth of diverse experience.

AddVantage Challenge

AddVantage is a Strategy Practice for SMEs that provides strategic, research, finance and mentoring support. Our objective approach overcomes the inevitable unconscious bias to build confidence in major decisions involved with scaling up, developing new propositions, entering new markets and launching new products.

Over the last seven years, the team at AddVantage has been fortunate to work with over 30 SMEs across multiple sectors with a focus on technology (including 3D printing, automotive, engineering, software-as-a-service and telecoms) and product manufacturing (including food & drink).

Our work has utilised proven methodologies developed from a combination of corporate best practice (from the likes of PepsiCo, GSK and Kantar), blended with extensive research & real-life application, which has enabled our promise to ‘bring fresh perspectives for better decisions’.

Over this time, the AddVantage proposition periodically evolved using a ‘minimum viable product’ (MVP) approach. The offer to present at the Big Gig was opportune as recent changes had been made over the lockdown period which were ready to be tested.

In preparation for the Big Gig event, benefitting from input from Paul, I pulled together a dozen or so slides to support the challenge (spoiler alert – this is applicable and hard for every business!):

How to best articulate and deliver the AddVantage proposition so that associates, prospects and clients find it clear, impactful and differentiated?

Big Gig Feedback

After Frank introduced the session, over the next ten minutes I set about giving what I thought was a compelling presentation to the 20+ participants, concluding with the proposition challenge.

Following a series of probing questions from the Big Gig-ers, they headed off into their virtual rooms to discuss the challenge in more detail, returning half an hour later armed with their group feedback.

Like any good peer-to-peer group, the feedback was challenging but constructive, backed up with reasoned observations together with helpful suggestions, which can be summarised as follows:

• Clearer narrative: Whilst there were positive elements, the link from my personal story to the AddVantage proposition was too big and abstract, needing to be closer rooted in the lives of our clients.
• Enhance differentiation: Whilst the narrative made understanding the points of difference difficult, there was some encouragement in two areas for development; the first was that the underlying concept of supporting objective decision-making through the inclusion of primary and secondary research resonated; second was that the recently developed ‘Scale Up Assessor’ ^* was recognised as having the potential to add value and build credibility particularly for a new prospective relationship.

I found this feedback invaluable, as deep down I knew the radio was tuned a little off station, so getting this un-biased, non-sugar-coated insight, has helped take our thinking forward. As a result:

• We now have an enhanced elevator pitch ^*,
• A clearer narrative closing the gap between my personal story and the proposition, and
• To enhance our differentiation, we are in the process of developing with our partners a suite of pain-point Assessors, which will complement the over-arching Scale Up Assessor.

I am very pleased with that!

So that was my experience of being on the other side of the fence at the Big Gig.

My advice to anyone thinking about sharing their own business challenge would be four-fold:

• Just do it – it is better to be informed (if slightly battered!) than ignorant!
• Choose wisely – think carefully on the challenge itself, so that it’s both interesting for the contributors as well as yielding useful insight that will help your future decision making.
• Prepare well – take time to create content that will do justice to your challenge.
• Be humble – the Big Gig-ers are taking two hours out of their lives to listen, think and feedback on your challenge, so be open and thankful for their contribution.

About the Author

About AddVantage

Are you (or you know someone who is) dissatisfied with the high level of risk involved in improving and growing your business?

If so, do get in touch and if relevant gain access to our invite-only, complementary Scale Up Assessor, for an impartial, no-obligation assessment of your current position.

Contact: m: +44 (0) 7970 188057 | e: Nathan | w: AddVantage | In: nathanrjking