Euroman: The ballroom of the humanities
Text: Christian Fleckner Gravholt / Photos: Thomas Nielsen
Original article available in Danish from Euroman
It sounds like a comedy or Holbergian farce that a company recruits archaeologists, philosophers, literary historians and ethnographers to consult global corporations on business strategy. But that is a daily task for ReD Associates – a company that has built a million-dollar business around commercialising theories from the humanities.
IN THE DEBATE AROUND EDUCATION (in Denmark), the humanities have the role of the eternal scapegoat: society’s icing on the cake which you can do without. Despite the humanities crying that they are being starved, the discussions and attempts at saving the humanities are halted by stark numbers: candidates from the humanities are less employable than STEM candidates.
But is this a big misunderstanding? Has society overlooked the potential in candidates from the humanities? That’s the opinion of Filip Lau, partner and founder at the consultancy ReD Associates, which has created a million-dollar business out of using the methods of the humanities and the social sciences to advise some of the world’s biggest firms on strategy and growth opportunities.
Filip Lau was one of the founders at ReD Associates, twenty years ago. He is pictured here on the stairs at ReD’s premises on Kronprinsessegade in Copenhagen.
“The humanities and the social sciences have amazing tools to increase revenue in all types of companies. They can be great at creating growth by identifying needs in the market or reducing complexity. There just aren’t many that have come to this realisation yet.” says Filip Lau.
ReD Associates is based in Kronprinsessegade in central Copenhagen in premises with herringbone parquet, stucco and marble fireplaces – decorated with fastidious design and a view of the King’s Garden and Rosenborg Castle. At the Copenhagen offices, ReD Associates has around 45 employees. They also have an office in New York with more than 20 employees, and recently they opened up an office on Rue de Rivoli in Paris. Some of the employees have classic business school degrees, but the majority come from the humanities and the social sciences; they have studied sociology, ethnography, philosophy, history, archeology, Chinese literature, and similar studies.
Over the past 20 years, it has become a success story where ReD Associates has worked on significant projects for the C-suite of world-leading companies such as Adidas, Samsung, Ford Motor Company, Google, Coca-Cola, Netflix, Bertelsmann, Pernod Ricard, and – on home ground – companies such as Lego, Carlsberg, Novo Nordisk, Coop and Coloplast.
The ambition is to turn the disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences into applicable problem-solving tools on par with business methods, says Filip Lau. “If you are a CEO, you can call McKinsey or the Boston Consulting Group to solve your problems or you can call someone like us.”
However, it has been far from an easy start, when four scruffy twentieth-something-year-olds in 2005 started a business that would commercialise theories from the humanities. How Max Weber or Karl Marx can be used to understand the modern market was by no means obvious for businesses, so back then some doors really had to be kicked in. “But we took on this big lease, bought some suits and finely painted Royal Copenhagen cups, and did everything we could to convince companies to give us a chance. When we first got our foot in, it really took off,” says Filip Lau.
ReD Associates has created a consultancy around the classic academic disciplines with an added dash of modern creativity.
About ReD Associates
ReD Associates is a strategic consultancy with offices in Copenhagen, New York, and Paris. For nearly 20 years ReD has specialised in applying the social sciences to develop strategies for businesses and global organisations.
The company was founded in 2005. The founders, Filip Lau and Christian Madsbjerg, previously worked at businesses Kontrapunkt, e-Types, and the Danish Ministry of Business, while they all came with different social science backgrounds. For a number of years, the tech company Cognizant had a share in the company. Today, ReD Associates is fully owned by the current leadership, composed of a global partner group with various backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences.
This is how ReD Associates works
Ford – The car of the future
Based on core experiences, ReD advised Ford on growth strategies for cars, latest design, and specs of tomorrow’s electric cars.
Gates Foundation – Vaccines and trust
Based on studies on how people in emerging markets perceive vaccines, ReD has advised the Gates Foundation by developing a framework for identifying and understanding trust.
Lara Casciola came to ReD from Bang & Olufsen. She primarily works on projects within social impact or for brands in the fashion and luxury industry.
LARA CASCIOLA is a Senior Manager at ReD Associates from Canada and trained in design studies. She spends most of her time on projects within social impact, e.g. the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Currently, she is working with her team on a task for one of the most prominent luxury brands in the fashion industry. The project is about understanding how the brand can penetrate fast-growing markets in South Korea and Japan.
As Lara Casciola prepares a virtual meeting with her colleagues who have been doing fieldwork in Seoul and Tokyo, she explains that ReD Associates’ success and momentum is due to a shift in the world of business. Previously, many companies have been accustomed to grounding strategic decisions in statistics and large datasets, but are slowly realising that quantitative data do not give a realistic depiction of their customers and global developments.
“Most companies in the world have been very focused on quantitative data because numbers and statistics are perceived as a reliable basis, even if it is not actually the case,” says Lara Casciola.
“The problem is that quantitative methods often assume that people are rational, but in reality people’s motives and behavioural patterns are often less predictable.”
“The somewhat narrow focus on big data, graphs, algorithms, and statistics that many businesses have had is a sign that they have ‘distanced themselves from the world’,” adds Filip Lau. “Numbers are great, but by focusing on numbers you also simplify the world and its complexity, mess and chaos. We are the antithesis of that.”
RED ASSOCIATES came to be in a time when it became fashionable to talk about big data. Fillip Lau recalls that at the time, there was a widespread idea that in the future there would be large quantities of data via personal computers and mobile phones that you wouldn’t need theory at all because the answers would provide themselves.
“But data without theory is blind, and it doesn’t give you a deeper understanding,” he says. “That’s why it'‘s an enormous win when Facebook and Google approach us for help with projects, because they’ve realised that even though they have lots of data, they don’t have the right data. They need the ethnographic means of collecting and analysing data.”
In the past, the CEO in a big company was a confident character who could set a direction for the company. However, six-seven years ago, there was a change where it suddenly became completely legitimate for executives in leading companies to express doubt, says Filip Lau.
“They could talk openly about their existential crisis in our meetings with them, and they were asking much more philosophical questions like: ‘What is our role here on earth?’ That marked a shift, the agenda of a top leader was much more focused on bigger moral, societal, global and existential questions rather than focusing solely on what gadget to produce next year,” he elaborates.
This trend has only intensified as the world has become more obscure and unpredictable, according to Filip Lau: “Since 2016, it has really taken hold: social media, Trump, fake news, MeToo, Greta Thunberg, Black Lives Matter, the protests in Hong Kong, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the invasion of Ukraine. We are living in historic times right now, the tectonics are shifting, and maybe we are even talking about an interregnum. It is precisely in times like these that historical awareness, culture, philosophy and the history of ideas are needed – more than ever. Therefore, the disciplines our approach draws on are completely relevant now. The need is immense, and we are extremely busy.”
That’s why Filip Lau says he’s surprised that ReD Associates doesn’t have more competitors, as their original idea was to create an industry where it became common to use the tools of the humanities and social sciences instead of or in addition to the common, standardised business-oriented approaches.
“In our niche, we are the best in the world. There’s no one else who can do it. That may sound like boasting, but that’s not my intention, it’s actually a real loss. I can’t understand why we are still so niche. I thought we would become more mainstream.”
WALKING AROUND the many square meters of ReD Associates’ premises in the heart of Copenhagen is like being in a scene from Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, if it weren’t for the modern design fixtures and boards with colorful post-it notes that break the illusion. On the ground floor you enter a knight’s hall, but upstairs on the two floors of ReD Associates, employees are immersed in their work on their laptops or having meetings.
The nearly 70 employees at ReD represent a handful of different nationalities, including American, Finnish, Moroccan, Brazilian and Indian. The employees in the Copenhagen office are relatively young, and well-dressed – in a nonchalant way because there is no suit in sight as there once was when the company was founded in 2005. In part, this reflects general changes in the company culture, says Filip Lau.
When you are premium and charge the prices for your services that ReD Associates does, it is important to look presentable, but at the same time you should not embarrass your clients.
Overall, ReD Associates is a far cry from the usual clichés and caricatures associated with the humanities. There is no middle-aged, know-it-all man with a beard and wrinkled briefcases, nor are there any ripped jeans, homespun knitwear, worn-out shoes or faded t-shirts with anticapitalism quotes.
Filip Lau recognises the caricatures, but is frustrated that the humanities has such an ignoble reputation and that many portray it as if there is a mismatch between the humanities and business.
“Especially abroad, people from the humanities are lucky if they become researchers, otherwise they risk ending up as baristas or hotel receptionists, which is awful, because they are over-qualified. Many of them are really skilled, critical thinkers who have a solid academic background and are excellent communicators.”
“But for some mysterious reason the market is completely blind to that. There are very few places they can seek and do something meaningful, where their professional competencies really come into play,” he states.
The worst thing that can happen, according to Filip Lau, is that universities throw academic tradition out of the window in an attempt to make the humanities more appealing to companies, for example by creating “hyphenated academic degrees” as he calls it: “design-anthropologist, ethnography – engineering or other smart combinations”.
“What we need are professionally skilled graduates who know their theory and their cultural history and who have read the classics. Then it’s our job to make it commercial. We will teach them how to become good consultants. We have also hired people from business schools, but it is easier to teach a critically-thinking humanities graduate to become commercial than it is to teach a commercially-trained person to become a critical thinker. The latter is nearly impossible,” he states.
Anne Mette Worsøe Lottrup is a part of the partner group at ReD Associates. Currently, she is working on a project on HIV medicine, and one on a rare disease, its patients, and caregivers in Japan.
ANNE METTE WORSØE LOTTRUP is also a partner at ReD Associates. She joined the company after working at Novo Nordisk for a number of years, and she is one of the few people in the office who graduated from Copenhagen Business School.
In many ways, ReD Associates is very different from where she originally came from, she explains. Among other things, it is an integral part of the identity of ReD Associates that they see themselves as misfits.
“It’s clear that people at ReD want to think differently, and we also want to make room for people to do so. When we hire new employees, we typically look for people who have a bit of character, who are a bit different and have something at heart to say. Hence it’s okay to be a bit of a misfit,” she says.
One other thing, Anne Mette Worse Lottrup discovered early on when she started working at ReD Associates was that there is not much empty chatter or small talk in the lunchroom. There is often someone among the staff discussing an exhibition they have seen or pondering on some philosophical or societal question.
As we enter the lunchroom, the conversation turns to an upcoming book reception later in the week as one of the employees has translated Jonas Eika’s award-nominated novel After the Sun (2018) into English, and so the conversation continues.
The late writer, radio host and bon vivant Mads Holger once said it’s harder to grow in spirit than in wealth. Maybe the humanities can be the force that makes it possible for the spirit to be the means through which to drive wealth.