The Superbowl is known for being the annual event of the year in the US, with a staggering viewership of 100 million back in 2019. That same year, the competitive gaming event ‘League of Legends’, run by EXCEL ESPORTS, surpassed the famous sports event, drawing in an audience of over 103 million. So, as the gaming industry grows to £228bn worldwide in worth, what is the future for digital sports, versus the traditional? At Chief Disruptor LIVE, we sat down with Co-Founder of EXCEL ESPORTS, Kieran Holmes-Darby, to hear about how the company was born in the local pub, what it meant to be digital-first, and the future of the gaming industry.

25 years ago, social media was an alien concept, involving only a singular platform: SixDegrees.com. Fast forward to 2022, and having a social media presence has not only become part of our daily lifestyle but an essential tool for businesses, if they want to stay in the competitive lane. MOB Kitchen is the social media born food company, whose 1-minute recipe videos now attract an audience of 856k followers on Instagram, and leads the example in how to successfully build an online audience. We sat down with the founder, Ben Lebus, to find out how he grew MOB Kitchen from nothing, and where he sought out new opportunities to grow with online platforms.

It’s not new information that 2030 is the deadline to save the state of the global climate. As the United Nations explained in 2017, “we are the last generation to prevent irreparable damage”. Yet, strikingly, our 2022 Disruptive Trends Report showed how sustainability is being pushed down businesses’ agendas. So where are organisations going wrong, and how can leaders foster a positive balance between people, profit but also the planet, before it’s too late? We spoke with Douglas Lamont, CEO of Innocent Drinks and the co-chair of The Better Business Act, to delve deeper into the challenges businesses are facing with sustainable practices, the concept of sustainable capitalism, and how potential legislation could increase accountability across industries.

A few years ago, we interviewed Ricky Knox, the founder of Tandem Bank, right when fintechs and challenger banks were really taking off. Ricky himself seemed to embody the disruption that was rippling through the industry. He was bombastic, unapologetic and had a message for the incumbents: “we’ll be eating your lunch.”

Wellbeing has become a forefront focal point since the pandemic began. According to our Digital Trends Report 2021, it was found that 35% of respondents saw separating work and home as a top priority to improve working life.

The world of tech is one that can be fairly accused of there being too much going on. The collective attitudes towards different technologies ebb and flow and in general, sum up a generic fickleness in the industry - illustrated nicely by Gartner’s Hype Cycle. As tech commentator Ben Evans writes of tech today, “none of them are The Thing, and all of them are full of questions”.

Serendipity 3, an exclusive New York restaurant, is well-known for its outrageously priced $69 “haute dogs” and $1,000 ice cream sundaes. However when this haute dog was launched, the sales of its $17.95 hot dog went through the roof. The tactic revealed human cognitive bias: the expensive hot dog played the role of a decoy for price relativity.

It has been a year since we spoke to the CIO of a major high street café chain, who told us that “cautious optimism is hugely important”. He was leading the optimism movement at the time, and it’s a sentiment that we’ve only seen grow and grow: business leaders are leading through precautionary principles of risk management and modelling macroeconomic shocks, with more organisations than ever saying that they have a business continuity plan in place in the event of a crisis.

To remain customer centric, enterprises must understand ever expanding volumes of data and it has become business critical to utilise a data architecture that best reflects the needs of employees and customers. Two approaches have traditionally dominated: the data warehouse and the data lake. Recently, a third contender has arrived: the data mesh.

Companies need AI to accelerate innovation, assess business conditions and deliver new customer experiences. But today, many organisations have not yet bridged the gap between the promise of AI and real results.