Unconventional consultants, for innovation advice and new venture creation.
We work with pioneering business leaders to help them build a better future.
What's the story?
We founded Now or Never to turn big ideas into new products, services, and businesses that can be launched with confidence.
Recent history means many organizations are facing what we call their 'now or never moment', a short window in time where with courage and guts, they can do things differently to build a better long term future.
Doing new and different things often requires outside perspective and help, but it's pretty hard to get that from the incumbents. Saddled with out of date business models of their own, from junior analysts learning on the client's dime, buzzwords to hide their insecurity, withholding information to get the next sale, trying to be a one-stop-shop and often being afraid to tell it like it really is.
“I have never seen a management consultant’s report in my long life that didn’t end with:
“What this situation really needs is more management consulting.”
- Charlie Munger (a very wise man).
Our model is different, we work like a general contractor, scoping each brief with a modular talent stack of the best independent contractors and specialist agencies for insight, strategy, brand, design and technology.
Innovation Strategy Customer Insight
Strategic Foresight Proposition Design
Brand Digital Strategy Growth Hacking
Creative Initiatives New Venture Build
The types of questions we love being asked:
We're a 110+ year old farming co-operative and need to better understand what the future might look like for us and our members.
Our product offerings are analog but our customers expect digital, we need to build a new fintech venture that meets their needs.
I have an idea for a new business venture away from the core of my operations. Can you help me explore if it is worth pursuing and how to go about it?
We have been selling package vacations to Canada for many years with a very loyal customer base, how can we win new customers through a better website experience?
I'm the new head of innovation for a big pension fund, help me get a different perspective and identify new opportunities others haven't yet hit upon?
We've gone through a organizational shuffle recently, I need a product strategy and road map to anchor me and my team around.
How we do it
Challenge.
We spend time creating the best possible brief together, not just the easiest question to answer.
We listen to you, go away to think and come back with questions and provocations to ensure we start on the right foot.
Explore.
Our version of learning and discovery, we speak to your customers, colleagues and other stakeholders to get under their skin.
The best ideas often come from the fringe and places hard to reach, not by standard research practices.
Imagine.
This is the part where the big ideas come into play, and we leverage our incredible network to help us bring out the best ones.
We look for the audacious and the downright doable, what's the biggest thing we can imagine and the smallest thing it could be to start.
Experiment
Ideas might good, but they become great when you can play around with them.
We run experiments to continuously learn, whether that's a handful of people seeing a prototype or the initial customers spending hard earned cash on what we've created together.