"...if you try to “innovate” with the same mindset, you are surely going to get the same result." Ben Smitheee, Relevents

[The Institute for Innovation Development interview series will be inviting innovation experts, innovative business leaders and emerging fintech companies to talk to our readers. The series seeks to uncover innovation best practices, learn from innovative business creators, and discover how to apply these insights into a financial services business model.

Relevents, a disruptive business events creator, wants to accomplish nothing less than completely overhaul and reinvent the traditional events and business conference arena. Partnered with world-class disruptors, their curators-in-residence have put their knowledge and networks together to create unique learning and collaboration environments. We sat down with Ben Smithee, their Chief Strategy Officer and Master Curator.]

Hortz: How exactly are you going about disrupting the typical conference?

Smithee: “What we are trying to do is create shared experiences that truly spark learning, build relationships, and become a catalyst from which new business can really happen. Rather than have pundits deliver their content by presenting boring power point slides, we are trying to change the people in the room by shifting the focus from “content” to “context”. Rather than having guest speakers who get up and present a case study on how they helped Corporation X or Y solve their innovation problems, we are integrating their content and technology being discussed into hands-on, collaborative working sessions. We feel that leads to better understanding, enables co-creating ideas or solutions together, and more naturally extends that experience and new ideas generated beyond the dates of the conference to keep the conversations and ideas going. So, instead of just listening passively, we are designing and experimenting on how to get people to experience and internalize important ideas.”

Hortz: Can you give us an example of how you take somebody’s solution or technology and make that into an experience?

Smithee: “As an example, one of our content partners, Gongos Inc., is in the decision intelligence space. They believe that businesses have to get deeper into consumer empathy, understanding them on a more in-depth personal level. They determined three key components: First, better understanding of the data that is around us: data analytics, online social data, etc. Second, mixing that with primary research through ethnographic means and tools to map consumer archetypes and psychographics and the real day-to-day of the consumer. Third, bringing it all to life through visualization and strategic outputs. What we are co-designing with them is about bringing these practices to life. Participants that are attending the festival will experience all three of these pieces through interactive, virtual and live experiences versus just telling attendees about it on slides. It is going to be a big highlight of the festival!”

Hortz: Can you explain your Curators-in-residence which seem to be core to your event programs?

Smithee: “What we wanted to do from day one was to build the company with a different mindset, one that was different from a traditional, events professional perspective. There is enough of that out there and if you try to “innovate” with the same mindset, you are surely going to get the same result. So rather than thinking with only an events-focused mind, we put together people from outside the events industry. For example, my background is from the insights and intelligence space. Julie Anixter’s background is deep in the innovation space. Then, we further diversified that mindset by inviting external “curators-in-residence” that we consider some of the top 1% of thinkers and, more importantly, “doers” from around the globe. These people are people who get paid to keynote conferences, events and consult to large companies. With this upcoming Sacramento event, we put together half a million dollars worth of our curators’ time and content to bring you the best of the best in one amazing festival.” See Curators-in-residence list.

Hortz: How is it that you are able to get this top 1% together to work on your conferences?

Smithee: “Our key function is to be a catalyst for change, to break the model and shatter these silos of traditional business event environments. We are attracting people who believe that the traditional events model is broken and actively want to support this movement.”

Hortz: What then is your new value proposition for conference attendees?

Smithee: “First of all, we don’t even call them conferences, but festivals because we want them to be a blend of professional and personal exploration. Things are going on in unique environments, all over the cities that we choose. We are bringing together progressive, globally diverse, cross-industry perspectives and creating experiential designs and shared experiences to help attendees actively evolve their business thinking and business models.”

Hortz: You have an open invitation on your website for companies to partner with you and sponsor “an experience”. What kind of situations are you talking about?

Smithee: “One of our curation partners is sponsoring a festival idea incubator with a total of $50,000 of investment called the DRÆMATHON that is basically taking ideas from the conceptual stage, so anybody who has an idea, or dream of something bigger and better, can come to this festival and pitch their idea. That stuff you don’t typically get at conferences: birth of new ideas and creation of new businesses right there at the event. Also, as another example, VSP, the national leader in vision care insurance and benefits, wants to innovate in the world of contextual health. They want to use the festival as their launching ground for their vision of contextual health, experiment with us, and create the future with the wealth of mindshare at the festival.”

Hortz: For our financial advisor/small business readers who are looking to create new client experiences, impactful events, and customer engagement strategies, can you share how you go about creating new customer experiences?

Smithee: “In order to create a meaningful experience with your clients, you have to work together with your clients to give them the experience they really want. Clients are evolving and want different kinds of relationships with their advisors and other firms that they use. Best tangible actions to take are to be aware of the scope of the change going on and to proactively and consistently learn by engaging deeply. It’s taking the time and steps to actually listen to the market, your customers, prospects, and understanding what is going on. With the social web, mobile, ethnographic tools, we have the ability to create experiences from understanding consumers better than we ever have.  So leverage those technologies, those abilities and approaches. And make sure that you create those experiences together. That’s what we have done. We didn’t say here’s our idea, this great new model, come and join us. We acknowledged that fundamental change is needed, and invited our attendees and content partners to help us in creating the solution. It’s really then about collaborating and partnering. It’s accepting that you cannot create everything just on your own.”

Hortz: What are the benefits for financial advisors, the financial services industry in general, to be part of this kind of event?

Smithee: “While we have diverse content categories at the Innovate Festival, we have a whole section focused on fintech. But I believe the financial services folks that attend Innovate TBD, are going to get just as much from other areas like Brand DNA and the Future Consumer Pavillions as they will in their experiences in the fintech areas. Remember, what we are celebrating are new ideas and new business activism. Immersing yourself in other ideas and areas of experience outside your industry, outside of your current thinking and thought process of your industry, through shared experiences and working sessions with other creative professionals, will spark more new thinking, and give you new approaches to solving your own business problems. We invite you to jumpstart your business evolution by going to our Innovate festival in Sacramento.”

Another version of this article was previously posted on Financial Advisor Online.

The Institute for Innovation Development is an educational and business development catalyst for growth-oriented financial advisors and financial services firms. We position our members with the necessary ongoing innovation resources and best practices to drive and facilitate their growth, differentiation and unique community engagement strategies. The Institute was launched with the support and foresight of our founding sponsors--Pershing, Voya Financial, Ultimus Fund Solutions, Fidelity, MeridianIQ/AdviceIQ, Innovation Equity Partners and Charter Financial Publishing (publisher of Financial Advisor and Private Wealth magazines). For more information or to join click here.