The Ultimate Guide to Branding in 2020

Written by Allie Decker

Discover how to create and manage a brand that helps your business become known, loved, and preferred

Products are never just products, right?

Coca-Cola is more than a soda. Starbucks is more than a coffee. Ray-Ban is more than a pair of sunglasses. Glossier is more than a tube of concealer.

Interacting with these products provide experiences, and we buy them with that experience in mind. Better yet, the companies that create and market them know exactly the experience they want you to have when you make (or consider) a purchase. That’s why they create a brand.

From the language in their Instagram caption to the color palette on their latest billboard to the material used in their packaging, companies who create strong brands know that their brand needs to live everywhere. They know their names extend far beyond the label.

The result? These brands are known, loved, and chosen out of a long lineup of options.

Who doesn’t want that? I know I do. That’s why we built this guide — to equip you to create and manage a strong brand that’ll help your business be admired, remembered, and preferred.

Use the links below to jump ahead to sections of interest, and don’t forget to bookmark this guide for later.

What’s a brand?

Before I dive into the importance of branding and how to build a brand, let’s go back to basics: What is a brand?

A brand is a feature or set of features that distinguish one organization from another. A brand is typically comprised of a name, tagline, logo or symbol, design, brand voice, and more. It also refers to the overall experience a customer undergoes when interacting with a business — as a shopper, customer, social media follower, or mere passerby.

What is branding?

Branding is the process of researching, developing, and applying a distinctive feature or set of features to your organization so that consumers can begin to associate your brand with your products or services.

Branding is an iterative process and requires getting in touch with the heart of your customers and your business. It’s important for a variety of reasons — I dive into these next.

The Importance of Branding

Your brand is arguably one of your organization’s most important assets. It gives your organization an identity, makes your business memorable, encourages consumers to buy from you, supports your marketing and advertising, and brings your employees pride.

Branding can be the deciding factor for consumers when they make a purchase decision. In a 2015 global Nielsen survey, almost 60% of shoppers said they actively buy from brands they know, and 21% said they bought a product because they liked the brand.

Branding gives your business an identity beyond its product or service. It gives consumers something to relate to and connect with.

Branding makes your business memorable. It’s the face of your company and helps consumers distinguish your business across every medium (which I discuss later).

Branding supports your marketing and advertising efforts. It helps your promotion pack that extra punch with added recognition and impact.

Branding brings your employees pride. When you brand your company, you’re not only giving your business identity, you’re also creating a reputable, highly-regarded workplace. Strong branding brings in strong employees.

Branding Terms to Know

Here are some other brand-related buzzwords you should know. They further demonstrate the importance and value of branding your business.

Brand awareness

Brand awareness refers to how familiar the general public and your target audience is with your brand. High brand awareness leads to brands being referred to as “trending,” “buzzworthy, or “popular.” Brand awareness is important because consumers can’t consider purchasing from your brand if they’re not aware of it.

👉🏼 Strong branding makes your business known.

Brand extension

Brand extensions are when companies “extend” their brand to develop new products in new industries and markets. Consider Honda lawn mowers or Martha Stewart bedding. Brand extensions allow companies (or individuals) to leverage brand awareness and equity to create more revenue streams and diversify product lines.

👉🏼 Strong branding brings in more money.

Brand identity

Brand identity is the personality of your business and the promise you make to your customers. It’s what you want your customers to walk away with after they interact with your brand. Your brand identity is typically comprised of your values, how you communicate your product or service, and what you want people to feel when they interact with it.

👉🏼 Strong branding gives your business more than a name.

Brand management

Brand management refers to the process of creating and maintaining your brand. It includes managing the tangible elements of your brand (style guide, packaging, color palette) and the intangible elements (how it's perceived by your target audience and customer base). Your brand is a living, breathing asset, and it should be managed as such.

👉🏼 Strong branding requires consistent upkeep.

Brand recognition

Brand recognition is how well a consumer (ideally in your target audience) can recognize and identify your brand without seeing your business name — through your logo, tagline, jingle, packaging, or advertising. This concept goes hand-in-hand with brand recall, which is the ability to think of a brand without any visual or auditory identifiers.

👉🏼 Strong branding keeps your business top-of-mind.

Real-life brand example: Want to test your brand knowledge? Take this Logo Quiz by Business Insider to see how well you know your corporate brands. This is brand recognition at work.

Brand trust

Brand trust refers to how strongly customers and consumers believe in your brand. Do you deliver on your marketing promises? Do your salespeople and customer service go above and beyond? These things can create trust among your customers, which is important in a world where a mere 25% of people feel confident in large businesses.

👉🏼 Strong branding builds trust with your customers.

Brand valuation

Brand valuation is the commercial valuation of your brand derived from consumer perception, recognition, and trust. This concept goes hand-in-hand with brand equity. A powerful brand can make your business invaluable to investors, shareholders, and potential buyers.

👉🏼 Strong branding increases your business’s value.

How to Create a Brand

1. Determine your target audience
2. Establish your mission statement
3. Define your values, features, and benefits
4. Create your visual assets
5. Find your brand voice
6. Put your branding to work

Here’s how you can create a brand — or begin the process of rebranding your current one.

There’s a lot that goes into a brand, and there’s a lot to consider when building a strong one. So, grab a notebook and jot down ideas as you move through this section. Recognize that branding is an iterative process, so you might be repeating some of these steps as you brainstorm and build your brand.

1. Determine your target audience

Branding leads to awareness, recognition, trust, and revenue. We’ve talked about that. But let’s take a step back and understand where those stem from: consumers. And not just any consumers — your target audience and customers.

If your brand doesn’t resonate with your audience, it won’t lead to that awareness, recognition, trust, and revenue. That’s where target market research comes in.

Before pressing pen to paper (or cursor to digital document), you must understand to whom your branding will be speaking. Who does your product serve? Who is your ideal customer? Why did you create your business in the first place?

What you learn about your target market and buyer personas will influence your branding decisions down the line, so make this step your first priority.

Download our free Persona Templates to easily organize your target audience research and strengthen your marketing.

2. Establish your mission statement

Let’s return to a question I asked in the previous step: Why did you create your business? Answering this will help you build your mission statement, which defines your purpose and passion as an organization.

Before you can craft a brand that your audience recognizes, values, and trusts, you must be able to communicate the purpose that your business provides. Then, every part of your brand (logo, tagline, imagery, voice, and personality) can reflect that mission and vision.

Your mission statement is a building block of your brand manifesto, which encompasses why your organization exists and why people should care about your brand.

3. Define your unique values, qualities, and benefits

There are probably lots of businesses in your industry and niche. It’s easy to focus on your competition (and there’s a time and place for competitive analysis), but, for now, let’s focus on you.

What’s one thing that your business has that no one else can mimic (er, legally)? Your brand.

Because of that, you must ensure that your brand is comprised of and inspired by elements that are solely yours: the values, benefits, and qualities that make your company unique.

Take a moment to jot down a list of what sets your business apart from others. I’m not talking about product features (like appearance, components, or capabilities); I’m referring to how your products or services improve lives and contribute to success.

You’ve probably never heard of Alani Nu; they’re a nutrition company based in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. I order their vitamins because 1) they’re proven to work, and 2) I trust and respect the brand (and it’s gorgeous!). On their website, they’ve clearly and simply outlined their unique values and benefits as part of their overall brand. Highlighting these makes it easy for customers like me to trust their products and choose them over competitors.

4. Create your visual assets

At this point, you should understand your target audience, your mission statement, and the unique qualities that make up your business.

If you can say with confidence that you’ve mastered these steps, it’s time to move onto one of the more exciting parts of branding — the visual design. We’re talking about your logo, color palette, typography (fonts), iconography, and other visual components.

As you create these elements, build a set of brand guidelines (or a brand style guide) to govern the composition and use of your visual assets. This will ensure that whoever uses your new branding does so accurately and consistently.

Note: Design can be just as intimidating as it is exciting. Consider hiring a professional with logo and identity design experience or starting with a few helpful design templates.

5. Find your brand voice

Next, consider the auditory component of your brand. What would your brand sound like if you had a conversation with it, or if it texted you?

How you communicate with your target market is also considered part of your branding. You want to define a brand voice that connects and resonates with your audience — otherwise, they probably won’t pay attention. Because of that, don’t hesitate to return to step one to get familiar with to whom you’re speaking.

From your advertising campaigns and social media captions to your blog posts and brand story, ensure your tone is consistent throughout all of your written content. Give your audience a chance to get familiar with your brand and learn to recognize the sound of your voice. Better yet, master a fun, entertaining voice, and your customers will look forward to your social media and email updates.

MailChimp is a great example of a brand that speaks with a clear, consistent tone. When I used their free plan for my small business, I always chuckled when receiving their emails and working in their interface. From its web copy to its email blasts and social media captions, MailChimp has established a brand voice and personality that is personable, fun, and accessible — it can be hard to explain the technical parts of a software product (like A/B testing), but MailChimp has mastered that, too.

6. Put your branding to work

Your brand only works if you do. Once you finish designing and creating your new brand (or rebrand) integrate it throughout every inch of your business. Pay extra attention to ensure it’s displayed anywhere your business touches customers. Here are a handful of tips for applying your brand across your organization.

Website

Splash your logo, color palette, and typography across your website. Don’t use anything but your predefined assets in your brand guidelines. Your website is a major part of your company identity — if it doesn’t reflect your brand, it will only provide a jarring customer experience. Also, be sure that all web copy, calls-to-action, and product descriptions reflect your brand voice.

Social media

All profile photos, cover art, and branded imagery should reflect your brand. Consider putting your logo as your profile photo — this will make it easier for customers to recognize your business. As with your website, be sure all profile information, posts, and captions reflect your brand voice.

Packaging

If you have a physical products business, your product is probably the most tangible way that customers interact with your brand. For that reason, your packaging should reflect your new branding — in its design, colors, size, and feel.

I love Chobani yogurt (confession: I’m eating it right now). Their new branding immediately tells me that they produce authentic, healthy Greek yogurt. That’s one of the main reasons I buy Chobani. Recently, I realized that their yogurt packages are made with a very earthy, textured material — an intentional decision that supports the overall experience they’ve paired with purchasing and eating the Chobani brand.

Advertising

Because advertisements (digital and print) are often used to establish brand awareness and introduce consumers to your brand, it’s critical that they reflect your branding. In fact, your branding should make the ad creation process easier — with your brand style guide, you already know how your ads should appear and what type of copy to write.

Sales and customer service

A brand is only as powerful as the people behind it, and if your people aren’t putting your brand to work, it won’t work for you. Moreover, your brand applies to more than your marketing. Inform your sales and customer service folks of your brand guidelines and tell them to use it, especially when they engage directly with customers. Whether they are sharing a branded product demo or answering customer support inquiries, encourage them to use your logo, tagline, imagery, and brand voice.

Branding Tips for Small Business

• Treat your brand as a person
• Prioritize consistency
• Follow a brand strategy
• Don’t let inspiration turn into imitation
• Use branding to hire

Treat your brand as a person

To best wrap your head around the branding process, think of your brand as a person. Your brand should have an identity (who it is), personality (how it behaves), and experience (how it’s remembered).

Ask yourself these questions about your brand:

• How would your brand introduce itself? If it had to describe its appearance, how would it do so?
• How would your brand talk about your products or services? Would it be serious and professional, or would it be humorous and edgy?
• What would someone say about your brand after “meeting” it for the first time? What are a few sentences they’d use to describe it?

The purpose of branding is to create relationships with your customers. The easiest way to do this is to treat your brand as a person and understand that you want your customers to do the same.

Whiskey Riff is another brand you’re probably not familiar with. It’s a two-man media company based here in Chicago that’s dubbed themselves “the most entertaining country music site ever”. I’m a fan because I love country music, enjoy their written and podcast content, and proudly wear some of their awesome apparel.

If Whiskey Riff was a person, here’s how I’d think it would answer the questions above:

• “Hey, I’m Whiskey Riff. I love country music and, you guessed it, Whiskey. My logo was inspired by the Y in the circle on the Chicago Theater marquee, and I'm adorned with horizontal red stripes and stars — which represent the American and Chicago flags.”
• “I publish in-your-face content about what’s going on in country music today. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. My podcast featured my founders interviewing country music artists and telling hilarious stories. Check out my apparel line; my t-shirts, tanks, hats, and accessories can be seen at country music festivals (and on stages) nationwide.”
• “Whiskey Riff is like that first shot of Jack Daniels — that much-needed, refreshing drink after a long day. Its a break from that cookie-cutter way of life, and you immediately appreciate — and trust — its candidness. There’s absolutely nothing like it in the industry.”

Prioritize consistency

Inconsistency is the number one branding mistake that companies make. Inconsistency undermines your brand and confuses your customers. Recognizable, valuable brands prioritize consistency — and they reap the benefits. When your brand is a unified presence across mediums and platforms, customers can easily get familiar with, recognize, and come to prefer your brand over time. Brand guidelines can help with this initiative.

Build and follow a brand strategy

A brand strategy is more than your brand guidelines; it’s a plan with specific, long-term goals that can be achieved as your brand evolves. These goals typically revolve around your brand’s purpose, emotion, flexibility, competitive awareness, and employee involvement.

Remember how I said that branding is a continuous process? There’s a lot that goes into it. A brand strategy can help you turn that process into a well-oiled practice that keeps your brand moving toward success and recognition.

Don’t let inspiration turn into imitation

Competitive analysis is important. Not only does it educate you on where your competition stands and how they are excelling, but it can also give you ideas on how you can improve or further set apart your brand.

However, be conscious to not fall into an imitation trap. Keep your competitive research limited and focus on what your organization brings to the table. Just because a competitor (or two) has branded their company in a certain way doesn’t mean that you have to follow suit. New, unique, provocative brands are memorable brands.

Use branding to hire

Strong branding makes your employees proud. I know I’m proud to be associated with HubSpot, much less work there. Leverage your branding to attract talented people. If hiring is a strong initiative for your organization, dedicate some of your resources to employer branding. Employer branding is how you market your company to job seekers and current employees. If you’re publically proud of your organization, others will be, too.

Ready, Set, Brand

Branding is your organization’s name, logo, color palette, voice, and imagery. It’s also more. It’s that intangible feeling your customers have when they interact with your brand. You know … that experience we talked about in the beginning.

That’s how powerhouse brands deviate from all the others. The tangible components contribute to this — a gorgeous logo, a clever tagline, an authentic manifesto, and a clear brand voice — but truly strong brands thrive when they focus on the big picture of their brand. Get to the heart and soul of your target audience and your organization, and a successful brand will follow. 

How to Make Your Website a Powerful Marketing Machine

Not so long ago, websites were purely used to deliver product and services information to target customers…

But they have morphed into a point-of-sales platform where businesses leverage their website for sales. Selling products or services on websites has become de rigueur and most businesses have jumped on board this money spinner of an idea, and why not? With consumers doing most of their shopping online, it makes perfect business sense to ensure your products and/or services are sold on your website.

Since businesses began seeing their website as a sales tool, another realization dawned upon them – their website is also a great marketing tool. Building a website is not only about ensuring your brand reaches a wider audience, but also about making sure that this audience is convinced about the merits of the products or services of your brand and persuaded to buy them.

Yes, your website can be turned into a lean mean marketing machine. The kind that drives not just online sales but offline sales as well!

But this is easier said than done isn’t it? There are plenty of articles out there with great tips about turning your website into a successful marketing tool, but it requires a lot of effort to put these tips into action.

What I’ve realized, quite painfully, is that you can turn your website into a marketing powerhouse, but it requires one hell of an effort. You’ve got to put your heart and soul into the process and it still might not work.

Over time, I have learnt the hard way that there are some tips that can be applied to all websites. So these are the one size fits all kind of tips and there are others that can only be applied to certain websites.

So, here’s my list of tips that fall into the one size fits all category; these are the kind of tips that all of you can incorporate irrespective of your business domain and your website’s audience:

1. Call to action images

Have you looked at your images with call-to-action tinted glasses? Yes, each and every image on your website can be a call to action.

When you are choosing images for your website, don’t just think ‘high quality’, ‘unique’, ‘relevant’, also think ‘actionable’. You want your images to reflect the products or services you are selling, but why not go beyond this limited perspective; use images as an action trigger.

If used well, images can boost site conversion rates and if they aren’t, all they will do is act like a decorative element for your site and at best add heft to your brand messaging.

The images on most fast food chain websites are an ideal example of images that persuade people to take action. They use mouth-watering product images that are typically a part of a deal they want to market. More often than not, the image also carries the deal cost and a fantastic tagline.

That’s what marketing is all about isn’t it. Make the target customer aware of your product or deal and make them want to purchase it.

2. Primary focus on trust elements

Nothing sells like trust. It is the single most important website quality that will make it an all-powerful marketing machine. If consumers trust your brand, they are more likely to recommend it to their friends, family and associates.

So how do you go about building trust on your site? Very often it’s the little things that help build trust on your site.

While product images, prices, detailed product information, extremely visible contact info, list of clients etc. are extremely important elements that drive website credibility, there are some other super-important elements that are given the short shrift by business owners.

These are crucial in contemporary websites. If you are working with top of the line and highly reputed customers, why not mention that fact on your website? There are times when the NDAs you’ve signed with your clients will prevent you from doing so, but if you make the effort you might be able to convince a few clients in this regard. It’s well worth it.

Customer stories are like testimonials on steroids. They are far more engaging than testimonials and better equipped to convince potential customers that your products or services can serve their expectations.

Research, case studies and whitepapers are brand collateral that are extremely important if you want to convince people you have what it takes. They demonstrate domain expertise, which is the bulwark of trust and credibility.

So, think about how you can boost website credibility so that your target audience is able to trust your brand.  Take the usual route but also think innovatively. Try to do something that your competitors aren’t doing. This differentiation can help you work a marketing miracle with your site.

3. ‘Shareworthy’ content

We are well aware that you must ensure your website content is easy to share, and this is done with the integration of social media buttons on your site.

But have you thought about whether your content is actually worthy of sharing? Yes, you need to ensure your social share buttons are prominently placed and customized keeping in mind the design of your site, but what people forget is that website visitors will only click on these buttons if the content is good enough to hold and engage their attention.

Typically, the best place to add social share buttons will be your website blog (hot tip: a website blog is another key element for boosting website marketing goals).

The idea is to use your blog in many different ways, so that you are able to create content that is shared by readers. So make your blog a platform to tell your brand story and your customer stories. Why not use your blog to discuss your products or services and their different use cases? Make sure you post videos regularly and most importantly – come up with thought leadership articles.

Mix up your content and ensure its well thought through, extremely well written, current and relevant.

Here are a few benefits of coming up with share worthy content for your site:

• It helps you personalize your brand, wherein you can actually solve customer problems with your content.
• It helps you come across as an authority in your domain.
• It helps conversions and lead generation.
• It drives organic search visibility.
• It can help build your personal brand.

Taken together, these benefits will add to your efforts to create an online marketing machine a.k.a. your website.

4. Website translation

Try localizing your website by translating it into different languages, if your business wants to establish a global connection. Neil Patel has a great article on how he increased his traffic enormously be translating his website into 82 languages. Yes, that’s right – 82 languages.

It’s pretty simply really – your website can only be a powerful marketing machine, if it reaches out to the widest number of people. And this isn’t going to happen if your website is only available in one language.

Let’s say your primary website is in English and you want to take it to the world. One of your target markets is Germany. Now, the Germans speak English but it is their second language. So, there might be a case wherein they find it difficult to understand your brand messaging, which in a worst case scenario can lead to lower conversion rates? But what if your website had a German translation? Your website immediately resonates with the German target audience, and this can lead to better conversions and improve lead generation.

But a word of caution here – You need to aim for translation that is authentic and perfectly carries your brand message to the target audience. You don’t want the message to be lost in translation.

Apart from the language, you need to keep the cultural, regional and tonal considerations in mind while translating your website. Your website might have adopted an informal tone, but the target market might prefer a formal tone, this is one of the many factors to keep in mind while translating your website.

Final thoughts

Your website can’t be converted into a marketing machine overnight, and the process will require sustained efforts. One of the things you must take care of is that the website shouldn’t remain in permanent beta. I’ve come across businesses that can’t seem to stop making changes to their site. While this isn’t a bad thing, you need to give your website some time to work its “magic”. If you’ve added an element that you think will make your website more marketing friendly, allow it do its job. Give it some time. Over time, if you think it’s performing poorly, make the necessary changes, but not until then.

Guest Author: Aigars is CEO and founder of Colorlib, a company that develops website templates, WordPress themes and is behind several best-selling products. He has been in the web development for 3 and internet marketing for 7+ years and that’s just the beginning

Book Review: Business Model Generation

by Simon

Business Model Generation launched in 2010 and has since become a global success story. It was written as a practical guide to enable people to implement effect change in their organisations and businesses via the redesign and transformation of business models. The most groundbreaking aspect of the book is the introduction of the business model canvas. The structure is shown below, and as you can see it is made up of nine key building blocks.

Prior to the creation of the canvas, businesses and organisations communicated their business models via business cases. These would be created in spreadsheets, written up in documents, and presented in slides. The canvas was created to enable a shared understanding of what a business model actually is. With this format, the model can be easily manipulated to enable those discussing strategy to try out alternative models. Here for example is the business model canvas of the Financial Times:

Author Alex Osterwalder describes the benefits of using a more visual language:

Visual thinking is indispensable to working with business models. … Because business models are complex concepts composed of various building blocks and their interrelationships, it is difficult to truly understand a model without sketching it out.

A business model really is a system where one element influences the other; it only makes sense as a whole. Capturing that big picture without visualizing it is difficult. In fact, by visually depicting a business model, one turns its tacit assumptions into explicit information.

I would certainly agree with this, but just because you have visualised a concept does not necessarily mean you really have captured the whole, and it does not guarantee that the visualisation is actually of high quality and helpful. In reading Business Model Generation I kept swaying from one extreme to another. Many times I kept saying to myself this is too simple, and then at other times I could really see the benefits of such simplification.

I have now settled down and arrived at a final conclusion: the canvas is one of those simple tools that at first sight you think is obvious, but in fact if it was so obvious someone would have done it earlier. It’s simplicity is a huge strength, so long as whoever is using it does not get caught up in thinking that having a business canvas is the be all and end all. The reason I say this is that there is that one of the chapters in the book examines the wider business environment, and the diagram from the book lists the additional complicating factors, without positioning them into a new framework or canvas:

One theme I talk a lot about is the act of seeing. I am always interested in looking at how people are using both the current business model canvas, and also how they are looking to improve it. It is one thing to have a business model for a new product or service, but the current business model canvas has no explicit reference to the organisation’s core values. If people within an organisation really do live by their core values (as opposed to publishing a mission, vision and value statement which reads well but is not followed) then all other activities flow from this. For this reason I quite like a remodelled Value Envelope canvas created by Jeroen Kraaijenbrink:

Photo credit: Jeroen Kraaijenbrink

I think one final comment is that the presentation of the book has been designed to be luscious and seductive. This is no bad thing, but I do wonder if the authors missed a trick in examining the realities of some of the companies they provide case studies and commentary on. For example, Amazon features prominently, with two different case studies, the first being their web services and the second being a more strategic look at how and why Amazon needed to diversify. As the authors say in the opening paragraphs, Business Model Generation is about “creating value, for companies, customers and society. It is about replacing outmoded models.” A recent report on Amazon by the Financial Times was quite an eye opener, stating that some workers walk between seven and fifteen miles a day. (Source: Amazon Unpacked, Financial Times).

Amazon have also launched another service called Mechanical Turk. This allows anyone with a computer and internet access to carroy out crowd-sourced jobs (which are described as HITs – Human Intelligence Tasks). This sounds like a great new business model, but often the jobs are poorly paid, with workers signing an agreement which means they are not covered by minimum-wage requirements. Employers can reject work on any grounds, and those doing the work have few options to complain and claim compensation for unpaid work.

So when we examine Amazon, despite a business model canvas which on the surface seems to be cutting edge and next generation, in fact harks back to the beginning of the twentieth century and good old fashioned Taylorism. This is not a paradigm shift from the industrial revolution, it is the industrial revolution with computer chips and security tags and time and motion studies.

On Transition Consciousness I do every so often look at organisations and business leaders I rate and who I think have something extremely valuable to add to the global conversation on the shape and evolution of business, and how business can be inspired by nature. I think that the Business Model Canvas is a valuable tool, but we need to ensure that we do not become seduced by it. In the right hands it becomes an extremely powerful tool to promote effective dialogue and to aid creative thinking around the logic and structure of new business models. But without Values at the core of the thinking, we are in danger of believing the hype and not being able to see that what seems like a visionary business model is in fact just “business as usual” in a different disguise.

Just to be clear on how I rate the book, I do recommend people to read it. While many reviewers on Amazon criticise it for being too simplistic, I think the actual concept of the canvas is powerful, and for those who have not worked with business models and business cases before, for those who are looking at starting or developing a new business for the first time, the book is an excellent introduction. A canvas by its very nature is blank, waiting to be drawn upon, and I can see many ways in which it can be used creatively to develop new insights, innovations, communication and team building in organisations, and in fact I am developing various workshops utilising the canvas at this moment in time. But ultimately, it can only reflect the quality of thinking which goes into the thinking behind the business models, and so we continually need to seek out mentors, role models and also inspiration from nature if we really want to be a part of what Peter Senge calls The Necessary Revolution.

By 2030, Bangladesh will be the 24th largest economy. Here's how ICT is driving that growth

By 2021, Bangladesh expects its ICT exports to be worth $5 billion

Zunaid Ahmed PalakMinister of State for Information and Communication Technology, Ministry of Post, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, more than 120 companies export information and communications technology (ICT) products worth nearly $1 billion to 35 countries. By 2021, it’s expected that this will increase to $5 billion. Indeed, the growing strength of the ICT Industry underpins the four vital pillars that will support Bangladesh’s transformation to a digital economy by 2021, and a knowledge economy by 2041.

Announced in 2008 and officially launched by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2009, the Digital Bangladesh Vision identifies human resource development, connecting citizens, digital government and the aforementioned promotion of the ICT industry as critical to meeting these transformation targets. Here’s why they are so important:

Human resource development

The government wants Bangladesh to be a gateway for the digital world and has started multiple initiatives to develop a skilled, equipped and digital-ready pool of talent. Our education system produces more than 500,000 university graduates every year and, thanks to the introduction of several dedicated training programmes to get the talent pool ready to deliver value on a global scale, we have trained more than 65,000 Information Technology Enabled Services (IT/ITeS) professionals in the past year.

According to the Oxford Internet Institute, Bangladesh has the second largest pool of online workers in the world. To further enhance skills, we have established specialized labs in all of the country’s 130 universities. We are investing in frontier tech centres of excellence with global technology partners such as IBM, and we have a strong focus on training professionals in emerging technologies – the Internet of Things, blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and analytics.

Connecting citizens

The next pillar is about connecting citizens - and Bangladesh is committed to ensuring 100% internet connectivity by 2021. We have already made good progress with currently more than 93 million internet subscribers and 160 million mobile subscriptions throughout the nation, making Bangladesh the fifth largest mobile market in Asia Pacific and the ninth largest in the world.

We have ensured seamless connectivity through two submarine cable connections with 1,700 gigabits per second (Gbps) and seven ITC connections with 400 Gbps. We plan to further enhance this by becoming an early adopter of 5G. By the end of 2019, we will provide high-speed internet connectivity to even remote villages.

In order to ensure a cost-effective space for companies interested in investing in Bangladesh, we are building 28 high-tech parks around the country and plan to increase this to 64. There is a focus on developing a thriving environment for partners and investors who are keen to take advantage of the opportunity that Bangladesh presents.

Digital governance

E-governance is the next step in driving the Digital Bangladesh engine forward. The government is proactively pursuing the digitalization of all government portals, such as passport applications and visa applications, by the year 2023. In 2014, we developed the National Portal which now houses more than 45,000 websites and services of different government offices. We have developed more than 5,000 digital centres across the country to help provide various digital services to citizens, while addressing the issue of a digital divide.

Our Bangladesh National Digital Architecture (BNDA), which ensures interoperability, won a World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) award this year and WSIS has recognized Bangladesh for different e-government or digital government initiatives for the past six years in a row.

We have established a Digital Service Accelerator to expedite and facilitate the e-services of all ministries and have issued more than 100 million digital IDs to our citizens – one of the highest volumes in the world. Services are very carefully designed to ensure they are relevant to all three groups of Bangladeshi citizens: younger, tech-savvy generations growing up with technology; “digital adapters,” who are middle-aged individuals who have adopted technology; and the minority who stay away from technology. The scale of digital governance in Bangladesh has a tremendous impact on the transformation of the nation.

Promotion of the ICT industry

The vibrant and rapidly growing ICT industry in Bangladesh is the fourth area supporting digital transformation. We serve clients in an array of domains, including financial services, telecoms and healthcare, and drive the IT/ITES engine behind some of the world’s most global companies.

The four pillars behind Digital Bangladesh are strengthened by strong government commitment and support.

Bangladesh is experiencing nearly 8% gross domestic product (GDP) growth and is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. We are 34th in the World Economic Forum’s Inclusive Development Index, ahead of many established nations, and by 2030, we will be the 24th largest economy in the world. The essential ingredient behind this growth has been the smart use of ICT to spur progress in all sectors.