A trained lawyer, Jonny Crowe claims that his varied career experiences, which range from heading up used car retailers to working as an interim chief executive of Dutch fashion retailer Wehkamp, have given him the ability “to see what goes on behind the scenes in different sectors” as well the power to be able to “find out who gets businesses running right, and how”.
After building, growing, leading, and buying high-growth digital companies, he now heads Liminal Ventures, a market intelligence and strategic advisory firm serving the digital identity, fintech, cybersecurity and VC communities.
Crowe is also about to launch a new podcast at the end of this month, The Corporate Ape, which, he claims, will explore ‘the contradiction of human irrationality and the corporate struggle to balance that primate factor with logic, process and technology’.
How have you driven business growth?
Unforeseen external forces can drive unexpected business growth. But being in the right position to take advantage of the hand you’re being dealt takes planning and foresight. I know this from my experience at [used online car retailer] cinch.
Back in 2018, we were stealth — building what would eventually become cinch — a platform for buying cars. At the time, there was no competition in the market. In fact, the thought of buying a car fully online was an alien concept.
You might buy the little things in life online, but you want to look into a person’s eyes and shake hands for the big things, right? Well, we ignored that generally accepted truism and launched in July 2019, and by June 2021 it had become the UK’s number one online B2C marketplace for automobiles, selling 45,000 cars a year.
We made a calculated bet years before the pandemic in 2020, that the car market was ready for disruption. The pandemic accelerated the consumer’s consideration of a new, online way to buy a car — but that consideration was going to happen anyway. And that’s why consumers haven’t switched back to their old purchase habits.
What are some of the challenges you’ve come up against?
Humans tend to resist change. When coaching CEOs and management teams, I often find myself explaining that going against your self-preservation instincts and stepping out of your comfort zone is what transformation and management is all about.
Fostering the right environment for innovation to grow, giving the team both the autonomy and the support needed to experiment safely, incentivising them to refrain from playing it too safe by having them participate in the value of the upside they will create.
Do firms need digital transformation specialists now, or is it just a matter of seeking out a competent software developer with a fistful of APIs?
This is one of the topics I talk about in my upcoming podcast. In terms of whether digital transformation specialists are needed, we need changemakers to marry critical thinking with an ability to manage the technology that holds our knowledge base, and the employees who are working with it.
Critical thinking is still something that I coach to this day, and it is something I observe to still be lacking in many environments.
However, it’s true that the first phase of digital transformation is over. In my experience, too many business leaders approach DT initiatives as something that is project-based and siloed, but that ship has long sailed. I would add that too much digital transformation has been tokenistic, half-hearted and ‘quick fix’ minded.
Digital transformation should involve every department in your organisation — if AI, APIs and automation software is empowering products to deliver results or services to customers five times faster, then all groups need to be prepared for that change.
How do you navigate the balance between wading through the AI hype and setting your business up for success?
There is understandably a lot of trepidation surrounding AI. The reality is that it isn’t going anyway anytime soon — so don’t keep your head in the sand. Bringing AI adoption up in open conversations with your employees is a sure-fire way to bring the entire business along for the ride on how these disruptive technologies will start to bring value.
When integrating AI into actual business workflows, be sure to create guard rails. Try it in a certain part of the business first, limit its access, and connect via trusted (or even better, trustless) APIs to keep safety and security at its core. If you start empowering your workforce to see the benefits that narrow applications of AI can bring to your company, your company will be in a prime position to utilise tomorrow’s technologies today.
What’s been your biggest learning curve in your career to date?
Having led big transformations for over a decade, change is not a technology problem, it’s a people problem. So many hours are spent in boardrooms discussing change. Even when leadership teams agree, not everyone will want to go in the same direction or speed.
Whether this is introducing a new piece of tech, new workflows, or completely restructuring a business — transformations can feel confusing and chaotic to the humans required to let go of the old and adapt to the new.
When we introduce change into someone else’s working life, we need to be prepared for their reaction and attuned to where they are on the journey to acceptance and support. Until we take time to understand human emotions in response to change, our people won’t unlock the power of their adaptability and our transformation efforts will fail.
What lessons do you think technology leaders and digital transformation specialists can learn from the Horizon/ Post Office IT scandal?
This is a much more complicated and layered story than many people may think. My heart goes out to everyone who has been affected by it. I don’t think I know enough, in enough detail, to comment properly. However, there are certainly lots of lessons to learn for sure, but I feel we need to be patient and thorough in understanding the full enquiry rather than picking one conclusion.
Fujitsu awaits fate in Post Office scandal
What do you know for sure?
I’m not convinced I know anything for absolute certain. I’m still pleasantly surprised each year when the days start getting longer again after December 21. I’m not sure I’d want to lose that simple joy and take it for granted.
I’m pretty much convinced my kids are smarter, or at least more together than I was at their age. I am confident that future generations will look back on our current obsession with projecting an imagined life through social media with a sort of semi-affectionate disdain. Maybe at best. I’d be ready to bet a lot of money that lots of music is better live with others, which isn’t to say that there isn’t some music that’s for being on your own with great headphones.
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