LettsGroup is revolutionising the venture model with advanced technology. Today, technology leadership is a huge determiner of economic and global dominance. LettsGroup is at the forefront, investing in deep tech and pioneering innovative solutions that will shape the future of society and economies.
Led by Philip Letts, the 7th generation of the Letts family and Executive Chair of LettsGroup, the company is equipped with a long-standing family legacy of innovation, and is now combining it with cutting-edge technology to create a systematic approach to venture production. They have two guiding principles and methods to achieve impact in venture building.
First, the Innov@te™ methodology uses a customer-centric approach. It places the customer at the heart of the innovation process. Through tight-loop systems of curation that involve data collection and behavioural analysis, LettsGroup ensures that its ventures are built to meet the needs and behaviours of the target audience, resulting in a higher chance of successful adoption of their products in the global market.
Second, their Size Zero methodology addresses the traditional notion that getting "too big" kills innovation. Instead, it focuses on efficiency and control in scaling ventures, providing a solid foundational structure for sustainable operations. The unique combination of methodologies allows LettsGroup to achieve repeat innovation and sustainable venture building, setting a new standard in the industry.
"LettsGroup is committed to pushing the boundaries of the venture model by leveraging advanced technology and deep tech investments," said Philip Letts, Chair of LettsGroup.
"In today's dynamic global landscape, technology leadership is a key determinant of economic and societal success. We are dedicated to investing in innovative solutions that will shape the future and drive ventures to the top of the global power rankings."
LettsGroup has already made significant strides with its initial ventures. LettsArt, the first NFT-enabled, fully accessible, website platform designed purely for the art world, has quickly gained traction, providing a new way for artists, art dealers and collectors to engage with and better monetize online audiences. LettsSafari, a subscription-based digital climate venture, has also gained momentum in addressing the biodiversity crisis through rewilding initiatives that are defining subscription economy eco-services. Additionally, LettsGroup is developing LettsNews, a fully automated, AI powered news network, and LettsCore, a groundbreaking Media-as-a-Service platform that is creating the first content blockchain.
As LettsGroup marks the 3rd iteration of Letts family incubators in 2023, it continues to redefine the venture model with its innovative approach, looking to drive ventures to develop industry-first practices. The company remains committed to its corporate values of innovation, sustainability, quality, integrity, and family, and aims to make a lasting impact in the world of venture building.
LettsGroup unlocks repeat innovation methodologies out of a historical family
business model - the first of its kind.
LettsGroup, the family-run branded venture group, has become the first to crack the code to repeat innovation, following the release of the 3rd edition of the company's methodological framework, Innov@teTM. The tried-and-tested approach is a pivotal breakthrough in the world of innovation, thus allowing a model that codifies and ensures consistent venture production.
“Using our proven incubator methodology, and advanced technology, we solve some of
society’s most pressing problems,” Philip Letts, Chairman.
In 1796, John Letts built the world’s first corporate incubator. John Letts’s incubator developed a series of successful innovations including the first commercial diary, the Letts Diary. Further innovations included interest tables, specialist clerical and medical diaries, calendars, parliamentary registers, ledgers, and logbooks.
Now, in 2023, LettsGroup marks the 3rd iteration of Letts Family incubators, with its Executive Chair, Philip Letts, the 7th generation of the eponymous diary family. The world’s oldest corporate incubator has cashed out their invention of the diary, and cashed in on providing sustainable, repetitive innovation and venture building.
“It seems we are all becoming entrepreneurs. And yet no one has cracked repetitive
innovation,” Philip Letts, Chairman.
A series of corporate and innovative expertise has thus led to the establishment of LettsGroup. From LettsGroup’s tried and tested methodological approach, innovation can be a codified, patterned stream of service. Heavyweight international technology leaders have unified to support the growth of the branded venture group, including previous senior leaders of O2, Oracle UK and Ireland, EDS International, UBS, Broadview International, and Silverpeak. The team is littered with expertise in the cutting-edge world of innovation and tech.
LettsGroup is breaking through the market with a number of initial ventures, with the aim to establish a ‘Unicorn’ venture by 2030 - with the help of renowned tech investors. To highlight, these ventures include LettsArt, the first NFT-enabled, fully accessible, Web3 platform for the art world; and LettsSafari, the subscription based digital greentech platform that tackles the biodiversity crisis by expanding rewilding initiatives.
“Behind the scenes we are building a fully automated news network called LettsNews and
LettsCore, a groundbreaking Media-as-a-Service platform,” Philip Letts, Chairman
The methodology at the core of LettsGroup is Innov@teTM. Innov@teTM is the modern and extended approach of John Letts’ original incubator. Additionally, LettsGroup is in the business of repeated, technologically advanced, and sustainably conscious innovation. The methodological approach behind LettsGroup is the code to unfolding further new ideas to become projects, products, and ventures. Ford cracked the code for mass production. LettsGroup is cracking the code for innovation. More precisely, cracking a new innovation and venture every two and a half years.
But LettsGroup is not in the business of just throwing money and huge sums at problems or innovation. Its Size Zero methodology, accompanying Innov@teTM, presses Letts' theory that getting ‘too big’ kills innovation.
Both philosophies set out a necessary foundational structure to the successful operations of an ‘organisation’ for innovation, LettsGroup.
Where the family ventures, their simple philosophy follows, placing the customer at the heart of innovation. LettsGroup extends and optimises this philosophy, ensuring the customer is centre much earlier than in typical innovation processes, where many assume the centre to lie solely with entrepreneurs and inventors. This process is upheld further through tight-loop systems of curation, for which customer data collection and behavioural analysis is at the foundation.
Even more central to the corporate incubator is its seasoned founder, Philip Letts. The Chairman has over thirty years of experience in innovation, launching his first private incubator, Prophete, in 1997. From Prophete came Beenz - the earliest iteration of a crypto currency, boasting more than 6 million customers before its sale to Carlson Group companies.
Prophete was the first test of the Innov@teTM methodology. From Philip Letts’ second private incubator in 2006, The Visual Studio, came Maistro Ltd. Once again, the innovation was a breakthrough in the creative services marketplace, taken public in 2012. Furthermore, from The Visual Studio came Size Zero, a methodology handbook published in 2015 to guide young ventures to scale with
greater efficiency and control.
The company boasts the corporate values of innovation, sustainability, quality, integrity, and family. Led by the Letts family and managed by established industry leaders, LettsGroup is combining innovation with tackling the issues of society today, placing environmental consciousness at the forefront of these values. Its integrity is derived in its stance that no innovation supported by the incubator will be without deep considerations of sustainability, a pledge the Group has and will continue to uphold.
While just at its infancy, the branded incubator has produced its first, emerging ventures. Also a number of tech-centric ventures are being developed within the incubator, with LettsGroup producing a factory of new ideas, and a code to repetitive innovation.
If innovation is the new global currency, how do we do it right?
In 1995 Bill Gates famously announced the ‘internet tidal wave’ and officially threw Microsoft’s future at the web. Steve Jobs went one step further, after he returned to Apple, adding ‘i’ (for internet) in front of its product names. A decade later the iPhone was launched. The ‘i’ may as well have stood for ‘innovation’, because that is what they were searching for.
Leaders are betting on innovation to stay ahead of 21st Century threats. Biden has re-framed the relationship with China as a battle between two arch competitors - and may the most innovative win. Johnson sold Brexit as a tool to unlock the power of British ideas, in particular ‘Peppa Pig’. And everyone is praying for new technology to save us from the climate crisis - while emissions just keep climbing.
Like cancer, it seems that there is no cure for poor innovation, a disease which destroys the majority of companies. It is becoming a business epidemic while product variants are increasing and product life cycles are becoming shorter and shorter.
Corporations thought they had found a solution when they latched onto corporate incubators over a decade ago. A number of management consultants and academics touted it as the answer to hatching unicorn scale ideas in a factory. Today, corporate incubators are largely bust.
Larger companies are desperately seeking new approaches. John Lewis, the UK department store owner, is launching a £1m innovation fund that will channel cash into projects with the potential to end the high street’s “throwaway” culture. The fund is aimed at identifying “innovators” that are challenging the industry’s outdated “make… use… throw away” model.
In order to power their transformational strategy, and generate new ideas for tobacco-free products, PMI harnessed the power of crowdsourcing - engaging more than 65,000 employees worldwide. This gave employees from multiple departments and backgrounds a means to contribute suggestions, as well as assessing and developing them.
Businesses have also tried to develop ‘future thinking’ techniques and techno hackathons. They have attempted to outsource innovation and partnered with innovation consultancies like IDEO and Hubbub. They have even tried collaborating with venture investors and entrepreneurs.
And yet none of this seems to be working too well. Big companies used to have a lifespan of 61 years, it is now down to 18.
McKinsey believes that, in 2027, three quarters of the companies that were quoted until recently on the S&P 500 will have disappeared. They will be bought-out, merged, or bankrupt. General Electric, Exxon Mobile, Procter & Gamble and DuPont are among the oldest companies on the New York Stock Exchange. Nevertheless, those with the largest market capitalizations today have new names: Apple, Alphabet, Meta or Amazon.
General Electric recently announced that it will break up into three separate businesses. DuPont has merged with Dow Chemical and Exxon Mobile is struggling with investigations and lawsuits.
In 1973, the English economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher asked why large companies keep disappearing at such a rate when he published his influential book ‘Small is Beautiful’. He exposed the inefficiency of large enterprises and anticipated the current trend towards sustainable development. He maintained, “What characterises modern industry is its enormous consumption to produce so little… It is inefficient to a degree that goes beyond imagination!”
The loss of energy is called entropy. It’s what kills large companies.
Large companies need a continuous input of more and more management energy simply to continue to exist. The larger the company, the more energy it needs - just to survive. Apparently large companies spend more time managing themselves than they do serving their customers.
As the life expectancy of companies drops, that of its workers is increasing. That’s changing the makeup of business - as their employees demand more labour market flexibility and greater mobility. In the US, almost a third of all employees have an independent or contingent activity and are not linked to a company by a full-time working contract.
It seems we are all becoming entrepreneurs. And yet no one has cracked repetitive innovation.
Or have they?
One of the world’s oldest corporate incubators is attempting it. And they believe the secret lies with their customers.
John Letts invented a world’s first corporate incubator in 1796. He started out with a simple philosophy, that the customer was the secret to innovation. He just had to figure out how to get them to invent things with Letts. Later, he developed the infrastructure to take these products to market and scale them.
He built an incubator studio that nurtured and developed new business ideas and inventions coupled with a vibrant store in the heart of the city of London where they could mingle with customers. These interactions led to prototypes and prototypes were tested back with the customers. Successful prototypes quickly became live, paid-for concepts. Concepts became products.
The studio was attached to the store. Today the store is virtual.
In the early 1800’s John Letts’s incubator developed a series of successful innovations including the first commercial diary. He launched interest tables, specialist clerical and medical diaries, calendars, parliamentary registers, ledgers, and logbooks.
The latest generation of the eponymous diary family is betting the new shop on cracking sustainable, repetitive innovation. They have developed a methodology called Innov@te™ which modernises and extends the initial incubator approach developed by John Letts. It tackles the process for innovation, like Ford cracked the process for mass producing cars.
Innov@te™ comes to life in virtual incubator studios that bring together inventions, their inventors, designers and customers in live, iterative, customer concept phases.
Combined, it offers a modern factory for ideas that are engineered into new projects.
LettsGroup also created the Size Zero philosophy, which sets out the necessary structure for turning projects into businesses. They call it the ‘organisation’ for innovation. It supports and enhances the theory that getting too big can kill innovation.
According to them, the secret to innovation lies with customers, from the outset, adopting tight-loop systems that curate innovation out of a series of physical and virtual interactions. All while conventional thinking assumed that the answer lay with entrepreneurs and inventors. The power of ‘one’.
LettsGroup has challenged itself to develop a brand new venture every two and a half years. Time will tell whether their approach will get us any closer to cracking one of the 21st century’s greatest dilemmas. After all, we will need all the innovation we can muster to face society’s newest set of challenges.
This article was first published in the Letts Journal.
LettsGroup is a branded incubator group, which is active through @LettsGroup on twitter.
LettsSafari is a LettsGroup venture, a digital platform that allows individuals to do something practical about containing the adverse rate of climate change - one tree, one animal, one new safari park at a time.
LettsGroup is excited to announce the expansion of its recent venture, LettsSafari - a new climate venture with a twist. The goal is to harness, using technology, the power of community to tackle the biodiversity crisis through a focus on ‘renewable nature’. Today, LettsSafari is considered a leader in smaller-scale rewilding.
In a world that is becoming increasingly climate-conscious during a time of crisis, LettsSafari offers innovative, digitised environmental services through its LettsSafari Network of Parks. A digital experience visitors can immerse themselves in all from the comfort of their own home.
The venture, led by Philip Letts and his team, is excited to announce the launch and expansion of LettsSafari +, its members online media service and virtual visitor platform. Here, updates are released every Friday ‘from the park’ direct to members’ inboxes, via LettsSafari websites and within the app. The platform has opened channels including Wildlife Photos, Safari Gardens, Rewilding, and most recently Wild TV. Get a front row seat for content of the highest quality through the network’s dedicated group of wildlife photographers, filmmakers, and writers.
'The future could see climate conscious people switching away from certain TV streaming services and subscribing to eco services like LettsSafari'.
The platform has been tried and tested, leading to the launch of a new ‘Platform Subscription’, which offers companies and individuals ‘real life’ visits, so they can make even more of a difference with LettsSafari.
The digital service’s main offering is a tangible, proactive and economically viable solution to the impacts of climate change through digitalized safari parks that are engineered specifically towards rapidly repairing soil and waterways, absorbing CO2, and ensuring trees and plants thrive naturally, providing habitats for wildlife.
Subscribers participate and learn how to implement ‘mini’ LettsSafari's in their garden, work, school and in the community.
The LettsSafari approach is based on attracting large numbers of digital subscribers who pay £3.50 per month or £35 annually to build wild spaces with us and for themselves. They engage, learn and participate online. We believe that, at scale, our approach can make a measurable and material impact on the climate and biodiversity crisis.
The next 12 months will mark a turning point of growth for the venture, expanding its Network of Parks to plant more trees, extending more content to bring viewers rewilding projects from across the globe, continuing to utilise advanced technology to monitor progress, improve habits, and do even more for climate and wildlife.
LettsSafari’s next phase of growth will also see it plan for an exciting future showcase eco safari park in England that will be open to the public as well as visited online like all the other LettsSafari parks. An African style safari park in the west. A place for day visits and staying over in a safari village. A living, working lab for tangible biodiversity solutions.
Sign up to LettsSafari+ to receive the digital experience today with weekly newsletter updates. LettsSafari’s site is now live for visitors, creators, and environmentalists. LettsSafari is a venture of the branded incubator group, LettsGroup, which is active through @LettsGroup on twitter.
LettsRetreat offers exclusive and luxurious eco retreats where families, friends, and teams can escape.
LettsGroup is excited to announce the launch of its latest venture, LettsRetreat at LettsRetreat.com. LettsRetreat is offering eco-stays at rewilded climate conscious parks, the perfect space for an escape for anyone from families to businesses.
The eco retreats will provide a place to experience nature that many of us no longer know. As removed from the urban centric world most of us live in now, at a LettsRetreat you will be immersed in an unpredictable natural environment. Adopting LettsGroup’s wider green values and agenda, LettsRetreat will ensure that each of its retreats are marked by beautiful scenery, a deep history, and a rewilding project at its core.
The venture, led by Philip Letts and his team, is kicking off its initiative with its first retreat in Devon, England. Mamhead Park South is one of the UK’s leading smaller scale rewilding projects, complete with a fascinating history reaching back to the Domesday book. The retreat is not just an escape, but an experience. Visitors can stay in historic buildings by Robert Adam, walk through a Capability Brown Garden that's been rewilded, or enjoy the environmentally conscious open-air art.
The venture plans on expanding to a series of locations. All will be rewilded and each will share the LettsRetreat values of climate awareness, creativity and biodiversity. Much like LettsGroup’s other ventures, thinking green is at the center of this project. These estates will continue the rewilding initiative that started in Devon. LettsRetreat’s rewilding project will continue to be refined and grow as the venture does.
These spaces are not just for families and friends to retreat. The latest venture offers businesses the perfect creative getaway for their teams to step back from the typical day-to-day and find some inspiration, all the while enhancing their NetZero credentials.
Culture is a hallmark of LettsRetreat, both in its rich history and the offering of open-air art and sculpture that is placed all-around it. Each location will be offered as destinations for film shoots, expanding on the portfolio of TV shows, Indie movies, wedding videos and wildlife documentaries that have already filmed at LettsRetreat's first eco retreat. The eco estate has also hosted magazine shoots, and featured in Harper's Bazaar’s top 10 holiday stays in the UK.
Sign up to LettsRetreat + to receive the digital experience today with weekly newsletter updates. LettsRetreat’s site is now live for visitors, creators, and environmentalists. LettsRetreat is a venture of the branded incubator group, LettsGroup, which is active through @LettsGroup on twitter.
LettsRetreat is a LettsGroup company. For press inquiries and requests contact: [email protected]
