RX’s global chief strategy officer, Peter Lindsay, commemorates a year in the role by talking to Mike Fletcher about his achievements and the organiser’s strategic direction.
Peter Lindsay, RX’s global chief strategy officer, is reflecting on a year in the role.
“It’s a big company, and we cover a lot of regions. The role has already taken me to places I had never been to, and I’ve loved meeting so many different people,” he says from his London base.
Lindsay was recruited in September 2023 to run a team of 15 strategists and enact “a more declared point of view” on the direction RX should be heading, which industry sectors it should be pursuing, the role of digital, and an evolution of the customer value proposition.
As a result, of course, there has been consolidation (RX reportedly exited Austria in October last year, and IBTM Asia Pacific will no longer take place in Hong Kong next year). But there has also been plenty of growth (RX acquired the World Hydrogen Summit in Rotterdam, Hydrogen Americas in Washington DC, and Hydrogen Asia-Pacific in Brisbane, Australia in May).
“We’re still growing overall,” Lindsay says. “My job is to make sure that it’s targeted growth. Sometimes, I’m a guiding hand, other times, I’m challenging or helping teams by offering a different perspective and asking those difficult questions that will take them out of a fixed tunnel mindset.”
Both the organiser’s acquisition and show launch strategies come under Lindsay’s remit, and he’s happy to admit that a company the size and scope of RX wasn’t always the most agile at launching into new markets with new concepts.
However, one key observation made early on in his role was that RX is exceptional at both geo-adapting successful shows into new regions and, pinpointing segments within burgeoning shows and using them to launch stand-alone versions.
“New York’s pharmaceutical and biotechnology show Interphex is a great example, having launched into two new territories – South Korea and Japan,” Lindsay says. “Japan is particularly good for launching off-shoots of successful shows, particularly in sectors such as Energy, IT and parts of Manufacturing. It’s a tree and branch model, where between five and ten different shows can stem from one successful ‘mother show’ in, say, Tokyo and spread out across the country.”
When pushed on whether this strategy then takes priority over acquiring existing events, Lindsay says: “One of the implications of a tighter strategic focus is that we’re pretty strict on our assessment of what’s right to buy. That’s not to say we’re not buying – the Sustainable Energy Conferences deal, for example – but it has to be a growth sector, the right geographical fit, the right stage of the show’s lifespan and something we feel confident we can run and grow. Only if all the criteria work together can acquisitions become powerhouses of the growth potential we hold here at RX.”
From a strategic perspective, I tell Lindsay I can see the logic. After all, with heightened interest from private equity supporting entrepreneurial scale-ups, there’s suddenly a lot of money available for acquisitions, which has the potential to inflate valuations.
He agrees: “With so much private equity interest, the market can become quite excitable. It’s therefore incumbent on us to remain calm-headed. Over time, we want to be able to look back and assess that over five years, the acquisitions RX made were, more often than not, a good bet.”
On the continuing flood of private equity support, which has entered the market since the pandemic, Lindsay offers: “As far as we can see, it will sustain for at least the next three to five years. After that, it will depend on what happens in the global economy. But for the time being, the trajectory will continue. Private equity funds like exhibitions – it’s a business model they find straightforward to assess, it’s repeatable, and they can get their heads around it quickly.”
As part of RELX, the global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools, weighty support for the future of RX comes in the form of data, data analysis, machine learning and AI-powered solutions to improve the customer value proposition.
“We have leveraged RELX expertise and technology to develop the digital and data analysis tools which enable our customers to build their businesses by connecting face-to-face and digitally,” Lindsay explains. “We also have a growing portfolio of big data and AI events, including Big Data LDN, Big Data and AI Paris, and Data Universe, which took place for the first time in New York in April. Having access to RELX’s extraordinary data and AI expertise, insights and resources as we grow and sustain them is a huge bonus. RELX’s technology expertise cuts across many of the sectors we serve, and we see exciting opportunities to incorporate these capabilities across existing events.”
Over the next 12 months, Lindsay says RX will not only evolve the support that RELX offers but will also double down on its ever-increasing obsession with customer value.
“On the face of it, it sounds generic, but there’s a lot of detailed work going on behind the scenes to understand more about why customers come to exhibitions, how it differs from region to region, and what we can do to improve the attendee experience,” he says. “We’re placing a lot of pressure on ourselves to keep getting better at measuring what constitutes success from both a sales and marketing perspective, as well as developing our ability to attract the best buyers from new and previously untapped segments.”
It’s an aspirational strategy, the rest of the exhibition industry will watch with interest.
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