Building the future of building materials … how industrial leaders can turn global change into new growth by redefining the customer problem, reinventing business models and making sharper strategic choices

October 23, 2026

A developer needs a viable project. A contractor needs reliable execution. An owner needs an asset that remains useful, affordable and adaptable. A city needs places where people can live well.

Materials make these outcomes possible, yet their producers often capture only a fraction of the value they enable.

This creates a strategic challenge. If better design allows customers to build more effectively with fewer tonnes, how can materials companies benefit? Improving production efficiency remains essential, but future growth also depends on the role suppliers choose to play in construction and throughout an asset’s life.

The most useful frame combines three perspectives: building materials as the operating core, construction as the strategic arena, and better places as the wider ambition. This broadens the customer problem while preserving discipline about which activities to own.

Five stages can help leaders connect this ambition to action. Each draws on companies outside traditional heavy materials, then considers implications for Cemex, CRH, Heidelberg Materials and Holcim. Those implications are strategic recommendations, rather than descriptions of announced company commitments.

1. Explore what could be

See how global change reshapes customer demand

Construction demand is being reorganised by forces that extend beyond the economic cycle. Urbanisation and affordability create demand for accessible housing. Ageing buildings and infrastructure require renewal. Climate adaptation demands protection against heat, flooding and water stress. Electrification, digital infrastructure and industrial policy change the geography and specifications of investment.

These forces intersect. A data centre requires power, water, thermal management, security and dependable delivery. A housing programme must reconcile affordability with energy efficiency. Regeneration combines existing structures, public space and new infrastructure. The attractive market is increasingly a specific application in a particular place, with identifiable customers and economics.

Nvidia illustrates the importance of understanding the system around a product. Its accelerated-computing proposition connects processors with CUDA software and developer tools. The strategic lesson is that adoption depends on complementary capabilities that make technology usable. In construction, equivalent complements include design support, installation knowledge, product data and dependable supply.
Jio provides a different perspective. Its digital platform connects network infrastructure, devices and applications to broaden access to services. For materials leaders, the question is which services their physical infrastructure and customer relationships could support, and which partners would be better placed to provide them.

The construction cases reveal the same widening frame. King’s Cross foregrounds the value of connected places. Singapore’s Tengah integrates planning with shared infrastructure, including residential centralised cooling. Sydney’s Quay Quarter Tower demonstrates substantial structural reuse: project architect BVN reports retention of 65% of the existing structure. These examples point towards different combinations of new construction, repair and adaptation.

This reframing changes the route to market. Developers judge viability, contractors judge execution and owners judge lifetime performance. Each may value the same material differently. Selling to all three requires an understanding of who specifies, who pays and who benefits. A resilience improvement, for example, may interest an owner more than a contractor working within a fixed construction budget.

Leaders should also explore a scenario in which AI agents compare compliant designs, environmental declarations, availability and prices for customers. This could shift influence towards the information systems through which suppliers are assessed. It is a strategic possibility to test, not an established outcome.

Implications

Cemex: Translate regional demand into priority applications, with technical support and reliable delivery as part of the offer.
CRH: Use its connected infrastructure portfolio to pursue whole-project needs across roads, water and related materials.
Heidelberg Materials: Match global technical expertise to local growth segments where its heavy-materials assets provide an advantage.
Holcim: Connect its sustainable-construction ambition to specific customer problems and markets, recognising its changed perimeter after the Amrize separation.

2. Reinvent before you have to

Find the capabilities beneath the current product

Successful companies can become trapped by the categories that made them successful. Their assets, incentives and language reinforce the existing business, while new applications for their capabilities remain outside the planning process.

Fujifilm offers a powerful example. Technologies developed through photographic film contributed to healthcare and advanced materials businesses. The transferable principle is to examine underlying capabilities—chemistry, precision processing, coating and quality control—then establish where they meet valuable demand. Technical relevance still needs to be combined with customer access and commercial execution.
Ping An demonstrates reinvention around interconnected customer needs. Its integrated-finance strategy connects financial services with health and senior care, supported by technology. The lesson for construction is to examine adjacent needs across a customer’s journey. Financing, specifying, building, operating and renewing an asset create opportunities for coordinated offers, although no supplier needs to own every activity.

This is where S-curve thinking becomes useful. Leaders can improve the current business while building the capabilities and demand for its successor. The next curve might involve circular feedstocks, specialist applications, renovation systems or continuing technical services. It should have a credible connection to existing strengths, rather than rely on diversification alone.

The customer frame also determines what innovation means. A concrete frame emphasises strength, cost and carbon per cubic metre. A materials frame adds integrated supply. A construction frame includes project time, labour and rework. An asset-owner frame adds durability and adaptability. Understanding urban living reveals affordability and resilience needs. Each wider frame provides insight; each also introduces activities and risks that may belong with partners.

Adaptive reuse makes the commercial tension tangible. Preserving a structure can reduce demand for new bulk materials while increasing demand for assessment, strengthening, compatible additions and repair. A supplier’s growth can come from solving a more valuable problem even when material intensity falls.

“Future gravity” provides direction: an ambition about what the business could become that pulls today’s capability development and investment towards a coherent opportunity.

Implications

Cemex: Assess whether existing technical and commercial capabilities can support higher-value application packages and selected adjacencies.
CRH: Turn portfolio breadth into coordinated customer solutions, with clear evidence of benefits beyond cross-selling.
Heidelberg Materials: Explore new applications for process, resource and materials expertise while retaining the discipline of its focused industrial strategy.
Holcim: Ensure expansion in Building Solutions produces repeatable customer value and attractive returns, with clear choices about integration.

These recommendations build on different strategic starting positions: CRH emphasises its connected portfolio, Heidelberg its heavy-materials focus, and Holcim its expansion in higher-value solutions.

3. Choose and experiment dynamically

Turn possibilities into a portfolio of justified commitments

A broader opportunity set makes prioritisation more important. Companies need a way to distinguish a compelling story from a business they have a right to win.

Haier’s RenDanHeYi model offers an organisational lens. Its emphasis on entrepreneurial teams, users and partner ecosystems challenges the assumption that innovation must be directed through a central hierarchy. Materials businesses can adapt the principle through accountable teams close to customer problems, supported by shared technical capabilities and explicit investment authority.
Energiesprong illustrates coordination around a measurable outcome. Developed in the Netherlands, its renovation approach combines building upgrades, industrialised components, energy technologies and performance guarantees. Part of the investment can be supported by future energy savings. The proposition aligns several participants around a better-performing home; its viability depends on delivery costs, funding and performance in use.

Begin strategic choice with “future-back thinking”. Imagine a valuable customer position in 2035, then work backwards to the capabilities, partnerships and decisions required. Pair that ambition with scenarios. Lower carbon might command a premium in one market and become a minimum specification in another. Industrialised construction could scale quickly in selected applications while remaining constrained elsewhere.

The business-model menu already extends beyond commodity sales: low-carbon differentiation, circular processing, integrated systems, installation support, digital ordering, repair, technology licensing and take-back. Each has different economics. Digital ordering can improve retention and reduce service costs without generating subscription income. Recovered materials create value only when collection, processing, quality and logistics work together.

More ambitious models change who pays, what they pay for and who carries risk. These might include performance contracts, asset monitoring or guaranteed recovery arrangements. They should be treated as options to test, with an identifiable payer and measurable benefit.

Options analysis should expose assumptions rather than conceal them within a single forecast. What must a customer pay? What utilisation does the investment require? Which partner controls a critical dependency? Set thresholds before a pilot begins, including acceptable delivery cost, repeat demand and the evidence needed for the next capital release. An option has value partly because management can decline the larger commitment.

Compare options on customer value, market attractiveness, right to win, capital exposure, feasibility and speed of learning. Maintain a “possibility portfolio” across core improvements, scalable adjacencies and emerging experiments. Decide explicitly whether to commit, partner, test, monitor or stop.

Implications

Cemex: Use portfolio discipline to prioritise a few growth options with clear synergies and customer evidence.
CRH: Compare acquisitions, connected solutions and organic investment using consistent capital and integration criteria.
Heidelberg Materials: Stage technology commitments against infrastructure readiness, demand and returns across alternative scenarios.
Holcim: Test circularity and systems offers for incremental margin, adoption and capital efficiency before wider rollout.

4. Deliver transformational impact

Build the operating system that makes growth repeatable

Transformation becomes commercially meaningful when it changes how a customer problem is solved. Many programmes accumulate pilots while leaving accountability, incentives and resource allocation largely intact.

DBS offers a useful lesson through its focus on digital capabilities, customer journeys and a start-up culture. The relevant question is whether cross-functional teams can improve an outcome end to end. For construction, that outcome might be a pour delivered reliably, a specification approved quickly or documentation completed without repeated requests.
Microsoft illustrates the resource commitments involved in business-model renewal. Its expansion through cloud and AI combines established customer relationships with new infrastructure, services and substantial investment. The lesson is to connect strategic ambition with the capabilities and economics required to deliver it, including the costs incurred before demand fully materialises.

Materials companies can map the customer journey from design and specification through procurement, delivery and asset use. A late approval, unreliable dispatch or missing test record may destroy more value than a small material-price difference. Digital tools matter when they improve these decisions and handovers.

Buildots provides a construction example: IHP has used its AI technology to analyse site imagery and support progress visibility on hospital projects. Better information can help suppliers coordinate with actual delivery needs. Factory-based construction and robotic wall printing similarly create demand for predictable formulations, interfaces and quality.

Decarbonisation requires an equally practical portfolio. Lower-clinker formulations, alternative fuels, recycling, carbon capture, mineralisation and emerging production routes differ in maturity and economics. Technical validation is one gate; customer qualification and profitable scale are others. Claims must explain their boundaries and verification.

The technology portfolio also needs different timescales. Calcined clay can reduce clinker requirements where suitable feedstock and market acceptance exist. Advanced concrete separation seeks to recover higher-value fractions. Emerging electrochemical production requires a different assessment of scale and integration. Leaders should compare each pathway on delivered product economics, not simply the appeal of its process.

Manage performance and transformation together. Established operations require safety, quality, availability, delivered-cost and cash measures. Emerging offers need evidence of qualified demand, repeat orders, scalable unit economics and capability development. Small experiments need learning objectives; large commitments need investment discipline.

Implications

Cemex: Connect its operational-excellence agenda to customer-level improvements, turning internal savings into stronger delivery economics.
CRH: Make shared capabilities strengthen local execution, while avoiding integration processes that slow customer response.
Heidelberg Materials: Scale proven technical and digital practices globally, with local accountability for adoption and commercial results.
Holcim: Link sustainable-product and solutions growth to project benefits, rather than relying on category labels as evidence of value.

5. Have the courage to lead at the frontiers

Change the commitments that shape behaviour

Leadership courage appears in concrete decisions: funding a new capability, questioning a familiar market, inviting dissent or withdrawing from an activity that no longer justifies its capital. It also means accepting greater responsibility when the business can manage it profitably.

Hilti’s Fleet Management shows how a product business can deepen its role through continuing service. The relationship involves tool availability, support and the customer’s productivity. The strategic lesson is to identify which customer problems justify a continuing commitment and what capabilities that commitment requires.
Rolls-Royce’s TotalCare makes the allocation of responsibility particularly clear. Customers pay through an engine flying-hour mechanism, while the provider assumes defined maintenance risks. This aligns commercial incentives with engine use and reliability. Materials companies can learn from that alignment without assuming the same contract suits a building or structure. Measurement, control and long-term liability differ significantly.

A warranty, maintenance agreement and performance contract are distinct commitments. A supplier should understand what it can control, how outcomes will be measured and whether it can absorb downside risk. Recurring revenue is attractive when the service economics support it.

Circularity requires similar realism. Designing buildings for dismantling and recording their materials can improve the prospects for reuse. Material passports, however, do not guarantee a future buyer, economical recovery or acceptable quality. Take-back offers need credible recovery routes and transparent responsibilities.

A materials-bank perspective makes this tangible: components are designed, documented and connected so that recovery remains possible. Commercial value then depends on access, condition, timing and demand. The opportunity is to build those conditions into project design and contracts early, rather than promise circularity at handover.

The organisational choice concerns where authority belongs. Local teams understand customers and operating constraints; global platforms can provide technology, standards and expertise. Leaders need incentives both to develop innovations and adopt good ideas from elsewhere. Clear decision rights matter more than repeated calls for collaboration.

For senior executives, the test is whether their own allocation of time, talent and capital reflects the future they describe. A compelling ambition should change the next investment review, the next customer conversation and the next leadership appointment.

Implications

Cemex: Pair demanding performance accountability with protected capacity to develop the next sources of growth.
CRH: Preserve entrepreneurial ownership while rewarding collaboration that improves customer outcomes across businesses.
Heidelberg Materials: Make technical leadership commercially accountable, and challenge investment assumptions as evidence changes.
Holcim: Translate its construction-partner ambition into explicit responsibilities, service capabilities and disciplined limits on risk.

The immediate agenda is manageable: choose one valuable customer problem, one operational improvement and one growth experiment. Give each an owner, a baseline and a decision date. Use the evidence to scale, revise or stop. Building materials leaders can then connect the performance of today’s assets with the potential of tomorrow’s business, and capture more of the value they help the world create.

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