• Download Peter Fisk’s masterclass The CFO Program: Markets, Megatrends and Reinventing Business  

Incredible technologies and geopolitical shifts, complex markets and stagnating growth, demanding customers and disruptive entrepreneurs, environmental crisis and social distrust, unexpected shocks and uncertain futures.

How do you make sense of today’s rapidly changing world? How will you succeed in tomorrow’s world?

We explore how businesses can survive and thrive, and move forwards to create a better future. How to reimagine strategy, to reinvent markets, to reenergise people. We consider what it means to combine meaningful purpose with superior profits, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.

The old codes of business don’t work anymore. The most innovative companies – from Amazon and Anthropic, to Blackrock and Bytedance, Climeworks and Coupang, to DJI and Deepmind – succeed with new codes.

The New CFO

The future business needs a CFO who looks forwards not backwards, who articulates futures beyond measuring performance, who engages the whole business in the innovation and growth initiatives that drive the future, that drive value creation.

The future CFO needs to be the value catalyst, value coordinator, value creator.

The definition of CFO has evolved and so has the real role of a CFO. The change itself highlights the growing importance of finance for driving business decisions and preparing the organisation for future growth.

The CFO of the future will need to navigate these disruptions from multiple angles and have a vision and the ability to drive colleagues across the organisation to deliver value by utilising the opportunities presented by these disruptions.

The modern CFO is no longer just a numbers person — they are a storyteller, risk navigator, systems thinker, and culture shaper. They are central to aligning strategy with execution, investment with purpose, and innovation with performance. Today’s CFO must balance the short-term imperative of profitability with the long-term demands of resilience, relevance, and regeneration.

This means:

• Allocating capital to enable transformation, not just preserve legacy systems.
• Developing new metrics that reflect intangible value — from data and ecosystems to sustainability and innovation.
• Partnering with the CEO, CHRO, and CTO to shape strategy, culture, and technology investments.
• Engaging investors around long-term value creation, not just earnings per share.

CFOs now play a critical role in helping their organisations reimagine what they do, how they work, and why they exist. And in many of the world’s most forward-looking companies, the CFO is helping to drive bold reinvention.

Part 1: CHANGING WORLD

• What makes you future-ready? The future is here but unevenly distributed
• Thriving in a world of relentless change: look forwards not backwards
• Every industry is shaken up, comparing revenue and value, big is rarely best
• Megatrends and disruptions: 18 future arenas, AI and converging tech
• Having a north star: purpose and vision while everything changes
• World’s most inspiring companies: ASML to BYD, Colossal to Schneider

Part 2: REINVENTING BUSINESS

• DYB, how will you reinvent your business, before somebody else does?
• Lamborghini tractors and Samsung groceries, DSM and Fujifilm
• Riding the S Curves: shifting the core, change before your have to
• New disruptions: AI and data, climate and society, networks and Zalpha
• Business transformation, the new superpower, being in permanent beta
• Value creation: Profitable growth, business transformation, and the CFO

Here are some great examples of transformations, and the role of CFOs

On’s CFO

On Running, the Swiss sportswear brand known for its innovative performance running shoes, has experienced rapid global growth by blending product innovation with a strong lifestyle brand identity. Their reinvention focuses on delivering cutting-edge technology in footwear, combined with an aspirational brand culture that connects deeply with consumers.

Their CFO, Martin Hoffmann, has been pivotal in supporting this transformation. He has balanced aggressive investment in research and development, marketing, and global expansion with strong financial discipline and transparency. Under his leadership, On Running successfully navigated its 2021 IPO, securing capital to fund growth while maintaining investor confidence.

Hoffmann’s role extends beyond traditional finance — he drives cross-functional collaboration to align product innovation, supply chain agility, and brand-building with clear financial goals. This approach illustrates how CFOs in fast-growing consumer brands act as strategic enablers, fueling innovation without sacrificing sustainable profitability.

Perhaps to demonstrate his impact, Hoffmann was recently made On’s new CEO.

Unilever’s CFO

Unilever has long positioned itself at the forefront of purpose-led business. But turning sustainability into a competitive advantage requires more than good intentions — it demands financial alignment.

Under former CFO Graeme Pitkethly, Unilever embedded sustainability into its capital allocation and reporting frameworks. Finance worked closely with ESG teams to build credible business cases for climate and social impact initiatives, while also translating these efforts into metrics investors could understand.

Pitkethly championed integrated reporting and aligned executive incentives with long-term sustainable value. In doing so, he demonstrated the CFO’s potential to connect purpose and performance — ensuring that values were backed by viable economics.

Microsoft’s CFO

When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft, he initiated one of the most successful corporate reinventions in history — shifting from legacy software to cloud-based platforms and services, and more recently, becoming a frontrunner in AI.

Behind this transformation was Amy Hood, Microsoft’s CFO since 2013. She played a vital role in allocating capital toward Azure, Microsoft’s cloud business, and in managing acquisitions such as LinkedIn and OpenAI investments. Her financial leadership helped balance innovation with profitability, guiding Microsoft through a major business model shift without losing investor confidence.

Hood also reoriented internal finance around long-term growth, transforming reporting and forecasting to reflect recurring revenues, usage models, and ecosystem value.

Shopify’s CFO

Shopify began as a platform to help small businesses build online stores. Today, it’s a global commerce infrastructure provider with embedded payments, logistics, and analytics — part of a broader trend toward platform-based, service-rich business models.

CFOs at Shopify have played a pivotal role in managing this growth while preserving operational discipline. From funding new verticals to refining pricing models and responding to investor pressure, the finance team enabled rapid transformation without compromising the company’s entrepreneurial DNA.

This example illustrates the CFO’s role as an enabler of digital innovation and ecosystem monetization — a far cry from traditional ledger-based accounting.

DBS Bank’s CFO

DBS, one of Southeast Asia’s largest banks, is now regarded as a benchmark for digital transformation in financial services. Its reinvention focused on building digital products, agile ways of working, and even cultural transformation.

CFO Chng Sok Hui has worked closely with CEO Piyush Gupta to ensure that finance drives — not lags — this transformation. From digitizing financial operations to redefining key performance indicators around innovation, digital engagement, and ecosystem participation, the finance function became a strategic partner in execution.

Finance also helped develop DBS’s sustainability roadmap, integrated digital KPIs into investor communications, and provided the fiscal discipline to fund innovation responsibly.

Future fit CFOs

These examples show that transformation is no longer just a CEO or strategy team exercise — it’s a cross-functional leadership imperative, with the CFO at the core. As companies navigate a world of accelerated change, the CFO’s ability to connect future-focused thinking with current performance, to balance risk with opportunity, and to speak the language of both markets and mission will define who wins and who falls behind.

Future-fit organisations need future-fit CFOs — leaders who go beyond the numbers, ask the hard questions, and unlock new sources of growth and value.

Transformation is not a one-off project — it’s a way of being. For CFOs, this means evolving from guardians of the past to architects of the future. The opportunity is enormous: to not just report on value, but to create it — sustainably, strategically, and boldly.

And as the world continues to change at pace, it’s clear: the best CFOs won’t just adapt to the future. They’ll help shape it.