Peter Fisk

How was your 2025? For me, it felt like a year of economic recalibration, and tech acceleration.

After the inflationary shocks of recent years, uncertainty and complexity became the normal, and global markets transitioned to a new era of AI-enabled productivity and innovative possibilities.

From Campari in Italy to Cartier in Switzerland, Mercedes Benz in Germany to Minibea Mitsui in Japen, Orascom in Egypt to Oxxo in Mexico, “reinvention” was on the mind of every business leader I worked with.

It’s only when you look back that it’s really possible to see what a pivotal year 2025 has been. The $5 trillion valuations and thinking machines, agentic workflows and premium humanity, regenerative business models and hyper-personalisation, China’s EV revolutionaries and Dyson’s incredible Airstrait.

So here is what I learnt in 2025, as I travelled around the world, working with incredible companies and impressive business leaders. What did you learn from 2025, and are you ready to go further, even faster, in 2026?

January 2025 … Building brands with more spritz

My year started with a Spritz, or more correctly, with a project exploring the future of Campari, where Aperol Spritz has dominated their portfolio for the last two decades. What next, in a world of shifting tastes, social behaviours and aspirational wellness? Campari is still a Milan-based family business, and I worked with the Italian company’s leaders around the world to explore new innovative ideas in drinks concepts, brand experiences and business models. Key will be to take a more consumer-centric approach, recognising different audiences and cultures, then driving occasions and experiences, then products.

• What will you do next? … AI rocket ships and quantum speed, hairy mammoths and Olympic champions. Now is a time of great acceleration. My take on the biggest ideas shaking up markets, and the minds of business leaders. 
• The Rise of Jio … from free phone to super app, and now India’s lifestyle brand, created by the petrochemical giant Reliance … How to reimagine your future with new audiences, in new sectors, with new brands and business models
• Be More Human … How technical brands are finding their voice: how auto brands look beyond the car, pharma brands look beyond the pill, tech brands look beyond the spec, to engage and inspire, build empathy and desire.

Across the Alps in Switzerland, I explored the future of commodity trading with Holcim, and the changing nature of supply chains and commercial strategies for the world’s leading cement business. I also helped their finance teams to step up in their role from reporting the past to envisioning the future, to help leaders focus on the best innovation opportunities for value creation, rather than just revenue or profit, and how to engage shareholders in their “NextGen Growth” strategy. While cement has been a major carbon emitter, this is a great example of putting sustainability at the core of strategy, innovation and growth.

Also in January …

• AI as industrial agent … The Economist’s The World Ahead 2025 gave us a deep dive into the “Trump Effect” on global trade when his planned tariffs were just bluster,  and the transition of AI from “creative toy” to “industrial agent.”
• Sovereign tech … BlackRock’s 2025 Global Outlook introduced its mega forces framework, urging investors to pivot toward AI infrastructure and “Sovereign Tech” as traditional business cycles break down.
• $4 trillion business … Nvidia became the first company to achieve a $4 trillion market valuation, driven by the announcement at CES 2025 of its massive rollout of its “Blackwell” chips
• Geopolitical tech … France and the UAE announced national “AI sovereignty” funds to build localised infrastructure, moving away from US-based clouds.

February 2025 … Das Beste oder Nichts

Adidas stepped up in 2025 with more world marathon majors medals than any other running shoe brand, and in Nuremberg, I worked with their Global Running team to explore what’s next. Led by SVP Alberto Uncini Manganelli, they recognised that the real challenge is not just to create great products, but to enable consumers to achieve more. One example was their launch of the world’s first dedicated treadmill shoe, the Treadwell, months in advance of the announcement by World Athletics a few months later of the first World Treadmill Running Championships in 2026, where anybody can compete against the world’s best asynchronously, on a treadmill.

• Coaching Champions … Emmanuel Wanyonyi, the young Kenyan 800m runner, was one step away from an Olympic gold medal at Paris 2024. Claudio Berardelli, his coach, thought about what to say to him.
• The Fender Guitar Experience … Transforming guitar culture through digital ecosystem-based innovation, from online learning to community building, new business models and enhanced brand experience.
• The AI Pioneers … 10 pioneering companies redefining business through AI and technology … ASML, Deepseek, GitLab, Illumina, KlimaDAO, Rocket Lab, Shopify, Slack, 37 Signals, and Waymo.

A little further north in Germany I worked with the leaders of Mercedes Benz, in partnership with St Gallen Business School, to explore automotive futures, in a market increasingly dominated by Chinese EVs. We explored new strategies and innovations, looking for inspiration into sectors like consumer electronics, retail and entertainment. For the German business, this meant a focus on AI-driven driving experiences beyond the powertrain.

Also in February …

• Organisational stagility … Deloitte’s 2025 Global Human Capital Trends coined the term “stagility” meaning the need for companies to balance structural stability with extreme agility as AI eliminates traditional entry-level roles.
• Delivering agentic AI … Gartner’s Top Strategic Tech Trends for 2025 highlighted “Agentic AI” and “Spatial Computing” as the two technologies that will define corporate spending for the next 36 months.
• Unilever splits … the UK/Dutch consumer giant announced the spin-off of its ice cream business (to be know as the Magnum Ice Cream Company, including Ben & Jerry’s) pivoting entirely towards beauty and well-being and home care
• Super Bowl economy … a record $20 billion was spent on Super Bowl-related commerce, with Temu and TikTok Shop dominating the ad slots.

March 2025 … “Future Junkies” in Manhattan

“Future Junkies” launched in New York in March, my new project to explore how the world’s best leaders are reimagining the future. Junkies are obsessives, and these leaders (think of Nvidia’s Jensen Huang who started 30 years ago dreaming of his superpowered chips, or OpenAI’s Sam Altman obsessed with what’s next). The project explores the diversity of emerging trends, and how leaders can build a forward-looking mindset that flows into strategies, innovations and action. It’s a research platform for new keynote events and workshops, and also a living futures book, constantly updated with the latest ideas and trends, insight and foresight.

• The Great Reinvention … How every industry is being radically shaken up, and rapidly reinvented. Who will be the winners and losers, what will matter most, and what comes next?
• The Innovation Mindsets of America vs Europe vs Asia … from the American dream to Europe’s social responsibility to Asia’s new ambition. What drives innovation, growth, and the future?
• The B2B Superpowers … ABB to Biontech, Climeworks and DSM, Fedex to Holcim, Illumina and Nvidia, Open AI to Stripe, Vestas and Waymo. Who are the most inspiring B2B companies, and how are they reinventing themselves?

Iberdrola has seen dramatic growth in market value over the last year, as one of the leaders in the clean energy revolution. Partnering with Headspring, I worked with their leaders from around the world to explore how to accelerate decarbonisation, and their own business. We dived deep into the strategies of peers like Next Era Energy and Schneider Electric to explore the changing business models, and what’s working and what’s not. We explored my model of the 4Ds of the energy transition – decarbonised, digitalised, deregulated and decentralised – and what they mean together.

Also in March …

• BYD’s international surge … the Chinese EV giant officially opened its first major factory in Hungary, radically undercutting European automakers on price.
• Accelerating clean energy … IEA’s Global Energy Investment 2025 reported that for the first time, investment in “Grid Modernization” and “AI Data Center Cooling” surpassed investment in new solar capacity.
• Simpler sustainability … a global trend of deregulation saw the US and UK slash ESG reporting requirements for small businesses to stimulate startup growth.
• Tech billionaires … Forbes’ World’s Billionaires List 2025 highlighted a massive shift in wealth toward “compute barons”, meaning individuals whose net worth is tied to semiconductor supply chains and datacenter ownership.

April 2025 … Megatrends accelerated by tech convergence

Megatrends 2035 is my new report defining the 6 dynamic forces shaking up every industry. While AI dominates, its impacts is as much in accelerates the convergence of other technologies, like genomics, robotics, networks and batteries. And also in offering new ways to address other megatrend challenges like climate change, ageing populations, dense urbanisation, and geopolitical fragmentation.

• Megatrends 2035: The 6 dramatic forces shaking up every market and driving every business to reinvent itself, from demographic revolution to exponential intelligence, regenerative systems and humanity rising.
• The New Leadership DNA … How do the world’s most inspiring business leaders thrive in a world of relentless change? Inspired by Satya Nadella and Sam Altman, Jessica Jackley and Mary Barra, Melania Perkins and Nik Storonsky.
• Performer Transformers … the art of delivering today and creating tomorrow. How today’s best leaders need to have a dual mindset, connecting short and long-term focus in a world of continual change and reinvention

NTT Data is consistently ranked as one of the world’s most innovative companies, but the Japanese tech business is less well known than most innovators. Its  transformation seeks to align its global capabilities to deliver mega client projects. For me, the real challenge is to help corporate clients themselves to see the opportunities of AI and convergent tech, positioning NTT Data as a strategic partner in business transformation rather than just a very smart IT supplier.

Also in April …

• Liberation day … Trump introduced sweeping new import tariffs, based on bilateral trade “imbalances” and therefore penalising countries with strong exports to the US, and causing the worst stock market falls since Covid-19.
• Spatial first … Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro launched as a “spatial-first” device, featuring a 3D-capture camera as the new industry standard, and yet many consumers still wonder whether Apple’s launches are getting ever-more incremental.
• Waymo innovative … Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2025 report awarded top honours to Waymo and Nvidia. OpenAI and Mistral AI, followed, emphasising the rise of “Sovereign AI” startups in Europe and Asia.
• Smarter growth … IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook still shows global growth at around 2-3% (1% or less in Europe), but with more optimism, driven by AI-driven productivity gains in the service sectors of developed economies.

May 2025 … Leading in the footsteps of Columbus

Every year I work with a small group of global executives to explore their futures, transform their organisations, and themselves. This year’s 6 month Global AMP program, organised with IE Business School, came to a climax in beautiful Segovia, in northern Spain. In a historic room, where Christopher Columbus was asked by the Spanish Queen, Isabella, to explore the Americas in 1492, we mapped out new strategies for the reinvention of businesses from Argentina to Sweden, energy to retail.

• Space Thinking … reframing markets as spaces not sectors … talking in the customer’s language, anticipating unmet needs, designing propositions that resonate, and driving innovation and profitable growth
• A Guided Tour of Europe’s Innovators … 15 Inspiring Cities and 15 Innovative Companies: from Adyen in Amsterdam to DeepMind in London, Too Good to Go in Copenhagen and GoodAI in Prague
• The Net Positive Playbook … building a new generation of businesses that give more than they take, reinventing organisations for sustainable growth

Transformation is the new business leaders’ superpower. So it was great to continue my great partnership with StrategyTools to deliver the “Transform!” business simulation where business leaders, as competing exec teams of leading companies, race to reinvent themselves, and create $60 billion of market value. Simulating 10 years in 10 weeks, they rapidly learn how to master P&Ls and DCFs, acquisitions and mergers, changing regulation and employee strikes, to create a business fit for the future.

Also in May …

Top 10 Product Innovations of 2025

From Apple’s intelligence to Dyson’s hair straighteners, Samsung’s ring and Sony’s EV, product innovations were straight out of sci-fi movie of a decade ago. AI is now embedded in almost every walk of life, often without us realising:

1. Apple Intelligence (Vision Pro 2): The first wearable to replace the laptop for many professionals, featuring “Eyes-Free” AI navigation and ultra-high-definition spatial multitasking.

2. Dyson Airstrait 2.0: A masterclass in “hard-tech” engineering that uses high-pressure air to style hair without heat damage, becoming the fastest-selling beauty tool in history.

3. The “Humanoid” Optimus (Gen 3): Tesla’s first commercially available robot for light industrial work, marking the beginning of the “Robotics-as-a-Service” (RaaS) business model.

4. Meta Orion Glasses: The first true AR glasses that look like standard frames, allowing users to see digital “holograms” over their real-world environment during business meetings.

5. Google Gemini 2.0 Ultra: The first “Omni-Model” that can see, hear, and speak in real-time with zero latency, effectively acting as a personal chief of staff for millions.

6. Rivian R2: The “Electric Jeep” for the masses; its launch was the most successful automotive debut of 2025, proving that affordable EVs can still be “cool.”

7. Samsung Galaxy Ring: The product that took “Health-Tech” mainstream by providing hospital-grade sleep and stress tracking in a device that never needs to be taken off.

8. Sony “Afeela” EV: A collaboration with Honda, this car is the first “Computer on Wheels,” designed for autonomous transit where the interior serves as a mobile cinema/office.

9. Starlink Mini: A backpack-sized satellite dish that brought high-speed internet to the most remote “Digital Nomad” locations on earth, fundamentally changing the “Work from Anywhere” concept.

10. Adobe GenStudio: A specialized “AI-First” creative suite that allows brands to generate 1,000 unique, brand-safe ad variations in seconds, revolutionizing the marketing agency model.

Top 10 Business Leaders of 2025

Leadership is more about the future than ever before – making sense of a changing world, seeing the best opportunities, envisioning new business models, and leading the transformational journey to get there. Here were my top 10 leaders, who were also influential across their industries:

1. Jensen Huang (Nvidia): The “General of the AI Revolution.” His vision for accelerated computing has made him the most watched leader in the world, influencing every sector from healthcare to heavy industry.

2. Lisa Su (AMD): Credited with breaking the Nvidia monopoly by providing the “open alternative” to AI chips, ensuring the global market remains competitive and innovative.

3. Sam Altman (OpenAI): Continues to navigate the complex intersection of global policy, AI ethics, and product deployment, effectively setting the pace for how society interacts with artificial intelligence.

4. Fei-Fei Li (World Labs): The “Godmother of AI” launched World Labs in 2025, pioneering “Spatial Intelligence”—the ability for AI to understand the 3D physical world, a breakthrough for robotics.

5. Bernard Arnault (LVMH): Proved that luxury can survive the AI era by doubling down on “Human-Only” experiences and artisanal scarcity, maintaining LVMH’s status as Europe’s cultural and economic anchor.

6. Satya Nadella (Microsoft): Successfully integrated AI across the world’s most used software suite, turning Microsoft into the “Operating System of the AI Economy” without losing market share to agile startups.

7. Elon Musk (Tesla/xAI/SpaceX): Remains influential through the “Grok” AI ecosystem and the successful commercialization of the “Optimus” humanoid robot, which began pilot testing in factories in late 2025.

8. Shemara Wikramanayake (Macquarie): Emerged as the leading global voice on “Green Infrastructure Finance,” directing billions into the renewable energy grids required to power massive AI data centers.

9. Mira Murati (Former OpenAI/New Venture): After her high-profile departure, her new venture into “Safe Robotics” has become the most anticipated startup launch of 2025, influencing the future of human-robot interaction.

10. Gwynne Shotwell (SpaceX): While Musk focuses on AI, Shotwell has turned Starlink into a global telecommunications juggernaut, providing the connectivity backbone for 2025’s “Remote-Everything” business models.

Top 10 Business Books of 2025

And finally books. Yes, we’re still reading, and books create platforms for new ideas, provocations and progress. They capture the aspirations and insights about what comes next, and how we can thrive in a world we perhaps haven’t yet decoded:

1. The Thinking Machine by Stephen Witt: The definitive biography of Nvidia and the 30-year journey to the AI revolution.

2. House of Huawei by Eva Dou: An investigative look at how the Chinese giant navigated the “Tech Cold War” to remain a global leader.

3. The Agentic Era by Andrew Ng: A strategic guide for CEOs on how to transition from “Software-First” to “Agent-First” business models.

4. Abundance Thinking by Peter Diamandis: A 2025 update on how AI and robotics are solving the world’s “Scarcity” problems (energy, water, and food).

5. The Circular Economy Handbook by Catherine Weetman: The essential guide for complying with 2025’s new “Digital Product Passport” regulations.

6. Asynchronous Mastery by Jason Fried: The co-founder of Basecamp details how to build a billion-dollar company without a single “status meeting.”

7. The Humanity Premium by Scott Galloway: An analysis of why human-led services will become the ultimate luxury in a world of 5-cent AI content.

8. Sovereign Tech by Marietje Schaake: A deep dive into why nations are reclaiming their digital borders and what it means for global trade.

9. Tokenizing the World by Larry Fink: The BlackRock CEO explains why every financial asset will eventually exist as a digital token on a blockchain.

10. Regenerative Leadership by Laura Storm: A roadmap for moving beyond “Sustainability” to “Net-Positive” corporate governance.

Here’s saluting a great year of learning and progress in 2025. Onwards to an accelerating future … with thanks and best wishes to everyone I worked with in 2025!

• Download the Global Business Trends Report 2026 by Peter Fisk. 

The business world in 2026 will be defined by accelerating change across technology, society, and the economy.

Business leaders must navigate a fractured trust environment, evolving consumer behaviours, and geopolitical complexity while harnessing AI, digital platforms, and data-driven insights. Sustainability, purpose, and social impact are now central to strategy and brand relevance.  They must address hybrid workforces, skills gaps, and organisational reinvention, while ecosystems, platform models, and experience-led commerce create new growth pathways.

Success will favour organisations that combine agility, cultural intelligence, technological fluency, and purpose-driven innovation to anticipate shifts, engage communities, and deliver resilient, profitable outcomes in a rapidly evolving global landscape.

Each year, there is a huge array of trend report produced by business commentators, research agencies, consulting firms, and others. They are full of anecdotes, insights and ideas. Collectively – combining consumer and technology, economic and geopolitical perspectives – they create a directional map of the future, and the emerging trends, the most significant challenges and opportunities for business. That’s why the Trend Kaleidoscope is so valuable.

Just to get you started, here are a few examples:

• AI ambivalence: excitement vs fear
  People both embrace and fear AI, creating opportunities for brands to lead responsibly and educate consumers.
  Examples: IKEA designs responsible AI applications for home use; Samsung launches “AI for All” consumer education; Google’s AI Principles guide ethical deployment.
• AI-personalisation at scale
  Hyper-personalised products, services, and marketing are powered by AI, going beyond basic recommendations to anticipate needs.
  Examples: Spotify generates ultra-tailored playlists; Sephora uses AI for personalised beauty try-ons; Netflix adapts content thumbnails for individual viewing preferences
• Boundaryless ecosystems
  Companies collaborate across sectors to co-create value, breaking traditional industry boundaries.
  Examples: Tesla partners with energy providers for solar + EV integration; Apple collaborates with Hermès for luxury wearables; Salesforce builds partner networks across finance, retail, and healthcare.

Below you will find my summaries of all the major trend reports for 2026, indicating the challenges and opportunities most relevant to business leaders:

Economics and global trends

Global business in 2026 is shaped by slowbalisation, geopolitical tensions, and structural economic shifts. US–China competition, regionalisation, and demographic pressures influence strategy, investment, and supply chains. Inflation, interest-rate stability, and capital allocation challenge executives to balance cost control with growth. Climate, migration, and future jobs further shape societal expectations and workforce availability. Companies adopting resilient, flexible supply chains, scenario-based planning, and regionally adaptive strategies are better positioned to manage risk. Leaders who integrate macroeconomic insight, technological trends, and cultural intelligence can capitalise on emerging opportunities while navigating volatility in increasingly complex global markets.

The Economist The World Ahead 2026

Geopolitics, slowbalisation and structural economic shifts define the macro landscape; strategic resilience matters more than short‑term gains. Businesses must align with demographic and techno‑geopolitical currents to stay competitive.

• Slowbalisation and regionalisation — Toyota near‑shore production; Samsung local fabs; Siemens European supply hubs.

• US–China strategic competition — Qualcomm / TSMC supply reconfiguration; Intel U.S. chip builds; Huawei diversification.

• Inflation pathway shaping investment — Nestlé pricing strategies; Unilever cost optimisation; BP energy investment planning.

• Demographic headwinds — L’Oréal age‑inclusive markets; AARP partner programmes; Toyota mobility tech for older consumers.

• Tech‑geostrategy impact — ASML ster­eochemistry supply; Nvidia GPU flows; Ericsson 5G expansion.

FT Business, Finance and Economy Trends for 2026

Interest rate equilibrium, AI productivity debates and supply chain rewiring shape capital and operational strategies. Executives must balance structural cost pressures with growth ambitions.

• Interest‑rate plateau effects — Financial services repricing; real estate funding models; corporate capex timing.

• Supply chain resilience investments — DHL regional hubs; Walmart supplier diversification; Bosch just‑in‑case inventory.

• AI productivity imperative — Microsoft AI workplace tools; Google AI workflows; SAP AI enterprise modules.

• Cyber and regulatory risk focus — JPMorgan cybersecurity spend; Deloitte risk frameworks; BAE Systems defence tech.

• Corporate balance sheet health — Unilever capital discipline; Toyota conservative cash positions; Apple treasury management.

BBC Global Economy and Society 2026

Climate impacts, migration and future jobs frame macro narratives; social context matters as much as economic data. Understanding cultural and human shifts unlocks new opportunity mappings.

• Climate‑driven economic shocks — Insurer risk pricing; Munich Re climate models; Ørsted offshore wind scaling.

• Migration and labour shifts — Salesforce global teams; Accenture distributed workforce; McKinsey international talent flows.

• Future jobs and skills — Coursera workforce reskilling; IBM tech training; Amazon upskilling programmes.

• Digital inequality spotlight — Telstra rural connectivity; Google digital skills push; Microsoft broadband initiatives.

• Cultural economy growth — Spotify global creator community; Warner Bros integrated franchises; Tencent entertainment diversification.

Fortune Future of Business CEO Survey 2026

CEO priorities cluster around AI investment, talent strategy and risk navigation; confidence varies by region and sector.
Leadership shifts from cost‑cutting to strategic growth bets.

• AI investment surge — Nvidia enterprise uptake; Adobe AI creative suites; Siemens factory automation AI.

• Talent realignment — LinkedIn skill‑based hiring; Google remote flexibility; PwC workforce transformation.

• Risk and resilience planning — KPMG scenario modelling; HSBC risk committees; BCG crisis playbooks.

• Sustainable finance — BlackRock ESG funds; Unilever purpose capital deployment; Schneider Electric green portfolios.

• Innovation confidence signals — Apple R&D spend; Alphabet moonshots; Samsung product cycle acceleration.

Consumer and cultural trends

In 2026, consumer behaviour is shaped by trust erosion, economic pressures, and evolving cultural identities. Cost-of-living concerns drive value-oriented, tiered, and purpose-driven purchases, while AI generates both excitement and caution. Identity segmentation and polarised values mean brands must engage communities based on beliefs, interests, and digital habits. Multipolar global markets influence localisation and supply strategies. Attention is fragmented across platforms, creating opportunities in micro-moments, creator-driven content, and short-form experiences. Hybrid lifestyles and Gen Z/Alpha micro-communities shape product adoption. Brands that integrate emotional design, authenticity, and purpose into experiences achieve deeper relevance, loyalty, and growth across diverse global markets.

Ipsos Global Trends 2025/26

Consumers face fractured trust in institutions and shifting cultural identities; brands must navigate value pressures and technology ambivalence. Understanding underlying societal sentiments is key to resilient strategy and authentic engagement.

• Trust recession across institutions — Patagonia building radical transparency; DBS Bank using trust-by-design digital governance; Estée Lauder authenticity initiatives.

• Cost-of-living psychology reshaping behaviour — Aldi’s value-first strategy; Temu’s ultra-value model; On Running tiered pricing for new markets.

• AI ambivalence: excitement vs fear — Google’s AI Principles; IKEA’s responsible AI design; Samsung’s “AI for All” consumer education.

• Identity segmentation and polarised values — Nike’s community segmentation; TikTok vertical communities shaping product offers; Unilever’s diverse brand portfolios.

• Multipolar world affecting consumer choices — BYD’s dominance in emerging markets; Heineken’s tailored regional portfolios; Carrefour’s local sourcing models.

Mintel Consumer Trends 2026

Consumers redefine value, authenticity, and life stages; brands must deliver emotional connection, purposeful innovation, and transparent experiences. Strategies grounded in cultural truth and emotional relevance outperform generic value propositions.

• Emotional value over price alone — Starbucks offering personalised experiences; Sephora community events; Nike member perks.

• Identity as currency — LEGO fan communities shaping creation; Glossier creator collaborations; Adidas customised lines.

• Human connection demand — Peloton community building; Lululemon ambassador programmes; REI co‑op events.

• Anti‑algorithm preference — Spotify personalised playlists with opt‑out controls; Netflix mindful recommendation features; Apple focusing on privacy signals.

• Life‑stage fluidity — H&M “all‑age” collections; Marriott flex travel packages; Apple devices for multi‑generational use.

GWI Global Consumer Trends 2026

Deep behavioural data shows consumers calibrating spending, attention, and identity in a digital world; brands must map behaviours rather than demographics. Understanding micro‑moments and intentional engagement delivers strategic advantage.

• Intentional spending prioritisation — Patagonia mission purchases; IKEA affordable sustainability ranges; Uniqlo value basics.

• Fragmented digital attention — TikTok short‑form activations; YouTube Shorts usage; Discord community engagement.

• Creator economy’s influence — Fenty Beauty collaborating with influencers; Gymshark athlete partnerships; TikTok creators shaping trends.

• Gaming culture mainstreaming — Fortnite in‑game events; Nike virtual sneakers; Coca‑Cola esports sponsorship activation.

• Identity‑driven consumption — Dr. Martens subculture appeal; Vans skate culture; Supreme limited drops.

Euromonitor Top 10 Global Consumer Trends 2026

Consumers want convenience, comfort, authenticity, and smart choices; traditional assumptions about luxury and mass markets are shifting. Brands that blend pragmatism with emotional resonance lead category growth.

• Smart frugality — Lidl value innovation; Muji minimalist essentials; Target curated value lines.

• Eco‑realism — Allbirds sustainable materials; Patagonia recycled product lines; IKEA circular offerings.

• Redefined convenience — Amazon Dash and one‑click services; Grab super‑app fulfilment; Domino’s AI ordering.

• Hybrid lifestyles — Zoom flexible work solutions; Peloton multi‑format classes; Marriott long‑stay options.

• Aging diversified consumers — AARP targeted services; L’Oréal age‑inclusive beauty; Toyota mobility solutions.

Future Factory Youth and Culture Trends 2026

Youth culture transcends authenticity to emotional design and micro‑community codes; Gen Z and Alpha define cultural capital. Brands that decode emotional aesthetics and niche communities unlock cultural relevance.

• Post‑authentic aesthetics — Supreme cultural codes; Balenciaga avant‑brand expression; Palace skate appropriation.

• Micro‑communities impact — Roblox game communities influencing fashion; Discord niche fan groups; TikTok subcultures.

• Emotional design preference — Apple intuitive UX; Google expressive AI assistants; Nike experience‑driven design.

• Creator collaborations — Vans artist collabs; Converse Chuck Taylor artist series; Puma designer drops.

• Visual cultural codes — Instagram micro‑formats; TikTok trends shaping product palettes; Pinterest trend forecasting.

TikTok What’s Next: Trend Report 2026

Short‑form entertainment and micro‑interests define attention; communities organise around shared interests rather than demographics. Brands succeed by embedding in platform culture and co‑creating with niche storytellers.

• Joy‑seeking content behaviour — Duolingo light‑hearted campaigns; Innocent smoothies playful content; Coca‑Cola feel‑good storytelling.

• Micro‑influencer impact — Local fashion brands via micro‑creators; regional food influencers boosting new restaurants; indie beauty via TikTok creators.

• Entertainment‑led discovery — Netflix trailers as cultural events; Spotify editorial playlists; Red Bull extreme content.

• Vertical communities — BeautyTok, BookTok shaping product trends; FitnessTok drives digital fitness adoption; HomeTok influences décor.

• UGC‑fuelled engagement — GoPro user videos; DJI creator contest; Canon photography challenges.

TrendWatching 2026 Trend Framework

The “Expectation Economy” compels personalised, seamless and sustainable experiences; brands must exceed baseline expectations. Purpose, tech and experience fusion unlock lasting differentiation.

• Expectation economy rising — Apple ecosystem cohesion; Amazon Prime delivery standards; Zara trend responsiveness.

• AI‑driven personalisation — Spotify personalised mixes; Netflix tailored recommendations; Sephora AI beauty tools.

• Sustainable aspiration — Nike Move to Zero; Tesla EV leadership; IKEA renewable targets.

• Experience fusion — Disney Genie integrated experiences; Starbucks Reserve immersive spaces; Apple experiential stores.

• Purpose‑led innovation — Ben & Jerry’s social missions; Patagonia activism; The Body Shop ethical sourcing.

Technology, digital and AI transformation

In 2026, technology and AI are central to business transformation, driving operational efficiency, innovation, and customer experience. Organisations are adopting AI ecosystems, autonomous systems, and real-time decision architectures to enhance productivity and resilience. Digital trust, cyber-security, and composable enterprise architectures are essential to safeguard data and maintain credibility. Cloud operating models, connected commerce, and AI-powered experiences redefine customer interactions. Companies that integrate human-AI collaboration, leverage multi-agent systems, and adopt platform-based approaches outperform peers. Successful transformation requires aligning technology, talent, and organisational design, enabling businesses to capitalise on digital opportunities while managing risks across global operations.

Deloitte Tech Trends 2026

AI at enterprise scale, autonomous operations and cyber resilience define digital leadership; data is the strategic asset. Transformations are holistic — technology, operating models and talent combined.

• AI ecosystems adoption — Siemens smart factories; Amazon AI ops; Google Cloud enterprise stacks.

• Autonomous business operations — Tesla manufacturing AI; Amazon fulfilment automation; JD Logistics robotics.

• Data‑driven organisations — SAP data platforms; Snowflake analytics; Netflix data culture.

• Cyber and digital trust — Palo Alto Networks security; CrowdStrike cloud defence; IBM Zero Trust frameworks.

• Tech for sustainability — Microsoft carbon tools; Google clean energy AI; Dell lifecycle programmes.

Gartner Top Strategic Technology Trends 2026

Strategic priorities span AI agents, digital trust, industry cloud platforms and composable architectures; CIOs reshape roadmaps. Technology becomes both a growth engine and risk frontier.

• AI agents and multi‑agent systems — OpenAI assistants; Amazon Alexa enterprise skills; IBM Watson orchestration.

• Industry cloud platforms — Salesforce industry clouds; AWS vertical stacks; Oracle sector suites.

• Digital trust architectures — Okta identity services; Cloudflare trust stacks; Cisco secure connectivity.

• Composable applications — Microsoft Power Platform modular apps; Google Workspace integrations; Snowflake extensible workloads.

• Hyperautomation across functions — UiPath RPA; Automation Anywhere; Blue Prism enterprise bots.

Publicis Sapient Digital Business Transformation Outlook 2026

Connected commerce, customer experience platforms and digital‑first operating models define competitive advantage. Experience‑centric digital innovation wins new markets.

• Connected commerce ecosystems — Shopify multi‑channel; Alibaba super‑app; Salesforce commerce links.

• Cloud operating models — AWS enterprise shift; Google Cloud transformation; Microsoft Azure business suites.

• AI‑powered customer journeys — Sephora AI try‑on; Netflix recommendation engines; Starbucks personalised rewards.

• Experience‑driven products — Apple seamless devices; Nike member experiences; Peloton community features.

• Agile organisational design — Spotify squads; ING tribe model; Atlassian team autonomy.

IBM Business & Tech Trends for 2026

Business resilience and AI‑enabled decision making are strategic essentials; leaders must treat uncertainty as opportunity. AI needs trust, transparency and real‑time orchestration for enterprise impact.

• Uncertainty as strategic advantage — Agile planning at Deloitte; Amazon iterative product cycles; Google venture products.

• AI‑empowered workforce — Salesforce AI tools; Microsoft copilot at work; Adobe creative AI support.

• AI accountability frameworks — IBM ethical AI guidance; SAP transparency logs; Microsoft responsible AI.

• AI sovereignty models — Regional AI governance experiments; Alibaba local AI customisation; Tencent ethics boards.

• Real‑time decision architecture — Snowflake streams; Databricks real‑time; SAP live data.

Brands, culture, marketing and experience

Brands in 2026 compete through purpose, culture, and experience rather than traditional marketing alone. Micro-influencers, vertical communities, and short-form content shape attention and engagement. Consumers demand authenticity, social impact, and culturally relevant storytelling. Experience-driven products, immersive retail, and participatory brand initiatives differentiate leaders. Generational and aesthetic insights, alongside digital cultural codes, inform product design and messaging. Companies integrating AI, data-driven personalisation, and cross-platform engagement strengthen loyalty and relevance. Collaboration across sectors and embedding social, environmental, and emotional value into offerings is central. Brands that fuse cultural understanding, technology, and purpose deliver growth, resilience, and lasting consumer connection.

TikTok What’s Next Report 2026

Attention and consumption are defined by micro‑content cultures and entertainment‑first experiences.
Brands that embed in cultural flows outperform top‑down campaigns.

• Attention micro‑moments — Duolingo short bits; Coca‑Cola mini‑stories; Fanta playful bursts.

• Entertainment discovery channels — Netflix trailers as culture events; Spotify editorial sessions; Twitch brand activations.

• Micro‑influencer power — Indie beauty creators; local restaurant champions; fashion micro‑trend setters.

• Vertical community engagement — BeautyTok, FitTok, BookTok shaping trends; Lego fan Tok clubs.

• Participatory brand storytelling — GoPro user films; Canon photo challenges; Red Bull challenge series.

WGSN Future Consumer Forecast 2026

Design, aesthetics and cultural codes drive consumer tastes; generational nuances matter more than ever.
Brands that translate cultural codes into product and experience gain traction.

• Neo‑functional fashion — Uniqlo utilitarian range; Nike performance wear; Carhartt Work In Progress.

• Generational aesthetic leadership — Gen Z colour palettes (Shein); Gen Alpha future play (LEGO); cross‑gen design hubs.

• Sustainable beauty evolution — L’Oréal refillables; K‑beauty clean products; Estée Lauder eco lines.

• Experience‑first retail design — Nike flagship experiences; Apple immersive stores; Sephora workshop formats.

• Cultural code translation — Streetwear crossovers; music fashion fusion; art‑brand collabs.

Mintel Comperemedia Marketing Trends 2026

Message discipline, channel performance and consumer journey orchestration define marketing success.
Precision beats volume in strategic campaigns.

• Hyper‑personalised messaging — Spotify custom ads; Amazon recommendations; Nike DM campaigns.

• Performance‑channel optimisation — TikTok ads driving sales; LinkedIn B2B precision; YouTube engagement.

• Omnichannel journey coherence — Sephora integrated app and store; Target seamless carts; Starbucks app integration.

• Journey analytics mastery — Google Analytics 360; Adobe Experience Cloud; Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

• Trust and authentic communication — Dove real stories; Patagonia truth claims; Ben & Jerry’s mission voice.

TrendWatching Innovation of the Year, Purpose and CX Trends

Purpose and customer experience innovation differentiate leaders; socially relevant offerings capture deeper loyalty.
Brands must integrate mission into core customer value.

• Mission‑driven products — Patagonia environmental commitments; TOMS social impact; Warby Parker buy‑one.

• CX innovation excellence — Amazon customer obsession; Zappos legendary service; Apple Genius support.

• Sustainability as narrative — Stella McCartney eco couture; IKEA sustainability story; Adidas ocean plastic sneakers.

• Tech‑enabled engagement — Nike apps; Starbucks loyalty gamification; Sephora AR try‑on.

• Cross‑category partnerships — Spotify x Hulu bundles; Samsung x fashion collabs; Toyota mobility services.

BBC Culture and Future Series

Culture shapes consumption and meaning; brands that decode global cultural flows unlock relevance.
Creative industries and identity movements are economic drivers.

• Identity‑centric consumption — Dr. Martens subculture appeal; Vans skate culture; Supreme hype cycles.

• Creative economy acceleration — Spotify creator slots; Netflix global productions; Tencent multimedia.

• Global cultural fusion — K‑beauty worldwide; Afrobeat music influence; Latin fashion adoption.

• Digital aesthetic codes — Instagram visual trends; TikTok editing norms; Pinterest boards guiding design.

• Narrative‑driven brands — LEGO story worlds; Disney franchise narratives; Marvel cultural ecosystems.

Fortune and Fast Company Most Innovative Companies 2026

Innovation leaders outpace peers by integrating tech, experience and purpose into growth; brand dynamism correlates with market resilience. Real innovation blends bold experimentation with strategic core stability.

• AI‑enhanced innovation culture — Nvidia AI at scale; Adobe generative tools; Siemens R&D AI labs.

• Customer‑centric business models — Amazon Prime ecosystem; Netflix viewer‑first UX; Spotify playlist personalisation.

• Category disruption dynamics — Tesla reshaping mobility; Airbnb redefining travel; Revolut challenging banking.

• Brand purpose amplified — Patagonia environmental missions; Ben & Jerry’s activism; Unilever sustainable commitments.

• Cross‑sector innovation partnerships — Apple‑Hermès products; Microsoft‑OpenAI advances; BMW charging ecosystems.

Sustainability, climate and purpose

Sustainability in 2026 is a strategic imperative, not a compliance exercise. Climate fragility, resource scarcity, and ESG expectations shape business models and investment priorities. Companies are adopting net-zero pathways, circular systems, and carbon-conscious operations to meet regulatory, investor, and consumer demands. Transparency, traceable supply chains, and regenerative business models enhance credibility and loyalty. Climate tech, energy transition initiatives, and socially responsible practices create new market opportunities. Businesses integrating purpose into products, operations, and experiences differentiate themselves while contributing to global sustainability goals. Success depends on embedding ESG into strategy, culture, and innovation to balance impact with profitability.

World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2026

Climate fragility, resource scarcity and governance risks dominate the leadership risk agenda; multi‑stakeholder collaboration is essential. Risk management must integrate climate, tech and geopolitical pressures.

• Climate risk economics — Munich Re climate pricing; Swiss Re adaptation portfolios; Ørsted wind scaling.

• AI governance concerns — Responsible AI boards; Meta safety councils; Google ethics reviews.

• Resource scarcity pressures — Toyota battery recycling; Samsung rare‑earth sourcing; BASF materials innovation.

• Geopolitical risk fragmentation — Supply diversification at Bosch; Intel wafer fab spread; Siemens localisation.

• Social and health risks — Johnson & Johnson public health initiatives; Pfizer global outreach; Unilever hygiene campaigns.

UNEP/McKinsey Climate & Energy Transition

Net‑zero pathways, carbon markets and circular systems reshape industrial strategy; capital flows to climate solutions. Businesses shift from compliance to competitive sustainability.

• Net‑zero pathways mainstreaming — Tesla EV adoption; Ørsted renewables; BP transition portfolios.

• Circular economy scaling — TerraCycle partnerships; IKEA recycling efforts; H&M resale programmes.

• Carbon pricing influence — Shell internal carbon pricing; Unilever carbon accounting; Microsoft carbon fee.

• Climate tech innovation — Climeworks direct air capture; CarbonCure concrete; Form Energy storage.

• Green capital allocation — BlackRock green funds; Amundi sustainable ETFs; ING sustainable lending.

Euromonitor Sustainability and ESG Trends 2026

Sustainability becomes consumer and investor expectation; brands must operationalise ESG into products, messaging and value chains. Transparency and accountability define leader vs laggard.

• Eco‑realism consumer demand — Allbirds lifecycle focus; Veja ethical sneakers; Patagonia repair programmes.

• Impact transparency expectations — Eileen Fisher traceable sourcing; Nestlé product impact labels; Unilever clean claims.

• Sustainable packaging norms — Coca‑Cola recycled design; L’Oréal reusable containers; PepsiCo bio‑plastic tests.

• Brand‑as‑environment partner — Nike Move to Zero; Adidas Parley ocean waste; Levi’s water reuse.

• Traceable supply chains — Walmart transparency tech; Target responsible sourcing; Zara Material Trace.

Ecosystems, platforms and new business models

Business models in 2026 are increasingly ecosystem-driven, platform-based, and collaborative. Startups and emerging technologies signal market shifts, while AI orchestration, embedded finance, and autonomous systems enable new value creation. Companies are adopting boundaryless partnerships, regenerative business models, and digital-physical integration to enhance competitiveness. Post-linear commerce, hybrid offerings, and experience-driven strategies redefine customer engagement. Sector-specific S-curve transitions and platformisation accelerate disruption. Organisations that leverage cross-industry collaborations, data-enabled insights, and agile operating models can anticipate market needs, scale innovation, and capture new opportunities. Success requires strategic alignment of technology, networks, and business design to navigate rapid, global change.

McKinsey Industry‑Specific 2026 Outlooks

Sector playbooks show digital‑physical fusion, S‑curve transitions and platformisation as common accelerators.
Connected ecosystems generate compounding advantages.

• S‑curve technology transitions — EV adoption (Tesla); biotech scaling (Illumina); AI adoption (Nvidia).

• Platform‑first industry models — Amazon AWS; Google Ads; Salesforce CRM.

• Digital‑physical fusion — Nike digital products; Walmart omni; Siemens smart factories.

• Sector‑tailored innovation — Retail personalization; finance embedded tech; energy storage.

• Ecosystem partnerships — Microsoft‑OpenAI; Apple‑Hermès; Auto alliances for EV charging.

Accenture Business Futures Fjord Trends 2026

Business models shift toward ecosystem partnerships, regenerative design and experience innovation; boundaryless commerce accelerates. Value creation expands beyond linear supply chains.

• Boundaryless ecosystems — Salesforce partner networks; Google partner cloud; Apple developer ecosystems.

• Post‑linear commerce — Amazon membership; Alibaba ecosystem services; Shopify integrated commerce.

• Regenerative business models — Patagonia regenerative supply; IKEA circularity; Danone regenerative agriculture.

• Experience‑centric value — Disney immersive experiences; Starbucks Reserve; Apple flagship events.

• Platformisation of services — Tencent super‑app; WeChat integrated services; Mercado Libre marketplace.

StartUs Insights Cross‑Industry Innovation Trends 2026

Startup signals reveal cross‑industry disruption; AI orchestration, embedded finance and autonomous systems accelerate ecosystems. Innovation is networked, not siloed.

• AI orchestration platforms — UiPath enterprise pipelines; IBM AI stacks; AWS AI services.

• Embedded finance expansion — Stripe APIs; Square seller financing; Grab Pay super‑app.

• Autonomous systems adoption — Waymo self‑drive; JD Logistics robotics; Tesla factory bots.

• Energy reconfiguration — Tesla energy; Ørsted storage; Enel distributed grids.

• Startup‑driven model testing — Revolut fintech launches; Klarna buy‑now‑pay‑later; Lemonade insurance tech.

Leadership, organisations and talent

Leadership and workforce dynamics in 2026 revolve around agility, digital fluency, and purpose-driven culture. Organisations must adapt structures, reskill employees, and integrate AI into workflows to remain competitive. Skills gaps, hybrid work, and conflict navigation challenge leaders to cultivate engagement and performance. C-suite executives prioritise scenario planning, data-driven decision-making, and workforce reinvention to manage volatility. Purpose alignment, organisational flexibility, and adaptive leadership capabilities underpin talent retention and productivity. Companies that successfully balance human insight with AI augmentation, foster collaborative cultures, and anticipate market shifts position themselves to thrive in complex, rapidly evolving global environments.

IBM C‑Suite Study and CEO Outlook 2026

CEOs face a productivity imperative, data gaps, workforce redesign and strategic reinvention pressures.
Data fluency and scenario planning are core leadership competencies.

• Productivity over cost cutting — Google workplace AI; Salesforce automation; SAP efficiency modules.

• Data‑driven decision making — Netflix metrics culture; Amazon data lakes; Dell analytics.

• Workforce reinvention strategies — LinkedIn skills tracking; AT&T reskilling; Accenture upskilling.

• C‑suite digital fluency — CEOs with tech metrics; CTO‑CEO alignment; board AI literacy.

• Scenario planning adoption — BP scenario teams; HSBC risk modelling; BCG foresight units.

PwC Global Workforce and CEO Survey

Skills gaps, hybrid complexity and organisational reinvention dominate leadership concerns; risk and culture intertwine.
Purpose, agility and talent pathways determine future readiness.

• Skills gap urgency — Coursera partnerships; IBM training hubs; Deloitte digital academies.

• Hybrid work ecosystem — Slack collaboration playbooks; Zoom flexible setups; Google hybrid design.

• Risk perception shifts — KPMG uncertainty frameworks; HSBC enterprise risk; EY strategic risk units.

• Organisational reinvention — Microsoft structural agility; SAP networked teams; Oracle cross‑functional units.

• Purpose and retention — Unilever mission alignment; Patagonia retention ethos; Salesforce value culture.

London Business School Business Trends for 2026

Leadership success hinges on agility, psychological skills, conflict navigation and human‑AI collaboration.
Organisational design must adapt quickly to external shocks and internal complexity.

• Adaptive leadership competencies — GE leadership programmes; McKinsey adaptive training; Cisco agile leaders.

• Conflict navigation skills — Deloitte facilitation practice; Salesforce team frameworks; PwC collaboration tools.

• AI + human collaboration — IBM AI assistants; Adobe AI creatives; Microsoft copilot workflows.

• Dynamic organisational design — Spotify squad model; ING tribe structures; Atlassian team autonomy.

• Purpose‑driven cultures — Patagonia activism; Ben & Jerry’s mission; REI co‑op ethos.

In Summary … all the trends, ranked by impact

High economic impact (most likely to affect revenue, growth, and markets):

• AI-personalisation at scale – Hyper-targeted offerings anticipate consumer needs.

• Slowbalisation and regionalisation – Supply chains and investment move closer to home.

• Net-zero pathways mainstreaming – Companies adopt carbon-neutral operations and energy.

• Boundaryless ecosystems – Cross-sector collaboration drives innovation and growth.

• Platform-based commerce and experiences – Cloud and digital platforms unify customer journey.

• Regenerative business models – Sustainable practices drive growth and differentiation.

• Hybrid lifestyles – Work-leisure fusion shapes product and service demand.

• Trust recession across institutions – Consumers increasingly distrust brands and institutions.

• Sector S-curve transitions – Emerging tech reshapes industry growth trajectories.

• Data-driven organisations – Real-time insights power decisions and innovation.

• Autonomous systems adoption – Robotics and automation transform industries.

• Climate risk economics – Climate events drive costs and investment decisions.

Medium economic impact (significant but sector- or region-specific):

• Fragmented digital attention – Short-form, multi-platform engagement dominates attention.

• Creator economy influence – Consumers follow influencers shaping trends.

• Adaptive leadership competencies – Leaders develop agility, resilience, and emotional intelligence.

• AI ecosystems adoption – Integrated AI platforms enhance enterprise operations.

• Hybrid work ecosystem – Remote and flexible models reshape talent strategies.

• Autonomous business operations – Robotics and automation streamline business processes.

• Scenario planning adoption – Leaders anticipate and prepare for volatility.

• AI + human collaboration – AI augments human work across functions.

• Experience fusion – Physical, digital, and emotional engagement converge.

• Digital-physical fusion – Hybrid experiences combine online and offline touchpoints.

• Embedded finance expansion – Financial services integrated within other platforms.

• Post-linear commerce – Integrated, multi-touch customer experiences redefine commerce.

• Cost-of-living psychology reshaping behaviour – Spending shifts due to financial pressures globally.

• Identity segmentation and polarised values – Communities organised around beliefs, interests, lifestyles.

• Inflation pathway shaping investment – Rising costs influence pricing and capital allocation.

• US–China strategic competition – Geopolitical rivalry reshapes markets and sourcing.

Emerging and potentially disruptive trends:

• Post-authentic aesthetics and micro-communities – Niche cultural codes define youth consumption.

• Neo-functional fashion and utility design – Products combine style, adaptability, and functionality.

• Joy-seeking, playful brand engagement – Entertainment drives attention and loyalty.

• Vertical communities and creator-driven culture – Niche groups guide trends and adoption.

• Micro-influencer power – Small creators influence purchasing and culture.

• Participatory brand storytelling – Consumers co-create narratives with brands.

• Global cultural fusion – Diverse aesthetics influence product and marketing.

• Purpose-led brand innovation – Social and environmental missions strengthen differentiation.

• Climate risk resource scarcity pressures – Materials and energy limitations drive innovation.

• Digital trust architectures – Cybersecurity and reliability gain strategic importance.

• AI ambivalence: excitement vs fear – Consumers are curious yet cautious about AI.

• Multipolar world affecting consumer choices – Geopolitics influences buying patterns and localisation.

• Tech-geostrategy impact – Technology adoption influenced by geopolitical concerns.

• Adaptive organisational design – Agile, flexible structures enable rapid adaptation.

• Conflict navigation skills – Managing disagreement effectively is critical for performance.

• Workforce reinvention strategies – Reskilling and upskilling meet future skill needs.

• Demographic headwinds – Ageing populations shift consumer and workforce needs.

• Fragmented short-form content attention – Short attention spans require creative engagement.

• Autonomous decision-making systems – AI agents manage complex operational choices.

• Composability in applications – Modular systems enable flexible, scalable enterprise solutions.

• Real-time decision architecture – Instant data informs dynamic strategy adjustments.

• Hybrid commerce platforms – Combining online/offline channels optimises sales.

• Carbon pricing influence – Internal and external carbon costs shape strategy.

• Impact transparency expectations – Consumers demand visible ESG and sourcing data.

• AI orchestration platforms – AI coordinates complex, cross-industry operations.

• Regenerative supply chain innovation – Supply chains designed for circularity.

• Gaming culture mainstreaming – Gaming platforms impact products and marketing.

• Creator-driven product launches – Communities shape product development and adoption.

• Short-form attention monetisation – Capturing micro-moments drives sales and loyalty.

Explore more …

• Download the Global Business Trends Report 2026 by Peter Fisk. 
• Download the Trend Kaleidoscope 2026 summarising all the latest trend reports. 

And also …

• Download Megatrends 2035: the 6 dramatic forces shaking up every market by Peter Fisk. 
• Download Breakthrough Ideas for Business Leaders: Reshuffle to Regenerate by Peter Fisk. 
• Download Strategic Jazz: from Sting’s improvisation to strategy’s adaptiveness by Peter Fisk. 
• Download The Dual OS of Business: how to create tomorrow and deliver today by Peter Fisk. 
• Download The New Growth Playbook: Unlocking the growth engines of your future by Peter Fisk.
• Download The Super Innovators: 10 ways to disrupt conventions and reinvent futures by Peter Fisk
• Download The Courageous Leap: Stepping up from manager of today, to leader of the future by Peter Fisk. 

On a softly lit stage, Sting is rehearsing a new arrangement of “Englishman in New York.”

The familiar chords remain, the melody recognisable, yet everything else is fluid. The drummer subtly shifts the groove into a reggae-infused rhythm, the keyboardist introduces harmonic flourishes, and Sting responds, weaving his performance around the evolving texture. The song takes on a new shape with every repetition — structured yet improvisational, disciplined yet inventive. Every member of the ensemble listens, adapts, and contributes, producing a live experience that is never the same twice.

Sting has been doing this for decades. For me personally, he grew up only a few miles from my childhood home, just outside of Newcastle upon Tyne. In his twenties he was a teacher at a nearby school, while I was a decade younger. As he rose to musical stardom, I followed his career through the mega moments of The Police, to his maturing as an incredible solo artist.

Today he tours with a world-class ensemble of jazz musicians, constantly reinterpreting his repertoire, and treating each concert as both a performance and an experiment. His genius lies in balancing a clearly defined structure with creative freedom: the melody, the chord progression, and the rhythm section form the strategic backbone, while improvisation creates new possibilities in real time.

This interplay of structure and improvisation, of direction and discovery, is exactly the mindset today’s businesses need.

In an era defined by rapid technological acceleration, unpredictable markets, and heightened competition, companies can no longer rely solely on long-term, linear planning.

Strategy cannot be a static document; it must be a living, evolving practice. It must combine short-term execution with long-term vision, exploitative optimisation with exploratory experimentation, discipline with creativity. This is what we call Strategic Jazz: a model for navigating uncertainty by embracing the dualities that drive innovation and resilience.

Jazz is often dismissed as a purely spontaneous art, but nothing could be further from the truth. Underneath the free-flowing solos lies a bedrock of structure. Every performance is grounded in a chord progression, a rhythmic pulse, and an agreed key. These constraints are not limitations — they are the canvas on which musicians improvise.

Musicians spend years mastering scales, rhythm, harmony, and ensemble interplay. That discipline allows them to diverge confidently from the expected path. They listen intently to one another, sense where the performance is going, and make decisions in real time — sometimes trading stability for risk, sometimes descending into gentle dissonance, always returning to a shared theme.

In today’s business world, companies and their leaders face a similarly paradoxical challenge. They need:

• a clear sense of direction, so that everyone is aligned

• but also the freedom to experiment and learn, because the future is uncertain

• to deliver in the short term, even as they invest for the long term

• to exploit current advantages, while exploring entirely new opportunities

• and to innovate rapidly, without losing cohesion

This is the essence of what I have called “Strategic Jazz” … a strategy model that holds structure and improvisation in creative tension, enabling organisations to remain coherent and ahead of the curve even when the tune keeps changing.

Business principles of “Strategic Jazz”

Before diving into concrete business examples, it helps to lay out the foundational principles that define Strategic Jazz. These principles are not abstract ideals — they are practical, actionable, and relevant in the most turbulent of environments.

• Purposeful Direction
  Every organisation needs a strong, long-term directional melody — a core mission, values, and strategic priorities. This is the backbone that gives meaning and coherence. Without it, improvisation becomes aimless.

• Exploratory Discovery
  Structure without exploration stifles innovation. Strategic Jazz encourages deliberate experimentation: rapid prototyping, micro‑bets, feedback loops, and iterative learning.

• Simultaneous Horizons
  Short-term execution and long-term transformation are not sequential; they must happen together. Profits and performance today fund the experiments of tomorrow.

• Dual Focus on Exploitation and Exploration
  Organisations must scale what already works (exploit) while also probing for new advantages (explore). Getting both wrong or over-weighting one leads to stagnation or chaos.

• Rhythmic Learning Cycles
  Just as jazz musicians listen and react in real time, companies should build regular feedback rhythms. These might be monthly, quarterly, or even faster, depending on domain and scale.

• Distributed, Collaborative Leadership
  Leadership in Strategic Jazz is like bandleading. It’s not about dictating every note: leaders set the framework, then create space for teams to improvise, experiment, and co‑create.

• Cultural Safety and Mastery
  The capacity to improvise comes from deep competence plus psychological safety. Teams must be skilled and well trained, but also confident to take risks, fail, and learn.

• Momentum Through Interplay
  Progress comes not just from individual brilliance, but from the interaction between structure and spontaneity. Direction supports discovery, and discovery sharpens direction. That interplay becomes a virtuous flywheel.

The best companies play jazz

Let’s examine how four very different companies — Spotify, Nvidia, Anthropic, and Revolut — are practising Strategic Jazz in real-world ways, and how their recent activity illustrates the power of this model.

Spotify: Innovation in Rhythm

Spotify is often cited as a pioneer of agile, team-based structure — but it is perhaps more accurate to describe its strategy as jazz-like. The company organises around squads, tribes, and chapters, loosely coupled teams that share a mission yet operate with high autonomy. These units are free to test, iterate, and pivot, but they remain aligned around a shared vision: deepening engagement, expanding content, and building creator ecosystems.

• Purposeful direction: Spotify’s mission to democratise audio, support creators, and personalise experiences gives the company its strategic spine.

• Exploratory discovery: Squads run experiments on recommendation algorithms, monetisation, and creator tools.

• Rhythmic cycles: Feedback from listeners, data on usage, and rapid iteration inform product decisions.

• Collaboration: Cross-functional teams improvise together, making strategic decisions on the fly.

• Momentum through interplay: Successful experiments (e.g., personalised mixes or video podcasts) reshape the core product direction — and scale.

Nvidia: The Architect of AI Infrastructure

Nvidia’s journey from a graphics chip company to the backbone of AI infrastructure is a striking example of Strategic Jazz at massive scale. The company’s long-standing competence in parallel processing and GPU technology provided the “score”: powerful compute engines that could be adapted. But Nvidia didn’t simply stick to gaming — it improvised its way into the future of AI.

• Purposeful direction: Nvidia’s long-term vision centres on accelerating computing to power intelligent systems.

• Exploratory discovery: It experiments with new architectures, cloud partnerships, and AI platforms (e.g., microservices, inference, simulation).

• Short and long horizons: While gaming remains, data‑centre growth funds R&D for next-gen AI and physical systems.

• Collaboration: Nvidia works closely with cloud providers, researchers, start-ups, and governments.

• Rhythmic learning: Regular architecture launches (e.g., Blackwell, Ultra), benchmarks, and customer feedback cycles guide development.

• Interplay momentum: As AI adoption grows, Nvidia scales both its infrastructure business and its platform offerings, reinforcing its strategic core.

Anthropic: Purpose-Driven Exploration

Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude model, operates with a singular purpose: building safe, aligned, and powerful AI. But its route to scale is far from rigid. The company actively experiments with model architectures, enterprise use cases, and responsible AI mechanisms, all while staying anchored in its mission.

• Purposeful direction: Anthropic’s commitment to safety, alignment, and accessible AI acts as its melodic core.

• Exploratory discovery: Through Claude, Claude Code, governance tools, and alignment research, the team experiments with the shape and safety of AI.

• Dual horizons: It pursues enterprise adoption now (run-rate revenue) while investing heavily in long-term infrastructure and responsible AI.

• Collaboration: Partnerships with cloud providers, major enterprises, and research institutions amplify its reach.

• Learning cycles: Frequent model releases, safety audits, and feedback loops feed back into strategy.

• Momentum: Capital, growth, and experimentation reinforce each other in a virtuous cycle — direction sharpens as discovery yields results.

Revolut: Fintech in Constant Improv

Revolut’s rise from a digital payments startup to a global financial app is a story of disciplined ambition and relentless innovation. While it has clear north stars — banking, global expansion, and super-app functionality — it adapts quickly, adding new services, experimenting with crypto, wealth, and deposit products, and redefining what a fintech challenger can be.

• Purposeful direction: Revolut’s mission to build a global, interconnected financial super-app gives its long-term strategy clarity.

• Exploratory discovery: It innovates in payments, wealth, crypto, and banking, pushing into new geographies and use cases.

• Short and long horizons: While scaling its core banking features, it experiments with crypto and other verticals to diversify.

• Collaboration: It partners with regulators, financial institutions, and technology platforms to test new models.

• Rhythmic cycles: Product teams iterate rapidly based on user feedback, regulatory shifts, and market demand.

• Interplay momentum: Profits from established services help fund innovation; innovations, in turn, attract more users, building scale.

Strategic lessons from playing jazz

From Sting’s stage to Spotify’s squads, Nvidia’s AI factories, Anthropic’s mission-driven build, and Revolut’s financial innovation, a pattern emerges. Organisations that thrive in uncertainty don’t just strategise — they improvise within a frame. Here are the core lessons of Strategic Jazz, distilled:

• Set a strong but flexible architectural backbone.
  Without a clear mission, values, and strategic priorities, improvisation risks becoming random noise. But with structure, teams can push the envelope without losing coherence.

• Balance execution and exploration.
  Delivering results today funds tomorrow’s experiments. Strategic Jazz encourages organisations to do both, not choose one.

• Create fast feedback loops.
  Frequent cycles of testing, learning, and adapting keep the strategy alive. These loops accelerate learning and prevent momentum from stagnating.

• Empower distributed leadership.
  Great ideas come from everywhere. Leaders must cultivate autonomy while maintaining alignment, allowing teams to improvise intelligently.

• Build a culture of mastery and safety.
  Improvisation works best when people are deeply skilled — and confident enough to risk failing. Psychological safety and talent development are non-negotiable.

• Scale the virtuous interaction between direction and discovery.
  As companies experiment, they generate insights that refine strategy. As strategy refines, it provides a sharper frame for future experiments. This interplay fuels sustained growth.

• Accept and even lean into tension.
  Structure vs. freedom, short-term vs. long-term, exploitation vs. exploration — these tensions are not problems to solve but productive spaces to inhabit.

Ready for what’s next

Sting’s performance offers more than a metaphor. It provides a blueprint for modern leadership: a way to hold firm on what matters while letting creativity and discovery flow freely. In a world where disruption is constant, the most powerful organisations are those that don’t just survive change — they play with it, they riff on it, and they build new harmonies as they go.

Spotify, Nvidia, Anthropic, and Revolut show us how Strategic Jazz can be more than a concept — it can be a way of operating, innovating, and scaling. They demonstrate that clear purpose, disciplined capability, and improvisational freedom can coexist. And in doing so, they are orchestrating strategic masterpieces.

As business leaders, the challenge is yours: how do you write your own score? How do you create a rhythm of experimentation? How do you cultivate teams that listen as much as they play? If you can do that, you won’t just set direction — you’ll spark discovery. You won’t just plan — you’ll perform.

And your organisation, like the best jazz ensemble, will be ready for whatever tune the world plays next.

Explore more …

• Download the Global Business Trends Report 2026 by Peter Fisk. 
• Download the Trend Kaleidoscope 2026 summarising all the latest trend reports. 

and also …

• Download Megatrends 2035: the 6 dramatic forces shaking up every market by Peter Fisk. 
• Download Breakthrough Ideas for Business Leaders: Reshuffle to Regenerate by Peter Fisk. 
• Download Strategic Jazz: from Sting’s improvisation to strategy’s adaptiveness by Peter Fisk. 
• Download The Dual OS of Business: how to create tomorrow and deliver today by Peter Fisk. 
• Download The New Growth Playbook: Unlocking the growth engines of your future by Peter Fisk.
• Download The Super Innovators: 10 ways to disrupt conventions and reinvent futures by Peter Fisk
• Download The Courageous Leap: Stepping up from manager of today, to leader of the future by Peter Fisk. 

In 1980, I began running because I believed in heroes.

I believed in Brendan Foster — hard, northern, uncompromising. I believed in the elegance of Seb Coe and the fierce kick of Steve Cram. They were not distant avatars on a screen. They were tangible. They raced on tracks I could visit. They breathed the same wet northern air.

When I joined Morpeth Harriers, I joined more than a club. I joined a rhythm. Monday nights were sacred. Winter meant cross country leagues, caked in mud and pride. Summer meant track leagues and county championships. I can still feel the hum of Gateshead International Stadium during the Tyneside Track League on Wednesday evenings during the summer, seeing Cram on the start line, the disbelief that I might share the same track — and occasionally beat a future junior champion like David Sharpe.

That world felt coherent. The pathway was visible. School to club. Club to county. County to national. The sport was structured like a ladder and we all knew where the rungs were.

40 years later, the ladder still stands, but the crowd has moved elsewhere.

Running has never been bigger. Athletics has never felt more fragile.

The New Running Revolution

If you want to understand what is working, you do not begin at the track. You begin in a park.

Parkrun started in 2004 in Bushy Park with 13 runners and a stopwatch. Today it operates in more than 20 countries, with over 2,000 weekly events and millions of registered participants worldwide.In the UK alone, hundreds of thousands turn up on Saturday mornings — free, timed, volunteer-led. No membership. No selection. No hierarchy. It is possibly the most successful mass-participation sports model of the 21st century.

Parkrun did not ask people to commit to a season. It asked them to turn up.

Elsewhere in London, a different revolution began in 2007. Run Dem Crew fused urban culture, music, photography and crew identity with structured training. It proved that running could be cool — unapologetically, visibly cool — without abandoning performance. Members progressed from 5Ks to marathons while reshaping who felt seen in the sport.

Global brands noticed. Adidas Runners now operates chapters in cities around the world, blending free coaching, branded experiences and social energy. Corporate? Yes. But also accessible, diverse and contemporary.

Then there is Mikkeller Running Club, born from a Copenhagen craft brewery in 2014 and now spanning dozens of international chapters. The formula is disarmingly simple: run together, drink beer together. It sounds irreverent. It is. But it has lowered the psychological barrier to entry for thousands who would never step onto a track.

Digital has redrawn the landscape even further. Runna, founded in 2021, has scaled at extraordinary speed, offering personalised training plans through an app-based subscription model. Tens of thousands of users now follow structured programmes without ever meeting a club coach. Coaching has been democratised — and commercialised.

Brands have begun experimenting with physical space as well. Hoka opened its concept “Run Stop Corner Shop” in London — part retail, part community hub, part event space. It resembles a neighbourhood grocery store. But instead of milk and bread, it offers shakeout runs, talks and coffee. The message is clear: running belongs in everyday culture.

Competition formats are evolving too. Night of the 10,000m PBs turned a niche track event into a sold-out festival — beer tents, DJs, pacing lights, and thousands of spectators crowding lane three. It proved that the 10,000m is not boring. It is poorly presented.

In the UK, events like the Podium 5K have built a reputation for precision pacing and personal bests, attracting club runners and elites alike. Meanwhile, experiential runs like Nike After Dark Tour have reimagined urban racing as immersive theatre — lights, music, city streets reclaimed at night.

The energy is undeniable. Participation is booming. Running is visible, social, digitised and culturally fluent.

But most of it is happening outside the traditional athletics club structure.

That is not a threat.

It is a lesson.

The Diagnosis: Athletics is organised for yesterday

The recent independent vision for the future of track and field in the UK, co-chaired by Steve Cram, recognised a hard truth: youth participation is declining. Research identified barriers around perception, awareness, accessibility and belonging.

The guiding principles are profound:

• Inclusive and accessible for all
• Wellbeing and personal growth first
• Flexible and responsive formats
• Social connection and belonging
• Youth voice and ownership
• One team: joined-up delivery

This is not tinkering. It is structural reform.

But principles alone will not save the sport. We need a new operating system.

 

A Manifesto for Reinventing Running

1. From Hierarchy to Community

Traditional athletics was hierarchical. Standards. Selections. Trials. It rewarded the already talented and filtered the rest.

Modern running communities are horizontal. You run. You belong.

Clubs must stop behaving like gatekeepers and start behaving like hosts. Membership should feel like joining a creative collective, not applying for an institution.

2. Competition Must Become Experience

Young people live in an experience economy. A six-hour track meet with long pauses and sparse spectators will not compete with Netflix, gaming or nightlife.

Track nights should be short, sharp and sensory. Music. Lighting. Commentary. Storytelling. Mixed relays. Head-to-head match races.

Night of the 10,000m PBs showed the way. Podium 5K showed the appetite. The lesson is simple: package performance with atmosphere.

3. Wellbeing Is the New Performance Metric

If a 15-year-old leaves the sport burnt out, the system has failed — regardless of their personal best.

Coaching education must embed mental health literacy. Clubs should track retention with the same seriousness as medals. Rest, recovery and enjoyment should be visible priorities.

Running improves lives. That is not a slogan. It is the product.

4. Youth Must Shape the Future

Not as consultees. As co-designers.

Let them create content. Choose music. Influence event formats. Control club TikTok accounts. Design kit. Lead warm-ups.

Ownership breeds loyalty.

5. Build the Ecosystem, Not the Silo

Parkrun is not the enemy of clubs. It is the front door.

Digital apps are not stealing athletes. They are proving demand.

Social crews are not diluting standards. They are expanding culture.

The future lies in collaboration. Shared calendars. Shared promotions. Shared pathways from social run to track race to marathon start line.

6. Celebrate Local Heroes Again

In 1980, heroes felt reachable. Today, elite sport can feel distant.

Bring international athletes back to grassroots meets. Host Q&As. Create handicapped “race the champ” miles. Tell local stories loudly. Turn up in Bushy Park and you’ll see Hoka’s Team Makou training, but what if we could join in too?

Inspiration must be visible and proximate.

7. Redefine What Success Looks Like

Success in 2040 should not be measured only by Olympic medals. It should be measured by:

• Youth retention rates
• Diversity of participation
• Financial sustainability of clubs
• Volunteer satisfaction
• Cultural relevance

If athletics becomes vibrant in every town, medals will follow.

The Choice

We stand at a crossroads.

One path leads to preservation — defending structures built for another era, hoping nostalgia will sustain them.

The other path leads to reinvention — embracing inclusion, flexibility, digital fluency and community energy.

Running itself is not in crisis. It is flourishing. From Bushy Park to Copenhagen breweries, from urban crews to concept stores, from app-based coaching to floodlit track festivals, the sport has shown it can evolve.

Athletics must now do the same.

Not by abandoning its heritage — but by translating it.

The mud of cross country.
The hush before the gun.
The shared exhaustion of a final lap.
The belonging of a Monday night session.

Those feelings are timeless.

The structures around them are not.

If we are bold enough to redesign competition, courageous enough to share power with young people, and wise enough to collaborate across the ecosystem, athletics will not shrink into irrelevance.

It will surge back into cultural centrality.

And somewhere, on a damp evening under stadium lights, another young runner will stand on the start line, heart racing, believing — as I once did — that this sport belongs to them.

A Call to Action

To clubs: open your gates wider.
To governing bodies: simplify and align.
To coaches: prioritise joy alongside excellence.
To athletes: claim ownership.
To event organisers: experiment boldly.
To communities: collaborate.

We do not need to return to 1980. We need to build 2030.

The next generation deserves stadiums as electric as Gateshead once felt. They deserve heroes they can see, systems that serve them, and competitions that reflect their world.

If we embrace inclusion, flexibility, wellbeing, youth voice and true collaboration — not as slogans but as operating principles — athletics will not merely survive.

It will thrive.

And somewhere, a young runner will step onto a track for the first time, look around at the noise, the lights, the community — and feel what I felt all those years ago:

This is where I belong.

In calmer decades, strategy was often an exercise in linear extrapolation. Markets moved incrementally, competitors were familiar, and five-year plans felt solid enough to anchor capital allocation and investor confidence. Forecasts extended trend lines. Risk was something to hedge.

That world has gone.

Today’s leaders navigate a landscape defined by technological acceleration, climate disruption, demographic shifts, geopolitical fragmentation and the rapid emergence of entirely new business models. AI alone is redrawing the contours of work, creativity and value creation. In such a context, traditional forecasting is not merely insufficient; it can be dangerously misleading.

Foresight not forecasts

Strategic foresight offers a different discipline. It does not attempt to predict a single future. It prepares organisations for multiple plausible futures — and, more importantly, equips them to shape those futures to their advantage.

This is not an abstract exercise in speculation. It is a practical capability that touches every part of the enterprise: strategy, innovation, capital allocation, leadership, culture and investor relations. It is the difference between reacting to change and orchestrating it.

It is therefore an essential capability for all business leaders. More than a report, a inspiring keynote, or specialist team, strategic foresight is core to leadership in a fast-changing world.

Over the last year I have worked with companies in sector from fashion to food, finance and pharma, telecoms and tech, and every one of them now prioritise foresight as a priority. And use it strategically and proactively not just to inform strategy and innovation, but to reinvent how they approach such challenges, and work more dynamically across the business – to be more agile, to refocus priorities and reduce risks, and be future ready.

• How to think like a futurist, why every business leader needs a future mindset

Why strategic foresight matters

Strategic foresight matters for three fundamental reasons.

First, uncertainty is structural, not cyclical. The forces reshaping industries are not short-term disruptions but deep, systemic shifts. The energy transition, the digitisation of everything, urbanisation, ageing populations, bio-engineering, platform economics — these are megatrends that interact in complex, non-linear ways.

Second, advantage increasingly accrues to those who move early. The window between sensing change and market reconfiguration is shrinking. Companies that identify weak signals and commit boldly can redefine categories before incumbents even recognise the threat.

Third, capital markets are recalibrating expectations. Investors no longer reward efficiency alone; they reward credible future narratives. Companies must articulate not just how they will perform next quarter, but how they will remain relevant in a radically different decade.

Foresight is therefore both defensive and offensive. It builds resilience — protecting against surprise — and it unlocks growth by identifying new spaces to explore.

• Megatrends 2035, the 6 dramatic forces disrupting every market, right now

Megatrends with meaning

A robust foresight process begins with megatrends: large-scale, long-term forces that shape the context in which businesses operate.

Consider the global shift towards decarbonisation. Energy systems are being reconfigured from centralised fossil fuel generation to distributed renewables, storage and smart grids. Companies such as Siemens Energy are not simply manufacturing turbines; they are reimagining the architecture of energy systems. Meanwhile, utilities like Iberdrola are investing aggressively in renewables and grid modernisation, redefining what it means to be an energy provider.

Megatrends are not predictions. They are contextual forces. The strategic task is to interpret how these forces might interact. Urbanisation plus digital connectivity plus climate risk leads to the re-engineering of cities. Ageing populations plus AI diagnostics plus genomics transforms pharmaceuticals and preventative healthcare. Platform economics plus creator tools plus immersive media reshapes entertainment.

In my own work with companies across energy, entertainment, finance, pharmaceuticals, technology and telecoms, we begin by mapping these interacting forces. The goal is not to list trends but to surface tensions: where regulation collides with innovation; where social expectations outpace infrastructure; where technology enables behaviour that institutions are not yet ready for.

Out of tension comes opportunity.

• Dynamic Strategy, a new playbook for strategy that has focus and agility in a fast-changing world

Exploring scenarios, expanding possibilities

The next step is scenario planning — not as an academic exercise, but as a leadership dialogue.

Scenario planning was popularised in the corporate world by Royal Dutch Shell, which used it to anticipate oil shocks and geopolitical volatility. The core principle remains powerful: instead of asking “What will happen?”, leaders ask “What could plausibly happen — and how would we respond?”

In practice, we construct a small number of divergent but credible future worlds. For example:

• A hyper-regulated energy future where carbon pricing accelerates rapidly.

• A fragmented geopolitical environment with regional supply chains.

• A digitally immersive consumer world in which entertainment, commerce and community converge.

• A biotech breakthrough era where personalised medicine becomes mainstream.

These scenarios are not forecasts. They are test environments. Strategies are stress-tested against each world. Where are we robust? Where are we exposed? Where could we lead?

This process often reveals uncomfortable truths. Core assumptions — about customer behaviour, cost structures, or regulatory stability — prove fragile. Yet it also surfaces latent strengths: capabilities that become disproportionately valuable under certain futures.

For a global telecoms client exploring the future of work, scenario planning reframed their role. Rather than merely providing connectivity, they saw an opportunity to become orchestrators of distributed work ecosystems — integrating secure networks, collaboration platforms and smart city infrastructure.

Scenarios widen the aperture of thinking. They move leadership conversations from incremental improvement to structural reinvention.

Building options, strategy as portfolio

Foresight without action is theatre. The discipline becomes strategic only when it informs capital allocation and innovation choices.

In volatile environments, strategy must resemble a portfolio of options rather than a single linear plan. Some initiatives exploit existing advantages; others explore new domains. Some are low-risk extensions; others are calculated leaps.

Technology companies exemplify this duality. Amazon built its dominance by relentlessly exploiting operational excellence in e-commerce while simultaneously exploring cloud computing, entertainment and logistics. Alphabetinstitutionalised exploration through its “Other Bets”, acknowledging that not all investments would succeed, but some would redefine markets.

For established incumbents, this portfolio logic requires cultural shift. Leaders must legitimise experimentation. They must accept that some initiatives are options — small investments that preserve the right to scale later.

In pharmaceuticals, for example, scenario work around personalised medicine has led companies to invest in data partnerships, AI-enabled drug discovery and gene therapies. Not all of these bets will mature. But failing to participate risks strategic irrelevance.

Dynamic strategy therefore combines direction with agility. It sets a clear long-term ambition — a north star anchored in purpose — while enabling rapid reconfiguration of how that ambition is pursued.

Shaping futures, passive to proactive

The most powerful application of foresight goes beyond adaptation. It seeks to shape the environment itself.

Companies influence regulation, standards, ecosystems and consumer expectations. By articulating compelling visions, they mobilise partners and investors.

Tesla did not wait for a mature electric vehicle market. It accelerated consumer demand, forced incumbents to respond, and catalysed charging infrastructure. Netflix reshaped entertainment consumption, not merely by predicting streaming’s rise, but by investing ahead of demand and redefining content distribution.

In cities, we see similar shaping dynamics. Energy providers, mobility platforms, telecoms operators and property developers collaborate to create smart urban ecosystems. Leaders who engage in foresight are better positioned to influence these emerging standards and partnerships.

Shaping the future requires conviction. It demands leaders who are comfortable articulating bold visions — and aligning organisations around them.

In my work on purpose and vision, we emphasise that foresight without purpose becomes reactive. Purpose clarifies why a company exists beyond profit. Vision translates that purpose into a compelling future state. Strategy then becomes the bridge between today’s capabilities and tomorrow’s ambition.

Key approaches to strategic foresight

Strategic foresight typically integrates five core approaches:

• Environmental Scanning
  Continuous monitoring of technological, social, economic and political signals. This is not a one-off exercise but an embedded capability.

• Megatrend Mapping
  Identifying long-term forces and analysing how they intersect. This often involves cross-functional workshops to surface diverse perspectives.

• Scenario Planning
  Developing plausible future worlds to stress-test assumptions and strategies by exploring the key drivers, considering intersections, and evaluating alternative futures.

• Future Back Strategy
  Starting from a desired future position and working backwards to identify milestones and capability gaps, sometimes to make leaps forwards, to challenge incrementalism, and accelerate progress.

• Option Portfolio Design
  Allocating resources across “exploit and explore” initiatives, balancing resilience and growth, and building a dynamic portfolio of ideas, projects, and businesses to succeed today and tomorrow.

Together, these approaches create a “dynamic strategy” process — one that evolves as contexts shift.

Implications across the enterprise

Strategic foresight is not confined to the strategy team. Its implications permeate the business. Fundamentally it is about making better decisions today. These are most profound when they are tied to capital allocation, and the deliver of effective value-creating performance short and longer term:

• Innovation becomes more purposeful. Rather than chasing incremental improvements, teams explore spaces aligned with future scenarios. In food and agriculture, foresight around sustainability and urban density has driven experimentation in vertical farming and alternative proteins.
• Leadership evolves. Leaders must be comfortable with ambiguity. They facilitate dialogue across silos, encouraging diverse perspectives. They shift from control to orchestration.
• Culture becomes adaptive. Employees are encouraged to question assumptions. Learning loops are accelerated. Failure, when intelligent and bounded, is accepted as part of exploration.
• Investor Relations gains a narrative dimension. Investors seek clarity on long-term positioning. Companies that articulate credible future pathways — grounded in foresight — command strategic premium. The conversation shifts from quarterly volatility to structural opportunity.
• Talent and Organisation adapt. Skills in data analytics, systems thinking and design become critical. Structures become more modular, enabling rapid reconfiguration.
• Risk Management broadens. Rather than focusing solely on downside mitigation, risk teams collaborate with strategists to identify opportunity in uncertainty.

Combining direction with agility

A common misconception is that agility means constant pivoting. In reality, effective agility requires clarity of direction.

Purpose anchors the enterprise. Vision articulates the future it seeks to create. Foresight expands the range of plausible contexts. Dynamic strategy then aligns resources flexibly within that frame.

This combination — direction with agility — enables companies to leap forward when conditions align. It allows them to exploit current strengths while exploring adjacent possibilities.

In financial services, foresight around digital identity and decentralised finance has prompted banks to experiment with embedded finance and platform partnerships. In entertainment, immersive technologies and AI-generated content are redefining how stories are created and monetised. In telecoms, 5G and edge computing open pathways to smart industry and connected cities.

These are not incremental evolutions. They are structural leaps.

• The New Leadership DNA: Foresight, Courage and Reinvention are the Defining Acts of Leaders

Strategic mindset as leadership capability

Ultimately, strategic foresight is a mindset as much as a methodology. It invites leaders to replace the illusion of certainty with disciplined curiosity.

The future of business will not be shaped by those who forecast most accurately, but by those who imagine most boldly and execute most decisively.

In exploring the future of cities, how we eat, how we work, and how industries converge, I have seen one consistent pattern: the organisations that thrive are those that treat the future not as a threat, but as a canvas.

They scan widely. They question deeply. They experiment intelligently. They communicate compellingly. They align investors, employees and partners around shared ambition.

Strategic foresight does not eliminate uncertainty. It transforms it from a source of anxiety into a source of advantage.

In an age of exponential change, that may be the most important capability any leader can cultivate.

The year 2025 brought forth a remarkable selection of business books that go far beyond traditional management advice. In an era defined by rapid technological acceleration, geopolitical tension, institutional complexity, and uncertainty about progress, these books do more than instruct on leadership — they explain why leadership matters, and in what contexts it can be effective.

The five books highlighted here — House of Huawei, The Thinking Machine, How Progress Ends, Abundance, and Breakneck — reflect the multidimensional challenges that modern business leaders face. They explore technological innovation, corporate strategy, institutional constraints, national competition, and the conditions under which ideas scale. Together, they reveal common themes critical for business leadership today:

• Technology as central to strategy: Leaders must understand AI, semiconductors, and critical infrastructure to compete.

• Innovation is fragile and context-dependent: Breakthroughs must align with institutional, political, and cultural structures.

• Scale depends on systems and ecosystems: Success is shaped by networks, regulatory environments, and collaborative infrastructure.

• Leadership requires navigating complexity: Executives must operate at the intersection of geopolitics, technology, and societal expectations.

• Progress is contested: Optimism about technological potential coexists with scepticism about institutional inertia and risk.

These books stood out because they combine rigorous research, historical insight, and narrative storytelling to illuminate real-world constraints. They provide leaders with frameworks to navigate complexity and anticipate disruption in a hyperconnected, high-stakes global economy.

House of Huawei … The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company by Eva Dou

House of Huawei is a meticulous and compelling chronicle of one of the world’s most enigmatic companies. Eva Dou traces Huawei’s evolution from a small provincial telecom supplier to a global technology powerhouse, while exploring the political, economic, and cultural contexts that made its rise possible. Dou’s reporting blends corporate biography with geopolitical analysis, providing a lens through which to understand the intersections of business, technology, and state power.

The book begins with the company’s founding by Ren Zhengfei, a former military engineer whose disciplined leadership and strategic vision shaped Huawei’s ethos. Unlike Silicon Valley founders, Ren prioritised engineering excellence, cost efficiency, and relentless global expansion, which allowed Huawei to challenge established Western incumbents. Early chapters highlight the company’s reverse-engineering efforts on telecommunications switches, demonstrating a culture of intense learning and skill accumulation. Dou vividly describes how employees worked long hours in grueling conditions, cultivating a deep technical expertise that later powered Huawei’s success in 3G and 4G markets.

A defining episode is the 2018 arrest of CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada at the request of U.S. authorities. This incident illustrates how Huawei’s rise could not be separated from geopolitical tension, as Western governments scrutinised the company’s links to Beijing. Dou shows that Huawei’s corporate culture — described as “wolf warrior” for its fierce competitiveness and loyalty — both fuelled its success and intensified suspicion abroad. Huawei’s ability to operate in emerging markets, often where Western competitors were absent, is framed as both a strength and a geopolitical flashpoint.

Dou also provides insight into Huawei’s global strategy, highlighting its focus on long-term R&D investment, network expansion, and talent development. The company’s approach to risk, regulation, and partnership is dissected with attention to detail, showing how operational discipline combined with strategic foresight to build resilience. Huawei’s story is not presented as a simple triumph; Dou balances admiration for engineering and execution with critical reflection on ethical, political, and security implications.

For business leaders, House of Huawei demonstrates that competitive advantage comes from a combination of technical mastery, organisational discipline, and geopolitical savvy. Success in global technology markets is not only about products or strategy, but also about understanding and navigating the broader systems — political, regulatory, and cultural — in which firms operate. Dou’s book offers a blueprint for how companies can operate at the edge of possibility while balancing ethical, strategic, and operational pressures, making it a vital study in contemporary corporate leadership.

The Thinking Machine … Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip by Stephen Witt

The Thinking Machine chronicles the rise of Nvidia and the vision of its co-founder and CEO, Jensen Huang, whose leadership transformed a graphics chip manufacturer into the epicentre of the AI revolution. Stephen Witt combines biography, corporate history, and technology reporting to explore how Nvidia’s GPUs became the critical infrastructure for machine learning, high-performance computing, and modern AI. The book is part corporate strategy study, part technological narrative, and part character portrait, offering leaders insight into the combination of vision, execution, and ecosystem orchestration required to create a market-defining company.

Huang emerges as a visionary yet pragmatic leader. Witt details the early challenges Nvidia faced: fierce competition from established semiconductor players, tight capital conditions, and the need to convince both developers and investors of the potential of GPU technology beyond gaming. Huang’s strategic insight was recognising that GPUs could excel at parallel computation, making them ideal for deep learning workloads — long before AI’s commercial boom. This foresight allowed Nvidia to pivot successfully from consumer graphics to enterprise-scale AI infrastructure.

A compelling anecdote involves Nvidia’s early bet on AI research. Huang anticipated that deep learning would reshape computing, and he invested heavily in developing GPUs optimised for these workloads, creating the architectural foundation that competitors struggled to replicate. Witt highlights how Huang cultivated an ecosystem of partners, from cloud providers to research labs, reinforcing Nvidia’s dominance. This demonstrates the strategic importance of ecosystem orchestration, not just technological innovation.

The book also explores Nvidia’s culture of engineering excellence, cross-functional collaboration, and disciplined risk-taking. It emphasises how leadership vision must be paired with the ability to execute, communicate, and align stakeholders across diverse domains. The narrative shows that innovation at scale is as much about organisational design and foresight as it is about invention.

For business leaders, The Thinking Machine is a guide to anticipating technological shifts, leveraging ecosystem dynamics, and leading organisations capable of defining entire markets. Witt’s account reminds readers that technical insight must be combined with strategic acumen and operational precision to achieve global impact. Nvidia’s journey demonstrates that visionary leadership, when paired with disciplined execution and network effects, creates enduring competitive advantage in high-tech industries.

How Progress Ends … Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations by Carl Benedikt Frey

In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey examines the fragility of technological and economic progress, arguing that innovation alone does not guarantee prosperity. Frey traces historical patterns in which breakthroughs failed to translate into sustained growth, demonstrating how institutions, culture, and scaling capacity shape the ultimate impact of new ideas.

Frey’s central argument is that progress is contingent. He contrasts historical examples such as Song China, where technical ingenuity did not translate into global dominance, with the United States, where federal structures enabled experimentation and diffusion of ideas. He demonstrates that technological potential requires alignment with organisational, political, and economic systems to achieve meaningful outcomes.

The book explores the tension between decentralisation and centralisation. Decentralised systems foster experimentation, risk-taking, and serendipity, whereas centralised systems allow for rapid scaling and consolidation of innovation. Frey argues that societies — and by extension, businesses — must strike a balance to avoid stagnation. Overemphasis on either can stifle progress: too much centralisation produces rigidity, while too much decentralisation produces fragmentation.

Historical anecdotes illustrate this vividly. Frey recounts how Europe’s fragmented city-states enabled scientific experimentation and competition, while imperial bureaucracies often stifled similar breakthroughs. In contemporary terms, Frey warns that even the most advanced economies risk stagnation if institutions cannot absorb and scale innovation efficiently.

For business leaders, the book underscores the importance of contextual intelligence: understanding not just technology, but the institutional and social frameworks that determine whether it can succeed. Companies must anticipate regulatory, cultural, and operational barriers and design strategies that allow ideas to scale. Frey’s work provides a framework for recognising systemic bottlenecks and crafting organisations capable of sustaining long-term innovation in complex environments.

Abundance … How We Build a Better Future by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Abundance examines the paradox of technological capability versus societal outcomes. Klein and Thompson argue that scarcity often stems from policy and institutional barriers, not lack of technical capacity, and that innovation alone cannot solve systemic problems unless it aligns with regulatory and political structures.

The book contrasts extraordinary successes — such as the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines — with decades-long delays in infrastructure projects in housing, transportation, and energy. These examples illustrate that clear policy objectives, streamlined processes, and coordinated leadership can unlock transformational outcomes even in bureaucratic systems.

Klein and Thompson argue that business leaders must recognise the strategic significance of regulatory and policy environments. Understanding where incentives, rules, and procedural bottlenecks lie allows organisations to plan realistically and influence systems to enable impact at scale. The authors also advocate collaboration between the public and private sectors to overcome systemic obstacles, highlighting how multi-stakeholder coordination can accelerate progress.

A central theme is that abundance — widespread prosperity enabled by technology — is achievable but requires systemic orchestration. Business leaders are challenged to think beyond product innovation to consider the infrastructure, regulations, and institutional mechanisms that enable growth.

Through rich storytelling and data-driven analysis, Abundance offers practical insights for leaders seeking to maximise impact, navigate institutional barriers, and build projects capable of delivering tangible benefits to society. It emphasises that successful enterprises are as much builders of systems as producers of goods or services.

Breakneck … China’s Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang

Breakneck explores China’s industrial and technological rise as an “engineering state” capable of executing large-scale projects with speed, coordination, and precision. Dan Wang presents a compelling thesis: China’s distinct institutional and cultural structures prioritise rapid execution and systemic engineering, contrasting sharply with the U.S.’s slower, more deliberative model.

Wang documents how China combines central planning, state-aligned incentives, and disciplined project management to achieve rapid urbanisation, infrastructure build-out, and industrial innovation. He provides rich anecdotal narratives — from sprawling factory complexes to high-speed rail projects — to illustrate how the country translates ambition into tangible outcomes.

The book highlights China’s strategic focus on technological and industrial self-reliance, including semiconductor development, renewable energy, and AI. Wang describes how the state orchestrates talent, capital, and infrastructure to mitigate risk and accelerate deployment, creating competitive advantages that foreign competitors find difficult to match.

For business leaders, Breakneck provides lessons on institutional capacity, execution discipline, and risk alignment. It demonstrates that national or organisational models profoundly shape the ability to innovate at scale, manage complex projects, and compete globally. Wang’s book encourages leaders to consider context — not only market opportunities but also structural capabilities — when designing strategy.

Ultimately, Breakneck underscores that speed, system design, and coordinated execution are central to competitive advantage in a world where technological and industrial leadership defines power and prosperity.

Inspired to action

The best business books of 2025 reveal that leadership today requires a multidimensional perspective. Success is shaped by technological insight, institutional understanding, ecosystem orchestration, geopolitical awareness, and execution discipline. House of Huawei, The Thinking Machine, How Progress Ends, Abundance, and Breakneck collectively provide a roadmap for leaders seeking to navigate complexity, scale impact, and harness opportunity in a world defined by uncertainty and rapid change.

In today’s world of relentless change, disruption and transformation are constants. Companies face a stark paradox: they must deliver the results of today while inventing the business of tomorrow.

The conventional operating model of business is no longer fit for purpose. It prioritises the short-term, it seeks efficiency and scale, simplified focus and predictable growth. It is designed for linear markets, stable customer behaviour, and slow-moving technologies. Today, these become the obstacles to reinvention, creating inertia, misalignment, and vulnerability to disruption.

The best companies embrace a new model, which I call “the Dual Operating System” (Dual OS) of business.

It creates a strategic, organisational and cultural framework which allows organisations to exploit their current capabilities while exploring new growth opportunities simultaneously, ensuring that the business of today and the business of tomorrow are managed in parallel under a single strategic umbrella. In markets of relentless change, this becomes a continuous activity.

Unlike older ambidextrous concepts, which often remains conceptual, the Dual OS is practical, embedded, and operationalised, offering a blueprint for organisations to climb successive S-curves of growth without compromising current performance.

Leading examples  – from Amazon and BYD to DBS Bank and Ping An – illustrate the power of the Dual OS model. They combine operational excellence with continuous innovation, embedding exploration as a structural capability rather than a peripheral activity. This approach enables them to thrive across multiple S-curves, creating growth, resilience, and long-term value.

The new “Dual OS” 

The core challenge for modern organisations is the tension between exploitation and exploration. Exploitation focuses on maximising efficiency, scale, and profitability from the existing business. Exploration focuses on discovering new products, services, markets, and business models that will drive future growth. Historically, companies have prioritised one at the expense of the other, often to their detriment.

The Dual OS resolves this tension structurally. It embeds two operating systems within the same organisation, each with distinct processes, metrics, and culture, but aligned through a strategic nexus. The exploit system delivers predictable performance, sustaining revenues and cash flow. The explore system drives experimentation, prototyping, and learning, ensuring the organisation identifies and climbs the next S-curve before competitors.

Importantly, the Dual OS is not simply about innovation teams or R&D labs. It is about making duality a structural capability. It recognises that exploration and exploitation are inherently different: they operate on different timescales, with different metrics, rhythms, and organisational behaviours. Yet they are integrated under one strategy, ensuring insights from exploration can influence the core, and resources from the core can fuel experimentation.

Why the “Single OS” fails

Traditional organisational structures are optimised for stability and efficiency. They reward execution, predictability, and risk management. These qualities are essential for operational success but can stifle innovation and strategic flexibility. Past success often becomes a liability. Processes, systems, and routines that generated growth yesterday can constrain responses to emerging opportunities. But they hand on to the success formulae of yesterday, hoping it still works tomorrow.

This is not hypothetical. Even global leaders, one hero companies, are vulnerable.

WPP, once the world’s largest marketing group, exemplifies this. Its strength lay in creativity, brand management, and global scale. Yet these same capabilities delayed the adoption of AI-driven, data-enabled marketing platforms. By the time WPP attempted to pivot, tech-savvy competitors had already redefined the industry.

GE faced similar challenges. Its operational excellence in industrial machinery and energy systems became insufficient as markets shifted toward software, digital services, and platform-based solutions. Despite attempts to transform, GE struggled to reinvent fast enough to maintain market leadership.

Nokia missed the smartphone revolution. Its hardware expertise and global market share were formidable, yet the company failed to adapt to new ecosystem-based competition from Apple and Android, illustrating the danger of focusing solely on exploitation without structural exploration.

These cases demonstrate a critical lesson: delivering today is necessary but not sufficient. Organisations must also invent tomorrow structurally, deliberately, and continuously.

Riding the S-Curves … how business reinvents

To understand why structural reinvention is critical, it is useful to consider S-curves. Every product, service, or business follows a lifecycle:

• Emergence: Growth is slow as capabilities, markets, and customer adoption develop.

• Acceleration: Growth accelerates rapidly as market fit, distribution, and scale converge.

• Maturity: Growth slows as markets saturate and competition intensifies.

• Decline: Without new S-curves, revenues, profitability, and relevance erode.

The S-curve framework highlights why exploitation alone is insufficient. Even high-performing organisations eventually reach the plateau of their current curve. Riding the next S-curve is essential for continued growth and market relevance.

What’s even more significant is that companies need to change before they have to – while things are going well, but also while they have profit and power.

Companies that fail to anticipate or pursue new S-curves often succumb to disruption: they are slow to innovate, clinging to mature business models while new entrants disrupt and redefine markets.

The Dual OS … Exploit and Explore, and Connect

The Dual OS creates two distinct but interconnected systems inside the organisation. This builds on work by the likes of Scott Anthony’s Dual Transformation, and Alex Osterwalder’s Invincible Business, regarding the two dimensions not just as portfolios but as systems, with a connecting bridge :

1. The Exploit System

This system manages the core business. It delivers the performance, profitability, and scale required for short- and medium-term success. It is optimised for reliability and efficiency. Its strengths include:

• Repeatable processes

• Clear roles and responsibilities

• Well-understood metrics

• Risk minimisation

• Robust governance

The exploit system is essential. Without it, there is no foundation for growth.

2. The Explore System

This system creates the future. It focuses on discovering emerging opportunities, experimenting with new business models, and testing ideas that could become tomorrow’s sources of revenue. Its strengths include:

• Speed and agility

• Iteration and learning

• Cross-functional collaboration

• Customer-driven experimentation

• Comfort with ambiguity

Unlike traditional “innovation labs,” the explore system is not a peripheral activity—it is a structural component of the organisation, of teams, or sometimes a dual mindset within the same role and person.

3. The Nexus

The nexus is the connective tissue between exploit and explore. It ensures both systems are aligned, mutually supportive, and strategically coordinated. The nexus includes:

• Shared leadership oversight

• Common purpose and ambition

• Governance and resource allocation mechanisms

• Digital platforms that share data, insights, and learning

• Transition pathways to scale new ideas into the core business

Without the nexus, companies risk fragmentation: core teams ignore innovation, innovation teams lose credibility, and promising ideas struggle to scale.

Dual OS in Action

There are many models of Dual OS in action, sometimes creating separate organisation structures, sometimes aligning within teams, and holding the duality in their mindsets. What is clear is that it is more that creating a separate team to explore the future, it requires an alignment of both perspectives so that the business thrives today and tomorrow, together.

Here are some examples:

Amazon … Dual OS to experiment at scale

Amazon integrates operational excellence with a rigorous exploration engine.

• Exploit system: Retail logistics, inventory management, AWS infrastructure.

• Explore system: Alexa, cashierless stores, drone delivery, and AWS expansions.

• Tools and approaches: Leadership principles guiding experiments, controlled pilots, real-time telemetry, and clear scaling criteria.

• Impact: Amazon converts experimental ideas into billion-dollar businesses without disrupting core operations.

BYD … Dual OS to simultaneously grow in multiple industries

BYD started as an automative manufacturer, then added battery manufacturing, the combined its expertise in both to become a leader in electric vehicles, renewable energy, and integrated mobility solutions.

• Exploit system: Battery and automotive manufacturing operations deliver scale and reliability.

• Explore system: Electric vehicles, energy storage solutions, and international market expansion.

• Tools and approaches: Cross-functional project teams, rapid prototyping, vertical integration for experimentation, and agile supply-chain innovations.

• Impact: BYD has scaled multiple business models in parallel, positioning itself as a global leader in both mobility and clean energy.

DBS Bank … Dual OS for digital reinvention

DBS evolved from a traditional banking model into a digitally-driven financial institution. This wasn’t just about automation but strategic reinvention – creating the invisible bank, transforming purpose and ways of working – helping people “live more, bank less” with an ecosystem model of embedded finance

• Exploit system: Retail, corporate, and wealth management services remain operationally excellent.

• Explore system: Agile squads use design thinking to prototype mobile banking solutions, AI-driven advisory, and integrated customer experiences.

• Tools and approaches: Innovation labs, sandbox environments for rapid testing, iterative user research, and transition pathways to scale successful experiments.

• Impact: DBS increased digital adoption dramatically, reduced operational costs, and launched new customer-centric services without compromising traditional banking performance.

Mercado Libre … Dual OS for continuous adaptation in emerging markets

Mercado Libre is Latin America’s largest e-commerce and fintech company. Marcos Galperin’s idea started on a Stanford exec education program, a project to create an eBay-type marketplace in Latin America. This then evolved into a full e-commerce platform and logistics business, and now into a leading financial services platform.

• Exploit system: Marketplace and payment operations maintain scale and reliability.

• Explore system: Fintech lending, logistics experimentation, AI-driven recommendation engines, and cross-border commerce.

• Tools and approaches: Agile squads, data-driven decision-making, continuous experimentation, and localised market adaptation.

• Impact: Mercado Libre thrives in volatile markets, rapidly iterating solutions that competitors struggle to match.

Philips … Dual OS to reinvent the business, from electronics to healthcare

Philips has continuously repositioned itself over decades. Once best known as a lighting business, it diversified into many sectors, and now has a refocus through divestment and innovation, as a health tech business.

• Exploit system: Lighting, imaging, and patient-monitoring operations.

• Explore system: AI-driven diagnostic tools, connected health platforms, and telemedicine services.

• Tools and approaches: Customer co-creation, agile design teams, real-time market feedback, and strategic divestment of non-core businesses.

• Impact: Philips became a health technology leader while reducing dependence on commoditised electronics.

Ping An … Dual OS to create a portfolio of new businesses beyond the core

Ping A shifted from a traditional insurer into a digital-first platform spanning insurance, banking, health, and mobility. Good Doctor, for example, is now the world’s leading healthcare platform, an ecosystem of many partners, where PingAn leverages it IP and network or relationships to thrive and grow:

• Exploit system: Core insurance operations maintain risk management, compliance, and profitability.

• Explore system: AI-powered health diagnostics, telemedicine platforms, fintech innovations, and mobility services.

• Tools and approaches: Shared data platforms, advanced analytics, cross-unit innovation councils, and leadership forums.

• Impact: Ping An now generates multiple new revenue streams while sustaining insurance profits, climbing several S-curves simultaneously. Its organisational culture embraces digital-first experimentation, with clear integration into operational decision-making.

Schneider Electric … Dual OS to shift from products to services

Schneider Electric moved from traditional electrical equipment to digital energy management solutions. The French company is repeatedly ranked as the world’s most sustainable company, accelerating the transition to clean energy:

• Exploit system: Operationally excellent power and automation equipment production.

• Explore system: IoT-enabled building management, AI-driven energy optimisation, and renewable energy solutions.

• Tools and approaches: Digital twins, predictive analytics, agile development teams, and cross-market experimentation labs.

• Impact: Schneider now captures digital revenue streams, improves operational efficiency, and accelerates adoption of sustainable solutions across markets.

Tata Group … Dual OS to orchestrate multiple horizons

India’s Tata Group operates across diverse industries, from automotive and power to digital platforms and consumer services – with brands as diverse as Range Rover and Tetley Tea.

• Exploit system: Core industrial operations maintain global efficiency and scale.

• Explore system: Tata Digital, Tata EVs, renewable energy, and AI-driven service platforms.

• Tools and approaches: Strategic portfolio management, innovation hubs, and cross-company intrapreneurship programs.

• Impact: Tata balances legacy operations with emerging ventures, continuously reshaping its portfolio for long-term relevance.

Spotify … Dual OS to drive agility and continuous innovation.

Spotify has been a genuine disruptor of the music industry, challenging the traditional dominance of record labels and fixed formats. It continues to innovate around artists and communities, curating its music content in innovative and dynamic ways. It has reimagined product development through the squad-tribe model.

• Exploit system: Core music streaming service continues reliable delivery.

• Explore system: New features, creator tools, podcast and audio innovation.

• Tools and approaches: Distributed cross-functional squads, continuous A/B testing, metrics for engagement and adoption, rapid iteration cycles.

• Impact: Spotify maintains a dominant music platform while rapidly launching new services and features aligned with customer trends.

How to implement a Dual OS

1. Define a Purposeful Ambition

Every Dual OS begins with a long-term ambition—a “north star” that clarifies why the organisation exists and what it aims to achieve in the next decade. This ambition anchors both exploitation and exploration. It ensures operational teams understand how their work contributes to the future and gives innovation teams direction and boundaries.

Purpose must shape strategic choices: which markets to enter, which capabilities to build, and which risks to embrace. It must also guide resource allocation, ensuring that exploration receives meaningful investment without undermining operational priorities.

2. Build Distinct Operating Models

Exploitation and exploration cannot operate with the same metrics, culture, time horizon, or governance. They require distinct operating models that reflect their fundamentally different purposes.

The exploit system prioritises operational excellence: predictable delivery, process discipline, and performance against established KPIs. The explore system prioritises learning, speed, and iteration. Success for exploration is not measured by revenue but by validated insights, customer adoption signals, technical feasibility, and strategic potential.

Companies must create autonomous teams for exploration—free from the constraints of core operational metrics—while ensuring alignment through shared ambition and governance.

3. Design Nexus Mechanisms

The nexus is where most organisations succeed or fail. It must include intentional structures that bring exploitation and exploration together. These might include:

• Leadership councils that review both core business performance and innovation portfolio progress

• Shared data and analytics platforms that enable a common understanding of customer behaviour

• Governance processes that decide which experiments to scale

• Cultural rituals that reinforce shared values and strategic alignment

The nexus ensures that exploration isn’t marginalised and that the core business doesn’t become ossified.

4. Create Transition Pathways

The transition from explore to exploit is where most innovation dies. To avoid this, companies must create clear, repeatable pathways for scaling new ideas.

They must define criteria for what constitutes a scalable innovation, use pilot programs to test assumptions, and assign cross-functional managers to oversee integration. They must document learnings, create playbooks, and build capabilities that allow successful transitions to become routine rather than exceptional.

5. Adopt a Portfolio Mindset

Organisations must manage multiple horizons simultaneously:

• Horizon 1: the core business

• Horizon 2: adjacent growth

• Horizon 3: future bets

Capital, talent, and leadership attention must be allocated intentionally across horizons. A portfolio mindset ensures balance, resilience, and ongoing strategic renewal.

6. Embed Culture and Leadership for Duality

Culture is the foundation of the Dual OS. Leaders must create psychological safety, encourage experimentation, reward learning, and embrace iteration. They must model curiosity, openness, and humility.

Leadership in a Dual OS requires the ability to operate in two modes: disciplined execution and creative exploration. Leaders must encourage both, navigate tensions, and orchestrate collaboration across systems.

7. Use Technology as an Enabler

Technology underpins the Dual OS. AI, analytics, and digital platforms accelerate experimentation, improve decision-making, and enable real-time feedback. They connect teams, distribute insights, and reduce barriers between exploitation and exploration.

But technology is only effective when supported by culture and governance. It is the combination of all three—technology, culture, and structure—that unleashes the full power of duality.

Growth, Reinvention, and Sustained Value

The Dual OS is not simply a model for innovation; it is a platform for sustained growth and value creation. Companies that adopt it effectively rise above disruption. They ride multiple S-curves, turning uncertainty into opportunity, and reinvent themselves continuously.

Nvidia offers a powerful illustration. Its original GPU business represents the exploit system: a highly efficient, globally scaled operation. But its explore system enabled Nvidia to venture into artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, data-centre platforms, and generative models. These explorations created entirely new markets and catapulted the company to extraordinary heights. Between 2016 and 2025, Nvidia’s market cap grew from around £30 billion to more than £5 trillion. This was not luck; it was structural reinvention.

Similarly, the experiences of Ping An, DBS, Amazon, and BYD demonstrate that continuous exploration—aligned with operational excellence—is not only possible but essential. These companies deliver today while inventing tomorrow. They build resilience, unlock new value, and shape markets instead of reacting to them.

Dual OS … The Blueprint for the Future

The Dual OS represents a fundamental shift in how organisations think about strategy, structure, and leadership. It acknowledges that performance and innovation are not competing priorities but mutually reinforcing capabilities. It recognises that exploration and exploitation require different mindsets, metrics, and mechanisms—but can be orchestrated within one organisation. And it makes reinvention not a crisis response but a continuous, structural capability.

In a world of relentless change, companies must become masters of duality. They must be both disciplined and creative, efficient and adaptive, confident and curious. The Dual OS is the blueprint for organisations that want to thrive in this world—those that seek not just to survive disruption but to harness it as a source of enduring growth and value.

The organisations that embrace this model will outperform, out-innovate, and outlast those that do not. They will deliver today while creating tomorrow. And they will define the future of business.

Explore more …

• Download the Global Business Trends Report 2026 by Peter Fisk. 
• Download the Trend Kaleidoscope 2026 summarising all the latest trend reports. 

And also …

• Download Megatrends 2035: the 6 dramatic forces shaking up every market by Peter Fisk. 
• Download Breakthrough Ideas for Business Leaders: Reshuffle to Regenerate by Peter Fisk. 
• Download Strategic Jazz: from Sting’s improvisation to strategy’s adaptiveness by Peter Fisk. 
• Download The Dual OS of Business: how to create tomorrow and deliver today by Peter Fisk. 
• Download The New Growth Playbook: Unlocking the growth engines of your future by Peter Fisk.
• Download The Super Innovators: 10 ways to disrupt conventions and reinvent futures by Peter Fisk
• Download The Courageous Leap: Stepping up from manager of today, to leader of the future by Peter Fisk. 

There comes a moment in every ambitious career when the familiar contours of the job begin to dissolve. The inbox is still full, the meetings still arrive with unrelenting regularity, but something feels subtly different. People look to you less for answers and more for direction. You begin to sense that decisions are no longer confined to the boundaries of your function; they ripple across teams, products, countries, and markets. The horizon, once comfortably contained within your remit, stretches disconcertingly far.

This is the moment where a person stands on the precipice of one of the most important transformations in professional life: the leap from manager to leader. For many, it arrives quietly. It is not heralded by grand announcements or new business cards. Rather, it is noticed in the sudden shift of weight on your shoulders, in the questions that now carry wider consequences, and in the dawning realisation that the skills that made you successful may no longer be enough.

The transition is often romanticised in leadership books and HR presentations, yet those who experience it know it as a deeply human pivot. It requires courage, not simply because the responsibilities multiply, but because the identity must evolve. A manager’s excellence lies in competence. A leader’s excellence lies in perspective, poise, purpose, and the ability to bring out the best in others. It is a profound change of role, mindset, and capability.

This article explores that change: the practical shift in responsibilities, the inner journey of mindset, the new capabilities demanded, and examples of European business leaders who have made this transition and articulated its impact.

From technical specialist to strategic generalist

Managers grow up through functional mastery. They become the best engineer in the department, the sharpest financial analyst, the most dependable operations supervisor. Their reputations are built on answers, speed, accuracy, and a deep familiarity with their craft.

But leadership does not reward expertise alone. Rather, it rewards the ability to mobilise many experts, to balance competing interests, and to build a view of the organisation that transcends any one part of it.

One of the clearest illustrations of this shift comes from Carsten Spohr, who moved from a technical and operational background to become the Chief Executive of Lufthansa. He has spoken often about the moment he realised that the airline could no longer be managed merely as an operationally excellent transport business; it had to be shaped as an interconnected ecosystem of brands, services, partnerships, talent, and long-term capability. His expertise in flying and operations was no longer the centre of his value. Instead, his value became the ability to interpret the future of aviation, navigate labour relations, digitalise the airline, and rebuild trust after crises.

The transition from functional to holistic thinking is not a simple widening of responsibility. It is a reconfiguration of identity. Leaders must become strategic generalists who think in systems rather than silos. This requires an ability to connect dots across markets, people, technology, and culture. It requires the humility to know what you do not know, and the willingness to surround yourself with those who complement your blind spots.

In many European organisations—often older, more complex, and more decentralised than their American counterparts—this shift is particularly pronounced. Leadership means orchestrating diversity: of countries, languages, regulatory regimes, and cultural expectations. The leader becomes not only a strategist, but a translator, mediator, and integrator.

From functional advocate to organisation champion

Managers understand success as the performance of their team. Leaders understand success as the strengthening of the entire enterprise.

This is one of the most difficult shifts to master, because it requires a loosening of emotional attachment to one’s own function. Where once you might have lobbied fiercely for more budget for your area, leadership requires recognising that the greater priority might lie elsewhere. The leader does not win by defending their territory, but by allocating resources where they create the greatest overall value.

Few have articulated this better than Emma Walmsley, Chief Executive of GSK, who stepped from managing a consumer-health division to leading one of Europe’s most complex pharmaceutical groups. She has described leadership as the discipline of thinking in decades rather than quarters, and the responsibility of making decisions not only for the areas she once knew intimately, but for the enterprise as a whole. Leading GSK meant breaking down silos between research, manufacturing, commercial teams, and external partners, and creating alignment across a company whose value rests not only in products but in science, talent, and reputation.

Enterprise leadership also requires wrestling with trade-offs. Sustainability versus profitability. Investment versus efficiency. Innovation versus risk. Leaders navigate these tensions by elevating their thinking beyond departmental performance, examining how the different parts of the business interplay, and shaping the organisational architecture needed for long-term success.

This shift is particularly visible in companies that are reimagining themselves for new realities. Nils Andersen, who rose through the ranks to become the leader of A.P. Moller–Maersk, speaks of the moment he recognised that the company’s future was not in managing ships, but in orchestrating global supply chains. The enterprise view transformed every decision: from digital strategy to capital allocation to the carbon transition.

From short-term deliverer to long-term value creator

Managers excel at delivering results. Leaders excel at creating value. The difference may seem subtle, but it is profound.

Short-term performance depends on control, efficiency, and meeting targets. Long-term value creation depends on building capabilities, cultures, platforms, and partnerships that allow an organisation to endure and evolve.

This shift demands patience and perspective. It requires the courage to invest in innovation, digital transformation, talent development, and sustainability even when the immediate financial returns are uncertain. It requires holding a steady course in the face of quarterly pressure, crisis, or ambiguity.

A compelling example comes from Hélène Rey, Chair of the Board at BNP Paribas, who has emphasised that leadership in modern organisations means stewarding the institution not merely for shareholders, but for society and future generations. In large European banks—often more regulated, more scrutinised, and more embedded in national ecosystems—the long-term view is not a luxury but a necessity.

Similarly, Frans van Houten, former CEO of Philips, led one of Europe’s most significant corporate transformations, shifting the company from diversified industrial conglomerate to focused health-technology leader. He has spoken about the discipline required to resist the gravitational pull of short-term earnings, instead investing in digital health, connected care, and organisational renewal. The leader became an architect of future value, not a caretaker of today’s results.

The Inner Shift: Leadership as a way of being

If the practical changes are visible, the psychological ones are far more subtle. Many new leaders describe the transition as an emotional unravelling, followed by a reconstruction of self.

A manager’s identity is often built around expertise, certainty, and action. A leader’s identity must be grounded in curiosity, humility, and influence.

Where managers gain confidence from knowing, leaders gain confidence from navigating the unknown. They must be comfortable being uncomfortable. They must be willing to ask questions rather than provide answers, to invite challenge rather than suppress dissent, to trust rather than direct.

Ilham Kadri, CEO of Syensqo and former CEO of Solvay, has spoken eloquently about this internal transition. Coming from a scientific and operational background, she realised that leadership meant shifting from problem-solving to possibility-shaping, from managing complexity to inspiring clarity, from proving her competence to amplifying the competence of everyone around her.

The psychological journey is not simply an expansion of responsibility; it is a reorientation of how one sees oneself in the world. The leader becomes a sense-maker, storyteller, and catalyst. They operate with a steadiness that others rely upon. They hold paradoxes without being paralysed by them. They create confidence not by providing certainty, but by offering direction and meaning.

The New Capabilities: What modern leaders must develop

The modern European leader requires a set of capabilities that are broader, deeper, and more multifaceted than ever before.

One is strategic acumen. This is not merely understanding strategy documents or market analysis; it is the ability to see patterns, connect ideas, and articulate a forward-looking narrative that gives the organisation coherence and purpose.

Another is enterprise thinking, the capacity to balance competing priorities, allocate resources wisely, and make decisions that strengthen the organisation as a whole.

A third is talent orchestration. Leadership today is less about managing people and more about mobilising them—connecting individuals with missions that energise them, building teams that blend skills and perspectives, and nurturing cultures where creativity and performance thrive.

A fourth is storytelling. In large, complex organisations spanning multiple markets and cultures, the leader’s narrative becomes the thread that aligns and inspires. It is through storytelling that leaders communicate priorities, express values, and create energy for change.

And, perhaps above all, leadership requires courage. Courage to confront uncomfortable truths. Courage to choose the long term over the expedient. Courage to take risks when the rewards are unclear. Courage to speak, to act, and to stand still when necessary.

This is not theatrical bravery. It is the everyday courage of staying true to a vision, of holding steady through criticism, of leading in ambiguity, and of trusting others.

What the transition feels like

Leaders often speak of a disconcerting period where the old certainties dissolve but the new ones have not yet appeared. This is a natural part of the evolution.

• You lose the comfort of expertise, because leadership demands that you make decisions far outside your technical domain.
• You become more visible, because people read every gesture, tone, and comment.
• You become the integrator, resolving tensions between teams that once sat comfortably outside your remit.
• You slow down your thinking, because leaders must rise above the swirl of daily operations to focus on longer-term direction.
• And you begin to see the world differently, recognising that your influence lies not in doing more, but in enabling others to thrive.

European leaders often speak about this with striking candour. Jean-Dominique Senard, Chairman of Renault, once explained that the most disorienting part of leadership was not the scale of responsibility, but the shift from having a narrow field of control to guiding an organisation through persuasion, coherence, and integrity.

Leadership, he said, is not an assertion of power, but an expression of stewardship.

Leaders who have made the leap

Many of Europe’s contemporary business leaders exemplify the transformation from manager to leader.

Ana Botín, Executive Chair of Santander, moved from leading country operations to reshaping one of Europe’s largest banking groups. She has spoken of how leadership required not only strategic renewal but cultural renewal—building a more innovative, open, and internationally connected bank.

Bjørn Gulden, who led Puma before becoming CEO of Adidas, made the leap from operational manager to brand builder, cultural architect, and enterprise leader. His tenure emphasised the importance of purpose, team dynamics, and long-term brand equity over short-term performance.

Carlo Messina, leader of Intesa Sanpaolo, transitioned from finance professional to enterprise strategist, balancing profitability with social programmes, regional development, and digital transformation—an example of leadership attuned to the broader societal role of European institutions.

Ilham Kadri, Emma Walmsley, Carsten Spohr, and Frans van Houten similarly show that leadership in modern European organisations is not merely about commercial success but about shaping long-term value, building trust, and steering complex enterprises with vision and humanity.

The courageous leap forward

Stepping from manager to leader is one of the most courageous transitions in professional life, not because the tasks become harder, but because the expectations become deeper. Leadership demands a broader view, a longer horizon, and a willingness to transcend the very expertise that once defined you.

To lead is to see the enterprise as an interconnected system, to create value that endures, to elevate the performance and potential of others, and to hold steady in uncertainty.

It requires humility, curiosity, courage, and a commitment to something larger than oneself.

The world today—volatile, interconnected, opportunity-rich, and uncertain—needs leaders who are equal parts strategist, architect, and steward. Leaders who embrace possibilities, unite people, build platforms for progress, and imagine futures that others cannot yet see.

The leap from manager to leader is not simply a step upward. It is a step forward—into a future that you have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to shape.

Explore more …

• Download the Global Business Trends Report 2026 by Peter Fisk. 
• Download the Trend Kaleidoscope 2026 summarising all the latest trend reports. 

And also …

• Download Megatrends 2035: the 6 dramatic forces shaking up every market by Peter Fisk. 
• Download Breakthrough Ideas for Business Leaders: Reshuffle to Regenerate by Peter Fisk. 
• Download Strategic Jazz: from Sting’s improvisation to strategy’s adaptiveness by Peter Fisk. 
• Download The Dual OS of Business: how to create tomorrow and deliver today by Peter Fisk. 
• Download The New Growth Playbook: Unlocking the growth engines of your future by Peter Fisk.
• Download The Super Innovators: 10 ways to disrupt conventions and reinvent futures by Peter Fisk
• Download The Courageous Leap: Stepping up from manager of today, to leader of the future by Peter Fisk. 

The entire concept of a business is being reimagined before our eyes. And the ways of leading it too. The pace of change is staggering, fuelled by exponential technologies, generational shifts, and a deeper search for meaning. But beneath the surface, something more profound is happening: a revolution in the way we think about organisations, leadership, and value itself.

Over the last 12 months I have worked with inspiring business leaders across the world – from Campari to Cartier, Mercedes and Microsoft, Nestlé to NTT Data – with projects in places as diverse as Argentina and Azerbaijan, Denmark and Dubai, Mexico and Japan.

I’ve seen first-hand how the best companies are not just adapting, but reconceptualising what business can be. They are guided not by legacy or orthodoxy, but by bold, creative minds who dare to think differently.

Today’s breakthroughs in business thinking are not about tools or frameworks; they are about philosophy and possibility. They question our deepest assumptions about what it means to work, lead, and thrive. They ask how organisations can be more human, more adaptive, more purposeful — and ultimately more effective.

Meta-shifts in business thinking

The meta-shift in business thinking is the transition from control to creativity, from efficiency to evolution, and from hierarchy to ecosystem:

• From control to creativity: Leadership moves from commanding people to mobilising imagination and collective intelligence.

• From efficiency to evolution: Organisations focus less on optimising for today and more on adapting, learning, and reinventing continuously.

• From hierarchy to ecosystem: Value is co-created across networks, partners, and communities, not dictated from the top down.

In essence, business is shifting from being a machine to being a living system … adaptive, regenerative, and purpose-driven.

In this new logic, the best leaders no longer manage resources; they mobilise imagination. Strategy is no longer about beating competitors, but orchestrating networks of value. Innovation is not a department, but a continuous conversation with the future. Transformation is less about restructuring and more about regeneration — enabling people, ideas, and organisations to adapt and grow together.

• Strategy: from planning to sensemaking
  Strategy is no longer a fixed blueprint; it’s the ability to sense, interpret, and act in complex, uncertain environments.

• Leadership: from control to consciousness
  Leaders move beyond authority and oversight, cultivating awareness, energy, and purpose to guide people and systems.

• Innovation: from invention to intelligent imagination 
  Innovation transcends products or technology, combining human creativity with data, AI, and insight to create meaningful impact.

• Transformation: from change project to perpetual reinvention
  Change is no longer episodic; organisations evolve continuously, learning, adapting, and reinventing themselves in real time.

• Value: From profit to purposeful profitability
  Financial results remain important, but purpose drives decisions, inspires teams, and aligns organisations with broader societal impact.

This shift reflects a deeper recognition: business is not separate from society or the planet — it is an agent of evolution, shaping how we live, work, and thrive.

I remember exploring this with Amy Edmundson a few years ago at the Thinkers50 Global Summit (pictured with me below). She argued it was time for a more radical reimagination of how organisations work, how leaders think, and the impact which they have.  Her book, about the Fearless Organisation, made her the world’s top business thinker, and enabled her to demand $250k for a keynote.  Maybe that demonstrates the value of “ideas”.

The most powerful ideas change minds. They change choices. They change futures.

Breakthrough ideas in action

Here are some more detail on the ideas, some of them new, some of them less so, which I have seen on my travels and work with business leaders in every corner of the globe – shaping the next generation of management thinking:

Leadership … conscious, collective, and regenerative

1. Conscious Leadership

Leaders such as John Mackey (Whole Foods) and Fiona Hill (Conscious Business Institute) advocate a shift from ego-driven to eco-driven leadership — self-aware, empathetic, and systemic. Conscious leaders manage energy, not people; purpose, not profit; progress, not perfection.

2. Collective Intelligence 

The old heroic model of leadership is dead. The future lies in collective intelligence — systems where teams think together, adapt in real time, and self-organise around purpose. Laloux’s teal organisations and McHale’s hive mind both point toward decentralised, evolutionary leadership.

3. Regenerative Leadership

Beyond sustainability lies regeneration — designing organisations as living systems that restore and renew. And ultimately create “net positive” impact. Regenerative leaders ask: how can our business make life thrive? This thinking is influencing Unilever, Interface, and Danone.

4. Energy Leadership

A new frontier is emotional climate design — how leaders create psychological and energetic resonance across hybrid organisations. The next differentiator in leadership is not IQ or EQ, but AQ — adaptive and affective intelligence.

5.  Minimalist Leadership

Leaders as sense-makers, not saviours. Minimalist leadership focuses on clarity, curiosity, and humility. Berger calls it “simple habits for complex times” — letting go of control and creating space for collective sense-making.

Strategy … from planning to sensemaking

1. Sensemaking 

Strategy now begins with sensemaking — decoding ambiguity before deciding. In complex systems, there are no best practices — only next practices. Leaders must continuously interpret weak signals and reframe assumptions.

2. Optionality

The future is a portfolio, not a prediction. Strategic optionality — building small, low-cost bets in emerging spaces — replaces the old monolithic plan. Think Amazon’s “Day 1” mindset or Netflix’s perpetual beta culture.

3. Ecosystem Strategy and Platform Dynamics

Competitive advantage has moved from ownership to orchestration. Ecosystem strategy designs interconnected systems of value creation — blending collaboration, co-creation, and competition (“coopetition”).

4. Strategic Narrative

In uncertain times, strategy must be told as well as planned. A strategic narrative connects purpose, possibility, and performance — shaping belief and coherence. Great leaders now see storytelling as a core strategic tool.

5. Antifragility and Strategic Resilience

Beyond resilience lies antifragility — systems that strengthen under stress. The best strategies now embrace volatility as fuel for innovation, using scenario stress-testing, real options, and modular organisation design.

6. Using AI to Redefine Economic Systems

AI is still largely embraced by companies as a tool for efficiency. This just reduces the cost of the old paradigms. The real opportunity is to reinvent how businesses work, how markets work, how economies work – a coordination challenge of people, resources and decisions.

Innovation … intelligence, imagination, and impact

1. AI-Augmented Innovation

AI is becoming a creative partner — from design generation to predictive insight. The most advanced companies (like Nestlé, Microsoft, and NTT Data) are now building hybrid human–machine innovation loops — where data augments imagination.

2. Proximity Innovation

Technology is dissolving distance — enabling “just-in-time everything.” Proximity means hyper-local, personalised, instantly fulfilled solutions. It’s the fusion of automation, local fabrication, and digital intimacy.

3. Ecosystem Innovation

Beyond open innovation, we see open orchestration: building adaptive systems of partners who innovate together at speed. Think of Apple’s ecosystem, Alibaba’s platform economy, or IKEA’s circular collaboration networks.

4. Minimal Viable Transformation 

Evolving from MVP (minimum viable product), MVT focuses on rapid, modular transformation. Instead of massive programmes, organisations now build small-scale pilots that create cultural and systemic change at pace.

5. Polarity Thinking & Paradox Innovation

Instead of solving trade-offs, innovators embrace paradox. Profit and purpose, exploration and execution, humans and machines — the most innovative leaders are ambidextrous thinkers who integrate apparent opposites into creative tension.

6. Fractal Innovation Systems

Inspired by nature and network theory, fractal organisations innovate at every level — small units that mirror the whole. Haier’s “microenterprise” model and 37signals’ “shape-up” approach exemplify this — innovation through self-similarity and autonomy.

Transformation … from change management to perpetual reinvention

1. Continuous Reinvention

Transformation is no longer an event — it’s a capability. The new currency of competitiveness is the ability to reinvent faster and smarter than others. Organisations must institutionalise curiosity, learning, and courage.

2. The Transformation Flywheel

Transformation builds momentum through iterative cycles — small wins compound into cultural and strategic acceleration. Microsoft’s cultural reinvention around growth mindset shows how learning drives exponential renewal.

3. Organisational Biomimicry

Businesses are evolving into living systems — decentralised, adaptive, and self-healing. Borrowing from nature, they grow like mycelium networks: distributed, responsive, and regenerative.

4. Psychological Adaptability

Transformation depends not on systems but on mindsets. The Growth Mindset, and more. Organisations that normalise learning, role-shifting, and experimentation turn uncertainty into advantage.

5. Digital–Human Integration

The frontier is not digital transformation, but digital-human fusion — combining algorithmic precision with human creativity. The next advantage lies in designing organisations where machines think and humans imagine.

6. Institutional Courage

Transformational cultures cultivate bravery at scale — where truth can be spoken to power, and curiosity replaces conformity. “Spaciousness” — creating room for new thinking — underpins transformation readiness.

Thinkers’ thinkers

Every two years, Thinkers50 profile the best new ideas, and the best thinkers, around the business world. Here are some of their picks for the important, and provocative, ideas that are likely to shape the C-suites and organisations of the coming years:

Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take … Andrew Winston & Paul Polman

Former Unilever CEO Polman and coauthor Winston are perhaps the world’s leading thinkers right now, and while their book is a few years old, it has never mattered more. They redefine corporate purpose around net positive impact. They argue that companies must create value for all — people, planet, and profit alike. Using Unilever’s transformation as proof, they show how doing good drives growth. It’s both a moral and strategic manifesto for regenerative capitalism. Their message: the future belongs to those who give back more than they extract.

Reshuffle: Who Wins When AI Restacks the Knowledge Economy … Sangeet Paul Choudary

Choudary argues that AI isn’t just automating work — it’s reorganising economic coordination. The new winners will be those who control data flows, system architectures, and network logic. He reframes firms as nodes in intelligent ecosystems rather than static entities. The “reshuffle” is about how value creation and capture shift in an AI-driven economy. It’s a playbook for navigating the deep restructuring of capitalism itself.

Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation & Carbon: The Book of Life ... Paul Hawken

Hawken reframes climate action as regeneration — restoring the systems that sustain life. He presents a positive, actionable framework for reversing global warming at speed and scale. In Carbon, he deepens the science, showing carbon as the element of connection, not pollution. His approach links ecology, economy, and equity into one regenerative paradigm. Together, the books are a hopeful blueprint for planetary renewal and human prosperity.

Artificial Integrity: The Paths to Leading AI Toward a Human-Centered Future … Hamilton Mann

Mann argues that AI’s greatest risk isn’t malfunction — it’s moral misalignment. He outlines pathways to ensure integrity, transparency, and accountability in AI systems. Leaders, he says, must embed ethics into every layer of design and deployment. The goal is not just trustworthy AI, but trustworthy institutions behind it. It’s a blueprint for aligning technology with human purpose and shared progress.

The Vested Business Model: Win-Win Partnerships … Kate Vitasek

Kate Vitasek’s Vested model is a quiet revolution in how companies collaborate. Her research at the University of Tennessee shows that the most successful partnerships — from Microsoft to McDonald’s — are not built on contracts that divide risk, but on shared value creation.

The Vested approach reframes outsourcing and alliances as co-ventures — where both sides win by aligning incentives, innovating together, and focusing on long-term outcomes. In an age of complexity, Vitasek’s model offers a pragmatic blueprint for trust-based ecosystems that scale impact, not bureaucracy.

Pioneers: 8 Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs … Neri Karra Sillaman

Immigrant entrepreneurs embody resilience, reinvention, and cross-cultural agility. Karra Sillaman distils lessons from global founders who build lasting enterprises amid uncertainty. Longevity, she argues, stems from adaptability — the ability to navigate borders, markets, and identities. Her eight principles focus on vision, relationships, and the creative tension between belonging and difference. The result is a manifesto for entrepreneurial endurance in a restless, globalised world.

The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Work … Ludmila Praslova

Praslova reframes neurodiversity as a strategic advantage, not a deficit. Like canaries in a coal mine, neurodivergent people signal systemic workplace problems early. The book maps out how inclusive design and psychological safety unlock innovation and empathy. It calls for moving beyond tokenism to genuine structural inclusion. Her vision: workplaces that thrive through difference, dignity, and deep belonging.

How to Be Bold: The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage … Ranjay Gulati

Gulati explores how courage fuels leadership, creativity, and change. Boldness, he shows, isn’t recklessness but a cultivated muscle built through purpose and practice. Drawing on psychology and real-world leaders, he reveals how small acts of bravery create momentum. He challenges organisations to design cultures that reward intelligent risk-taking. It’s a science-backed call to replace fear of failure with curiosity and conviction.

The Science of Leadership: Nine Ways to Expand Your Impact … Margaret Moore & Jeffrey Hull

Moore and Hull fuse neuroscience, systems thinking, and coaching psychology. They identify nine evidence-based capacities that define modern leadership. From emotional agility to cognitive range, they show how to expand personal impact. The focus is on inner mastery as the foundation for outer influence. It’s a practical, research-grounded guide to thriving as a 21st-century leader.

Move Fast & Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems … Francis Frei and Anne Morris

Frei reclaims the startup mantra “move fast” (as Google said, “and break things”) but now for leaders with integrity. She argues that speed and trust are not opposites — they amplify each other. Through case studies, she shows how clarity, alignment, and accountability drive progress. The method: diagnose deeply, decide boldly, deliver transparently. It’s a leadership guide for decisive action without moral compromise.

The 4-Day Week: Productivity Reimagined … Andrew Barnes

Andrew Barnes, the New Zealand entrepreneur behind the global 4-Day Week movement, has sparked a quiet revolution in how we understand productivity. His central insight is elegantly radical: when people work less, they perform better. By redesigning the working week around outcomes, not hours, Barnes found that employees were more engaged, creative, and loyal.

It’s not about squeezing five days into four; it’s about working smarter. The model has now been tested in thousands of companies across 60 countries, and the results are clear — higher productivity, lower burnout, and better wellbeing. In a world obsessed with hustle, Barnes reminds us that focus, rest, and trust are the true engines of performance.

Don’t Be Yourself: The Case Against Authenticity … Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a psychologist who delights in challenging business orthodoxy. His book Don’t Be Yourselfargues that the cult of authenticity has gone too far. Leaders who “just be themselves” risk mistaking comfort for growth, or self-expression for effectiveness.

Instead, Chamorro-Premuzic calls for intelligent self-management — knowing when to adapt, when to stretch, when to fake confidence until you’ve earned it. Leadership, he argues, is not about being rawly authentic but about being responsibly intentional. In a world that celebrates transparency, he offers a timely counterpoint: we don’t need more authenticity; we need more maturity.

The Caring Company … Isaac Getz and Laurent Marbacher

Isaac Getz and Laurent Marbacher’s The Caring Company is perhaps the most human business book of our time. Their vision is of organisations built on trust, empathy, and freedom — where people are not “resources” to be managed but individuals to be supported.

They argue that capitalism itself is evolving — from an extractive system to a caring economy. Companies like Michelin and Decathlon are already proving that when you give people purpose and autonomy, extraordinary things happen. Their message resonates deeply in a post-pandemic world hungry for meaning: the best businesses care — about people, community, and planet — and profit follows.

Proximity: The Next Frontier of Innovation … Kaihan Krippendorff and Robert Wolcott

Kaihan Krippendorff and Robert Wolcott’s Proximity explores one of the most transformative shifts in modern business: the end of distance. As technology brings production, service, and personalisation ever closer to the customer, we are entering an era of just-in-time everything.

From 3D-printed shoes to hyper-local manufacturing and digital twin ecosystems, proximity redefines the economics of scale and scope. It is not just an operational model; it’s a mindset — one that rewards responsiveness, intimacy, and innovation. For leaders, the challenge is to design systems that are close enough to matter, yet flexible enough to scale.

Minimalist Leadership … Frank Martela

In a world addicted to busyness, Frank Martela’s concept of Minimalist Leadership feels almost spiritual. Drawing on his background in philosophy and psychology, Martela argues that the essence of leadership is not in doing more, but in doing less — better.

Minimalist leaders strip away the noise. They focus on what truly matters: meaning, relationships, clarity. They create space for others to shine. This is not about laziness or detachment, but about deliberate simplicity — a discipline that frees leaders from ego and helps organisations focus their energy on what really counts.

The Hive Mind at Work … Siobhán McHale

Culture expert Siobhán McHale reframes the organisation as a living, thinking organism. In The Hive Mind at Work, she explores how collective intelligence — the shared, dynamic capacity of groups to think and act together — can unlock extraordinary performance.

Her metaphor of the hive is powerful: when teams align around shared purpose and mutual respect, they self-organise with agility and creativity. It’s not about command and control, but about collective flow. The future of work, McHale argues, is not individual brilliance but cooperative genius.

Spaciousness: Creating Time to Think … Megan Reitz and John Higgins

Reitz and Higgins invite leaders to rediscover the lost art of spaciousness. In a world of endless meetings and micro-decisions, they remind us that thinking — deep, reflective, imaginative thinking — is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Their concept of “spacious leadership” is about creating the mental, emotional, and organisational room for insight to emerge. It’s the pause that makes progress possible. The leaders who succeed in turbulent times are those who can step back, breathe, and see the whole system — not just the next task.

Connecting the dots

What unites all these thinkers is a shift from control to connection, from ego to ecosystem, from efficiency to meaning. The next era of management will be defined not by mechanistic structures but by human systems thinking — organisations designed for curiosity, collaboration, and care.

Across the companies I’ve worked with — from the boardrooms of Zurich to the creative labs of Seoul — I see the same hunger: to make business not just faster or leaner, but better. To combine performance with purpose, scale with soul. To rediscover that the greatest breakthroughs in business are not technological — they are conceptual.

We stand on the brink of a new management renaissance. One defined not by rigid hierarchies or old-school playbooks, but by breakthrough ideas that reimagine what’s possible. The question is no longer how to manage work, but how to inspire progress.

And as these thinkers remind us — the future of business will not be built by those who play it safe, but by those who dare to think again.

More from Peter Fisk

Change accelerates. Technology disrupts. Expectations rise. Futures emerge. The only certainty is uncertainty. To survive, let alone thrive, organisations, leaders, and entire societies must shift from reactive resilience to proactive readiness. That shift is at the heart of what is increasingly known as being “future ready”.

 It is not simply about contingency planning or crisis management; it is about cultivating the foresight, agility, and creative courage to shape your own trajectory amidst flux.

In my new research Megatrends 2035, I explore six overarching forces — technological acceleration, social transformation, decarbonisation and resource limits, shifting global power centres, urban–ecosystem evolution, and the rise of humanity as a conscious actor — that will fundamentally reshape markets, ecosystems, and societal expectations. These forces are interconnected, often compounding, and rarely linear. They demand a type of strategic imagination that goes beyond scenario mapping to a deep understanding of emergent possibilities and the interplay between technology, society, and human purpose.

From these patterns, my forthcoming book The Reinvention Playbook introduces a set of strategies and disciplines that help leaders translate insight into action. These range from narrative architecture, which enables organisations to frame compelling futures, to platform thinking, which orchestrates ecosystems of partners, to capability regeneration, which ensures skills, structures, and mindsets remain perpetually relevant. The goal is to embed adaptability, foresight, and a regenerative orientation into the organisation’s very DNA, allowing it not only to withstand disruption but to flourish through it.

Being “future ready” is not about merely coping; it is about turning anticipation into strategic reinvention. It is the capacity to sense weak signals before they become crises, to shift orientation before disruption forces a reaction, to experiment forward, and to continuously redesign both systems and organisational identity. Achieving this requires leaders to operate across four interdependent domains:

• Strategic foresight – the discipline of mapping plausible futures, challenging dominant assumptions, detecting weak signals, and identifying the inflection points where markets, technologies, and societal expectations will pivot. This is the skill of seeing the horizon with both rigor and imagination, recognising patterns that others overlook, and cultivating an early-warning radar for opportunity and risk alike.
• Dynamic strategy – the ability to fuse purpose-driven clarity with agile, real-time adaptation. Leaders must maintain a north star while simultaneously improvising the path to it, translating foresight into flexible roadmaps, options, and experiments. Strategy becomes less a document and more a living, responsive practice that blends ambition with continuous sensing.
• Adaptive organisations – the structures and systems that allow for rapid adjustment. This includes modularity, optioned capabilities rather than fixed assets, regenerative supply chains, and organisational architectures designed for movement rather than rigidity. It is the recognition that the most sustainable advantage is adaptability itself, not temporary efficiency or scale.
• Cultural plasticity – the mindsets, behaviours, and social norms that enable perpetual learning and reinvention. Psychological safety, tolerance for failure, and the ability to reframe problems and “reimagine from within” are essential. Leaders must cultivate curiosity, empathy, and courage throughout the organisation, embedding an ethic of experimentation and reflective growth.

In short, future readiness is not a programme or a framework; it is a way of thinking and being. It demands that leaders move from responding to disruption to orchestrating it, from predicting change to creating it, and from optimising the present to designing the emergent future.

The organisations that succeed will be those that can combine foresight, strategic dexterity, organisational adaptability, and cultural plasticity into an enduring capability to reinvent themselves continuously — long before the next wave arrives.

Here, I explore some of today’s contemporary business thinkers whose work offers complementary lenses on future readiness. Each helps illuminate one dimension of the readiness journey: how to sense, how to act, how to build capacities, and perhaps most importantly, how to reinvent purpose, identity, and systems in the face of constant flux.

My focus is on curating and connecting their best ideas into a more actionable map for what it means to be future ready — not someday in the future, but right now:

Machine, Platform, Crowd

MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee are recognised for their rigorous, empirically grounded explorations of how digital technologies — AI, robotics, platforms, data — reshape the economy, work, and society. Their core insight: we are entering an era in which digital technologies increasingly serve not just as tools but as co-creators and agents, fundamentally altering which tasks humans perform, what work means, and how value is captured.

What are their best ideas?

• Complementarity and augmentation
  Rather than see technology purely as a replacement for human labor, Brynjolfsson & McAfee emphasize designing systems in which humans and machines complement each other. In a future-ready organization, you don’t merely automate; you reweave work around human judgment, curiosity, empathy, and creative synthesis — with AI as a kind of collaborator.

• Platform thinking, digital twins, feedback loops
  They show how digital platforms and networked infrastructures create new competitive advantage via scale, data feedback, and ecosystem dynamics. Future readiness demands mindset shifts from linear value chains to platform ecosystems, enabling continuous sensing, iteration, and recombination of assets.

• The “productivity puzzle” and lag effects
  They carefully study why, despite rapid advances in AI and automation, productivity gains have lagged. Their insight: adoption is uneven, often slow, hindered by organizational, cultural, institutional frictions. That reinforces a core tenet of readiness: having the internal absorptive capacity, culture, and leadership agility to translate technology potential into realized performance.

• Inequality, dislocation, and reskilling
  Brynjolfsson & McAfee highlight how technology can exacerbate wage polarization and job displacement — but also how policies, education, and redesign of systems can help channel the gains widely. Future readiness is not just about “winning” — it’s about regenerative inclusion. Leaders must think in terms of reinvesting digital dividends into human capital, redeployment, and fairness.

Megatrends 2035 emphasises technological acceleration and the shifting economic centre of gravity. Brynjolfsson & McAfee provide the micro-mechanics of that acceleration at work, showing how pattern recognition, algorithms, and scale reshape industries. Their work underscores the urgency of embedding digital literacy, experimentation, and platform fluency as non-negotiable core capabilities in the Reinvention Playbook.

In a future-ready organisation, you must not wait for a fully formed AI strategy to emerge, but begin weaving human–machine experiments now — small pilots, internal platforms, algorithmic augmentation in R&D, finance, logistics — to shift the cultural and organizational DNA before disruption forces radical change. Their work is a practical touchstone: the digital frontier is not optional; it’s the terrain in which future readiness will be won or lost.

Undisrupted

Ian Khan has pivoted from his earlier metaverse obsession to now focus on transformation, leadership, and future readiness. This time with real foresight, rather than following fads. His new book, Undisrupted: Leadership Essentials on Business, Transformation, Profitability, and Future Readiness, introduces a practical orientation to how leaders and organizations can anticipate and respond before disruption hits. Alongside that, Khan is associated with the Future Readiness Score, a diagnostic and action tool to measure organisational adaptability.

What are his best ideas?

• Seven Pillars of Future Readiness
  In Undisrupted, Khan outlines seven foundational domains (such as strategic foresight, transformational agility, business model elasticity, resource orchestration, culture of continuous learning, resilience, and stakeholder inclusion) that feed into an organization’s readiness spine. Rather than treat transformation as episodic, he sees it as an enduring, integrated practice.

• Score as compass, not scoreboard
  Khan’s Future Readiness Score enables leaders to scan their organization’s maturity across these pillars, to spot weak zones, and to calibrate investments. But he stresses that the score is not merely evaluative — it becomes a guide for which levers to pull, where to experiment, and what capacity to rebuild.

• From resilience to opportunism
  Whereas many change programs aim at resilience (bouncing back), Khan pushes toward opportunism (bouncing beyond). In readiness logic, you’re not just inoculating against downside risk; you are structuring to harvest upside optionality. His frameworks encourage leaders to treat uncertainty as a source of strategic optionality — scanning for early signals, preserving slack, maintaining modularity.

• Leadership discipline in ambiguity
  One of Khan’s strengths is his emphasis on the human side — the psychological, behavioral, and narrative disciplines leaders need in volatile contexts: how to hold paradox, communicate ambiguity, generate hope even amid uncertainty, and mobilize teams without full clarity.

The Reinvention Playbook is, in its essence, a design manual for embedding agility, renewal, and systemic resonance into organizations. Khan’s pillars map well onto my levers: for example, his “business model elasticity” mirrors your push for experimental platforms; his “resource orchestration” aligns with your modularity and ecosystem thinking. The Future Readiness Score can be a companion metric to my own reinvention maturity index — a diagnostic scaffolding to prioritize where in the playbook to begin.

Khan’s focus on treating readiness as a continuous practice (not a one-off project) echoes your insistence that reinvention is not episodic but perpetual. His contribution is especially valuable at the level of translation — giving busy leaders a digestible, scaffolded pathway into future readiness — and thus a practical complement to your strategic and systemic framing.

Imaginable 

Jane McGonigal is a game designer, and thought leader on how imagination, narrative, and funneling collective intelligence can help us prepare for uncertain futures. Her recent book Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Be Ready for Anything (2022) underscores how cultivating a “future imagination muscle” is not whimsical but foundational for foresight and resilience.

What are her best ideas?

• Futures thinking as a training ground
  McGonigal argues that we can — and should — train ourselves to anticipate emergent futures by constructing alternate narratives, running simulations, and “gaming” weak signals. She sees scenario planning not as a boardroom exercise but as a deeply creative, psychological process of expanding what we feel to be possible. In her view, those who can more richly imagine futures are better prepared to pivot when those plausible worlds begin to converge.

• Collective sensemaking and participatory futures
  A powerful idea in Imaginable is that future readiness is not an elite function but a distributed capacity. By engaging communities, customers, employees, even entire ecosystems in “future games,” organizations can surface hidden insights, latent anxieties, and emergent signals that no executive horizon scanner would catch alone.

• Emotional anchoring and anticipatory habits
  McGonigal emphasizes that it’s not enough to know “what might happen” — one must rehearse the emotional, cognitive, and social dimensions of those futures. Through structured “pre-mortems,” future diaries, and immersive prototypes, she helps leaders sensitize their imaginations to the felt logic of future worlds — making leaps more credible and less jarring.

• Optimistic yet rigorous posture
  While many futurists veer toward doom or hype, McGonigal holds to a disciplined optimism: she sees uncertainty as generative, not only threatening. Her creative approach helps rehearse positive futures as incentive scaffolds, rather than as fantasy. That aligns well with the idea of readiness not as defense but as expansive agency.

Megatrends 2035 map the structural contours of coming disruptions; McGonigal helps leaders inhabit those contours psychologically and emotionally. Her methods can be folded into the Reinvention Playbook as “future immersion routines” — periodic rehearsals, narrative labs, cross-stakeholder futures games, weak signal sprints — that keep your organisation attuned to shifts and open to pivot.

In practice, embedding her mindset means scheduling time and space for unbounded exploration — not as a side hobby, but as a formalized discipline (e.g. quarterly “future jams”) — so that when inflection points accelerate, your leadership team is already fluent in multiple futures. In this sense, McGonigal helps you humanize the foresight dimension of readiness.

Seeing Around Corners

Rita McGrath is a leading thinker in strategy, known particularly for her concept of discovery-driven planning and her work on transient advantage. When I sat down with her on stage at the European Business Forum, she talked about the need to challenge and shake-up our linear mindsets. She has a focus on unlearning strategic complacency, spotting weak signals, and building optionality into strategic portfolios.

What are his best ideas?

• Transient advantage vs sustainable advantage
  McGrath argues that the era of durable, long-lasting competitive advantage is fading. Instead, organizations must become experts in harvesting advantages, letting them expire, and then pivoting to new growth spaces. Future readiness means treating your core not as sacred, but as an evolving portfolio of options.

• Signal assessment and strategic discovery
  Her “Seeing Around Corners” methodology trains executives to scan beyond their industry boundaries, cluster weak signals, and convert them into plausible inflection narratives. She encourages mapping competitive vulnerabilities and reading discontinuities not as external threats but as opportunity spaces.

• Small bets and real options
  McGrath emphasizes structuring investments not around massive commitments, but small bets that preserve downside optionality. The idea is to cultivate a bias toward experimentation, staged scaling, and failure-safe pivots — a posture that aligns directly with the DNA of reinvention.

• Portfolio mindset and resource reallocation
  To stay future ready, McGrath recommends that companies continuously reallocate resources — not just in red vs green projects, but across waves, domains, and horizon spaces. The core must always subsidize the new, and innovation must be in conversation with the core, not operating wholly apart.

The Reinvention Playbook’s emphasis on modular restructuring, experimentation scaffolding, and cross-domain recombination resonates deeply with McGrath’s portfolio logic and optionality approach. Her methods of signal scanning and pivoting are natural complements to foresight disciplines. Indeed, “Seeing Around Corners” could be formalised as a recurring practice, a method for refreshing the radar of disruption and steering the next adaptive move.

In future readiness terms, McGrath reminds us: it’s not about being “safe,” it’s about being nimble, about embracing the inevitability of change and designing your organization to surf waves of obsolescence. The readiness challenge is not to resist disruption, but to ride it — to define where you will lead, and when you will let go.

Future Fit

René Rohrbeck is known for his work on how firms can develop “future fitness” by integrating foresight into strategic management. One of his notable contributions is the Future FITness Model, which aims to assess and strengthen an organization’s readiness to adapt, learn, and innovate in future contexts.

Rohrbeck’s Future FITness framework is built around three interlocking dimensions:

• Future Orientation — how proactive, open, and forward-looking an organization is in its scanning, signal processing, and scenario practices. This is about mindset, governance, time horizon orientation, and the capacity to reframe core assumptions.

• Integration Capability — the ability to absorb foresight into decision-making, strategy, innovation, and resource allocation. That means bridging the gap between futures horizons and day-to-day business operations, ensuring that foresight outcomes are actionable.

• Transformation Readiness — how ready the organization is to evolve, pivot, reorganize, reallocate, and redirect when new futures begin to crystallize. This includes structural flexibility, portfolio governance, and cultural comfort with ambiguity.

Rohrbeck emphasizes that fitness is not a point-in-time achievement but a continual state of renewal: you strengthen your future intelligence, integration muscle, and transformation agility over time.

So why does this matter for readiness?

• Diagnostic clarity
  The model gives leaders a lens to evaluate not just whether they do scenario planning but whether those futures permeate strategy, structures, and investments. Many organizations have foresight units that operate in isolation; Rohrbeck’s model insists the foresight must be integrated and dynamically applicable.

• Bridging “thinking” and “doing”
  A recurring challenge is that many foresight practices remain conceptual, not acting as catalysts for organizational change. Rohrbeck’s insistence on integration ensures that future intelligence is not decorative, but catalytic.

• Readiness as continuous renewal
  The FITness metaphor helps leaders see readiness not as a checklist to “complete,” but as a muscle to train. It encourages iterative cycles of scanning, prototyping, integrating, and pivoting.

In the Reinvention Playbook, I prescribe discrete levers and phases for renewal — while Rohrbeck’s Future FITness model helps embed a continuous meta-cycle: how often should scanning regenerate, when should integration happen, how and when should transformation pulses be triggered. His model deepens the architecture by linking foresight, strategy, and reconfiguration as a seamless loop.

Combining your Megatrends 2035 lenses (which map structural forces) with Rohrbeck’s model offers a two-level conversation: while Megatrends articulate the macro context, Future FITness ensures your internal architecture remains plastic and tuned to those shifts. Embedding Rohrbeck’s practices — regular scanning sprints, integration forums, transformation pulses — is a way to operationalize readiness as living discipline, not ad hoc project.

Emerging Tech

Amy Webb is founder of the Future Today Institute, which is really a platform for her annual mega-report, Emerging Tech Trends and her books (The Big Nine, The Signals Are Talking). Her practice synthesizes rigorous trend spotting, horizon scanning, and scenario modeling — making her a go-to voice for executives seeking to navigate the tech frontier.

What’s her approach?

• Trend triangulation and cross-sector synthesis
  Webb’s signature method is to cluster signals across industries, geographies, and domains (e.g. biotech + AI + climate + policy) to surface conjunctions — emergent phenomena that straddle traditional silos. This approach fits the readiness imperative: you must see pattern interactions, not siloed trends.

• Time horizons and layering
  In her reports she typically stratifies near-term (1–3 years), midterm (3–7), and long-term (10+), helping executives allocate attention, investment, and risk accordingly. Readiness requires not just scanning but time discipline — when to act fast vs when to hedge.

• Signal archetypes and “weakest signal hotspots”
  Webb constantly identifies “signal archetypes” — patterns that recur across contexts (e.g. convergence of AI + biotech, novel energy systems, emergent regulation). She helps organizations build “future lenses” to filter noise and elevate emergent energies.

• Transparency, narrative, and engagement
  Webb publishes her trends not as esoteric projections but as accessible narratives, toolkits, prompting archives, and scenario kits. Her strength is in making foresight actionable and grounded for practitioners, helping them internalize futures thinking rather than relegate it to the margins.

Megatrends 2035 provides a structural backbone of shifts; Webb’s reports help to populate them with signals, subtrends, and scenario vectors. Her forecasts feed into the radar modules, scenario backdrops, and optional strategy layers in The Reinvention Playbook. Embedding her triangulation and time layering methods within foresight routines ensures your readiness horizon is not blind to the rapid tech frontier.

Future Readiness

Howard Yu is Lego professor at IMD Business School and director of its Centre for Future Readiness. He’s also a really nice guy. I remember a boxing match which I created between him and Scott Anthony – 6 rounds of future thinking, strategy driving, hard punching ideas into action. (Despite this!) Howard is best known for developing the Future Readiness Indicator, a rigorous, quantified tool to evaluate how well publicly listed companies are positioned to harness future trends.

What’s his approach?

• Composite scoring across seven dimensions
  Yu’s indicator integrates metrics such as R&D investment, innovation outcomes, business diversification, growth trajectory, financial resilience, liquidity, and workforce/ESG signals to give a composite readiness score. It is not hypothetical — it benchmarks real firms and tracks change over time.

• Comparative diagnosis and benchmarking
  The indicator allows firms to see where they stand not only in absolute terms, but relative to industry peers. It highlights which dimensions are lagging (e.g. ESG, innovation, liquidity) and thus where to concentrate effort.

• From indicator to strategy conversations
  Yu advocates using the metric as a strategic conversation starter — not a static scorecard, but a “what if” lens to explore scenario paths and rebalancing moves. He uses it to identify which business units or geographies to accelerate or rethink.

• Leaps, not just incremental change
  In his earlier thought leadership (e.g. Leap: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can be Copied), Yu encourages firms to seek leap transformations rather than incremental improvement — a theme that resonates powerfully with readiness: sometimes the necessary move is a discontinuous shift, not a tweak.

The Reinvention Playbook is about activating strategic levers to transform; Yu’s Future Readiness Indicator gives you a quantitative dashboard of where your organization is — and where the gaps in your reinvention architecture lie. It can help prioritize which dimensions (eg R&D, diversity, liquidity) merit urgent attention as you build readiness.

His emphasis on leaps (from his earlier book) – moving the identity, architecture, or business model – complements the idea that reinvention often requires non-incremental play. In a world shaped by your Megatrends 2035, his indicator helps anchor the playbook in measurable, accountable moves. The smart play is not to treat readiness as aspiration but to structure it into your performance infrastructure — with metrics, feedback loops, and strategic pulses.

How to be “future ready”

The journey to future readiness is neither linear nor optional. It demands scaffolding your foresight, experimentation, and identity renewal in ways that align with the structural forces of the coming decades. These thinkers profiled here offer distinct but complementary perspectives:

• Brynjolfsson and McAfee bring the frontier of human–machine reimagination.

• Khan translates readiness into discrete, actionable levers for transformation.

• McGonigal equips us with imaginative rigor to sense futures before they emerge.

• McGrath teaches how to treat advantage as fluid and build portfolios of optionality.

• Rohrbeck defines a meta architecture for embedding fitness and transformation.

• Webb amplifies signal triangulation and real-world foresight practices.

• Yu grounds readiness in quantitative metrics and strategic leaps.

The challenge for today’s leaders — whether in the C-suite, strategy teams, or boardrooms — is not simply to survive disruption, but to harness it to create new value, strengthen resilience, and embed purpose. So what does that mean in practical terms? How can leaders make their organizations truly future ready?

1. Map the future drives shaping your markets

The first step is disciplined foresight. Leaders need to cultivate the ability to detect signals before they become shocks. This goes beyond traditional market research; it is about scanning for weak signals, convergent trends, and cross-sector innovations. Tools like scenario planning, environmental scanning, and trend triangulation are essential. Amy Webb’s work on emerging technologies, Rita McGrath’s “Seeing Around Corners” approach, and René Rohrbeck’s Future FITness model offer practical methodologies to map potential disruptions and opportunities.

Forward-looking companies such as Microsoft under Satya Nadella have institutionalized this discipline. By continuously mapping technology and societal trends, they pivoted from a Windows-centric model to a cloud-first, AI-driven ecosystem, anticipating shifts in enterprise computing before competitors could respond.

2. Build an adaptive architecture

Once leaders have sightlines on the future, the next step is organizational adaptability. Traditional hierarchies and rigid business models often struggle under fast change. Future-ready organizations design flexibility into their operations: modular business units, scalable digital platforms, and cross-functional teams that can reconfigure rapidly. Brynjolfsson & McAfee’s work highlights the importance of pairing humans and machines to amplify innovation and productivity.

Tesla exemplifies adaptive architecture. Its vertically integrated production model, combined with flexible software-driven vehicles and rapid iteration cycles, enables it to respond quickly to market shifts, new energy policies, and emerging technologies in ways legacy automakers cannot match.

3. Embed a culture of experimentation

At the heart of readiness lies culture. A company can have all the foresight and architecture in the world, but if its people are risk-averse or fixed in their thinking, change will stall. Leaders must foster psychological safety, encourage experimentation, and reward curiosity. Jane McGonigal’s work reminds us that imagination and simulation are not luxuries but essential capacities: rehearsing multiple futures equips teams to act decisively when disruption arrives.

Amazon’s “Day 1” philosophy is a powerful example. Its culture celebrates small, iterative experiments, and tolerates failure as a necessary part of learning. Teams are empowered to pilot new services or technologies rapidly, from AWS innovations to delivery models, ensuring that the organization constantly tests the edges of possibility.

4. Strategically prioritize what to reinvent

Not all elements of a business need radical reinvention at once. Future-ready leaders apply deliberate focus, targeting areas where disruption is imminent or value creation is largest. Rita McGrath’s transient advantage framework emphasizes viewing competitive edge as dynamic rather than static — the core must fund exploration, and leaders must be prepared to let go of assets or models that are no longer strategic.

Schneider Electric illustrates this principle. Recognizing that energy and resource management were becoming increasingly digital and decentralized, it transformed its portfolio to focus on smart energy solutions and sustainability services, while divesting from legacy hardware businesses. The outcome: a stronger, future-ready position aligned with global decarbonization trends.

5. Mobilise for Transformation

Future readiness is not a one-off initiative; it requires continuous measurement and accountability. Howard Yu’s Future Readiness Indicator and Ian Khan’s Future Readiness Score provide leaders with actionable metrics to track their organization’s agility, innovation capacity, and transformation progress. These tools allow boards and executives to move beyond gut feeling, identifying gaps, monitoring momentum, and triggering interventions in real time.

DBS Bank in Singapore has leveraged similar approaches. By embedding metrics for digital adoption, customer experience, and innovation outcomes, it ensured that its large-scale digital transformation — from traditional banking to a platform-based ecosystem — remained on track and responsive to emerging trends.

6. Lead with purpose and vision

Finally, future readiness is inseparable from purpose. Leaders must define a vision that transcends short-term profits and galvanizes action across their ecosystem. This is where your Reinvention Playbook aligns perfectly: readiness is not just about survival; it is about creating regenerative value that benefits customers, society, and the environment.

Patagonia demonstrates how purpose drives resilience. By embedding environmental stewardship into every part of the business — from supply chain to brand narrative — it has maintained relevance and trust while navigating industry changes and societal expectations.

7. Act Now, iterate continuously

The final call to action is urgency coupled with iteration. Future readiness is not achieved in a single boardroom session or strategy report; it is built over time through repeated cycles of sensing, acting, learning, and scaling. Leaders who wait for perfect clarity or “final trends” risk being blindsided. The message is clear: start small, experiment broadly, integrate insights, and scale what works.

Are you ready?

Future readiness is not a checklist; it is a mindset, a discipline, and a strategic imperative. It requires foresight, adaptive structures, cultural plasticity, strategic prioritization, and purpose-driven leadership. Across industries, leaders who are embracing these principles — from Microsoft to Tesla, Amazon to Schneider Electric — demonstrate that readiness is a competitive advantage, a form of resilience, and a generator of opportunity.

For boards, executives, and strategists, the practical takeaway is simple yet profound: scan, sense, experiment, integrate, measure, and lead with purpose. The future is not a distant horizon — it is already shaping the choices you make today. The organizations that will thrive are those that treat disruption as a canvas for reinvention, embedding readiness into the very DNA of their business.

Future readiness is not a destination. It is a perpetual practice — the defining competence of leaders in the era of megatrends. Start now. Your business, your people, and your society will thank you.

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