The Reinvention Playbook by Peter Fisk

Contents

Thriving in a world of relentless change

Chapter 1: Change as your opportunity

• Embracing the megatrends, shockwaves and s-curves, rising above crisis and uncertainty
• Relentless reinvention, continuous not just in crisis, a mindset not a single moment
• Lamborghini was a tractor company, Samsung sold groceries, Nintendo made playing cards

Chapter 2: Technology as the great disruptor

• AI as the superforce of change, speed and power, automating process, enhancing humanity
• Exponential impact of convergent tech – genetics and robotics, batteries and blockchains
• Learning from world’s top innovators like ASML and Waymo, Illumina and Rocket Lab

Chapter 3: Leading with an innovation mindset

• Having the courage to dream, being pioneers, agility to experiment, ideas to innovate.
• Perpetual Beta, the new operating mindset. Evolving with a fast and fluid sense of DNA
• Inspired by Sam Altman and Lei Jun, Marcos Galperin and Phuti Mahanyola

Reimagining markets, reinventing business

Chapter 4: World-changing, boundary-breaking

• Every sector is shaken up: fashion to finance, healthcare and retail, mobility to space
• Ecosystems not companies, collaboration not capability, imagination not just disruption
• Ping An’s insurance platform, Xiaomi’s disruptive tech, and Joby Aviation’s flying cars

Chapter 5: Trailblazers, reimagining markets

• Disruptive start-ups creating new market spaces – challenging rules, redefining aspirations
• Imagination beyond disruption, markets not just companies, creating a cultural movement
• Colossal’s hairy mammoths, Swiss engineering of On, and Pinduoduo’s gamified retail

Chapter 6: Titans, reinventing business

• Traditional companies pivoting to the future – to survive and thrive, before you have to
• Let go of legacy, find new purpose, fuse digital and physical, decentralise and collaborate
• DSM’s coal mines to life sciences, Fujifilm’s camera film to cosmetics, Jio’s Indian lifestyle

Rethinking strategy, innovation and leadership

 Chapter 7: Strategy in an age of AI and disruption

• Strategy as choices, driven by dreams and data, systems and scenarios, fast and evolving
• Building a future portfolio, with focus and flexibility, thinking future back to accelerate growth
• Ping An’s exploit and explore, Nubank’s unbanked, Schneider’s smarter energy

Chapter 8: Sustainable and smarter innovation 

• Space-time thinking to achieve more, AI to find market gaps and anticipate demand
• Experimenting with instant prototypes, to reinvent business models, and solve big problems
• Gaayaki healthy drinks, Tony’s better chocolate, NotCo’s AI food, and BYD beyond dreams

Chapter 9: Leadership for tomorrow

• Forward-thinking leaders, visionaries and transformers, with creativity and courage.
• Human-centred, emotionally intelligent, building teams not empires, growing and resilient.
• Inspired by Daniel Ek and Mary Barra, Hisayuki Idekoba and Xin Zhang

 The Reinvention Blueprint

 Chapter 10: Being a future-ready business

• Creating tomorrow and delivering today. Are you in the future business?
• Ideas Kaleidoscope
• Future Compass

Chapter 11: Unlocking the catalysts of change

• Finding the best ideas and opportunities. The future is already here. Next is now.
• Market Making
• Opportunity Mapping

 Chapter 12: A practical guide to business transformation

• Tools and templates to navigate your journey to a better future
• Growth Accelerator
• Transformation Roadmap

Chapter 1: Change as your opportunity

Thriving in a World of Relentless Disruption

We are living in a time of unprecedented change. From the exponential rise of artificial intelligence and climate-driven upheaval, to geopolitical tension, shifting demographics, and rapid digitalization, disruption is no longer a temporary phase — it’s the new normal. For today’s businesses, the question is no longer whether they might be disrupted, but when, how, and how often.

But within every disruption lies the seed of opportunity. The companies that will survive — and more importantly, thrive — are those that learn to treat change not as a threat, but as fuel for growth. They ride the waves of transformation, harnessing megatrends, rebounding from shockwaves, and mastering the art of relentless reinvention. This mindset shift — from defensive to dynamic — is now the ultimate competitive advantage.

Riding the S-Curves of Innovation

Disruption rarely follows a straight line. Instead, it often unfolds in “S-curves” — patterns of growth where new innovations start slow, accelerate rapidly, and then plateau. Businesses that cling to the top of a mature curve risk being blindsided by the next one. The winners are those who jump curves early, before the peak — constantly scanning the horizon, investing in new technologies, business models, and capabilities while their current models still perform well.

Apple is a classic example. Even at the height of the iPod’s success, Apple disrupted itself by launching the iPhone. Netflix did the same, moving from DVD rentals to streaming, and now into original content — always shifting ahead of the curve.

To ride the S-curves, leaders must cultivate ambidexterity: the ability to exploit the present while exploring the future. This involves creating space for innovation alongside execution, short-term profits alongside long-term bets.

Megatrends Are the New Compass

In a world where change is constant, strategy must be rooted in the right direction. Megatrends — the massive, transformative forces reshaping the world — offer a strategic compass. These include:

• Digital and AI transformation: From automation to generative AI, digital technologies are rewriting what’s possible in every industry.
• Sustainability and climate action: ESG is no longer a nice-to-have — it’s a mandate from regulators, investors, and consumers.
• Demographic shifts: Aging populations, urbanization, and rising middle classes in emerging markets are redefining demand.
• Global fragmentation: Supply chains are being reimagined amid trade wars and geopolitical rifts.
• Future of work: Hybrid models, skill shortages, and AI co-pilots are transforming what it means to be a worker — and a leader.

Instead of reacting to these shifts, forward-thinking businesses proactively align with them. For instance, Ørsted, once a Danish oil and gas company, boldly transformed into one of the world’s leading renewable energy firms. Patagonia embedded sustainability into every layer of its business model long before it became fashionable. These companies didn’t wait for pressure — they moved with purpose, leveraging megatrends to define the future rather than be defined by it.

Shockwaves as Catalysts for Reinvention

Crises are no longer rare. Whether it’s a pandemic, financial crash, war, or climate catastrophe, we now live in an era of frequent global shockwaves. While these events bring pain and uncertainty, they also offer unique windows of opportunity.

COVID-19, for instance, devastated countless businesses — but also accelerated digital transformation, remote work, telemedicine, e-commerce, and contactless payments. The companies that adapted quickly didn’t just survive — they leapt ahead.

Consider Zoom, Shopify, or Peloton during the early pandemic years. Or restaurants that pivoted to delivery and ghost kitchens. Or manufacturers that used 3D printing to produce PPE. Crisis forced reinvention — but it also revealed who had the agility, culture, and mindset to change fast.

In a world of cascading crises, resilience isn’t just about bouncing back — it’s about bouncing forward. The best companies build shock-absorbing and shock-learning capabilities: scenario planning, decentralized decision-making, digital infrastructure, and, most importantly, a culture that welcomes change.

Why Continuous Reinvention Is Non-Negotiable

For decades, businesses operated in cycles. You’d grow, optimize, and when crisis hit — you’d “reinvent.” That reactive approach no longer works. The pace of change is too fast, and the cost of standing still is too high.

Reinvention must become a continuous capability, not just a reaction to disruption. That means:

• Constantly refreshing the value proposition: Are you solving today’s problems or yesterday’s? Are you still the best at what matters most?
• Evolving your business model: Are you experimenting with new revenue streams, platforms, or ecosystems?
• Re-skilling your workforce: Are your people ready for tomorrow’s technologies and ways of working?
• Rewiring your culture: Are curiosity, agility, and learning embedded into how you operate?

Continuous reinvention is like fitness — you don’t get strong in a crisis. You get strong before the crisis, so you’re ready when it comes.

Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Adobe have mastered this discipline. Amazon started as a bookstore and now powers e-commerce, cloud computing, and AI. Microsoft reinvented itself from Windows to the cloud, then to AI-first. Adobe shifted from boxed software to SaaS and design ecosystems. These companies reinvent not out of desperation, but out of ambition.

The Mindset Shift: From Fear to Flow

To embrace change as opportunity, leaders must reframe how they see uncertainty. Instead of fearing disruption, they must learn to flow with it. This involves several mindset shifts:

• From control to curiosity: You can’t control change — but you can understand it, explore it, and learn from it.
• From perfection to iteration: Don’t wait for the perfect plan. Test, learn, and adapt in real time.
• From ego to ecosystem: No company can go it alone. Collaborate across ecosystems, industries, and sectors.
• From risk-avoidance to risk-intelligence: Not all risks are bad. Learn to take smarter, faster, more calculated risks.

Culture plays a huge role here. Organizations must foster psychological safety, experimentation, and reward systems that value bold thinking over playing it safe. Leaders must model vulnerability, adaptability, and lifelong learning.

The next decade will bring more disruption than the last. AI will upend industries. Climate action will reshape supply chains. New generations will demand different values. The businesses that win will not be the biggest or the oldest — but the most adaptable, the most curious, and the most courageous.

Change is not the enemy. It is the raw material of progress. For those bold enough to embrace it, every disruption is a chance to reinvent — and every reinvention is a path to enduring relevance.

Change is your opportunity. The only real risk is standing still.

Masters of Reinvention

In today’s fast-changing world, staying the same is the fastest path to irrelevance. Some companies resist change and fade into obscurity. But others embrace transformation, reinventing their identity, their industry — even their reason for being.

These companies aren’t just survivors. They are shape-shifters. Bold innovators who pivoted from tractors to supercars, from paper to phones, from books to cloud empires. Their stories are more than business case studies — they’re masterclasses in evolution.

Let’s dive into eight iconic companies that radically transformed themselves — and how they did it.

Lamborghini: From Tractors to Supercars

• Origins: Practical Power. Founded in 1948 by Ferruccio Lamborghini, the company originally produced agricultural tractors in post-war Italy. Leveraging leftover military hardware, Lamborghini Trattori became a successful industrial brand. Ferruccio, a wealthy tractor magnate, was known for his mechanical skill — and his love of cars.
• The Pivot: A Supercar Born of Frustration. Legend has it Ferruccio owned a Ferrari but found its clutch problematic. When Enzo Ferrari dismissed his feedback, Ferruccio resolved to build a better car himself. In 1963, Automobili Lamborghini was born — aiming to combine performance with refinement.
• The Reinvention: Luxury Performance: From the legendary Miura to the Countach and today’s Aventador and Revuelto, Lamborghini reinvented itself into one of the world’s most recognizable luxury performance brands.

Still underpinned by mechanical excellence, the brand now stands for power, precision, and head-turning design — a far cry from humble tractors.

Samsung: From Grocery Store to Tech Powerhouse

• Origins: A Small Trading Company: In 1938, Lee Byung-chul founded Samsung as a grocery and dried-fish trading company in South Korea. Over the decades, Samsung dabbled in sugar, textiles, insurance, and even shipbuilding — an eclectic portfolio driven by opportunity.
• The Pivot: Into Electronics: In the 1960s and 70s, Samsung entered electronics, starting with black-and-white TVs and home appliances. The 1990s saw a sharper pivot: global competition, branding, and innovation became priorities.
• The Reinvention: Innovation Juggernaut: Today, Samsung Electronics is a global leader in semiconductors, smartphones, displays, and home tech. It builds key components for competitors and pushes boundaries in AI, IoT, and 5G.

From humble origins, Samsung transformed into a vertically integrated titan shaping the digital world.

Nintendo: From Playing Cards to Gaming Revolution

• Origins: Handmade Hanafuda Cards. Founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, Nintendo began as a playing card manufacturer. For decades, it specialized in hand-painted Hanafuda cards for Japanese gamblers.
• The Pivot: Toys and Experiments. By the 1960s, facing a shrinking card market, Nintendo experimented with toys, instant rice, even love hotels. Nothing stuck — until the 1970s, when it ventured into electronic games.
• The Reinvention: From Arcade to Home Gaming Icon. With hits like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., and the Game Boy, Nintendo reshaped entertainment. The company pioneered character-based gaming and mass-market consoles. Its boldest move? Reinventing itself again with motion-controlled Wii, Switch, and now, franchise-driven media (like the Mario movie and theme parks).

Nintendo continues to evolve — never forgetting its playful roots, but always adapting to the times.

IBM: From Machines to Mindshare

• Origins: Mechanical Calculators. IBM traces its roots back to 1911, when it made time clocks, tabulating machines, and punch cards. By mid-century, IBM was the dominant force in mainframe computers, powering businesses, governments, and NASA.
• The Pivot: Surviving the PC and Internet Eras: In the 1980s and 90s, the rise of personal computers and software shifted the tech landscape. IBM struggled — until it sold its PC business to Lenovo and pivoted away from hardware.
• The Reinvention: From Products to Services. Under CEO Lou Gerstner and successors, IBM became a global consulting, cloud, and AI firm. It built out services, analytics, and platforms like Watson, invested in quantum computing, and acquired companies like Red Hat to fuel its hybrid cloud strategy.

IBM today is no longer a “machine company” — it’s a business transformation partner. A bold pivot that saved and redefined the brand.

Nokia: From Paper to Pixels

• Origins: A Finnish Paper Mill. Founded in 1865 along the Nokianvirta river, Nokia started as a wood pulp and paper company. It later added rubber, cables, and consumer goods. For much of the 20th century, it was a modest Finnish conglomerate.
• The Pivot: Telecom Takeoff. In the 1980s and 90s, Nokia shifted focus to telecom infrastructure and mobile phones. Its sleek, durable handsets (like the iconic Nokia 3310) dominated the global market.
• The Reinvention: From Phones to Networks. Nokia missed the smartphone revolution and sold its handset division to Microsoft. But instead of disappearing, it doubled down on network infrastructure, 5G, and IoT.

Today, it competes with Ericsson and Huawei in powering global connectivity — a tech player once again, just in a different arena.

Disney: From Cartoons to Streaming Empire

• Origins: Animated Magic. Founded in 1923 by Walt and Roy Disney, the company gained fame through hand-drawn animation — starting with Steamboat Willie and culminating in classics like Snow White, Cinderella, and The Lion King.
• The Pivot: Theme Parks and Merch. Walt Disney’s vision extended beyond screens — in 1955, Disneyland opened, creating an immersive branded experience. The company also expanded into TV, merchandise, and licensing.
• The Reinvention: From Content to Ecosystem. In recent decades, Disney has evolved into a media conglomerate. Strategic acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Fox brought powerhouse IP. In 2019, Disney+ launched, signaling a pivot to direct-to-consumer streaming.

Today, Disney is a vertically integrated storytelling universe, spanning films, shows, games, parks, and digital. Its business model — and imagination — has transformed.

IKEA: From Pens to Furniture Giant

• Origins: Mail-Order Stationery. Founded in 1943 by 17-year-old Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA began as a mail-order catalog for pens, wallets, and watches. Customers could order by mail and receive their items by local delivery.
• The Pivot: Flat-Pack Furniture. In the late 1940s, IKEA added furniture to its catalog. By the 1950s, it pioneered flat-pack design, solving transportation and affordability problems.
• The Reinvention: Design for the Masses. IKEA redefined modern furniture by combining Scandinavian minimalism, cost efficiency, and a DIY ethos. Stores became destinations, with restaurants and showrooms. IKEA embedded sustainability into its mission and continues to explore urban living, modular homes, and circular design.

From pens to prefabricated kitchens, IKEA’s reinvention rests on one principle: making good design accessible to all

Amazon: From Bookstore to Everything Store

• Origins: Online Book Retailer. Jeff Bezos launched Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore, leveraging the internet’s reach and the simplicity of shipping books.
• The Pivot: From Books to Products to Platforms. Amazon quickly expanded into electronics, clothing, toys, and more. But its most significant moves were strategic: Amazon Marketplace (third-party sellers), Prime (loyalty ecosystem), and AWS (cloud computing), which now drives most of Amazon’s profits.
• The Reinvention: The Digital Infrastructure of Modern Life. Today, Amazon is a retail behemoth with logistics supremacy, a cloud giant powering companies from Netflix to NASA, a media platform with Prime Video, Twitch, and Audible, a hardware maker (Echo, Kindle, Ring), an AI and automation innovator exploring drones, robotics, and generative AI

From bookstore to digital backbone of the global economy, Amazon’s reinvention is still ongoing.

What We Learn From These Reinventors

Across these wildly different companies, certain themes emerge:

• Boldness Over Comfort: Reinvention often means abandoning what made you successful. These companies left behind their core — tractors, paper, cartoons — to pursue bigger futures.
• Strategic Timing: They didn’t wait for collapse. Many made bold moves at the peak of success, jumping S-curves before decline.
• Deep Self-Awareness: They knew their true strengths — not just what they did, but what they were good at doing. For example, Disney isn’t just cartoons — it’s world-class storytelling. IBM isn’t just hardware — it’s solving complex business problems.
• Culture of Adaptability: Transformation isn’t a one-time pivot. It’s a way of thinking. The best companies embed curiosity, agility, and continuous learning into their DNA.
• Purpose as a Guide: Even as they changed what they did, they stayed grounded in why they exist. IKEA kept its mission of “better everyday life.” Nintendo remained focused on play. Amazon stayed obsessed with customers.

Reinvention Is the New Legacy

In an era of relentless change, yesterday’s success guarantees nothing. But as these stories show, even the most unlikely companies can evolve into global leaders — if they’re willing to let go, rethink, and reimagine.

Whether you’re a startup or a century-old brand, the question is the same: Will you resist change — or will you become your next version? Because in the end, it’s not just about surviving disruption.

It’s about creating the future before it arrives.

Chapter 2: Technology as the Great Disruptor

We are living in the age of great disruption — an era where technology is not simply a tool, but a transformational force reshaping every aspect of human life and business. What once took decades to change now happens in months. What was once unimaginable is now inevitable.

At the center of this transformation is technology as the great disruptor — a force that challenges the status quo, dismantles entire industries, and births entirely new ones. Among the most powerful of these technological forces is artificial intelligence (AI) — a superforce of change that is redefining speed, scale, and capability.

But AI is only the beginning. The real revolution lies in the convergence — where AI meets robotics, where nanomaterials accelerate clean energy, where blockchain redefines trust, and where quantum computing reimagines complexity. These technologies are no longer evolving in isolation. They are colliding, combining, and compounding — creating disruption not in a linear path, but in exponential waves.

AI: The Superforce of Disruption

From Code to Cognition

Artificial intelligence has moved from a niche field of research to the core engine of modern innovation. Today, AI powers voice assistants, personalizes e-commerce, recommends content, detects fraud, predicts disease, and even writes code or composes music.

But this is just the beginning. AI is quickly becoming a general-purpose technology, comparable in impact to electricity or the internet. It is not just automating tasks — it is augmenting intelligence, enhancing decision-making, and transforming how we create, consume, and compete.

Speed, Scale, and Self-Improvement

What makes AI uniquely disruptive is its ability to learn and improve itself. Machine learning algorithms, especially large language models and deep neural networks, can train on vast datasets and improve their accuracy, nuance, and adaptability at a pace humans cannot match.

Generative AI tools like GPT, Midjourney, and Sora can now produce text, images, video, and even code. This creative capacity is blurring the lines between human and machine capability — democratizing creation, accelerating design, and shifting the landscape of jobs and industries.

AI as Amplifier, Not Just Automator

While AI excels at automation — reducing the need for human labor in repetitive, rule-based processes — its more profound impact lies in amplification: enhancing what humans can do. Doctors can use AI to diagnose disease earlier. Designers can prototype faster. Scientists can model proteins, forecast weather, or simulate molecules with unprecedented accuracy.

AI is not just replacing human roles; it is extending human potential.

Beyond AI: The Power of Convergent Technologies

While AI grabs the headlines, its true power emerges when it converges with other technologies. The future is not shaped by AI alone, but by its integration with robotics, quantum computing, genetics, energy systems, and materials science. Each of these domains is advancing exponentially — and when they combine, they create compound disruption.

Let’s explore some of the most significant areas of convergence:

1.     Genetics + AI: Decoding Life

The Human Genome Project took 13 years and nearly $3 billion to sequence one genome. Today, thanks to advancements in AI and bioinformatics, it can be done in hours for a few hundred dollars. But beyond speed, AI is helping us interpret genetic data, predict mutations, and design personalized medicine.

CRISPR gene editing is allowing us to modify DNA with precision. Combined with AI-driven simulation, we are on the brink of treating genetic diseases, extending lifespans, and even enhancing biological function.

This convergence is transforming healthcare into predictive, personalized, and preventative care

2.     Robotics + AI: Intelligent Machines in Motion

AI gives robots their “brains,” but improvements in robotics give them the body and dexterity to operate in physical space. The combination is unlocking next-generation automation — from warehouse bots to autonomous vehicles to surgical assistants.

We are moving toward a world of hyper-efficient logistics, AI-powered drones, self-driving fleets, and smart robots that can adapt to complex environments. These systems will revolutionize manufacturing, agriculture, defense, and disaster response — not just performing tasks, but making decisions in real time.

3. Batteries + Materials Science: The Energy Revolution

Energy is the lifeblood of modern civilization — and it, too, is being disrupted. Advances in battery technology, driven by new materials and nanoengineering, are creating lighter, cheaper, and more powerful energy storage systems.

These improvements are not incremental — they’re exponential. We are moving closer to breakthroughs in solid-state batteries, graphene-based capacitors, and self-healing materials, which will extend electric vehicle range, support renewable grids, and enable mobile devices to run longer and charge faster.

AI plays a key role here as well — optimizing battery design, simulating chemical interactions, and managing smart grids.

4. Blockchain + AI: Decentralized Intelligence

Blockchain technology introduced the idea of decentralized trust — systems where no central authority controls data, identity, or value exchange. While originally associated with cryptocurrencies, blockchain is now used for smart contracts, supply chains, digital IDs, and secure data sharing.

When paired with AI, blockchain ensures auditability and fairness in decision-making. AI systems can be trained, deployed, and monitored on decentralized networks, increasing transparency, security, and resilience.

In the future, we may see AI agents operating autonomously on blockchain platforms, executing transactions, managing assets, or coordinating with other machines — a new kind of decentralized digital economy.

5. Quantum Computing: Redefining Complexity

Classical computers use bits — 0s and 1s. Quantum computers use qubits, which can exist in multiple states simultaneously. This gives quantum systems the potential to solve problems that are intractable for traditional machines — from drug discovery to climate modeling to cryptography.

AI will benefit enormously from quantum computing’s ability to analyze vast data spaces, train models faster, and simulate complex systems. Quantum-AI convergence could accelerate innovation far beyond what current computing allows.

While quantum is still emerging, companies like IBM, Google, and startups like IonQ and Rigetti are racing toward quantum advantage — and when it arrives, the disruption will be seismic.

6. Nanotechnology + Bioengineering: Rebuilding from the Atom Up

Nanomaterials — engineered structures at the molecular or atomic level — are enabling breakthroughs in everything from medicine to construction. Imagine:

• Targeted cancer drugs that release only at tumor sites
• Ultra-strong, ultra-light materials for aerospace
• Smart surfaces that self-clean or change color
• Sensors embedded in your bloodstream to monitor health in real time

As we understand and manipulate matter at the nanoscale, we can redesign biology, materials, and machines with unmatched precision. Combined with AI modeling, nanotech is unlocking a new era of innovation at the smallest — and most powerful — scale.

The New Rules of Business in the Age of Tech Disruption

The impact of these converging technologies is not theoretical. It is practical and immediate, reshaping how companies operate, compete, and create value.

Here are the new rules emerging:

• Speed Is Strategy. In a world where innovation cycles shrink from years to months,speed becomes the defining advantage. Businesses must move fast — not just in launching products, but in making decisions, adapting to change, and learning from failure.
• Ecosystems Over Empires. No company can master all exponential technologies alone. The winners are those who buildcollaborative ecosystems— working with startups, universities, platforms, and even competitors. Innovation is becoming more open, networked, and decentralized.
• Reinvention Must Be Continuous. Transformation is no longer a one-off initiative. It must beperpetual and built into the culture. Reinvention needs to happen not only in moments of crisis, but as a daily discipline — rethinking customer experience, supply chains, business models, and talent.
• Human + Machine, Not Human vs. Machine. The most powerful businesses will not simply automate — they willaugment. They will empower workers with AI tools, train employees in digital fluency, and design workflows that blend human creativity with machine intelligence.
• Purpose and Ethics Matter More Than Ever. With powerful technology comes powerful responsibility. As AI and biotech reshape society, companies will be held to higher standards oftransparency, accountability, and purpose. Ethics will be a source of trust — and competitive advantage.

Humanity at the Crossroads

Technology is neither good nor bad. It is amoral — a multiplier of intent. Its impact depends on how we use it We are at a crossroads where the same technologies that can automate jobs can also create new ones; that can invade privacy or protect it; that can deepen inequality or democratize opportunity.

The difference lies in human leadership. We must use these superpowers — AI, robotics, quantum, and beyond — not to replace humanity, but to enhance it:

• To reduce suffering
• To extend knowledge
• To create access and inclusion
• To solve the world’s biggest challenges

Disruption is inevitable. But destruction is not.

Surfing the Exponential Wave

We are no longer in an age of change. We are in an age of acceleration. And in this era, technology is not just an enabler — it is the driver of destiny.

Whether you are an entrepreneur, executive, or policymaker, the message is clear:

You must understand technology. Embrace it. Shape it. Or be shaped by it.

Because technology will continue to disrupt. But for those who are ready — for those who ride the wave instead of resisting it — the future is not something to fear.

It is something to build.

Chapter 3. Leadership in a World of Relentless Change

We are living in a time where change is not episodic—it’s constant. Technological revolutions, societal upheavals, economic volatility, and environmental imperatives are converging to rewrite the rules of business. In such an environment, leadership must evolve from being a static role of control and command to one of imagination, adaptation, and continuous reinvention. Leaders today must not only navigate uncertainty but thrive within it. They must foster organizations that are perpetually reinventing themselves—not in response to crisis, but as a way of being.

This is the age of perpetual beta, where nothing is ever truly finished, and everything is in a state of becoming. Leadership in this era is about embracing experimentation, leading with curiosity, and empowering others to co-create the future.

To harness change as opportunity, businesses must embed reinvention into their DNA. Here’s how:

• Build a “Next Horizon” Team Create a dedicated team — or empower an internal innovation lab — to scout future trends, test new business models, and experiment with emerging tech. Give them autonomy and resources, not bureaucracy.
• Institutionalize Learning Make learning part of everyday work. Upskill your workforce in AI, sustainability, and systems thinking. Encourage reverse mentoring. Celebrate learning from failure.
• Design for Flexibility Use modular systems, agile teams, and adaptive strategies. The world is too volatile for rigid structures. Build an operating model that can flex with change.
• Embrace Platform Thinking Think beyond products — build platforms, communities, and ecosystems. Create value through networks, not just transactions.
• Make Purpose Your Anchor In a chaotic world, a clear purpose provides clarity and trust. Companies with purpose outperform — because they align people, culture, and strategy toward long-term value.

Leading with an Innovation Mindset

In the past, innovation was often confined to R&D departments or occasional product launches. Today, it must be the beating heart of an organization’s culture. An innovation mindset means encouraging experimentation, tolerating failure, and seeing problems as invitations to think differently.

Great leaders champion ideas from anywhere in the organization. They democratize innovation by making it safe for employees to question the status quo. Amazon’s “Day One” philosophy, for instance, reflects a commitment to the startup spirit even at massive scale—always iterating, always inventing. Leaders like Jeff Bezos and Satya Nadella have modeled this by prioritizing learning and long-term thinking over short-term gains.

An innovation mindset is not a personality trait—it’s a deliberate practice. It requires setting up systems that reward experimentation, creating cross-functional collaboration, and embedding design thinking into decision-making.

The Courage to Dream and Pioneer

Leadership in a disrupted world demands boldness. Not reckless risk-taking, but courageous vision. The courage to dream is what separates reactive managers from transformational leaders.

Consider Elon Musk’s ventures, from Tesla to SpaceX to Neuralink. Whether or not one agrees with his approach, Musk exemplifies the willingness to imagine a radically different future—and then mobilize resources to make it real. True leadership in turbulent times involves being a pioneer: forging new markets, challenging entrenched norms, and opening paths where none existed.

Such courage is not only about ambition—it’s about responsibility. Leaders must be willing to bet on better futures not just for their organizations, but for society and the planet.

Agility to Experiment, Accelerate, and Adapt

Agility is no longer a competitive advantage—it’s a survival trait. In a fast-moving world, static strategies quickly become obsolete. The best leaders think and act like entrepreneurs, treating the organization as a living laboratory.

This means testing ideas rapidly, learning from real-world feedback, and pivoting quickly. Companies like Spotify and Netflix exemplify this approach, constantly iterating their business models based on emerging consumer behaviors and technological shifts.

Leadership agility is also about emotional intelligence. Adaptive leaders are listeners. They remain attuned to weak signals, stay open to feedback, and continuously recalibrate based on what’s working and what’s not. They lead with questions, not just answers.

Being the Disruptor and the Imaginator

The most successful organizations are those that don’t just prepare for disruption—they become the disruptors. And that requires a leader who sees beyond current horizons, who imagines not just what the market wants today but what it might need tomorrow.

Disruptive leaders ask provocative questions. What would make our current model obsolete? What would a competitor do to beat us in five years? They challenge sacred cows and institutional inertia. They push their teams to unlearn, rethink, and redesign.

But disruption isn’t just about breaking things. It’s about reimagining them—business models, value chains, ecosystems, and relationships. Leaders as imaginators create a compelling narrative of the future, one that inspires belief and attracts talent, customers, and capital.

Perpetual Beta: A New Operating Mindset

The “perpetual beta” mindset—borrowed from the software world—is becoming a metaphor for modern leadership. It means operating with a deep understanding that nothing is final, and everything is provisional. Products, processes, and strategies are always evolving.

This mindset rejects perfectionism in favor of progress. It encourages minimum viable products, iterative rollouts, and continuous deployment. Leaders who embrace perpetual beta don’t wait for certainty—they move forward with humility, learning and improving as they go.

It also demands resilience. In a world where success is fleeting and disruption inevitable, leaders must cultivate a culture of constant learning. They must normalize failure as a path to growth and celebrate curiosity as a core value.

Fast and Fluid DNA: Reinventing the Organization

To lead reinvention, leaders must build organizations with fast and fluid DNA—networks, not hierarchies; dynamic capabilities, not static structures. This is about creating systems that flex, respond, and evolve as conditions change.

This requires shifting from rigid five-year plans to adaptive strategy cycles. From isolated departments to interconnected teams. From centralized decision-making to distributed autonomy. Organizations like Haier in China have embraced this with their micro-enterprise model, allowing hundreds of entrepreneurial teams to operate independently while aligned to a common purpose.

Leaders of such organizations are not just managers—they are ecosystem architects. They build environments where people are empowered, ideas can flow, and execution is fast.

Reinvention as a Leadership Imperative

Perhaps the most essential quality of leadership today is the commitment to reinvention. Not as a one-off transformation program, but as a continuous act. Reinvention is not about reacting to crisis—it is about proactively reshaping the organization to stay ahead.

This demands self-awareness, strategic foresight, and a deep sense of purpose. Leaders must ask: Who are we becoming? What impact do we want to have? How can we serve the future better than the past?

Leadership in a world of relentless change is not about having all the answers. It’s about nurturing the curiosity to ask better questions. It’s not about maintaining control—it’s about unleashing potential. And it’s not about defending the legacy—it’s about designing the future.

Those who lead this way won’t just survive the storm. They will shape what comes after it.

Sam Altman: Leading OpenAI Through Unprecedented Change

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is navigating one of the most rapidly evolving and high-stakes industries in the world today: artificial intelligence. The scope of change that AI is driving in business, society, and technology presents a unique challenge to leaders like Altman, who are not only tasked with steering one of the world’s most cutting-edge companies but are also guiding the course of human development through technological advancements.

Altman, a seasoned entrepreneur and former president of Y Combinator, is a leader who thrives on visionary thinking, adaptability, and bold risk-taking. Under his leadership, OpenAI has pivoted from a non-profit research lab to a commercial entity, a shift that has allowed it to continue funding some of the most ambitious AI research projects in history, including the GPT series and DALL·E.

In a world where technological evolution happens at a breakneck pace, Altman leads with a focus on long-term, ethical considerations, while positioning OpenAI as an advocate for the responsible use of AI. His leadership style balances technical expertise with philosophical depth — frequently emphasizing AI’s potential to bring about significant societal good. He believes that AI is one of the few technologies that can fundamentally change the course of humanity, and he aligns OpenAI’s efforts with a mission to ensure that this technology benefits society as a whole.

Altman’s leadership is rooted in collaborative innovation, fostering partnerships with governments, private entities, and academic institutions to ensure AI remains a tool that empowers humanity. He’s driven by a deep understanding of market needs and technological advancements, constantly recalibrating OpenAI’s mission in light of new opportunities or risks.

Altman’s impact on OpenAI has been nothing short of transformative. Under his guidance, OpenAI has shifted from an ambitious startup to an industry leader, influencing not only the field of AI but also the very structure of global tech economies. He’s championed the idea that businesses should be built with the long-term in mind — and that includes both the technology itself and the impact on users, employees, and global communities.

In terms of leadership skills, Altman’s ability to stay focused on long-term goals while managing the speed of technological disruption is a key asset. In a world defined by volatility, Altman embodies the new leadership paradigm that is more adaptable, open-minded, and vision-driven than ever before

Lei Jun: Transforming Xiaomi into a Global Tech Powerhouse

Lei Jun, the founder and CEO of Xiaomi, is another visionary leader who has embraced the relentless pace of technological change to reinvent his company. Under Lei’s leadership, Xiaomi has grown from a smartphone startup to a global technology powerhouse with interests in smart homes, IoT, and e-commerce. His leadership is a fascinating study in balancing innovation, operational excellence, and a deep understanding of market dynamics.

Lei Jun’s leadership style is rooted in his belief that “value” is paramount. From the outset, Xiaomi has differentiated itself from competitors by offering high-quality products at affordable prices. Lei has cultivated a culture of disruption— both in terms of business models and product innovation — focusing on delivering value through lean operations and digital-first strategies.

What sets Lei Jun apart in today’s rapidly changing business landscape is his agility. Unlike traditional leaders who may adhere to rigid strategies, Lei has embraced dynamic adaptation. As markets evolve, so does Xiaomi’s approach, constantly innovating not just in product design but also in its business model. Xiaomi’s success can be traced back to its unconventional approach to market penetration — from online-first sales to community-driven product development.

Lei Jun is also keenly aware that, in today’s fast-moving world, leadership involves knowing when to pivot. He understands that constant reinvention is key to staying relevant, whether through technological leaps or business strategy adjustments. He remains firmly focused on creating a tech ecosystem that thrives on interconnected devices and smart services, positioning Xiaomi as a smart living brand rather than a mere device manufacturer.

One of the defining aspects of Lei Jun’s leadership is his commitment to empowering his employees. He places great emphasis on fostering an environment where teams are encouraged to take ownership and experiment. This decentralized decision-making process has given Xiaomi the agility to adapt to both local and global market conditions. In many ways, Lei Jun exemplifies the modern leader — someone who is strategic, innovative, and capable of driving large-scale change while maintaining an intimate connection with his team and customers.

Marcos Galperin: Disrupting Latin American E-commerce with Mercado Libre

Marcos Galperin, the founder and former CEO of Mercado Libre, has become a figurehead of e-commerce innovation in Latin America. Mercado Libre has grown into the Amazon of Latin America, offering a range of services from online shopping and digital payments to logistics and cloud services.

Galperin’s leadership style has always been characterized by his ability to blend entrepreneurial daring with strategic foresight. In a market that was often underdeveloped in terms of infrastructure and digital adoption, Galperin saw an opportunity to lead a transformative wave, focusing on enabling online shopping, improving payment systems, and creating a robust logistics network.

Galperin’s approach was rooted in deep empathy for the Latin American consumer. He understood the region’s unique challenges and adapted his company’s offerings to meet local needs, such as by building trust around online payments, addressing logistical barriers, and developing digital literacy programs. Under his leadership, Mercado Libre introduced Mercado Pago, a payment system that solved the problem of lack of trust in online transactions, and built a network that continues to shape e-commerce in Latin America.

His leadership style is also marked by a long-term mindset. Galperin took strategic risks, such as building its logistics network before demand truly existed. But these calculated investments paid off, enabling Mercado Libre to scale as demand grew. He also adopted a decentralized leadership style, empowering his regional teams to adapt to local market conditions while maintaining alignment with the company’s broader vision.

Galperin’s impact extends beyond Mercado Libre — he has helped position Latin America as a rising e-commerce market and has fostered a culture of innovation and resilience in an often volatile economic environment. His leadership has shown that, in the modern world, it takes both vision and execution to navigate continual change, and his willingness to take bold risks has been crucial in driving the relentless reinvention of his company.

Phuti Mahanyele: Championing Growth and Sustainability at Naspers

As the CEO of Naspers South Africa, Phuti Mahanyele is a key leader who is reshaping how large corporations evolve in the context of a constantly changing world. Known for her work in finance and private equity before taking the reins at Naspers, Mahanyele’s leadership is rooted in her commitment to responsible growth and sustainability.

Mahanyele’s leadership style is purpose-driven and community-oriented. She has been vocal about ensuring that Naspers doesn’t just focus on profits but also delivers tangible benefits to the South African and broader African community. Under her guidance, Naspers has doubled down on investing in digital transformation, ensuring that the company keeps pace with the digital economy. She also focuses on inclusive leadership, creating pathways for younger generations, especially women, to rise in leadership roles.

In an era of constant change, Mahanyele has demonstrated that leadership is not only about market leadership but also about leading with integrity and values. She has also fostered a culture where leadership is distributed across the organization, encouraging employees to take ownership of Naspers’ long-term vision.

Her impact has been immense not just within Naspers, but also in the broader African market. By championing growth that is socially responsible, Mahanyele is demonstrating how organizations can thrive in a world of constant disruptionwithout losing sight of their social responsibilities. She is making the case that businesses that drive societal change will ultimately be more resilient in an era where consumers demand more than just profits from the companies they support.

What Modern Leadership Looks Like

These leaders — Altman, Jun, Galperin, and Mahanyele — have one thing in common: they understand that leadership today requires a new mindset. In a world where the only constant is change, their leadership styles emphasize adaptability, collaboration, and sustainability. They possess a keen understanding of global dynamics, and they lead with a vision for the future — one where companies aren’t just market players but key drivers of global transformation.

They are all visionary, but they also embody the practical skills of decisive action, building resilient teams, and navigating uncertainty. Through their leadership, they are not only reinventing their companies but also reshaping the markets and industries they inhabit.

Chapter 4: World-changing, boundary-breaking

In the 21st century’s relentless wave of technological, societal, and environmental change, no industry is immune. From agriculture to automotive, banking to beauty, cement to construction, education to energy, fashion to finance, healthcare to retail, manufacturing to mobility, and even space exploration, every sector is being shaken to its core.

The Great Disruption

This profound disruption is driven by converging forces such as digital technology, sustainability imperatives, evolving consumer expectations, and new competitive dynamics. The result is an era of rapid reinvention — one that demands radical shifts in business models, leadership mindsets, and cross-sector collaboration.

Reinventing Agriculture: Smart farming and sustainability

The agricultural sector, long perceived as traditional and slow to innovate, is experiencing a dramatic transformation. Precision agriculture, powered by AI, drones, sensors, and satellite data, enables farmers to monitor crops and soil health in real-time, optimizing resource use and boosting yields. For instance, the Dutch company Lely is pioneering robotic milking systems, automating dairy farming to improve efficiency and animal welfare. Meanwhile, startups like Indigo Agriculture in the US are leveraging microbiome science to enhance crop resilience and reduce chemical inputs. Sustainability is also driving change: regenerative farming practices and carbon farming initiatives are reshaping supply chains, as companies from food giants like Danone to retailers like Walmart commit to net-zero agriculture.

Incumbents, traditionally slow to adopt new tech, now face pressure to partner with agtech startups or risk obsolescence. Governments and investors increasingly support sustainable agriculture, fostering a convergence of biotech, IT, and finance into the sector.

Reinventing Automotive: Electric and autonomous revolution

The automotive industry is undergoing one of the most seismic disruptions of any sector. The rise of electric vehicles (EVs), autonomous driving, and shared mobility is fundamentally redefining car manufacturing, ownership, and use. Tesla’s success sparked a global race — legacy players like Volkswagen and General Motors are investing billions to electrify their fleets. Beyond electrification, companies like Waymo and Cruise are pioneering self-driving technology, promising safer and more efficient transportation. Meanwhile, mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) platforms such as Uber and Didi are challenging traditional car ownership models, especially in urban areas.

This disruption has led to new collaborations: automakers partnering with tech giants like Google and Apple to develop software and AI capabilities, blurring lines between automotive, software, and telecom sectors. Leadership actions now emphasize agility, ecosystem-building, and sustainable innovation to navigate shifting regulatory landscapes and consumer expectations.

Reinventing Finance: Digital and decentralised

Financial services have been profoundly shaken by digital innovation and democratisation. Fintech startups like Stripe, Revolut, and Chime have upended traditional banking by offering seamless digital-first experiences. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies, pioneered by Bitcoin and Ethereum, are introducing decentralized finance (DeFi) models, challenging intermediaries and altering payments, lending, and asset management.

Banks are responding by investing heavily in digital transformation, partnering with fintechs, and exploring blockchain’s potential. For example, JPMorgan Chase developed its own digital coin (JPM Coin) and blockchain platform (Onyx). Regulatory scrutiny is rising as authorities seek to balance innovation with consumer protection. The rise of data analytics and AI in credit scoring, fraud detection, and personalized financial advice is another major change. Customer expectations for transparency, speed, and accessibility are higher than ever, compelling incumbents to rethink their value propositions and culture.

Reinventing Fashion: Experiences, sustainability, and personalisation

The beauty and fashion industries are reimagining themselves through consumer empowerment, sustainability, and technology. Brands like Glossier and Fenty Beauty have reshaped beauty by leveraging social media, influencer marketing, and direct-to-consumer models that emphasize inclusivity and authenticity.

Sustainability drives are also strong: Stella McCartney and Patagonia have long championed ethical sourcing and circular fashion, inspiring an industry-wide focus on reducing waste and carbon footprints. Innovative materials such as lab-grown leather and bio-fabricated textiles are emerging from startups like Bolt Threads. Digital tech enables personalization at scale: AI-powered skincare diagnostics, virtual try-ons via augmented reality, and blockchain-based supply chain transparency are enhancing customer engagement. Fast fashion incumbents face pressure to transform or lose relevance amid growing awareness of social and environmental costs.

Reinventing Construction: Digitisation and regenerative buildings

Cement and construction, sectors traditionally known for slow innovation cycles, are also evolving rapidly. The cement industry’s enormous carbon footprint has led companies like Holcim to invest in low-carbon alternatives such as geopolymer cements and carbon capture technologies.

Digitization — through Building Information Modeling (BIM), 3D printing, drones, and IoT sensors — is improving project planning, reducing costs, and enhancing safety. Startups like ICON are pioneering 3D-printed homes, potentially revolutionizing affordable housing. Smart infrastructure, integrated with digital grids and sensors, is converging with energy and urban mobility sectors. Leadership here involves embracing sustainable practices, forming public-private partnerships, and leveraging cross-sector innovation to meet the demands of rapid urbanization and climate change.

Reinventing Education: Hybrid models and lifelong learning

The education sector has seen profound disruption accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Digital platforms such as Coursera, Udemy, and Byju’s offer scalable, personalised, and on-demand learning globally, challenging traditional brick-and-mortar institutions. Lifelong learning is emerging as a necessity in a world of rapid skill shifts, with employers increasingly valuing microcredentials and continuous education. Hybrid learning models blend online and in-person methods, improving accessibility.

Incumbents are adapting by digitizing curricula, partnering with edtech firms, and emphasizing skills over credentials. Artificial intelligence enables adaptive learning and predictive analytics to better support student outcomes. The convergence of education, technology, and workforce development is reshaping how knowledge is delivered and valued.

Reinventing Energy: Clean energy and decentralised grid

The energy sector’s shift from fossil fuels to renewables is well underway, propelled by climate urgency and technological advances. Solar, wind, and battery storage costs have plummeted, enabling decentralized, distributed energy systems. Companies like Ørsted and NextEra Energy have transformed from traditional utilities to clean energy leaders. The rise of smart grids, powered by IoT and AI, facilitates real-time demand response and energy optimization.

New entrants include tech companies entering energy markets — for example, Tesla’s energy division with solar and battery products. Blockchain is being explored for peer-to-peer energy trading. Leadership here requires balancing regulatory challenges with innovation, investing in green infrastructure, and enabling customer participation in energy markets.

Reinventing Healthcare: AI-accelerated, personalised and preventative medicine

Healthcare disruption spans digital health, biotech, and data-driven medicine. Telemedicine platforms like Teladoc Health and Ping A Good Doctor have expanded access and convenience. AI accelerates diagnostics, drug discovery, and personalized treatment plans. Startups such as Insilico Medicine use AI to predict molecules for new drugs faster than traditional methods.

Wearables and remote monitoring devices enable proactive health management. Genomics companies like 23andMe and Illumina are pushing personalized medicine into mainstream care. Incumbents — from pharma giants to hospital networks — must integrate new technologies, navigate data privacy concerns, and evolve reimbursement models. Patient-centric care and health ecosystems are redefining value creation.

Reinventing Retail: Digital first and experience-driven shopping

Retail is redefined by digital-first consumer behaviors and experiential differentiation. E-commerce giants like Amazon and Alibaba dominate, but new models like social commerce and live shopping blur entertainment with retail. Brick-and-mortar retailers are reinventing stores as experiential hubs, integrating AR, VR, and AI to personalize shopping journeys. Subscription models and direct-to-consumer brands (e.g., Warby Parker, Glossier) challenge traditional wholesale.

Supply chains are digitized and made more resilient with automation and data analytics. Sustainability concerns push circular fashion, ethical sourcing, and packaging innovations. Leadership requires agility, customer obsession, and innovation ecosystems that blend technology, logistics, and marketing.

Reinventing Manufacturing: Smart factories, robotics and 3D printing

Manufacturing is in the midst of Industry 4.0 — smart factories powered by robotics, IoT, and AI. Predictive maintenance, digital twins, and additive manufacturing (3D printing) increase efficiency and flexibility. Companies like Siemens and GE lead in digitizing production lines, while startups innovate in advanced materials and manufacturing-as-a-service.

Mass customization is possible at scale, meeting evolving consumer demands. Circular manufacturing models reduce waste and improve sustainability. Leadership must cultivate a culture of continuous improvement, invest in workforce reskilling, and manage complex digital ecosystems.

Reinventing Mobility: Beyond cars to integrated transport ecosystems

Mobility disruption transcends automotive to include public transport, micro-mobility (e-scooters, bikes), and integrated urban transport systems. Cities like Copenhagen and Singapore are pioneering smart mobility hubs combining different transport modes through digital platforms.

New entrants such as Bird and Lime offer flexible, sustainable last-mile solutions. Autonomous shuttles and hyperloop concepts push innovation further. Mobility is converging with energy and telecom sectors, requiring collaborative leadership across government, industry, and tech.

Reinventing Space: The new frontier of commercialisation

Space is no longer the exclusive domain of governments. Private companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab have democratized access, driving cost reductions and innovation.

Satellite constellations (e.g., Starlink) aim to provide global broadband, disrupting telecom and media. Space tourism and in-orbit manufacturing are emerging sectors. Governments, private companies, and international bodies grapple with regulation, sustainability (space debris), and cooperation. Leadership in space ventures demands visionary strategy, technological excellence, and new models of public-private partnership.

Disruption brings opportunity

Across all sectors, disruption is fuelled by:

• Technology Convergence: AI, IoT, blockchain, robotics, and biotech combine to create entirely new value propositions.

• Sustainability Imperatives: Climate change and resource constraints force business model reinvention.

• Changing Consumer Expectations: Demand for personalisation, transparency, and purpose-driven brands grows.

• New Entrants and Ecosystems: Startups, tech giants, and cross-sector players challenge incumbents, who must adapt or partner.

• Leadership Evolution: Leaders must embrace agility, foster innovation cultures, collaborate across sectors, and invest in workforce transformation.

The future belongs to businesses that can navigate complexity, leverage emerging technologies, and align with the values and expectations of a rapidly changing world. The great shake-up is not a temporary disruption but an ongoing revolution — one that touches every industry, every leader, and every individual.

Responding to the Great Disruption

In an era marked by relentless disruption, accelerated technology adoption, shifting consumer values, and sustainability imperatives, companies of every size and sector face an existential challenge—and an unprecedented opportunity. The traditional playbook of competing through scale, operational excellence, or incremental innovation is no longer enough. The business landscape is not merely changing; it is being fundamentally reshaped by new forces that demand a radical rethinking of strategy, structure, and mindset.

To thrive in this new world, companies—whether nimble startups or established incumbents—must go beyond reacting to disruption. They must proactively create new market spaces, forge dynamic ecosystems, and reimagine the very way markets function. This means shifting from company-centric views to ecosystem thinking, prioritizing collaboration over siloed capabilities, and using imagination as a strategic tool rather than treating disruption as a threat alone.

From competition to ecosystems: The new unit of value creation

Historically, companies measured success by outperforming rivals through superior products, cost leadership, or brand strength. But the speed and complexity of today’s disruption mean no company can do it all alone. The boundaries between industries are blurring, technologies are converging, and customer demands are evolving faster than any single company can keep pace.

The new unit of economic and innovation value is no longer the company but the ecosystem—a dynamic, interconnected network of organizations, technologies, partners, and customers co-creating value. This shift is visible in multiple sectors:

• In mobility, Tesla’s success is intertwined with battery suppliers, software developers, and charging infrastructure providers. Meanwhile, cities, regulators, and mobility startups together form an ecosystem enabling integrated transport services.

• In healthcare, pharmaceutical companies collaborate with biotech startups, AI firms, hospitals, payers, and patient communities to accelerate drug discovery and personalize care.

• In finance, banks partner with fintech innovators, cloud providers, and regulators to build seamless digital platforms.

Ecosystem thinking recognizes that competitive advantage emerges from orchestrating complex collaborations rather than owning every capability internally. It unlocks innovation by combining diverse expertise and accelerating time to market.

Collaboration, not just capability: Building bridges across boundaries

In this ecosystem age, collaboration is no longer a nice-to-have but a strategic imperative. Companies must shed silo mentalities and embrace open innovation, partnering with startups, academia, competitors, suppliers, customers, and even regulators to co-create new value.

The rise of innovation hubs, accelerators, and corporate venture capital reflects this shift. For example, Unilever Foundry connects the FMCG giant with startups worldwide to pilot and scale innovations in sustainability, digital marketing, and packaging. Similarly, BMW Startup Garage acts as a venture client unit, embedding startup innovations directly into its automotive development, accelerating adoption.

These collaborations go beyond transactional supplier relationships to form strategic alliances that combine speed, creativity, and scale. They allow incumbents to tap entrepreneurial energy and startups to leverage industry experience and resources. Yet collaboration requires intentional design: clear goals, aligned incentives, agile governance, and mutual trust. It also demands new leadership capabilities—leaders must act as ecosystem orchestrators, boundary spanners, and cultural translators.

Imagination as a strategic advantage: from disruption to creation

Too often, companies react to disruption defensively—defending market share, cutting costs, or incremental improvement. While necessary, these tactics are insufficient for long-term growth. The real opportunity lies in imagination: the capacity to envision and shape new futures, invent new business models, and create new market spaces.

Blue Ocean Strategy exemplifies this approach: instead of competing in crowded markets (“red oceans”), companies seek uncontested market spaces (“blue oceans”) through innovation in value and demand creation.

Amazon is a masterclass in imagination—transforming from an online bookseller into a cloud computing powerhouse, logistics giant, and AI innovator. This required leaders who could imagine beyond current constraints and invest in nascent markets.

Imagination also means reimagining how markets work:

• The sharing economy (Airbnb, Uber) created new supply-demand paradigms.

• Blockchain and DeFi reimagine finance by decentralizing trust and transactions.

• Circular economy models rethink value from ownership to access and reuse.

To harness imagination, companies need diverse teams, experimentation culture, and leadership willing to embrace uncertainty and long-term horizons.

Startups and incumbents: different roles, shared opportunities

Both startups and incumbents have critical roles in the new ecosystem-driven, imagination-powered landscape—yet their approaches and strengths differ.

Startups bring agility, risk tolerance, and fresh ideas. Their lack of legacy constraints allows rapid iteration and disruption. Startups thrive by spotting unmet customer needs, leveraging emerging technologies, and launching novel business models.

However, startups often lack scale, resources, and market access. This is where collaboration with incumbents offers mutual benefits.

Incumbents, with their deep customer knowledge, brand equity, distribution networks, and regulatory expertise, provide startups with vital support and market credibility. But incumbents must overcome internal inertia, legacy systems, and risk aversion.

Successful incumbents are those that reinvent themselves not only through acquisition or incremental innovation but by integrating startup mindsets and embedding ecosystem approaches. Companies like Microsoft and GE have transformed into platforms that enable third-party developers and startups to build complementary offerings.

Creating new market spaces: Opportunities in the unknown

One of the most exciting prospects of the shake-up is the creation of entirely new market spaces—sometimes emerging at the intersection of industries, technologies, and social trends.

• Smart cities combine construction, energy, mobility, telecom, and data analytics to offer integrated urban experiences.

• Personalized medicine merges biotech, AI, data, and healthcare delivery to redefine treatment.

• Sustainable fashion blends materials science, circular economy principles, and consumer engagement to transform apparel.

Companies that imagine and co-create these new spaces gain first-mover advantage and shape ecosystems that lock in partners and customers.

This requires abandoning rigid industry definitions and encouraging cross-sector collaboration. It means investing in platforms, data sharing, and interoperability standards to enable seamless integration.

Business model innovation: from ownership to access, products to platforms

The shake-up demands rethinking business models fundamentally. Traditional models focused on selling products or services are giving way to more fluid, customer-centric, and scalable approaches.

Key trends include:

• Subscription and access models: From software (SaaS) to mobility (car subscriptions) and entertainment (streaming), customers increasingly prefer access over ownership.

• Platform business models: Firms like Airbnb, Alibaba, and Salesforce create value by connecting producers and consumers, leveraging network effects, and enabling co-creation.

• Outcome-based models: Companies like Schneider Electric offer energy management as a service, aligning pricing with customer outcomes rather than products.

• Circular economy and sharing: Companies design for reuse, refurbishment, and recycling, embedding sustainability into value propositions.

Leadership in business model innovation requires deep customer insight, agility to pivot, and the courage to cannibalize legacy revenues in favour of future growth.

From command and control to ecosystem orchestration

The leadership required in this transformed landscape is profoundly different:

• Visionary imagination: Leaders must see beyond immediate disruption to new possibilities and inspire their organizations to pursue them.

• Ecosystem orchestration: Leaders act as connectors, building partnerships, aligning stakeholders, and managing complexity.

• Culture of collaboration and experimentation: Encouraging diverse teams, tolerating failure, and enabling rapid learning.

• Customer obsession: Deep understanding of evolving customer needs drives innovation priorities.

• Sustainability and purpose-driven mindset: Integrating social and environmental impact as core to strategy.

• Agile governance and decision-making: Empowering decentralized teams and iterative development.

Examples of leadership transformation include Satya Nadella’s revitalization of Microsoft by fostering openness and cloud-first innovation, and Mary Barra’s push for GM’s electric and autonomous vehicle strategy with an ecosystem mindset.

Where to start?

• Map and engage your ecosystem: Identify key partners, customers, regulators, and startups. Build platforms for co-creation and innovation.

• Invest in collaboration capabilities: Create structures (innovation labs, venture units) and processes to work effectively across boundaries.

• Cultivate imagination and experimentation: Establish clear spaces for disruptive innovation and reward bold thinking.

• Rethink business models: Use design thinking and scenario planning to explore new value propositions and revenue streams.

• Develop ecosystem leadership: Train leaders to manage partnerships, influence without authority, and navigate ambiguity.

• Embed sustainability and purpose: Align innovation with social impact to build long-term resilience and customer trust.

• Embrace technology as an enabler: Invest strategically in AI, cloud, IoT, and data analytics to unlock new capabilities.

• Prioritize customer-centricity: Use data and direct engagement to continuously adapt offerings to shifting needs.

From surviving disruption to shaping the future

The great shake-up sweeping across industries is daunting but also brimming with opportunity. Companies that cling to old paradigms risk irrelevance or extinction. Those that embrace ecosystems, collaboration, and imagination will pioneer new markets, forge resilient business models, and create lasting value.

This transformation transcends competition—it is about co-creation and community. The future belongs to organisations that see beyond their own boundaries, partner widely, innovate boldly, and act with purpose.

In this new era, ecosystems, not companies; collaboration, not capability; imagination, not just disruption—are the keys to unlocking growth, relevance, and impact.

Ping An: From insurance giant to intelligent ecosystems

Ping An is not just a financial services provider—it is one of the most ambitious reinventions of a traditional business into a technology-powered, multi-industry platform. Founded in 1988 as a life and property insurance company, Ping An has become one of China’s largest and most valuable corporations. However, what truly sets it apart is its transformation from a conventional insurer into a data-driven ecosystem spanning healthcare, finance, smart cities, and beyond.

Recognizing that insurance and banking alone offered limited future growth, Ping An invested over $7 billion in technology development in just a few years. The goal was clear: to embed the company across the most essential aspects of people’s lives—not merely to sell policies or manage assets, but to create an interconnected web of services built on trust, data, and predictive intelligence.

At the center of this reinvention is Ping An Good Doctor, China’s largest digital healthcare platform with over 400 million registered users. It uses AI to triage symptoms, offer medical advice, and connect users with physicians and pharmacies. Combined with its insurance services, Ping An offers integrated health protection—prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and financial coverage.

Another flagship initiative, OneConnect, is a fintech platform spun off from Ping An that now serves hundreds of banks and insurers with AI, blockchain, and cloud services. Ping An not only digitized its own operations but commercialized its capabilities for others. This “platform-as-a-product” strategy fuels exponential growth by turning cost centers into profit engines.

What distinguishes Ping An is its systems thinking. It sees the world not in verticals but as a connected fabric—where finance, health, housing, mobility, and education all intersect. Its smart city initiatives aim to digitize urban governance, using AI for traffic control, crime prediction, and emergency response.

Ping An’s transformation reflects a broader truth about the future of business: incumbents can lead disruption, not just survive it. But doing so requires imagination, massive investment in digital infrastructure, a willingness to disrupt yourself, and an ecosystem mindset. By redefining itself as a platform, Ping An transcends its original industry—and shows how insurance, health, and financial security can converge into a seamless, intelligent customer experience.

Xiaomi: Disrupting devices, reimagining smart living

Xiaomi is one of the most remarkable stories of modern technology entrepreneurship—a brand born in Beijing in 2010 that grew from selling smartphones online into a global ecosystem of smart hardware, software, and now electric vehicles. Its rise is rooted in disruption: Xiaomi brought high-performance Android smartphones to market at half the price of competitors, using an online-only model, direct community feedback, and minimal marketing costs.

Its model flipped the traditional business logic. Xiaomi operated on razor-thin hardware margins (often less than 5%) and made profits from software services, data monetization, and smart accessories. This “hardware as a gateway” strategy has allowed Xiaomi to develop a vast, loyal user base. But the company never intended to be just a phone maker—it envisioned building a “smart life” ecosystem.

Today, Xiaomi boasts one of the world’s largest consumer IoT platforms, with over 600 million connected devices—from smart TVs to air purifiers, home security cameras to electric toothbrushes. Its MIUI software serves as the digital thread across these products, offering unified control and personalized AI-driven recommendations.

Crucially, Xiaomi’s approach to innovation is highly open. It invests in, incubates, or partners with thousands of startups to develop smart products under its brand or ecosystem. This platform model has allowed Xiaomi to scale rapidly and adapt nimbly, often launching hundreds of new products each year, deeply integrated into its customers’ daily lives.

Now Xiaomi is taking its disruptive DNA to the automotive sector. In 2024, it launched the Xiaomi SU7, a sleek, high-performance electric car. More than just a vehicle, it embodies the company’s vision of cars as “mobile smart devices.” The SU7 integrates seamlessly with Xiaomi’s phones, smart homes, and AI assistant, offering a fully connected, ecosystem-based driving experience.

This move reflects the convergence of mobility, AI, consumer electronics, and energy. It pits Xiaomi against both tech and auto giants—but with its mastery of hardware, platforms, and loyal fans, it may reshape expectations for smart cars. CEO Lei Jun sees vehicles as the next big smart terminal, and Xiaomi is positioning itself to lead this fusion.

By scaling across verticals while maintaining a singular ecosystem, Xiaomi shows how tech companies can leap industries—not by replicating old models, but by reimagining user-centric, platform-powered futures.

Insilico Medicine: AI-powered drug discovery at breakneck speed

Insilico Medicine is at the frontier of a revolution that could redefine healthcare: the fusion of biotechnology and artificial intelligence. Founded in 2014 by Alex Zhavoronkov, a computer scientist and aging researcher, Insilico was born from a single bold premise: that the traditional process of discovering new drugs—slow, costly, and failure-prone—could be radically accelerated and improved by AI.

The company’s flagship platform, Pharma.AI, uses generative deep learning and reinforcement learning to simulate biological processes, discover new targets for intervention, and design novel drug-like molecules in silico. Rather than relying on laborious lab experiments or trial-and-error compound testing, Insilico can computationally generate candidates that are more likely to succeed in the clinic.

In 2021, the company achieved a landmark milestone. Its AI-generated fibrosis drug candidate went from discovery to preclinical validation in just 18 months—a timeline unheard of in the pharmaceutical industry, where typical development can take up to 10 years. The drug, INS018_055, was later approved for human trials, making it one of the world’s first AI-discovered therapies to reach clinical stages.

Insilico also applies its technology to aging research and biomarker development. It has built biological age prediction models, identified targets for age-related diseases, and worked with researchers to explore longevity-based therapies. Its work demonstrates how AI can not only invent drugs but also shift medicine from reactive to preventive.

The company’s business model combines internal drug development with licensing its platforms to pharmaceutical partners. Collaborators include Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and dozens of biotech firms. Insilico is also expanding into automated wet labs and robotic screening to create a fully integrated, AI-driven discovery pipeline.

The implications are vast. If Insilico succeeds, it could cut drug development costs by billions, democratize pharmaceutical innovation, and enable faster responses to emerging diseases—transforming healthcare globally.

But perhaps most importantly, Insilico Medicine exemplifies a new kind of company: a deep-tech startup that applies imagination and computation to one of humanity’s oldest problems. By rethinking the scientific process itself, it shows how AI is not just disrupting existing industries but redefining how science and innovation are done.

Joby Aviation: Building the infrastructure for flying cars

Joby Aviation is bringing the Jetsons-era dream of flying cars into commercial reality, not as a gimmick, but as a serious solution to the growing challenges of urban congestion, carbon emissions, and outdated infrastructure. Founded in 2009 by inventor JoeBen Bevirt, the California-based company is developing electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to enable fast, quiet, and zero-emission urban air mobility.

Unlike traditional helicopters or planes, Joby’s eVTOL aircraft combines the vertical lift of a drone with the efficiency and range of a fixed-wing aircraft. It can carry four passengers plus a pilot, reach speeds of up to 200 mph, and fly 150 miles on a single charge—all while being 100 times quieter than a helicopter. These features make it ideal for short, intra-city flights or regional commutes.

Joby is not only building the aircraft but also the infrastructure, operating model, and regulatory relationships required to scale urban air mobility. It aims to launch commercial services by 2025, with partnerships already in place with NASA, Toyota, and Delta Air Lines. Through Delta, Joby envisions offering premium airport transfers for business travelers in cities like New York and Los Angeles.

Unlike many aerospace ventures, Joby is vertically integrated—designing, manufacturing, and intending to operate its own fleet. This end-to-end model mirrors the strategy of companies like Tesla and Apple, ensuring control over quality, safety, and user experience.

Joby’s public listing via SPAC in 2021 gave it capital and visibility, but also scrutiny. Safety, certification, and public acceptance remain critical challenges. The company has made significant progress toward FAA approval, conducting extensive test flights and simulations.

But the ambition is much bigger than building a flying taxi. Joby envisions a new category of transportation, one that redefines urban form and mobility patterns. By taking traffic off roads and into the skies, eVTOLs could reduce commute times, cut emissions, and connect communities once separated by terrain or infrastructure.

Joby represents the bold, imaginative companies shaping the future—not incrementally improving transport, but completely rethinking it. Its vision depends on ecosystem development, public-private collaboration, and trust—but if realized, it could fundamentally change how cities work and how people move.

Chapter 5: Trailblazers, reimagining markets

Trailblazers are the start-ups and scale-ups that forge their own path—bold, irreverent, and unconstrained by the old rules of business.

They don’t just disrupt industries; they redefine what an industry is. Instead of competing within existing boundaries, they redraw the map entirely—reimagining customer needs, reshaping cultural norms, and reengineering the business models that underpin value creation. Trailblazers challenge assumptions about how products should look, who they’re for, and what success means.

Think Red Bull, which didn’t just launch a new drink but created an energy-fueled lifestyle brand built on extreme sports and high-octane experiences. Or Liquid Death, a canned water brand that mocks the health-washed wellness industry with heavy-metal flair and unapologetic irreverence—“murder your thirst.” These companies don’t target demographics—they build cult-like communities.

They don’t chase market share—they invent new markets. With distinctive language, bold storytelling, and purpose-driven rebellion, trailblazers create emotional gravity that pulls people in. They show that strategy today is not about finding a niche, but building a movement. In a world saturated with sameness, trailblazers offer something else entirely: a belief system, a fresh identity, and a radically different vision of how brands, business, and culture can collide.

Disruptive start-ups creating new market spaces

In every corner of the globe, a new generation of startups is tearing up the old rulebook and inventing entirely new market spaces. These companies are not content to nibble at the edges of existing industries; they are challenging entrenched assumptions, redefining what customers aspire to, and inventing fresh languages, metrics, and mindsets to describe—and measure—their success.

This is more than “blue ocean” strategy; it is a wholesale reimagining of markets from the ground up. Below are some of the most vivid examples of this phenomenon, organised around the themes of connections, consumers, behaviors, business models, mindsets, measures of success, and language.

1. Rewiring Markets: Tovala’s Meal Ecosystem

In the USA, Tovala has reframed the way we think about home cooking by reimagining the kitchen itself as a connected service. Tovala’s smart oven, paired with a meal-delivery subscription, uses barcode scanning and cloud‑based cooking profiles to automate meal preparation. This convergence of hardware, curated food, and software-as-a-service blurs the lines between appliance maker, meal kit company, and cloud‑kitchen startup. Customers don’t buy an oven or simply order food—they subscribe to a cooking experience. Success is measured not by units sold but by subscriber retention, weekly meal frequency, and customer time saved. Tovala demonstrates how reconfiguring connections between device, content, and customer can create a brand-new market space centred on effortless, tech‑enabled dining.

2. Redefining Consumers: Tala’s Credit Frontier

Emerging markets have long been underserved by traditional banks. Tala, founded in 2011 in Nairobi, Kenya, has reconceived credit underwriting for the “unbanked” by using smartphone data—SMS logs, app usage, and network patterns—to build real‑time credit scores. Rather than relying on historical credit bureau data, Tala assesses risk in the moment, approves loans within minutes, and delivers funds via mobile money. Its customers are entrepreneurs, fishermen, seamstresses—people who were previously invisible to lenders. Tala’s success is judged by metrics such as repayment velocity, credit‑inclusion rates, and economic impact. By challenging the notion that creditworthiness can only be measured by past debt history, Tala has created a new financial category: real‑time, data‑driven micro‑credit for the globally underbanked.

3. Reinventing Behaviors: Calmerry’s Virtual Therapy Network

In mental health, stigma and access barriers persist. Calmerry, a teletherapy startup based in Europe, has redefined therapy as an on‑demand, text‑and-video service. By connecting licensed therapists with clients through a platform that allows asynchronous messaging alongside scheduled sessions, Calmerry merges the immediacy of chat‑based counseling (popularized by chatbots) with the depth of human psychotherapy. It unhooks emotional well‑being from the traditional confines of an office visit, enabling users to seek help at midnight or during a commute. Behavioral change here is as much about destigmatization—treating therapy as a consumer app—as it is about convenience. Success is measured by user‑reported mood improvements, session frequency, and declines in wait‑times, rather than traditional appointment‐attendance metrics.

4. New Business Models: Impossible Foods’ Microbial Meat

Impossible Foods, headquartered in California, has pioneered a protein revolution by using engineered yeast and plant-based ingredients to replicate the taste and texture of meat. But Impossible Foods is not merely a plant‑protein company; it is a microbial‑fermentation operation that licenses its heme‑producing technology to traditional meat processors. By spinning off its core ingredient, leghemoglobin, as an industrial platform, Impossible redefines its value proposition—from selling burgers to enabling a global transition away from animal agriculture. Success is gauged in metric tons of meat displaced, greenhouse gas reductions achieved, and licensing partnerships formed, not just in restaurant deals or retail shelf space. This business model blurs the line between food startup and industrial biotech, opening a new category of platform-based protein innovation.

5. Transformative Mindsets: Andela’s Global Talent Network

Andela began in 2014 in Lagos, Nigeria, with a mission to connect African software engineers with global tech companies. But Andela quickly discovered that the real constraint was not location but mindset—many skilled developers lacked the networks, mentorship, or perceived legitimacy to join Silicon Valley firms. Andela’s innovation was to build a distributed “talent accelerator” that combined rigorous technical training, career coaching, and placement services. Over time, Andela expanded to Latin America, Eastern Europe, and beyond. The company doesn’t just source talent; it cultivates confidence and global mindsets. Success is measured by developer income growth, retention in tech careers, and company‑wide diversity metrics, rather than headcount alone. Andela shows how reframing the human capital challenge can create entirely new labor markets.

6. Rethinking Success: Copytrack’s Creative Rights Marketplace

Intellectual property in the digital age is notoriously hard to police. Copytrack, a German startup, has invented a new market space for image licensing and rights enforcement. Using reverse‑image search and blockchain timestamps, Copytrack identifies unauthorized uses of photographers’ work and negotiates licensing fees on their behalf—taking a commission only if a claim is successful. The company reframes success from “number of cases resolved” to “value recovered for creators,” paying out to photographers around the world and sharing data with advocacy groups. Copytrack thus shifts the paradigm from adversarial lawsuits to collaborative rights marketplaces, where fair compensation becomes an accessible standard rather than a distant legal battle.

7. Forging New Language: Inari’s Gene‑Tailored Seeds

Inari, a biotech firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is breeding seeds not by tinkering with individual genes but by using computational models to design entire genomic configurations. This “gene‑tailored” approach accelerates the creation of crop varieties that are resilient to drought, pests, and disease. Inari has coined new terminology—“pancrelay” genetics, “stacked orthologues”—to describe its methodology, creating a linguistic framework that reflects the scale and complexity of its innovation. By defining a new vocabulary, Inari asserts ownership of a novel domain between genetics, agronomy, and data science. Success is measured in field‑trial performance, biodiversity impact scores, and seed adoption rates, not just in revenue per acre.

8. Catalyzing New Behaviours: Lime’s Micro‑Mobility Revolution

Lime, the ubiquitous dockless scooter and bike rental company, did more than deploy hardware in urban cores; it rewired civic behavior. By integrating app‑based rentals into public transit planning, forging partnerships with municipalities, and incentivizing carbon‑credit–eligible rides, Lime has turned micro‑mobility into a recognized pillar of urban transport. It redefined success from “units deployed” to “last‑mile trips completed,” carbon emissions saved, and reduction in car trips. Lime’s playbook has been emulated in cities worldwide, creating a new expectation: that urban mobility should be seamless, flexible, and sustainable.

9. Expanding Consumers: BYJU’S Gamified Learning Universe

In India, BYJU’S transformed education by gamifying learning with an AI-powered app that adapts lessons to each student’s pace and style. But BYJU’S did not stop at tutoring; it acquired coding platforms, exam‑prep services, and even offline learning centers. The company reframes students not as passive recipients of curricula but as active gamers, rewarding progress with badges, challenges, and social leaderboards. Success is measured by time‑on‑platform, concept‑mastery rates, and downstream academic performance, rather than just subscription counts. BYJU’S has created a new consumer category—“education gamers”—and has demonstrated that by blending pedagogy, entertainment, and AI, you can unlock markets that were long limited by geography and school infrastructure.

10. Imagining Entirely New Spaces: Neuralink’s Brain‑Machine Frontier

Perhaps the most audacious example is Neuralink, Elon Musk’s neurotechnology startup. By implanting ultrafine threads into the brain and developing high‑bandwidth, wireless interfaces, Neuralink seeks not only to treat neurological disorders but to create a “symbiosis” between humans and AI. This vision transcends medicine and software; it proposes a new marketplace for cognitive augmentation. Neuralink is inventing metrics—“bits per second of neural data,” “neuroplasticity index”—and a linguistic framework that makes brain‑computer interfaces as discussable as smartphones. Whether or not Neuralink achieves its loftiest goals, it reminds us that disruptive startups can create market spaces so novel that they demand entirely new vocabularies and measures of value.

Generative Market Creation

These startups share more than just ingenuity. They go beyond the old ideas of red and blue oceans. They illustrate a deeper playbook for “generative” market creation:

1. Challenge the Orthodoxy: Don’t just seek unoccupied niches; question the underlying rules that define industries.

2. Redefine the Customer: Find unseen or underserved segments and reconceive what “the consumer” means.

3. Design New Behaviors: Use technology and psychology to make novel actions effortless—and desirable.

4. Invent Business Models: Unbundle value chains, license platforms, and reimagine revenue streams.

5. Adopt New Mindsets: Foster cultures that embrace ambiguity, learn rapidly, and celebrate bold imagination.

6. Measure Differently: Develop metrics that capture impact, engagement, and externalities, not just financial throughput.

7. Create Fresh Language: Craft vocabularies that give shape to innovations otherwise hard to describe.

These principles point to a radical future: one in which markets are not pre‑given arenas but living constructs, continuously reshaped by audacious entrepreneurs. In this new age of generative disruption, success belongs to those who use imagination not merely to swim in an under-served sea, but to conjure entirely new seas.

Imagination Beyond Disruption

Disruption is no longer enough. It once meant replacing the old with something faster, cheaper, smarter. But in a world already in flux—where technologies collide, expectations escalate, and meaning matters more than ever—merely breaking things is no longer visionary. The future belongs to those who go beyond disruption. To those who harness the full force of imagination, not just to improve products or challenge incumbents, but to reimagine entire market spaces. To create new games entirely. And to build cultural movements that inspire people, not just to buy—but to belong.

1. Not Just Different, But Transformed

Traditional innovation often focuses on incremental gains: a better phone, a more efficient supply chain, a novel feature. Even disruption—the celebrated goal of start-ups and innovators alike—has largely come to mean outperforming competitors on the same field. But what if the point isn’t to play harder, but to play differently? Imaginative companies don’t merely improve the system—they redefine it. They ask not “How do we beat the market?” but “What if the market doesn’t exist yet?”

Take Tesla, which didn’t just build electric cars—it reframed the auto industry as a tech-driven ecosystem, with clean energy, software-driven upgrades, and a global mission wrapped into a premium lifestyle. Or consider Ant Forest, the green initiative of China’s Alipay, which turned sustainable actions into a national social game—gamifying carbon offsetting and turning millions of users into eco-warriors by planting real trees based on digital points.

This is the power of imagination—not a tweak, but a transformation. Not just thinking outside the box, but building a new arena altogether.

2. Innovating Markets, Not Just Products

The most profound innovation today is not in products or technologies—but in markets themselves. True transformation requires companies to ask: Who are we serving, and what game are we playing? It’s not about owning more of the pie, but baking a bigger, tastier, entirely new pie.

Klarna, the Swedish fintech, didn’t just add another payments solution. It reframed how people shop—turning the old credit card model on its head by offering “buy now, pay later” options that appeal to younger, budget-conscious consumers. Klarna didn’t just win customers; it created a new financial behaviour. Similarly, Rappi in Latin America combined delivery, logistics, and financial services to become a “super-app” that serves as an everyday assistant, responding to the reality of hyper-urbanised, digitally connected economies.

In India, Nykaa reshaped beauty not just as a product industry but as a content-driven, community-based experience. Through education, influencer-led storytelling, and hyper-personalisation, Nykaa became more than an e-commerce platform—it created a trusted space where emerging Indian beauty aspirations could flourish.

These examples show how market innovation isn’t about one killer feature—it’s about reimagining the context in which people engage, consume, and co-create value.

3. Creating Cultural Movements

What truly imaginative companies do best is spark movements. Not in the sense of brand campaigns, but in becoming platforms for shared identity and co-authorship. They don’t do things to customers; they do things with them. In the age of social media, decentralised networks, and purpose-driven consumers, power flows from participation. The future belongs to those who can mobilise a cultural shift.

Patagonia is a masterclass in this approach. It doesn’t just sell jackets; it invites customers to take a stand for the planet. From its “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign to its activism and environmental grants, Patagonia transformed outdoor retail into a cause-led coalition—where every purchase reinforces collective identity and shared values. It’s not a brand. It’s a tribe.

Or take Lovevery, the US-based subscription brand for early childhood learning. It doesn’t simply deliver educational toys—it offers parents a philosophy. With content, community, and science-backed developmental support, it empowers a generation of parents to reimagine early learning. By championing a higher purpose—supporting childhood development holistically—Lovevery became part of how parents define themselves.

In Brazil, Nubank turned personal banking from a source of frustration to a source of pride. By removing bureaucracy, offering radical transparency, and building a bold, millennial-friendly brand, Nubank activated emotional loyalty in a sector long seen as sterile and transactional.

Movements like these succeed not just because of what they sell, but because of what they stand for—and what they help people become.

4. New Connections, New Mindsets

Imaginative companies operate with a new mindset: seeing markets not as static categories, but as fluid, evolving spaces defined by changing human aspirations. They connect the dots across silos—blending domains, geographies, disciplines, and cultures.

Consider Too Good To Go, the Danish platform that connects restaurants and consumers to reduce food waste. It doesn’t just optimise logistics—it reframes food sustainability as a daily act of community kindness. Or Blavity, a media company started to serve Black millennials, now shaping culture through storytelling, tech, and events. These businesses thrive because they spot human truths and unmet emotional needs—not market segments.

And then there’s Glossier, which reimagined beauty by turning customers into co-creators. With a “community-first” product strategy, Glossier built its brand around real conversations, real skin, and real people—rejecting the top-down aesthetic of legacy beauty brands. It didn’t just change the look of skincare. It changed the power dynamic.

These companies don’t just “disrupt” from the outside; they work from the inside out—reconnecting with the soul of their market, then scaling it with imagination.

5. Rewriting the Rules of Value

Imagination also redefines what success looks like. Where traditional business focused on short-term profit and shareholder return, today’s trailblazers embrace more expansive measures: impact, community, purpose, joy.

Oatly, the Swedish oat milk company, embraced radical transparency, quirky humour, and an unapologetically activist stance to become a symbol of plant-based rebellion. It didn’t position itself as healthier or cheaper—it declared itself a force for the future. It questioned the very logic of dairy and made people laugh, think, and switch.

Fairphone, the Dutch sustainable smartphone brand, challenged the obsession with speed and disposability by building repairable, ethical phones. Its success isn’t volume-based; it’s values-based. Similarly, KlimaDAO uses blockchain not for speculation, but for collaborative climate action—tokenising carbon offsets and involving communities in climate governance.

Success here is measured not just in units sold, but in meaning created, trust built, behaviours shifted, and futures imagined.

6. From Ecosystems to Possibility Spaces

Finally, what the most imaginative companies recognise is that markets are no longer linear. The most valuable innovations emerge in the intersections—between sectors, between technologies, between people.

Companies like Shopify built entire ecosystems around entrepreneurial enablement. GitLab turned software collaboration into a decentralised innovation engine. Airbnb didn’t just disrupt hotels—it unlocked economic agency for millions of hosts worldwide.

These companies think in possibility spaces—where products, services, tools, and people intersect to create compounding value. The future will not be shaped by companies alone, but by coalitions, platforms, and ecosystems.

This shift calls for leaders who act less like managers of firms and more like designers of systems—leaders who don’t just optimise the machine, but redesign the world it operates in.

The Future Belongs to the Imaginative

In a time of uncertainty, climate crisis, cultural realignment, and exponential technology, imagination is not a luxury. It is a necessity. Disruption alone is insufficient. We need visionaries who ask bolder questions, who see value in overlooked places, who invite society to dream again—and build futures that are regenerative, inclusive, and astonishing.

The most powerful business advantage of the next decade won’t be data, or speed, or scale. It will be imagination. Not as fantasy, but as the disciplined art of possibility—transforming markets, activating movements, and creating the future, not just predicting it.

From São Paulo to Stockholm, Nairobi to New York, a new generation of imaginative companies is leading the way. Not just winning the game. But changing it.

Colossal Biosciences: Reviving Mammoths and Reimagining Life

Colossal Biosciences is not just a biotech company—it is the vanguard of a new era in synthetic biology, where science fiction begins to look like science fact. Founded by geneticist George Church and entrepreneur Ben Lamm, Colossal’s headline mission is to bring the woolly mammoth back to life. But this audacious goal is about much more than de-extinction. It signals a radical shift in how we think about biotechnology, climate solutions, and even the stewardship of ecosystems.

Using CRISPR gene-editing technologies, Colossal is working to splice mammoth genes—resurrected from frozen DNA—with those of the modern Asian elephant to create a cold-resistant hybrid that could survive in Arctic conditions. Why? Not just for the thrill of resurrection, but to help restore grassland ecosystems in the tundra, slow permafrost thaw, and potentially combat climate change. It’s a future where bioengineering is applied at a planetary scale.

Beyond the mammoth, Colossal is exploring de-extinction pathways for the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) and dodo, reframing conservation not as a defensive act, but as an act of innovation and repair. It’s an entirely new mindset—”rewilding” with intention, designing biology as we would technology.

The company operates more like a platform than a traditional biotech. Its work encompasses genomics, AI, tissue engineering, and epigenetics—creating commercial applications across species conservation, human health, and agriculture. Investors range from Paris Hilton to leading VC firms, reflecting its blend of science, spectacle, and long-term strategic potential.

Colossal is emblematic of a new kind of moonshot company: operating at the edge of ethics, imagination, and impact. It’s not just disrupting science or wildlife conservation—it’s reimagining life itself as a creative canvas. And in doing so, it challenges every other industry to raise its ambitions—not just to solve problems, but to rethink the fundamentals of what’s possible.

On Running: Swiss Engineering Meets Movement Culture

On Running is a Swiss sportswear company that has run far beyond its Alpine origins to become one of the most admired performance brands in the world. Founded in 2010 by former athlete Olivier Bernhard with two friends, On has carved out a space at the intersection of innovation, sustainability, and design—evolving from a niche runner’s secret to a global cultural brand.

What sets On apart isn’t just its distinctive “CloudTec” sole—designed to deliver a uniquely cushioned yet responsive running experience—but its dedication to constant experimentation. Its innovation ethos is proudly Swiss: precise, practical, but also bold. From carbon-fiber plated shoes to recycled materials, from lab-born foams to their zero-emissions “Cloudneo” subscription shoe, On approaches performance as an engineering problem—and design as a human experience.

But On isn’t just building shoes; it’s building a movement. It blends elite athlete endorsements (Roger Federer is not only a brand ambassador but an investor) with everyday runners and urban creatives. Its flagship stores in Zurich, London, and Tokyo look more like art galleries than retail spaces, reflecting a lifestyle that fuses nature, performance, and culture. The brand’s marketing is subtle but intentional—more about storytelling than slogans, more community than competition.

On’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021 raised over $700 million and cemented its status as a global challenger brand. Yet the company remains committed to “Swissness”—combining humility with ambition, engineering with emotion. It exemplifies a new kind of performance brand: not selling speed or stats, but celebrating motion as a state of being.

On is part of a larger shift in how brands relate to consumers—not as passive buyers, but as co-creators in a lifestyle of purpose, sustainability, and self-expression. It reflects a future where functionality and feeling are fused, where companies compete not just on what they sell, but on the values and experiences they enable.

Pinduoduo: Turning Shopping into a Social Game

Pinduoduo is one of the most surprising and disruptive success stories in the global retail landscape. Founded in 2015 by Colin Huang, a former Google engineer, the Chinese e-commerce platform has rewritten the rules of online shopping—not by competing head-on with giants like Alibaba or JD.com, but by inventing a completely different game.

At the heart of Pinduoduo’s model is “social commerce”—a blend of group buying, gamification, and real-time interaction that turns shopping into a shared, playful experience. Users can team up with friends to unlock lower prices, earn coupons through games, or discover deals through mini-quizzes. The app feels more like a social feed or a mobile game than a traditional marketplace. And that’s the point.

By targeting lower-tier Chinese cities and rural consumers—an audience largely ignored by tech elites—Pinduoduo tapped into a huge and underserved market. But it didn’t just deliver low prices; it delivered connection, entertainment, and novelty. Shopping became not a transaction, but a moment of joy, discovery, and shared humor.

This engagement-first model allowed Pinduoduo to grow explosively, reaching over 800 million users in just a few years. The company went public on Nasdaq in 2018, and its parent company, PDD Holdings, now oversees international expansion (notably through its cross-border app Temu). What’s remarkable is how little Pinduoduo spends on traditional marketing—its users are its media, driven by virality and word-of-mouth.

Pinduoduo’s innovation is not just technical, but cultural. It redefines value beyond price, using gamification to create emotional stickiness and community loyalty. It’s less Amazon, more TikTok meets Costco—with serious data and AI power behind the scenes to optimize the flow of products, incentives, and experiences.

It’s a new archetype for digital retail in the 2020s—where attention is more valuable than inventory, and engagement is the true currency. As it continues to expand globally, Pinduoduo challenges every incumbent to rethink what it means to sell, to entertain, and to belong.

Chapter 6: Titans, reinventing business

In a world obsessed with start-ups and unicorns, it’s easy to overlook the giants—those legacy businesses that have shaped industries for decades, even centuries. Yet today, many of these established companies are not just surviving disruption; they are leading transformation. These are the Titans of business: organisations that have recognised the winds of change and chosen reinvention over decline.

Unlike trailblazers who begin with a blank slate, Titans must evolve from within. They face the challenge—and opportunity—of reimagining themselves while carrying the weight of history. But this legacy can be a strength. Scale, brand trust, customer relationships, and deep industry knowledge offer powerful platforms for change. Titans who understand this are not clinging to the past—they are using it as fuel for the future.

These companies are rethinking what they do, how they do it, and even why they exist. They are reinventing products and services, embracing new technologies, redesigning business models, and aligning with the values of a new generation. They are not waiting to be disrupted; they are disrupting themselves.

From Schneider Electric’s green transformation to Nestle’s wellness, DBS Bank’s digital reinvention to LVMH’s luxury innovation, these Titans prove that reinvention is not just for the young and agile. It is for the bold, the wise, and the willing. They show that greatness today lies not in resisting change, but in mastering it—on their own terms, with their own strengths, and at scale.

Pivoting to the future to survive and thrive, before you have to

In today’s volatile and fast-changing world, disruption is not a distant threat—it’s a constant reality. The rules of business are being rewritten by technology, sustainability imperatives, social shifts, and new generations of consumers with different values and expectations. While startups are often seen as the catalysts of this transformation, an equally powerful and perhaps more surprising force is emerging: the world’s leading legacy companies—the Titans—who are reinventing themselves not in response to crisis, but in anticipation of opportunity.

These companies are pivoting before they have to. They are using their heritage as a platform for reinvention rather than a barrier to change. They are transforming not only what they sell, but how they create, deliver, and sustain value. They are rethinking their identity, purpose, and place in society. And crucially, they are doing this with scale, credibility, and global reach.

Schneider Electric: From incumbent to innovator

Take Schneider Electric, once seen as a traditional industrial player in energy management. Over the past decade, the French multinational has repositioned itself as a global leader in sustainability and smart technology. Long before ESG became a boardroom priority, Schneider pivoted toward digitization, decentralization, and decarbonization of energy systems. It transformed its portfolio—investing heavily in software, automation, and services that help customers reduce emissions and improve efficiency.

Schneider’s EcoStruxure platform integrates IoT, AI, and cloud to optimize everything from data centers to entire city grids. In doing so, the company has turned sustainability from a compliance burden into a commercial advantage. It is now consistently ranked among the world’s most sustainable corporations, not for charity, but because it is building a future-facing business model that thrives in a net-zero economy.

Nestlé: From food giant to wellness company

Another titan rewriting its future is Nestlé. The world’s largest food company has recognized that long-term success requires more than scale—it demands relevance in a world of health-conscious, values-driven consumers. Rather than defend legacy categories, Nestlé has actively reshaped its portfolio toward wellness and nutrition.

It has shed underperforming assets in sugary snacks and bought into fast-growing health and supplement companies like Vital Proteins and Garden of Life. It’s investing in plant-based foods, functional beverages, and personalized nutrition technologies. Nestlé now describes itself not as a food conglomerate, but as a nutrition, health and wellness company—placing itself at the intersection of food, science, and wellbeing.

It is also embracing new forms of innovation: Nestlé’s R&D Accelerator platform brings together entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers to fast-track new product development in areas such as gut health and alternative proteins. Rather than fight disruption, Nestlé is choosing to lead it from within.

DBS Bank: Digital first, human always

In the financial world, few incumbents have transformed as effectively as Singapore’s DBS Bank. Once perceived as a conservative state-linked lender, DBS has reinvented itself as a digital-first powerhouse. The pivot began with a bold ambition: to make banking as seamless and invisible as Uber. It restructured internal teams, adopted agile working models, brought in tech talent, and invested in APIs and AI at scale.

But what truly sets DBS apart is its cultural shift. CEO Piyush Gupta instilled a startup mindset across the organization, encouraging experimentation and empowering teams to challenge bureaucracy. Today, 99% of customer transactions are digital, but the human element hasn’t been lost. The bank’s mantra—“Digital to the core, human at the heart”—remains a guiding principle. DBS is now regularly ranked as the world’s best digital bank, and its innovation has improved customer experience, reduced cost-to-serve, and opened up new revenue models across Asia.

Unilever: Leading with Purpose, Innovating with Agility

Unilever has long been a pioneer in embedding sustainability into business strategy, but its current transformation goes even deeper. Recognizing the need to be faster, leaner, and more innovative, Unilever has radically restructured around five new business groups—each with end-to-end accountability. It has increased investment in DTC and e-commerce channels, developed data-rich consumer platforms, and created flexible supply chains that can respond in real time to changing consumer behavior.

The company’s innovation engine has accelerated. Its brands—from Dove to Hellmann’s—are being reinvented with purpose and performance in mind. Plant-based foods, refillable packaging, biodegradable formulas, and local production models are all scaling quickly. By combining corporate clout with entrepreneurial agility, Unilever is showing that global incumbents can adapt at speed—when empowered by the right leadership and mindset.

LVMH: Redefining Luxury Through Innovation and Culture

In an industry often accused of being slow to change, LVMH has shown how luxury can be both timeless and cutting-edge. Under Bernard Arnault, the group has blended tradition with bold innovation—launching new digital experiences, investing in sustainability, and acquiring culturally resonant brands like Tiffany & Co.

LVMH has also embraced the power of cultural collaboration—partnering with designers, artists, and even gaming platforms like Fortnite. It has created immersive digital boutiques, NFTs, and fashion-tech hybrids that connect with Gen Z audiences in unexpected ways. Crucially, it has retained the craftsmanship and exclusivity that define its legacy. This balancing act—between heritage and novelty—is what enables LVMH to reinvent luxury without diluting its soul.

Reinvention Strategies for Titans

What unites these diverse companies is a shared recognition: the world has changed, and the old playbook no longer applies. But reinvention is not mimicry. Titans are not trying to become startups. Instead, they are using their own strengths—scale, systems, trust, and experience—to outmaneuver disruption with more resources, more insight, and often, more impact.

Here are some of the key principles emerging from their transformations:

• Anticipate, don’t react: Reinvention is most successful when it’s proactive. Titans are investing in future capabilities, not waiting for crises.

• Embrace contradiction: Innovation and tradition. Speed and scale. Efficiency and emotion. The best reinventions embrace both/and thinking.

• Rebuild from within: Culture and structure matter. Titans must empower their people, decentralize decisions, and foster internal entrepreneurship.

• Create ecosystems: Reinvention isn’t solo. Titans are building platforms, partnerships, and ecosystems to deliver more holistic value.

• Lead with purpose: The most successful transformations are values-driven. Purpose gives reinvention meaning—and attracts talent, consumers, and allies.

Reinvention is not just for the young. Today’s titans prove that with courage, imagination, and strategic foresight, even the most established organizations can pivot to the future—before they have to. They are not relics of a fading industrial age, but architects of a new one.

They remind us that true leadership is not about preserving power, but about evolving it to serve a new era. The future belongs not just to those who move fast—but to those who move first, with intention. And in that race, the Titans are very much alive.

Letting Go to Leap Forward

The future is not waiting. While start-ups race ahead with disruptive ideas and zero baggage, legacy companies—Titans of industry—stand at a crossroads. These giants hold immense power: global scale, brand equity, deep expertise, loyal customers. But too often, they are anchored by their own past. To survive and thrive in a world of relentless change, these Titans must do the hardest thing: let go of what made them great in order to become something greater.

1. Let go of legacy: look forwards not back

For many large enterprises, legacy is a double-edged sword. It brings credibility, trust, and reach—but also calcified processes, outdated mindsets, and fear of change. Too often, companies frame their future through the lens of their past, assuming that what worked yesterday will still be relevant tomorrow.

Kodak is a cautionary tale—pioneering digital photography, only to shelve it in fear of cannibalising film sales. IBM, in contrast, offers a success story: once a hardware behemoth, it pivoted toward cloud, AI, and services by shedding its old business lines and reinventing its role in enterprise transformation.

Letting go does not mean rejecting all heritage. It means refusing to be defined by it. It’s about shifting focus from “what we’ve always done” to “what the world needs now.” Leaders must ask not “How do we defend our legacy?” but “What is the boldest, most relevant contribution we can make next?”

2. Find new purpose: A cause worth reinvention

Legacy businesses often confuse purpose with mission statements. But today, purpose is more than corporate language—it is a living, evolving force that defines why a company exists and what impact it aims to make in the world.

Unilever, once a product-focused FMCG titan, has embraced sustainability and human wellbeing as central to its reinvention. With brands like Dove and Ben & Jerry’s leading the charge, Unilever aligns business goals with social and environmental purpose—attracting talent, inspiring innovation, and deepening customer trust.

Schneider Electric has redefined its mission around energy efficiency and carbon reduction, turning industrial engineering into a climate-positive force. Even Microsoft, long the face of enterprise software, reinvented its purpose under Satya Nadella: to empower every person and organization to achieve more.

Purpose gives reinvention direction and urgency. It enables companies to transcend category limitations and unlock new growth. Titans that find fresh, forward-looking purpose can rally people—inside and outside the organization—around a bigger cause.

3. Fuse digital and physical: Think digital-first, not just hybrid

Many legacy businesses are stuck in “hybrid” thinking—adding digital elements to physical infrastructure. But true reinvention demands a digital-first mindset, where technology is not an add-on but the core enabler of value creation.

Nike, once a product-led company, has embraced digital as its new foundation. Its Nike Training and Running apps create daily engagement; its SNKRS app redefines product drops as cultural moments. Data, personalization, and digital storytelling are now central to the brand experience, not secondary to the shoes themselves.

Starbucks has similarly fused digital with physical. Its mobile app is more than a payment tool—it is a loyalty engine, data source, and customer interface that personalizes offers and streamlines service. The company’s reimagined stores include pick-up only and drive-thru digital hubs, built around evolving customer habits.

Digital-first thinking isn’t just about convenience. It reshapes value propositions, operating models, and customer relationships. Titans must move from simply “doing digital” to being digital—from digitising old processes to building entirely new business logics rooted in technology.

4. Decentralise: Unleash the power of networks and communities

In an era of platform economies and social ecosystems, centralised control is no longer an advantage—it’s a bottleneck. Titans must shift from command-and-control hierarchies to flexible, decentralised networks that empower people across and beyond the organisation.

Take Haier, the Chinese appliance giant. It reinvented itself as a “platform of micro-enterprises,” where over 4,000 self-organised teams operate with P&L responsibility, innovation autonomy, and customer proximity. This model unleashes entrepreneurship from within, scaling agility and creativity across the company.

Web3 and decentralised technologies take this even further, enabling shared ownership and distributed governance. Luxury brand LVMH is experimenting with blockchain to verify authenticity and engage consumers in new trust-based relationships. Meanwhile, community-led brands like LEGO have co-creation platforms that let fans design, vote on, and even sell their own product ideas.

Decentralisation is not chaos—it’s empowerment. Titans that tap into networks, creators, and communities can move faster, learn quicker, and stay far closer to emerging needs and opportunities.

5. Collaborate: Co-own, co-create, co-sell, co-support, co-achieve

No single company—no matter how large—can solve today’s complex challenges alone. The future belongs to those who can collaborate across boundaries: with start-ups, academia, creators, governments, and even competitors. Reinvention at scale requires openness, trust, and shared ambition.

Take BMW and Daimler. Longtime rivals, they joined forces to build urban mobility platforms, investing jointly in ride-hailing, parking, and EV charging services. By pooling resources and data, they hope to shape the future of transport rather than be sidelined by it.

DBS Bank, in Singapore, has built a vast ecosystem of partners across fintech, health, education, and commerce. It sees itself not as a bank, but as a platform for life, integrating services in ways that solve broader customer needs. Its innovation labs and startup partnerships accelerate learning and amplify impact.

Or consider Patagonia, which collaborates with environmental NGOs, local communities, and even competing brands to champion regenerative agriculture and climate justice. The brand’s voice, reach, and influence grow not through domination—but through solidarity and shared values.

Collaboration multiplies capability. It brings in fresh thinking, shares risk, builds relevance, and creates entirely new value chains. For Titans, it requires humility—but unlocks transformation that no single entity can achieve alone.

Leading from the Future, Not the Past

Reinvention is no longer optional. Titans of business are being challenged to adapt in ways that go beyond innovation—toward complete transformation. This requires more than new products or digital tools. It demands a fundamental shift in worldview.

To lead in the decades ahead, companies must let go of outdated mindsets and reframe what makes them valuable. They must find bold new purpose, embrace technology as a driver of experience, build flexible networks, and see collaboration not as competition but as evolution.

It is not about rejecting legacy—it’s about transcending it. The companies that do will not only remain relevant, but redefine relevance itself. They won’t just protect their past—they’ll invent the future. Titans, reimagined, can become tomorrow’s trailblazers.

DSM: from coal mines to life sciences

DSM’s story is one of the most remarkable business reinventions in modern history. Founded in 1902 as the Dutch State Mines (De Staatsmijnen), it was a coal mining company serving the Netherlands’ energy needs. But as coal declined in the 1960s, DSM faced an existential crisis. Rather than defending its heritage, it chose transformation—abandoning mining completely by 1975 and pivoting into petrochemicals and later specialty materials and life sciences.

DSM’s leadership understood that long-term survival required letting go of legacy assets and reimagining its capabilities. It developed deep expertise in polymers, resins, and performance materials. But even that was not the end. As environmental and health concerns became more central to global markets, DSM again shifted—this time into sustainable nutrition, bio-based products, and health solutions.

Today, DSM is a leader in food fortification, vitamins, animal nutrition, and biopharma. It produces micronutrients that address malnutrition, omega-3s from algae as sustainable fish oil alternatives, and enzymes that improve food sustainability. The company merged with Firmenich in 2023 to create DSM-Firmenich, further expanding into natural flavours, fragrances, and well-being—blending science and sensory appeal.

What sets DSM apart is its willingness to walk away from entire industries, even profitable ones, when they no longer align with a sustainable, innovation-driven future. It invests heavily in R&D, partners across ecosystems, and positions itself as a science-based company with purpose: “Brighter Living for All.”

DSM’s journey from coal to chemistry to health and climate impact illustrates how a company can reinvent itself multiple times, each time moving closer to long-term value creation—economically, socially, and environmentally.

Fujifilm: from camera film to innovative cosmetics

Fujifilm, once synonymous with camera film, has achieved a masterclass in corporate reinvention. As digital photography swept across the world in the early 2000s, it rendered the company’s core business obsolete. While rival Kodak clung to the past and eventually filed for bankruptcy, Fujifilm embraced change and proactively pivoted into new domains, guided by its deep scientific and material expertise.

Understanding that its photographic business relied on advanced chemical compounds, precision coatings, and collagen technologies, Fujifilm redeployed those capabilities into healthcare, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. It began manufacturing diagnostic imaging systems, endoscopes, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing equipment—positioning itself at the heart of modern healthcare.

One standout is Avigan, an antiviral drug Fujifilm developed for influenza and which gained global attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, its Skincare line, Astalift, leverages film-derived nanotechnology to deliver anti-aging products, blending health science and consumer lifestyle.

Fujifilm also built a thriving medical imaging and AI diagnostics business, enabling earlier disease detection and better patient outcomes. By 2024, nearly 60% of its revenues came from healthcare and materials science—not photography.

What enabled Fujifilm’s reinvention was a clear-eyed assessment of its strengths: a culture of innovation, chemical mastery, and a willingness to enter new sectors beyond its legacy image. It didn’t just diversify—it transformed. CEO Shigetaka Komori’s leadership was instrumental, making bold investments and cultivating a mindset shift across the organization.

Fujifilm’s journey shows that even companies disrupted by technological shifts can turn decline into growth—if they’re willing to repurpose their core competencies for new, forward-looking opportunities.

Jio: from petrochemicals to India lifestyle superapp

Jio is one of the most radical corporate pivots ever seen—emerging not from Silicon Valley or a tech lab, but from India’s largest petrochemical and energy conglomerate, Reliance Industries. Spearheaded by Mukesh Ambani, Jio transformed Reliance from a fossil fuel and textile empire into the beating heart of India’s digital revolution.

Launched in 2016, Jio Platforms began as a mobile network offering free voice calls and ultra-cheap data. Within months, it disrupted India’s telecom landscape, adding over 100 million users in under six months. Today, Jio is the largest mobile network operator in India, with over 450 million subscribers, and forms the foundation for an integrated ecosystem that spans broadband, TV, cloud, commerce, payments, and entertainment.

Jio’s success wasn’t just about price—it was about infrastructure, scale, and vision. Reliance invested $40 billion in building out a pan-India 4G network from scratch. But more importantly, it saw Jio not as a telco, but as a lifestyle platform for digital India—enabling education, health, shopping, and entrepreneurship.

Jio has also become a magnet for global investment. Facebook (now Meta), Google, Intel, and Qualcomm have all invested billions into Jio Platforms, betting on its ability to digitize the world’s fastest-growing economy. JioMeet, JioMart, and JioCinema are just a few examples of the super-app’s expanding footprint.

For Reliance, this transformation is strategic and generational. As the world shifts from hydrocarbons to electrons, the company is reinventing its relevance—from oil to information, from industrial might to digital empowerment. Jio symbolizes a modern India: youthful, connected, entrepreneurial.

Jio’s story is more than business reinvention—it’s national transformation. It shows how a legacy giant can channel its resources, infrastructure, and ambition to leap into entirely new growth curves, shaping the future of society along the way.

Rethinking strategy, innovation and leadership

Leading with a Future Mindset

In today’s fast-changing world, businesses can no longer afford to rely solely on past achievements or existing capabilities to stay competitive. The future is shaped by forces that often lie beyond the boundaries of what has worked before, and the ability to look forward—to anticipate emerging ideas and opportunities—is essential. Instead of being constrained by the practices and assumptions of the past, successful businesses develop foresight by actively exploring what might come next.

This shift in perspective requires moving away from a backward-looking mindset focused on incremental improvements and efficiencies. While optimizing current products and processes remains important, it can also create blind spots that prevent companies from seeing new possibilities. Foresight demands curiosity and a willingness to embrace uncertainty. Leaders must view ambiguity not as a threat but as fertile ground for innovation and growth.

To build this future-oriented mindset, organizations need to scan their environment constantly. This means watching for emerging technologies, evolving customer behaviors, shifts in regulation, and broader societal changes. By identifying early signals and trends, companies can prepare themselves to act before these changes become mainstream or disruptive. Tools like scenario planning help by encouraging businesses to imagine multiple plausible futures, test assumptions, and develop strategies flexible enough to succeed under different conditions.

Creating dedicated innovation teams or labs that focus specifically on future challenges and opportunities allows organizations to experiment without being tied to legacy systems. Collaborations with startups, academic institutions, and industry ecosystems further broaden the horizon, introducing fresh ideas and different ways of thinking. Crucially, leadership development must emphasize the ability to think systemically, balance analytical and creative thinking, and foster a culture that values learning and experimentation.

One of the biggest hurdles to embracing foresight is organizational inertia. Companies often reward past performance, making it difficult to justify investments in uncertain futures. Overcoming this requires redefining success to include learning and adaptability, encouraging a mindset that views the future as an open field of possibilities rather than a set path defined by history. Breaking down internal silos and encouraging cross-functional collaboration are also vital, as diverse perspectives enrich the understanding of emerging opportunities and risks.

The payoff for businesses that cultivate foresight is significant. Instead of being trapped by existing models, they develop a portfolio of options—a set of potential futures they can explore, test, and evolve. This flexibility enables them to move quickly, seize first-mover advantages, and avoid being caught off guard by disruptive changes. Ultimately, foresight transforms uncertainty into a source of opportunity, empowering organizations to innovate boldly and shape the markets of tomorrow.

In a world where change is the only constant, the ability to look forward and explore new frontiers isn’t just valuable—it’s essential for long-term success.

Chapter 7: Strategy in an age of AI and disruption

In today’s environment of relentless change, traditional approaches to business strategy are increasingly obsolete. The future is no longer a linear projection of the past—it’s marked by constant shifts, unprecedented developments, and interconnected risks.

The future is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, summarised by the well-established VUCA framework as first used by military planners. Others have adopted newer terms like BANI—Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible—to describe the mounting fragility of systems, emotional turbulence, and unpredictable cause-effect relationships that characterize today’s environment.

One of the most useful frameworks to describe this new reality is TUNA: Turbulence, Uncertainty, Novelty, and Ambiguity.

Originally developed in the field of strategic foresight, TUNA provides a sharper lens than older models like VUCA, helping leaders understand the deep, structural changes shaping the future of business.

• Turbulence refers to the continuous instability across political, economic, environmental, and technological systems. From geopolitical shocks to supply chain disruptions, the operating context for organizations is in constant flux. Long-term plans are frequently upended by unexpected events, requiring businesses to become more responsive and resilient.
• Uncertainty highlights the limitations of prediction. In a TUNA world, past data offers diminishing insight into future outcomes. Businesses must navigate situations where they lack both the information and the clarity needed for confident decisions. This calls for new planning approaches that emphasize optionality and flexibility over rigid control.
• Novelty captures the reality that many of today’s challenges and opportunities are without precedent. Generative AI, synthetic biology, quantum computing, and planetary-scale environmental shifts are introducing forces that traditional strategy models never contemplated. Leaders must engage with unfamiliar futures, experiment with emerging ideas, and learn at speed.
• Ambiguity describes situations where cause and effect are unclear, where signals are conflicting, and where multiple interpretations coexist. This challenges leaders to interpret weak signals, test assumptions, and avoid over-simplifying complex environments.

In response to this TUNA landscape, business strategy is becoming more dynamic and purpose-driven. Instead of relying on long-term forecasts and fixed objectives, leading organizations are anchoring their strategies in a strong sense of purpose—a guiding star that provides clarity even when the path forward is unclear. Purpose helps unite teams, align decisions, and guide innovation amid turbulence.

Strategic planning itself is evolving. Companies are adopting scenario thinking to explore multiple plausible futures rather than bet on a single vision. They’re building modular strategies with flexible pathways, allowing for fast adjustments when the environment shifts. Real-time data, continuous experimentation, and strategic foresight are becoming everyday tools.

Agility is now central to strategy execution. Borrowing from agile development, organizations are implementing shorter planning cycles, decentralizing decision-making, and empowering teams to act on emerging insights. Strategy is no longer a top-down directive—it’s a living, adaptive process.

Crucially, AI is transforming how strategy is done. Advanced analytics and machine learning help scan the horizon for early signals of change, simulate outcomes, and identify hidden patterns in complex systems. Generative AI supports leaders in synthesizing insights, co-developing options, and rapidly iterating on ideas. This enhances both the speed and sophistication of strategic thinking.

In a TUNA world, strategy must shift from prediction to preparedness, from rigidity to resilience, from control to creativity. It must help organisations not just survive disruption—but continually reinvent themselves in response to it.

Strategic Foresight: Seeing the future first

In today’s fast-moving and uncertain world, business leaders must develop foresight—not just to predict the future, but to better anticipate challenges and opportunities before they fully emerge. Gaining foresight requires a deliberate shift in mindset, an expanded perspective on the forces shaping the business environment, and practical use of tools and frameworks that help translate insight into action.

At the heart of foresight is mindset. Leaders who cultivate curiosity, openness, and humility position themselves to see beyond the immediate and familiar. Curiosity drives them to seek out new information and fresh ideas outside their core industry or comfort zone. Openness allows them to consider perspectives that may contradict their own assumptions, while humility helps them accept that the future is inherently uncertain and cannot be precisely predicted. Instead of fearing ambiguity, foresight-minded leaders view it as fertile ground for innovation and discovery.

Beyond mindset, foresight demands a broader view of the world. Leaders must step outside their day-to-day operational focus to understand the wider social, technological, economic, environmental, and political trends shaping their industry and society. This holistic awareness helps them spot “weak signals”—subtle early indicators of change that might otherwise go unnoticed. Engaging with diverse voices—customers, employees, startups, academics, and even competitors—enriches their understanding and reveals emerging shifts in consumer values, new business models, and potential regulatory changes. Thinking systemically about how these forces interact enables leaders to imagine multiple possible futures, rather than clinging to a single expected outcome.

To turn mindset and perspective into practical foresight, leaders can use a range of proven tools and frameworks. Environmental scanning helps them continuously monitor news, research, social media, and expert networks for early signs of change. Scenario planning invites them to develop multiple plausible futures—optimistic, pessimistic, and in-between—testing strategies against each to build resilience and flexibility. Trend mapping visualizes key developments over time, distinguishing long-term transformations from passing fads. Backcasting flips traditional forecasting by starting with a desired future and working backward to define the steps needed to reach it, inspiring more future-driven strategies.

Other techniques like weak signal analysis focus on subtle, emerging cues that foreshadow disruption. Innovation labs and future workshops create safe spaces where teams can experiment with new technologies, business models, and customer ideas to rapidly learn and adapt. The Delphi method gathers expert input anonymously in rounds to refine predictions and build consensus.

Ultimately, foresight becomes most powerful when embedded in leadership practice. This means carving out regular time for reflection, encouraging a culture of curiosity and questioning, and aligning resources to support long-term innovation and adaptability. Leaders who master the mindset, broaden their perspectives, and apply these tools position their organizations not just to survive but to thrive amid ongoing disruption.

In a world where change is constant, foresight transforms uncertainty from a risk into an opportunity—a vital skill for any leader aiming to shape the future rather than be shaped by it.

Strategy as Choices: Navigating a World of Change

Business strategy has always been about choices. Not checklists or grand declarations, but real, often difficult decisions about what to do—and just as importantly, what not to do. Strategy is the art of deciding where to play, how to win, and how to align people, resources, and capabilities to move in that direction. In an age of rapid change and rising uncertainty, this view of strategy as a discipline of choices—guided by dreams and data, shaped by systems and scenarios—is more relevant than ever.

The confusion between business strategy and business planning is common, but they serve fundamentally different purposes. A business strategy defines the overarching direction and identity of a company. It sets out the purpose, long-term goals, and the distinctive value a business intends to create in the world. It’s forward-looking and aspirational, often asking questions like: What future are we trying to shape? Who are we here to serve? How will we stand apart from others?

A business plan, by contrast, is a practical and operational tool. It translates strategic intent into detailed steps—budgets, milestones, timelines, and metrics—over a defined period, typically a year. While strategy provides the compass, the business plan is the map for the immediate terrain. Strategy endures; planning iterates.

At the core of strategy are choices—choices about direction, priorities, and trade-offs. These choices are not always easy or obvious. Choosing a specific customer segment means ignoring others. Investing in certain capabilities—say, digital platforms or sustainability—may mean underinvesting elsewhere. Choosing to differentiate on experience rather than cost or speed shapes everything from operations to culture.

Trade-offs are central to strategic clarity. As Michael Porter once argued, without trade-offs, there is no real strategy—only vague ambition. The best strategies are those that are not only bold but also focused, enabling organizations to concentrate their energy where it matters most.

In today’s world, however, making choices is harder than ever.

In this context, strategy must become more dynamic, agile, and adaptive. The old model of writing a five-year plan, presenting it to the board, and locking it into spreadsheets no longer works. Strategy today must be a living process—continuously refined, tested, and adjusted as new information and new possibilities emerge.

This shift doesn’t mean abandoning long-term thinking. If anything, it makes a clear sense of purpose more important than ever. Purpose provides the anchor in stormy waters—the long-term direction that helps organizations stay focused even when the path changes. Companies like Unilever, Patagonia, and DBS Bank have shown how a compelling purpose can align teams, guide innovation, and enable better decisions when uncertainty reigns.

Alongside purpose, today’s strategic approach demands a new rhythm—faster cycles of sensing, experimenting, learning, and adapting. Borrowing principles from agile software development, many companies now run strategy “sprints” that replace static annual reviews. They operate with modular strategies—core components that endure, and flexible layers that can shift in response to feedback or disruption.

This agility extends to business planning too. Traditional planning methods—slow, hierarchical, and reliant on backward-looking data—are giving way to approaches that are faster, more collaborative, and more exploratory. Planning today is increasingly directional rather than prescriptive. It focuses on intent and options rather than fixed targets. It’s treated as a hypothesis to be tested, rather than a commitment to be blindly followed. Empowered teams on the front lines contribute insights and help shape decisions, not just execute them.

To support this new way of working, organizations are turning to tools drawn from futures thinking and systems design. Strategic foresight helps companies explore signals of change and stretch their thinking beyond current constraints. Scenario planning creates multiple, plausible futures and asks how a strategy might perform in each. Backcasting flips the usual logic—instead of projecting forward, it starts with a desired future and works backward to identify the steps needed to get there. Systems thinking reveals the interdependencies and unintended consequences that come with acting in a complex world.

AI and data analytics are further transforming the strategy process. Where strategic decisions were once based on intuition or limited data, today’s leaders can draw on powerful tools to process complexity at scale. AI can help synthesize massive datasets, identify emerging trends, and simulate future outcomes. Predictive analytics can model the impact of various decisions, while generative AI can assist with ideation, drafting, and even scenario creation.

More than just accelerating existing processes, AI enables a new kind of strategic intelligence—one that augments human decision-making with broader pattern recognition and real-time feedback. Companies like Netflix, Ping An, and Amazon already use AI not only to shape products but also to inform long-term strategic bets. As these technologies mature, strategy itself becomes more data-rich, real-time, and inclusive.

Yet for all the data and digital tools now available, strategy remains profoundly human. The best strategies are driven not just by information, but by imagination. They begin with a dream—of a better customer experience, a more inclusive society, a sustainable planet—and use that dream to define what really matters. Values, creativity, empathy—these remain essential to shaping a strategy that resonates and endures.

In this sense, strategy today is a fusion of logic and possibility, reason and vision. It must blend the rational with the emotional, the analytical with the intuitive. Leaders must be able to think systemically and act decisively, to sense weak signals and still pursue bold moves. The strategist of the future must be part data scientist, part designer, part storyteller, and part activist.

Ultimately, to treat strategy as choices is to accept that we cannot do everything, and we should not try. The power of a good strategy lies in its focus—in knowing who you are, what you believe in, and what future you want to help create. It’s about making intentional decisions, setting clear direction, and committing to those choices long enough to build momentum, while being agile enough to adjust when the world shifts.

In a world of constant change, the companies that thrive will be those that understand strategy not as a static plan, but as an ongoing journey of deliberate, courageous, and evolving choices. They will combine dreams and data, experiment and empower, and treat strategy not as a fixed destination, but as a living, breathing process of becoming.

Finding clarity of direction, making purpose matter

In an age of rapid change and rising expectations, companies are increasingly judged not just by what they sell, but by what they stand for. A clear and authentic purpose—the reason a business exists beyond profit—is becoming a central pillar of strategy, culture, and value creation. But for purpose to be meaningful, it must go far beyond marketing slogans or corporate social responsibility reports. It must be discovered, expressed, and embedded deeply into the business, driving decisions, inspiring people, and shaping how the company acts in the world.

The process starts by looking inward. Purpose isn’t invented; it’s uncovered. It stems from a company’s heritage, its capabilities, and the unique role it plays in people’s lives. It often emerges at the intersection of three questions: What are we good at? What do we care about? What does the world need from us? Patagonia, for example, found its purpose in environmental activism, rooted in its founder’s values and its outdoor gear customers’ lifestyles. Its purpose—“We’re in business to save our home planet”—guides everything from product design to activism and even its decision to give away company ownership to a climate-focused trust.

Once discovered, a purpose must be clearly articulated—simple, bold, and resonant. It should be more than vague statements about “being the best” or “delivering value.” Unilever’s purpose—“to make sustainable living commonplace”—provides both clarity and challenge. It translates into measurable goals around reducing environmental impact, improving health and wellbeing, and supporting livelihoods across its global operations.

But the true test of purpose is whether it becomes practical and operational. This means embedding it into strategy, innovation, and everyday decision-making. Danone redefined itself as an “Entreprise à Mission,” aligning its governance and business model with the goal of improving human and planetary health through food. It influences product development, partnerships, sourcing, and performance metrics.

Purpose also shapes employee engagement and culture. Younger generations, in particular, are seeking employers with a social mission and shared values. DBS Bank in Singapore embraced its purpose—“to make banking joyful”—to reimagine both customer experience and internal culture. This led to process redesigns, fintech partnerships, and employee empowerment programs that brought the purpose to life.

To keep purpose real, companies must measure and reward progress, not just intent. Metrics around sustainability, inclusion, wellbeing, or impact become part of strategic dashboards. Leaders must model purpose-driven behavior and hold themselves accountable.

Ultimately, a powerful purpose does not constrain profit—it redefines it. It unlocks innovation, loyalty, talent, and trust. It gives companies resilience in crisis and direction in uncertainty. The businesses that lead with purpose—and live it consistently—are not just doing good. They’re building stronger, more relevant, and more future-fit organizations.

At Patagonia, purpose is not just a statement—it’s a way of doing business. The company’s mission, “We’re in business to save our home planet,” reflects its deep environmental roots. Rather than simply promoting sustainability as a brand message, Patagonia has integrated activism into its operations. It donates a portion of sales to environmental causes, encourages customers to repair rather than replace clothing, and famously ran an ad telling people not to buy its products unless they really need them. In 2022, founder Yvon Chouinard took a radical step by giving away ownership of the company to a trust and nonprofit dedicated to fighting climate change, ensuring that Patagonia’s profits will always serve the planet. This is purpose not as marketing, but as governance and long-term intent.

At Unilever, purpose has become a unifying force across a vast portfolio of consumer brands. Its corporate mission, “to make sustainable living commonplace,” shaped a decade-long transformation under former CEO Paul Polman. The company embedded sustainability into product innovation, supply chains, and brand narratives. Brands with strong social or environmental purposes—like Dove, Lifebuoy, and Hellmann’s—outperformed others in the portfolio. This wasn’t about charity; it was about aligning commercial success with broader human needs. Unilever’s purpose now drives strategic priorities, from climate action to equity and wellbeing, and is central to its long-term value creation.

Danone offers another example of turning purpose into structural change. With the slogan “One Planet. One Health,”Danone linked its food and beverage portfolio to human and planetary wellbeing. It became the first major listed company in France to adopt “Entreprise à Mission” status—formally integrating its social purpose into its legal framework. This move required a shift in how the company defined success, balancing profit with impact on health, sustainability, and social equity. From investing in regenerative agriculture to improving access to healthy nutrition, Danone’s strategy is shaped by this broader ambition.

In the banking sector, DBS Bank in Singapore reimagined its role through the purpose “To make banking joyful.” It sounds lighthearted, but it led to a serious transformation. The bank focused on removing friction from customer experiences and used digital tools to simplify everyday banking tasks. Internally, DBS applied agile and design thinking principles to empower teams, break down silos, and accelerate innovation. As a result, DBS became one of the world’s most respected digital banks. The purpose shaped not just products and services, but internal culture and ways of working.

Even in retail, companies like IKEA demonstrate how purpose can guide strategic decisions. With the vision “to create a better everyday life for the many people,” IKEA focuses on delivering affordability, functionality, and sustainability. Its flat-pack model reduces both costs and environmental impact. More recently, IKEA has committed to becoming circular by 2030—offering repair services, reselling used furniture, and designing products for reuse. Its purpose drives choices about product development, logistics, and customer engagement.

These examples show that when purpose is real—when it shapes strategy, decisions, and culture—it becomes a powerful engine for innovation, trust, and growth.

Exploring alternative futures using scenarios

Scenario planning is a strategic tool used by companies to explore multiple plausible futures and make more resilient decisions in the face of uncertainty. Rather than trying to predict the future, scenario planning helps businesses imagine a range of different outcomes—based on variables such as economic shifts, technological disruption, regulatory changes, or social transformation—and stress-test their strategies against them. It’s especially valuable in times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—what many now call the TUNA world (Turbulent, Uncertain, Novel, and Ambiguous).

The process involves identifying key drivers of change, the critical uncertainties shaping the future, and developing a set of contrasting yet plausible scenarios. These narratives are not forecasts, but tools to challenge assumptions, uncover risks, spot opportunities, and make strategic choices with greater awareness of the external environment. At its best, scenario planning helps organisations avoid linear thinking and prepares them to act early and decisively, even in unfamiliar territory.

One of the earliest and most influential adopters was Royal Dutch Shell. In the 1970s, Shell used scenario planning to anticipate a potential oil supply crisis—at a time when most energy companies assumed continued abundance. When the 1973 oil embargo hit, Shell was better prepared than its competitors, having already considered a scenario where prices surged and supply was constrained. The foresight helped Shell move quickly, reshaping its supply chain and securing new energy sources. Since then, Shell has institutionalised scenario planning as part of its long-range strategic process, producing detailed public scenarios like “Sky” and “Mountains” to explore the transition to a net-zero energy future.

Unilever has also used scenario planning to embed sustainability into its long-term strategy. In developing its Sustainable Living Plan, the company explored divergent futures shaped by climate change, water scarcity, consumer preferences, and geopolitical instability. These scenarios helped Unilever evaluate which business models, supply chains, and innovations would be viable under different environmental and societal pressures. It led to investment in climate-resilient agriculture, new packaging solutions, and product reformulations to meet future needs.

Maersk, the global shipping and logistics company, used scenario planning during the COVID-19 crisis to model how global trade patterns could evolve post-pandemic. Scenarios ranged from a rapid recovery of globalization to a prolonged period of protectionism and regional supply chains. This helped Maersk reposition itself, investing more in inland logistics, digital platforms, and end-to-end supply services to adapt to multiple possible trade configurations.

Microsoft, under Satya Nadella, applied scenario planning to anticipate the future of work and digital transformation—especially during the early days of generative AI. Scenarios considered everything from mass remote work to decentralised AI agents disrupting software business models. The insights informed major strategic bets, such as accelerating Microsoft Teams, integrating AI into Office, and investing heavily in OpenAI.

Scenario planning doesn’t tell companies what will happen. Instead, it helps them prepare for what could happen—encouraging agility, imagination, and deeper strategic thinking. By rehearsing different futures, companies can make wiser choices today, remain flexible, and lead with confidence in an unpredictable world.

Faster, smarter business planning with AI

Traditional strategic planning and budgeting processes have long been criticized for being slow, rigid, and disconnected from fast-changing market realities. Many companies still spend months in laborious cycles of data gathering, forecasting, and internal reviews—only to find that by the time plans are approved, the context has already shifted. In today’s volatile and fast-moving world, this model is increasingly unfit for purpose. Enter AI: a transformative force that is helping businesses radically accelerate and improve how they develop strategies and allocate resources.

AI-powered planning platforms now enable companies to synthesize vast volumes of internal and external data in real time, generate predictive insights, and test multiple scenarios rapidly. Instead of waiting weeks for financial models or market analyses, AI can surface strategic opportunities, forecast outcomes, and highlight risks in minutes. Machine learning algorithms can detect patterns that humans might miss, while generative AI can assist in drafting strategy documents or creating dynamic financial narratives. The result? Planning cycles that used to take six months can now be compressed into six days—or even less—with higher accuracy and more agility.

One example is Amazon, which has long used data-driven forecasting and machine learning to optimize its supply chain and resource allocation. AI helps teams dynamically adjust inventory, pricing, and investment based on real-time signals. Strategic planning is distributed across teams who access shared, AI-enhanced dashboards that model customer demand, operational capacity, and financial implications instantly. This decentralised yet connected approach enables faster decision-making and rolling plans rather than rigid annual strategies.

HSBC is using AI to transform financial planning and budgeting. Working with software provider Planful, HSBC digitised and automated many of its planning workflows. AI algorithms analyze financial performance, flag anomalies, and suggest budget reallocations, helping managers move away from static annual budgets and toward continuous, responsive planning. This shift has not only improved speed but also empowered frontline teams with insights they can act on.

Unilever, in its global finance transformation, is applying AI to accelerate and improve decision-making. Its “smart finance” program uses predictive analytics to forecast category growth, track market volatility, and dynamically allocate investments. AI tools support scenario planning and help reduce the number of assumptions required to build robust plans. The company’s finance team describes the change as moving “from hindsight to foresight.”

Even startups and digital-native firms like Airtable and Notion are embracing AI-enhanced planning. Their product roadmaps, marketing strategies, and budgets are often co-created with AI tools that identify user trends, market movements, and feature performance. With small, empowered teams and real-time dashboards, they iterate strategies weekly, not annually.

The implications are profound: strategic planning becomes a continuous, adaptive process—not a once-a-year ritual. AI reduces the burden of manual analysis, shortens feedback loops, and allows businesses to focus on making choices, not just crunching numbers. Leadership teams can spend less time in planning meetings and more time evaluating options, aligning on purpose, and responding to change.

In an age of accelerating complexity, businesses that plan smarter and faster will outpace those still stuck in the slow lane. AI is not just a tool for efficiency—it’s fast becoming the catalyst for more dynamic, empowered, and future-fit strategy.

Strategic Portfolios: Exploit and explore

At its core, business strategy is about managing choices—not only about what to do today but also how to prepare for tomorrow. This dual imperative leads companies to cultivate and manage a portfolio of future options—a collection of products, services, business models, and new ventures that together shape both current success and long-term growth. This portfolio mindset recognizes the tension between exploiting the present and exploring the future, two distinct but interdependent activities that require different approaches, timeframes, and leadership styles.

The “exploitation” portfolio focuses on optimizing and scaling the company’s current core businesses. It involves enhancing existing products and services, refining operational excellence, and improving customer experience. These initiatives tend to have shorter time horizons, clearer market feedback, and well-understood risks. The goal here is efficiency, profitability, and incremental innovation that sustains cash flow and competitive advantage. For example, a consumer goods company might invest in reformulating existing products, expanding distribution channels, or using AI to personalize marketing campaigns—all aimed at maximizing near-term returns.

In contrast, the “exploration” portfolio involves investing in new possibilities—emerging technologies, novel business models, or disruptive ventures that may redefine markets or create entirely new ones. These projects often operate in contexts of high uncertainty and ambiguity, with longer and more variable timeframes. Exploration is about learning, experimentation, and discovering future growth engines, even if they don’t pay off immediately. A technology firm, for instance, might dedicate resources to developing artificial intelligence capabilities, blockchain applications, or sustainability-driven products that might not become commercially viable for years.

Managing these two portfolios simultaneously is challenging because they demand different mindsets and leadership styles. Exploitation requires discipline, focus, and operational rigor, emphasizing execution excellence and risk mitigation. It benefits from structured planning, performance metrics, and tight coordination across established teams. Leadership in this domain often centers on optimizing processes, scaling proven models, and meeting shareholder expectations for steady growth.

Exploration, by contrast, thrives on creativity, flexibility, and tolerance for failure. It demands a culture that encourages experimentation, rapid iteration, and cross-functional collaboration. Leaders must be comfortable with ambiguity, able to inspire teams to navigate uncertainty and pivot when necessary. Because exploratory initiatives are inherently risky and less predictable, leadership here often involves separate innovation units, venture arms, or skunkworks projects that operate with autonomy from core operations.

Successful companies deliberately design governance and resource allocation processes that balance these portfolios. They set clear strategic priorities and allocate capital accordingly—often following models like the “70-20-10” rule (70% of investment in core business, 20% in adjacent opportunities, and 10% in disruptive innovation) or other tailored mixes that fit their industry and maturity.

Real-world examples highlight this duality. Amazon maintains a robust exploitation portfolio—constantly improving its retail platform and logistics network—while simultaneously exploring far-reaching innovations such as cloud computing (AWS), AI-powered devices (Echo), and space ventures (Blue Origin). These diverse bets require different leadership teams, investment horizons, and risk appetites but collectively drive Amazon’s sustained growth.

Similarly, 3M is renowned for its innovation culture that balances incremental product improvements (exploitation) with blue-sky research (exploration). Its leaders support parallel pathways, ensuring that the business delivers steady returns while pioneering breakthroughs like new materials and health technologies.

In summary, a robust business strategy recognizes that sustainable success depends on managing a portfolio of options—one that exploits today’s strengths while exploring tomorrow’s opportunities. This dual portfolio approach requires deliberate design, distinct leadership capabilities, and a culture that can accommodate both rigor and creativity. When done well, it enables companies not just to survive change, but to shape the future.

Accelerating strategy: From the Future Back

In a world defined by rapid technological advances, shifting customer expectations, and constant disruption, businesses can no longer rely on incremental change or backward-looking strategies. Instead, the most effective approach to shaping tomorrow’s success is to work strategically from the future back—starting with a clear vision of where the company wants to be in five years, then defining intermediate milestones at three years and one year, and aligning actions to accelerate progress toward that future. This approach moves beyond simply evolving the past and embraces a mindset focused on creating the future.

Traditional strategic planning often begins with assessing current capabilities, market conditions, and competitor moves, then projecting forward based on historical trends. While this can provide stability, it risks being too reactive—anchored in what has been rather than what could be. Working from the future back flips this logic. It begins with imagining a bold and ambitious future state, grounded in emerging trends, breakthrough technologies, and new business models. This future vision acts as a compass, guiding decisions, investments, and innovation today.

Defining a five-year horizon provides space to envision transformative change without being overly constrained by short-term pressures. For example, a company might set a vision to become a leader in sustainable mobility, a pioneer in AI-driven healthcare, or a platform that redefines customer experience in retail. This long-term goal creates a clear destination, energizes stakeholders, and shapes strategic priorities.

From there, the journey is broken down into manageable, yet ambitious, steps. A three-year plan translates the long-term vision into concrete initiatives and capability-building. This might involve developing new technologies, forming strategic partnerships, entering adjacent markets, or piloting innovative business models. These mid-term objectives help organizations stay focused while allowing for agility as they learn and adapt.

The one-year plan focuses on immediate actions—allocating resources, setting KPIs, and launching critical projects that lay the groundwork for future success. This yearly cycle allows companies to course-correct rapidly, based on new data and market feedback, while maintaining alignment with the broader vision.

Working backward from the future also demands a mindset shift. It requires leaders and teams to embrace creative foresight, questioning existing assumptions, and imagining possibilities beyond incremental improvements. Instead of asking, “How can we improve this product?” the question becomes, “What will customers want or need in five years, and how can we create it now?” This fosters a culture of innovation and bold experimentation.

Moreover, this future-back approach accelerates execution. With a clear vision and staged milestones, decision-making becomes faster and more confident. Investments are better prioritized because they directly support the end goal. Cross-functional collaboration improves as everyone understands how their work contributes to the future state. This focus on acceleration is crucial in markets where the first movers often gain significant advantages.

Many companies today are embracing this approach. Tesla, for instance, operates with a vision of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy—a long-term goal that drives rapid innovation cycles and aggressive product launches. Similarly, Microsoft, under Satya Nadella, redefined its strategy around a future of cloud computing and AI, breaking down that vision into clear phases that allowed it to pivot from legacy software to a growth powerhouse in emerging technology.

In conclusion, accelerating the future business by working from the future back is about strategic intention and disciplined agility. It combines visionary leadership with practical milestones, enabling companies not just to adapt but to actively shape their industries. In a fast-changing world, this mindset is essential for turning ambition into action and ensuring sustained competitive advantage.

Ping An: the insurance giant’s strategy to be an ecosystem builder

Ping An’s evolution from a traditional insurance company into a multi-industry technology powerhouse reflects a deliberate and ambitious strategy to diversify and future-proof its business. Initially focused on life and property insurance in China, Ping An recognized early that relying solely on insurance premiums would limit growth amid rising competition and changing customer expectations.

The company’s strategic pivot hinges on leveraging advanced technologies such as AI, blockchain, big data, and cloud computing. This technological foundation enables Ping An to create integrated digital platforms that combine financial services with healthcare and mobility solutions.

Healthcare has become a key growth area. Ping An operates one of China’s largest online healthcare platforms, providing telemedicine consultations, AI-assisted diagnostics, health management apps, and chronic disease monitoring. This approach not only addresses healthcare access challenges in China’s aging population but also deepens customer engagement by linking health services to insurance products. The company’s ecosystem approach reduces friction and creates a virtuous cycle where better health outcomes can lead to lower insurance claims, enhancing profitability.

In mobility, Ping An is innovating around connected car insurance and smart transportation solutions. Using vehicle telematics and data analytics, Ping An offers personalized insurance premiums based on driver behavior while also partnering with mobility service providers. This positions the company as a key player in China’s emerging smart city and mobility ecosystems, where vehicles, infrastructure, and services are interconnected.

Through these expansions, Ping An is transforming into a “life ecosystem” provider, offering seamless services that cover multiple facets of consumers’ lives. This diversification not only opens new revenue streams but also strengthens customer loyalty and reduces reliance on any single market segment.

Nubank: the Brazilian digital bank’s strategy to embrace the unbanked

Nubank has redefined banking in Latin America by focusing on a large demographic historically excluded from formal financial services. Unlike traditional banks that emphasize wealthier and salaried customers, Nubank targets individuals with limited credit history or who are underserved by costly and bureaucratic legacy banks.

At the core of Nubank’s approach is its digital-first, mobile-only model, which eliminates the overhead of physical branches. This allows the company to offer low-cost, transparent products such as no-fee credit cards, digital checking accounts, and personal loans. The intuitive, clean app design prioritizes user experience and ease of access, making financial services approachable for younger, digitally native customers.

Nubank’s innovative use of data science distinguishes it further. By leveraging alternative data sources like payment history, mobile phone usage, and social signals, it builds credit profiles for customers typically ignored by traditional scoring models. This enables responsible lending while promoting financial inclusion.

Beyond banking, Nubank continues to expand its product ecosystem, adding investment options, insurance products, and business accounts. The company fosters strong customer trust by focusing on transparency and responsive service, qualities often lacking in traditional financial institutions in the region.

Its growth trajectory—becoming one of the largest digital banks globally and successfully listing on the stock market—underscores Nubank’s success in disrupting entrenched financial systems and democratizing access to banking.

Schneider Electric: A strategy to reimagine energy for a sustainable future

Schneider Electric’s transformation strategy addresses one of the biggest global megatrends: the transition to cleaner, smarter energy systems. Historically a manufacturer of electrical components, Schneider now positions itself as a provider of digital energy management and automation solutions designed to help customers improve efficiency, reduce emissions, and embrace renewable energy.

The company’s EcoStruxure platform exemplifies this shift. It integrates Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, cloud computing, AI, and analytics to provide customers with real-time visibility and control over energy use across buildings, factories, data centers, and cities. This platform-based approach enables predictive maintenance, energy optimization, and sustainability reporting, helping customers meet increasingly stringent environmental targets.

Schneider’s strategy also includes expanding into new energy domains such as microgrids, energy storage, and electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. By collaborating with utilities, governments, and private companies, Schneider helps design decentralized, resilient energy systems that can balance renewable energy intermittency.

Importantly, Schneider is shifting its revenue model toward outcomes-based services, where customers pay for the value delivered—such as kilowatt-hours saved or carbon emissions avoided—rather than just products. This aligns the company’s incentives with those of its customers and taps into growing demand for sustainability-linked solutions.

With strong leadership in innovation, global partnerships, and a firm commitment to sustainability, Schneider Electric is at the forefront of helping industries and cities decarbonize and digitize, positioning itself as a vital player in the future energy landscape.

Chapter 8: Bolder, Smarter and Sustainable Innovation

Innovation has always been a vital driver of business success, but in today’s rapidly evolving landscape, it matters more than ever. Companies face unprecedented challenges and opportunities—ranging from digital disruption and shifting consumer expectations to climate change and geopolitical uncertainty. To thrive, organizations must embrace strategic innovation that goes far beyond incremental improvements in products or services. Instead, they need to rethink markets, business models, and organizational structures in bolder, smarter, and more sustainable ways.

First, the scale and speed of change demand that innovation be bolder. Traditional, incremental innovation—tweaking existing products or optimizing current channels—is no longer sufficient to secure long-term competitive advantage. Markets are being reshaped by new entrants, emerging technologies, and evolving customer values at a pace that renders small changes obsolete quickly. Bold innovation means making transformative leaps: redefining customer experiences, creating entirely new business models, or entering unexplored markets. These kinds of innovations are designed to last longer and endure over time, building defensible positions that competitors find hard to replicate. Boldness also requires courage—the willingness to challenge legacy thinking, take calculated risks, and embrace failure as part of learning.

At the same time, innovation must be smarter—leveraging the exponential power of AI, machine learning, advanced analytics, and other emerging technologies. These tools enable companies to gather deep insights about customers, optimize complex processes, and even co-create value with ecosystems of partners and customers. Smarter innovation goes beyond technology for technology’s sake; it integrates new capabilities to accelerate decision-making, personalize offerings, and improve agility. Companies that harness AI not only innovate faster but do so with precision and relevance, increasing their chances of success in crowded, dynamic markets.

However, innovation is no longer just about business growth or technological advancement—it must also be sustainable. The growing awareness among consumers, regulators, and investors about social and environmental impact means companies are expected to solve real-world problems, not just profit from them. Sustainable innovation aligns economic goals with social good and environmental stewardship. Whether it’s reducing carbon footprints, improving supply chain ethics, or creating products that enhance wellbeing, these innovations build trust and resilience. Sustainability is a source of competitive advantage because it attracts talent, strengthens brand reputation, and mitigates long-term risks linked to resource scarcity and regulatory shifts.

Strategic innovation—the innovation of markets, business models, and organizational approaches—is critical precisely because it addresses the interconnected complexity of today’s challenges. For example, reimagining a business model might combine circular economy principles with digital platforms to unlock new revenue streams while reducing waste. Innovating organizationally might mean redesigning teams and incentives to foster continuous learning and cross-functional collaboration essential for ongoing innovation. Innovating markets could involve identifying underserved customer segments or creating ecosystems that redefine value creation.

In summary, companies today must innovate with greater ambition, intelligence, and responsibility. Bold innovations build lasting advantage and fend off disruption; smart innovations use technology to unlock new possibilities and optimize execution; sustainable innovations meet the demands of a world increasingly focused on social and environmental impact. Together, these dimensions ensure that innovation is not just a tactic for today’s problems but a strategic capability that prepares businesses to lead in an uncertain and evolving future.

Innovating innovation

Innovation is no longer confined to occasional breakthroughs or isolated R&D labs. Over the past decade, it has undergone a profound transformation in process, mindset, and practice—driven by the accelerating pace of technological advancement, rising customer expectations, and complex global challenges.

Today’s innovation is more iterative, collaborative, technology-enabled, and systemic. It embraces new methodologies and tools that help organizations create value faster, with greater precision, and often in entirely new ways.

Innovation has shifted from isolated, linear R&D to dynamic, technology-enabled, and customer-centric processes. New ideas like design thinking and agile experimentation put users and rapid learning at the core. Digital twins and AI accelerate development by blending virtual simulation and intelligent automation. Open innovation, venturing, and partnering harness collective creativity beyond organizational boundaries. Data analytics informs smarter decisions, while sustainability shapes innovation agendas to solve real-world problems.

This shift reflects a broader understanding that innovation is not just about inventing new products but rethinking markets, business models, organizational approaches, and customer experiences. Let’s explore how innovation has evolved and the new ideas and techniques shaping its future.

Together, these new approaches make innovation faster, more precise, more collaborative, and more impactful—equipping companies to thrive in an uncertain, complex world. Insilico Medicine’s AI-driven drug discovery, Siemens’ use of digital twins, and Airbnb’s design thinking-led platform creation are vivid examples of how innovation today is transforming industries and reshaping possibilities.

Solving the Bigger Problem

Innovation today also integrates sustainability as a fundamental goal. Companies are developing products, processes, and business models that address environmental and social challenges while delivering economic value.

For example, Interface, a global carpet tile manufacturer, has innovated to create carbon-negative flooring by using recycled materials and renewable energy in production. This approach drives brand differentiation and customer loyalty while contributing to broader sustainability goals.

Innovation today is increasingly recognized not just as a driver of commercial success but as a vital tool to address some of the world’s biggest environmental and social challenges. Companies that focus their innovation efforts on solving large-scale problems—such as climate change, resource scarcity, health inequities, and social inclusion—are finding that this approach can deliver both greater impact and sustained business value.

Tackling bigger problems requires a mindset shift. Instead of incremental improvements aimed solely at product features or cost reduction, companies pursue purpose-driven innovation that aligns with societal needs. This often means reimagining business models, supply chains, and customer engagement to create solutions that improve environmental sustainability or social wellbeing at scale.

For example, companies like Tesla and Ørsted innovate not only to sell products but to accelerate the global transition to clean energy. Tesla’s electric vehicles and battery technologies help reduce carbon emissions, while Ørsted has transformed from fossil fuels to become a world leader in offshore wind power. These innovations address urgent climate challenges while building strong, future-proof businesses.

Similarly, consumer brands such as Patagonia and Unilever embed sustainability into their innovation pipelines—developing recycled materials, reducing waste, and promoting circular economy principles. This resonates with increasingly conscious consumers, driving brand loyalty and opening new market segments.

Solving bigger problems also often involves collaboration across industries, governments, NGOs, and communities, amplifying innovation’s reach and impact. The shared urgency of global challenges creates opportunities for partnerships that combine expertise and resources, accelerating scalable solutions.

Commercially, purpose-driven innovation attracts investment, talent, and customer trust—critical ingredients for long-term success. Studies show that companies leading in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) innovation tend to outperform financially, reflecting a growing market preference for responsible business.

Innovating business models, beyond platforms and subscriptions

Innovation in business models has entered a new era, driven by the explosive growth of data and the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI). These technologies have fundamentally reshaped how companies create, deliver, and capture value. No longer confined to traditional products or services, today’s business models revolve around data as a core asset and AI as a powerful enabler. Across the globe, organizations are leveraging these forces to disrupt industries, open new revenue streams, and deepen relationships with customers in ways that were unimaginable just a decade ago.

At the heart of this transformation lie platform ecosystems—complex networks that connect consumers, providers, and partners, all while generating and harnessing vast amounts of data. For example, China’s Alibaba has built a sprawling digital ecosystem that integrates e-commerce, payments, logistics, and cloud services. By analyzing massive transactional and behavioral datasets with AI, Alibaba optimizes everything from inventory management to personalized marketing, creating a seamless experience that keeps users engaged and opens multiple revenue channels beyond traditional marketplace commissions. Similarly, Amazon exemplifies this model in the West, blending its marketplace with AI-driven recommendations and highly automated fulfillment systems that enhance efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Beyond platforms, new business models emerge from the monetization of data itself. Companies like Palantir Technologies have carved out a niche by offering data analytics and AI-powered insights to governments and corporations. Rather than selling physical goods, Palantir licenses software that integrates complex datasets, empowering clients to make smarter decisions in sectors like defense and finance. Experian, a global leader in credit reporting, uses AI to analyze financial data and offer risk assessment and fraud detection services to businesses worldwide, demonstrating how data-as-a-service can become a lucrative revenue stream.

Subscriptions have also evolved under the influence of AI, moving from simple access models to highly personalized, continuous engagement platforms. Netflix’s vast global subscriber base benefits from AI algorithms that curate content tailored to individual tastes, reducing churn and guiding strategic investments in original programming. Spotify operates similarly, using AI to create personalized playlists and discovery features, driving both subscription growth and advertising revenue. These models thrive by offering customers ongoing value shaped by data-driven insights.

AI’s ability to link outcomes directly to value has given rise to performance-based business models. Schneider Electric, for example, now offers energy management solutions where customers pay based on actual energy savings measured in real time by AI-enabled sensors. This shifts risk and aligns incentives, fostering long-term partnerships focused on sustainability. Rolls-Royce pioneered a related model with its “Power-by-the-Hour” service, billing airlines based on engine usage and uptime. Using AI to predict maintenance needs, Rolls-Royce reduces downtime and improves service quality, blending data intelligence with innovative revenue structures.

Marketplaces have become increasingly sophisticated by embedding AI into their core operations. Grab, Southeast Asia’s super-app, seamlessly integrates ride-hailing, food delivery, payments, and financial services, using AI to optimize driver allocation, dynamic pricing, and fraud prevention. Zillow, the US real estate platform, leverages AI for home valuations and personalized property recommendations, transforming how buyers, sellers, and service providers interact in the housing market.

AI is also enabling companies to move beyond mass production toward mass customization. Stitch Fix combines data analytics with human stylists to deliver personalized clothing boxes, continuously refining selections through feedback and returns. Adidas uses AI in its “Speedfactory” to rapidly design and manufacture customized sneakers, meeting consumer preferences with agility and precision.

Healthcare has been revolutionized by AI-powered business models that accelerate research and personalize care. Insilico Medicine uses AI to streamline drug discovery by predicting molecular structures and testing virtual compounds, dramatically shortening development cycles and reducing costs. Tempus integrates clinical and molecular data with AI to offer precision oncology services, tailoring treatment plans to individual patients through data-driven insights.

The frontier of autonomous AI-driven services is expanding rapidly. Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving technology company, offers autonomous ride-hailing and logistics services, continually improving through millions of miles of data collection. JD.com, a leading Chinese e-commerce firm, uses AI and robotics to automate logistics, providing same-day delivery while monetizing its efficient infrastructure as a service.

These examples illustrate how data and AI are not just enhancing existing business models but enabling entirely new ones that prioritize connectivity, personalization, performance, and sustainability. Companies that successfully integrate AI and data into their core business models create resilient, scalable, and customer-centric enterprises capable of adapting swiftly to market changes. As the digital economy continues to mature, these innovative models will define the competitive landscape, offering organizations the opportunity to lead their industries by harnessing the power of intelligent data use.

Fast Design and Experimentation

Traditional innovation processes often followed a linear, stage-gated approach: idea generation, development, testing, and launch. This model, while effective for certain industries, tends to be slow and inflexible—unsuited for today’s rapid market changes.

Design thinking has revolutionized how organizations approach innovation by putting human needs and empathy at the center. It emphasizes deep user understanding, rapid prototyping, and iterative feedback loops. Instead of developing fully-formed solutions in isolation, teams co-create with customers, test ideas early and often, and learn from failures quickly.

For example, companies like IBM and Airbnb employ design thinking to uncover unmet user needs and create intuitive experiences. Airbnb’s founders started by personally interacting with early users to iterate their platform, which helped them understand real-world problems and shape a disruptive business model that transformed hospitality.

Experimentation has become a core practice within innovation. Leading firms use minimum viable products (MVPs)and rapid pilots to test assumptions before large-scale investments. This reduces risk and accelerates learning. Amazon’s culture of “two-pizza teams” and continuous A/B testing exemplifies this approach—testing multiple versions of a feature simultaneously and using data-driven insights to refine offerings.

Innovating in Parallel Worlds

One of the most transformative innovations in the process of innovation itself is the emergence of digital twins—virtual replicas of physical assets, processes, or systems. Digital twins allow organizations to simulate, analyze, and optimize products and operations in a virtual environment before committing to physical prototypes or real-world deployment.

This approach significantly reduces time and cost and improves quality and customization. For example, Siemens uses digital twins extensively in manufacturing to optimize complex machinery and factory workflows. By simulating equipment behavior and production scenarios, they reduce downtime, improve maintenance schedules, and speed up product development cycles.

In aerospace, companies like Boeing employ digital twins to simulate aircraft performance under different conditions, enabling safer and more efficient designs. This virtual testing helps avoid costly physical trials and allows for more iterations within shorter timeframes.

Digital twins also support ongoing innovation post-launch by providing continuous real-time data, enabling companies to refine and upgrade products dynamically.

AI-Accelerated Development

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is profoundly reshaping innovation by augmenting human creativity and decision-making with computational power. AI technologies—including machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision—are accelerating every stage of the innovation lifecycle.

In drug development, for instance, AI helps analyze vast biomedical datasets, predict molecular interactions, and identify promising drug candidates faster than traditional methods. Insilico Medicine exemplifies this AI-driven approach. The company uses deep learning models to design novel molecules and predict their efficacy, dramatically shortening the timeline from discovery to clinical trials. By automating hypothesis generation and testing virtually, Insilico reduces costs and increases the chance of success in developing new medicines.

Beyond pharmaceuticals, AI assists in customer insights by analyzing social media, purchase patterns, and sentiment data to identify emerging trends and unmet needs, fueling market-driven innovation. Companies like Netflix and Spotify leverage AI algorithms to personalize content recommendations, improving customer engagement and guiding content creation strategies.

AI also automates routine innovation tasks. For example, generative design tools powered by AI can automatically create thousands of design alternatives based on defined constraints, enabling engineers and designers to explore more possibilities in less time. Autodesk offers such tools for architecture and product design, helping to optimize material use and aesthetics simultaneously.

Venturing beyond the organization

Recognizing that no single organization can innovate effectively in isolation, many companies have embraced open innovation—collaborating with startups, universities, suppliers, customers, and even competitors to accelerate idea flow and reduce risks.

Venturing has become a formalized strategy where corporations invest in or incubate startups that bring complementary technologies or business models. For example, GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Intel Capital provide startups with capital and resources while gaining access to cutting-edge innovations. This mutually beneficial approach helps corporations explore new markets and technologies with agility.

Partnering extends beyond financial investment. Companies often co-develop products or solutions with ecosystem partners, pooling expertise and capabilities. For instance, Unilever’s Foundry platform connects the company with startups globally to jointly develop sustainable innovations, from packaging to supply chain solutions.

Co-creation with customers is another critical dimension. Engaging customers early in the innovation process helps ensure that solutions truly meet market needs. LEGO Ideas is a prime example: fans submit and vote on new design concepts, some of which become official LEGO products. This participatory approach not only fuels creativity but also builds community and loyalty.

Speed and agility

Many companies now apply agile and lean startup methodologies to their innovation practices. These approaches emphasize flexibility, cross-functional collaboration, and customer feedback integration throughout the development process.

Agile teams work in short cycles or sprints, releasing incremental improvements rather than waiting for a perfect final product. This enables faster response to market feedback and changing conditions. Spotify’s agile culture is often cited as a best practice model, with autonomous “squads” responsible for specific features, fostering ownership and rapid iteration.

Lean innovation prioritizes eliminating waste—whether of time, money, or effort—and focuses on validated learning. It encourages early and frequent customer interaction to test hypotheses and pivot if needed. This mindset dramatically reduces the risk of market failure.

Data has become a critical asset in innovation. Companies use predictive analytics and big data to forecast market trends, identify emerging customer needs, and optimize product portfolios.

For example, UPS uses advanced analytics to optimize delivery routes and improve service efficiency, which itself is an innovation in logistics and operations. Retailers like Walmart analyze purchasing data to tailor inventory and promotions, creating more relevant shopping experiences.

Tony’s Chocolonely takes a stand against injustice in the chocolate industry, innovating for social change. Its mission is to make 100% slave-free chocolate the norm. What makes Tony’s approach innovative is its total integration of activism into the business model. It created a fully traceable supply chain, partners directly with cocoa farmers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, and pays a higher price to ensure fair income. Even its chocolate bars are unevenly divided to reflect the inequality in the industry. Tony’s challenges the status quo not through flashy tech, but through radical transparency, bold storytelling, and turning its consumers into advocates. It proves that a mission-driven model can disrupt even the most traditional industries.

NotCo, a Chilean food-tech company, blends AI and creativity to reinvent how food is made—without animal products. Its core innovation is Giuseppe, an AI platform that scans thousands of ingredients and molecular profiles to recreate the taste, texture, and behavior of dairy and meat using only plants. This has led to remarkably accurate plant-based alternatives to milk, burgers, mayonnaise, and more. NotCo’s edge is its speed and scalability: with AI, it can rapidly prototype and improve recipes, allowing it to move into new markets faster than traditional food companies. It’s not just about vegan alternatives—it’s about transforming the food system to be more sustainable, efficient, and inclusive, using AI as a co-creator.

BYD (Build Your Dreams) began as a battery company and has evolved into one of the world’s most innovative electric vehicle and energy companies. Based in China, BYD spans cars, buses, monorails, and solar energy. Its innovation stems from vertical integration—controlling the entire value chain, from battery chemistry to vehicle manufacturing—giving it cost and quality advantages. BYD invests heavily in R&D and works in close partnership with governments to build the infrastructure for electrification. Its innovation strategy is long-term, bold, and scalable—aiming not just to sell more EVs, but to lead the global transition to clean energy across transport, cities, and homes.

Together, these companies show that innovation can come from heritage or high tech, can serve purpose as much as profit, and can reshape industries from the inside out.

Chapter 9: Leadership for Tomorrow

Visionaries who create the future

Leadership today feels like steering a ship through waters that are increasingly stormy, crowded, and unpredictable. The currents of technology, geopolitics, climate change, and shifting cultural expectations churn faster than most organizations can comprehend. Yet, amid this turbulence, a new type of leader is emerging—leaders who not only manage the challenges of today but also have the courage and imagination to create tomorrow.

Conventional leadership often focuses on “heads down” execution, driving performance against known metrics. Tomorrow’s leadership is about “heads up” exploration, asking what new value can be created, what new purpose fulfilled, what future imagined.

This is leadership for tomorrow: forward-thinking, future-shaping, purpose-driven. These are not leaders with their heads down, buried in spreadsheets, processes, and immediate crises, but leaders with their heads up, scanning the horizon, discerning patterns, imagining possibilities, and mobilizing others toward them.

The challenge of change

The defining feature of our age is change—fast, nonlinear, and often bewildering.

Traditional business leadership was built for more stable times: efficiency, control, predictability, and incremental improvement. But when the ground beneath our feet is shifting constantly, the leadership playbook must change. Leaders for tomorrow need to embrace uncertainty rather than resist it, to see volatility not as a threat but as a signal of emerging opportunities, to thrive in complexity rather than try to simplify it into false certainties.

The great challenge, then, is dual: to deliver results today while also creating the conditions for tomorrow. This “ambidexterity” requires a balance of operational discipline and visionary imagination, of performance and transformation, of protecting today’s value while building tomorrow’s.

Leadership for tomorrow is not a destination but a journey. No leader ever fully “arrives”, the horizon keeps shifting. What matters is orientation: being heads up, open to change, guided by purpose, courageous in uncertainty, creative in complexity.

The leaders who will define the next decades are those who can manage today while inventing tomorrow. They are translators between the present and the future, between stability and change, between performance and possibility. They do not shy away from volatility but make sense of it; they do not fear complexity but find beauty in it; they do not cling to the known but venture into the unknown.

The mindset of tomorrow

What does it take to be such a leader? Skills alone are insufficient—what matters most is mindset, the orientation with which one sees the world. Leadership for tomorrow demands:

• Heads Up Thinking: Looking beyond the urgent to the important, constantly scanning the horizon, detecting weak signals of change, and framing them into strategic insights.

• Purpose as Compass: Purpose provides the anchor in turbulence, the “why” that guides decision-making and rallies others. It is not simply a slogan, but a moral and strategic north star.

• Curiosity and Imagination: Tomorrow’s leaders must question assumptions, ask better questions, and imagine alternative futures rather than extrapolating the past.

• Courage and Resilience: Navigating uncharted waters requires courage to make bold bets, resilience to bounce back from failures, and moral courage to take unpopular but necessary stands.

• Empathy and Connection: As organizations become more distributed and diverse, leaders must foster trust, inclusion, and a shared sense of belonging. Empathy helps bridge differences and enables leaders to inspire across cultures and generations.

• Systems Thinking: Problems are rarely isolated; they are embedded in interconnected systems—economic, technological, social, and ecological. Future leaders see patterns and interdependencies rather than silos.

• Creativity as Core Skill: In a world where AI can optimize processes, human creativity becomes the differentiator—the ability to design new models, invent new experiences, and craft narratives that inspire.

In short, leadership for tomorrow is less about command and control, and more about sensemaking and storytelling; less about managing certainty, and more about navigating uncertainty; less about power over others, and more about empowerment with others.

The opportunities to grasp

With disruption comes danger, but also extraordinary possibility. The leaders who thrive will not just react to challenges but reframe them as opportunities:

• Climate Change as Innovation Catalyst: Energy transition, circular design, regenerative agriculture—these are not only risks to manage but new trillion-dollar industries in the making. Leaders like Ørsted’s Henrik Poulsen, who pivoted from fossil fuels to renewables, show what courage can achieve.

• Technology as Amplifier: AI, robotics, biotech, and digital platforms are reshaping business. Leaders who see technology as more than efficiency—who harness it to augment creativity, reinvent experiences, or democratize access—will define the next era. Satya Nadella at Microsoft exemplifies this, reframing the company’s mission around empowering others through technology.

• Human Talent as Differentiator: As machines take over routine work, human imagination, empathy, and collaboration rise in value. Leaders must create cultures of learning, experimentation, and inclusion where diverse talent thrives. Canva’s Melanie Perkins embodies this, building a company culture that is open, empowering, and relentlessly innovative.

• Global Challenges as Shared Mandate: From healthcare to food security, from inequality to education, businesses cannot sit on the sidelines. Leaders who align business growth with social progress not only build resilience but legitimacy. Hamdi Ulukaya of Chobani has redefined leadership by putting refugees and communities at the center of his company’s mission.

Role models to inspire you

The leaders who thrive in today’s world are those who continually reinvent themselves and their organizations. They are forward-looking, agile, and purpose-driven, capable of balancing the demands of the present with the opportunities and imperatives of the future. Daniel Ek, Mary Barra, Hisayuki Idekoba, Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa, and Xin Zhang exemplify this new paradigm of leadership, demonstrating how vision, courage, and adaptability can transform industries and shape society.

Daniel Ek, co-founder and CEO of Spotify, is a quintessential example of a leader who embraces change as a constant. In an industry historically dominated by physical sales and later digital downloads, Ek recognized the shift in consumer behavior toward streaming and access over ownership. He built a platform that not only delivers music but also leverages data to personalize experiences and shape the broader music ecosystem. Beyond playlists, Spotify under Ek has expanded into podcasts and creator tools, demonstrating a continuous ability to pivot and explore adjacent opportunities. What makes Ek a model of forward-thinking leadership is his focus on experimentation and learning. Spotify operates in rapid cycles, testing features, adjusting algorithms, and acquiring companies to expand capabilities, all while maintaining a coherent long-term vision: democratizing music access and supporting creators. Ek’s approach underscores that tomorrow’s leaders must be willing to challenge norms, embrace technological insights, and adapt business models continually to meet evolving needs.

Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, exemplifies leadership in an industry undergoing seismic transformation. Barra has steered GM from its traditional combustion-engine legacy toward a future defined by electrification, autonomous vehicles, and digital mobility solutions. Her leadership combines operational rigor with visionary ambition, demonstrating the critical balance between managing today’s performance and investing in tomorrow’s opportunities. Barra has championed sustainability and innovation, committing GM to an all-electric future while fostering a culture that encourages risk-taking and accountability. She has also navigated complex regulatory and social environments, demonstrating that leadership of tomorrow requires not just strategic foresight but also the ability to mobilize organizations culturally and structurally around long-term objectives. Barra’s focus on both technological transformation and workforce engagement illustrates the importance of human-centered leadership, even in highly technical industries.

Hisayuki Idekoba, CEO of Recruit Holdings, offers another compelling example of forward-looking leadership. Under Idekoba, Recruit has evolved from a domestic publishing company into a global platform-driven human capital and lifestyle ecosystem. He has consistently demonstrated foresight and adaptability, expanding into online recruitment, HR solutions, and international markets, while leveraging technology to connect people, employers, and services more efficiently. Idekoba’s leadership style emphasizes experimentation and ecosystem thinking, recognizing that businesses must be able to pivot in response to societal trends and technological disruption. By fostering innovation across multiple geographies and sectors, Idekoba shows that future-ready leaders must think globally, act locally, and constantly refine business models to remain relevant.

Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa, CEO of Naspers South Africa, represents leadership that combines strategic foresight with a deep sense of social responsibility. She operates in emerging markets where economic, technological, and societal conditions shift rapidly, requiring both adaptability and cultural insight. Mahanyele-Dabengwa has prioritized purpose-driven growth, inclusion, and talent development, demonstrating that effective leadership is not only about financial performance but also about creating organizations that are resilient, ethical, and capable of inspiring employees. She fosters cultures that encourage collaboration, curiosity, and learning, ensuring that her teams can innovate and respond to unexpected challenges. In doing so, she highlights a core aspect of tomorrow’s leadership: the ability to balance speed and agility with human-centered values.

Xin Zhang, CEO of Tencent Cloud, operates at the forefront of China’s digital economy, building cloud and AI capabilities that support enterprises globally. Her leadership exemplifies visionary execution, combining deep technological insight with strategic foresight. Under Zhang, Tencent Cloud has expanded services in AI, gaming, and enterprise solutions while emphasizing innovation partnerships and ecosystem development. She demonstrates that leadership of tomorrow involves bridging operational excellence with long-term experimentation, ensuring organizations can anticipate and adapt to rapid technological evolution. Zhang also exemplifies inclusive, collaborative leadership, fostering teams capable of generating and implementing new ideas quickly in a fast-moving digital landscape.

Collectively, these five leaders showcase the essential qualities of future-ready leadership. They demonstrate the ability to thrive amid complexity and uncertainty, to balance immediate operational demands with visionary bets, and to foster cultures that encourage creativity, learning, and resilience. They are purpose-driven, leveraging a clear North Star to guide decisions, inspire employees, and align stakeholders around shared goals. They embrace technological change not as a threat but as an opportunity to redefine markets, customer experiences, and organizational models.

They also exemplify the human-centred dimension of modern leadership. Whether through employee engagement, talent development, inclusion, or customer insight, they ensure that people remain central even in highly technological or disruptive contexts. Their agility, courage, and foresight illustrate that the leaders of tomorrow must continuously reinvent themselves and their organizations, preparing not just for what is predictable but also for the unknown opportunities and challenges ahead.

In a world defined by disruption, these leaders illuminate the path forward: a model of leadership that is purposeful, adaptive, human-centered, and relentlessly future-focused — capable of navigating today while actively creating the possibilities of tomorrow.

Leading with courage and creativity 

If leadership is about creating the conditions for others to thrive, then leaders for tomorrow must design organizations that are courageous and creative at their core. This means:

• Embedding Experimentation: Encouraging small bets, rapid prototyping, and learning from failure—turning uncertainty into discovery.

• Flattening Hierarchies: Empowering people closer to customers and technologies to make decisions, rather than relying on slow, top-down control.

• Crossing Boundaries: Building partnerships across industries, geographies, and even competitors—because the challenges ahead are too big for any one organization alone.

• Institutionalizing Purpose: Making purpose real in strategy, metrics, and daily practices—so it is not a slogan but a lived reality.

• Investing in People: Prioritizing continuous learning, psychological safety, and inclusion, so that people can bring their full selves and best ideas to work.

Organizations led this way are more than resilient; they are regenerative, able not only to adapt but to renew themselves continuously.

Leadership is a human act

The 21st century will be remembered for its technological revolution—artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering, quantum computing. These advances will transform economies, societies, and daily life. Yet, paradoxically, the more technology shapes our world, the more human-centered leadership becomes essential. Machines may analyze faster, automate better, and even predict more accurately, but they cannot empathize, inspire, or build meaning. The distinctive role of leaders in the age of AI is therefore not to compete with machines, but to amplify what makes us human.

Emotional intelligence in an age of AI

Artificial intelligence can read data, but it cannot read a room. It can simulate conversation, but not genuine care. Emotional intelligence—self-awareness, empathy, social skill—is therefore rising as the premium currency of leadership. Leaders must not only understand markets but also moods, not only measure profits but also manage emotions.

Consider Satya Nadella’s transformation of Microsoft. When he became CEO in 2014, Microsoft was internally fragmented, competitive, and demoralized. Nadella began not with a new product strategy but with a cultural one—shifting the company from a “know-it-all” to a “learn-it-all” culture. He shared openly about his own experiences raising a child with special needs, modeling vulnerability and empathy. This set a tone: humanity was not weakness, but strength. The result? Microsoft rediscovered its innovative edge, becoming one of the world’s most valuable companies, precisely because it became more human.

For leaders, practical steps toward emotional intelligence might mean:

• Starting meetings by checking in on how people feel, not just what they’ve done.

• Practicing radical listening—truly hearing concerns without immediately jumping to solutions.

• Sharing personal stories to humanize authority and build trust.

• Using coaching conversations more than directives to develop talent.

Building teams, not empires

Traditional leadership often rewarded empire-builders—those who accumulated budgets, headcount, and hierarchical power. Tomorrow’s leadership values something else: the ability to build agile, high-performing teams that adapt quickly, collaborate seamlessly, and innovate constantly.

Speed matters more than size. Agility matters more than authority. The leader’s role shifts from command to connection, from building silos to building bridges.

Whitney Wolfe Herd at Bumble embodies this philosophy. She built her company not around a hierarchical empire but around a mission-driven, collaborative team culture. Employees are empowered to experiment, question, and push the product forward with a sense of shared ownership. Bumble became one of the most distinctive platforms in tech because its leader prioritized inclusivity, collaboration, and empowerment over central control.

What does this look like in practice?

• Designing small, cross-functional teams that own projects end-to-end.

• Celebrating team achievements more than individual heroics.

• Rotating leadership roles within projects to encourage shared responsibility.

• Eliminating unnecessary layers of management to allow faster decision-making.

Learn it alls beat know it alls

The half-life of knowledge is shrinking. What you know today may be obsolete tomorrow. Leaders of the past were often rewarded for expertise and certainty. Leaders of tomorrow are rewarded for curiosity and humility—for asking better questions rather than claiming to have all the answers.

The growth mindset, popularized by psychologist Carol Dweck, is not just a personal philosophy but an organizational necessity. Leaders who model continuous learning create cultures that learn.

Take Reed Hastings of Netflix. His leadership philosophy is built on “freedom and responsibility,” but also on relentless learning. Netflix constantly reinvents itself—from DVD rentals to streaming, from licensed content to original productions, and now into interactive experiences. Hastings has admitted mistakes publicly, pivoted boldly, and encouraged his teams to experiment—even when that meant discarding old certainties. The company’s success is not luck, but a reflection of a learning culture where leaders admit what they don’t know and explore what they might discover.

Practical steps leaders can take to foster learning include:

• Scheduling personal “learning hours” weekly—reading, reflecting, exploring new domains.

• Encouraging employees to share lessons from failures without fear of blame.

• Creating internal platforms where teams can teach each other new skills.

• Modeling humility by openly admitting what they don’t know.

Resilience, and the anti-fragile leader

If volatility is the new normal, resilience is the new superpower. Tomorrow’s leaders must not only withstand shocks but turn them into fuel for reinvention. Resilience is not about stoic endurance, but about adaptive recovery—the ability to bounce forward, not just back.

Arne Sorenson, the late CEO of Marriott International, exemplified resilient leadership. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when global travel collapsed, Sorenson delivered an emotional video address to employees. Visibly weakened from cancer treatment, he spoke candidly about the challenges, the need for painful layoffs, and his deep empathy for affected workers. His authenticity and transparency helped Marriott retain trust in the most difficult of times. The company weathered the storm because its leader embodied resilience not as toughness, but as humanity under pressure.

Resilience can be cultivated through practices such as:

• Building personal renewal habits—mindfulness, exercise, or reflection—that sustain energy.

• Creating organizational slack—reserves of time, talent, or resources to absorb shocks.

• Normalizing conversations about stress and mental health.

• Celebrating recovery stories, not just success stories, to build collective confidence.

Balancing humanity with technology

It would be naïve to suggest that leaders can ignore technology. Tomorrow’s leaders must be technologically literate, able to understand AI, digital platforms, data science, and automation. But their true value is not technical mastery—it is integration. They must weave together technology with humanity, ensuring that digital transformation serves human flourishing rather than undermining it.

Fei-Fei Li, co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute, is a role model here. A pioneering AI scientist, she advocates passionately for keeping ethics and empathy at the heart of technology. She argues that leaders must not just deploy AI for efficiency but design it for inclusivity, fairness, and societal good. Her stance illustrates how leadership in a tech-driven world requires more than technological prowess; it requires moral imagination.

Practical steps might include:

• Conducting ethical reviews of new technologies before deployment.

• Including diverse voices in tech development to avoid blind spots.

• Asking, “Who benefits and who might be harmed?” when considering technological initiatives.

• Framing technology projects in terms of human outcomes—quality of life, access, empowerment.

A different kind of power

Underlying all of this is a profound shift in the nature of power. Yesterday’s leaders wielded power through hierarchy, control, and ownership of resources. Tomorrow’s leaders wield power through influence, empathy, and the ability to mobilize networks.

They do not dominate—they orchestrate. They do not hoard knowledge—they share it. They do not seek obedience—they inspire commitment.

Hamdi Ulukaya of Chobani provides a compelling example. Instead of building an empire in his image, he distributed ownership to employees, welcomed refugees into the workforce, and treated communities as stakeholders. His approach redefined what power in business can look like: not extraction, but empowerment. His leadership is human-centered not just as rhetoric, but as lived practice.

Why does this matter? Because businesses that prioritize humanity outperform in the long run. Trust attracts talent. Empathy fuels collaboration. Learning drives innovation. Resilience ensures survival. In a world where technology levels the playing field, it is humanity that differentiates.

Leaders who are human-centered will be better equipped to navigate the paradoxes of tomorrow:

• Efficiency vs. empathy

• Speed vs. sustainability

• Automation vs. creativity

• Profit vs. purpose

They will not treat these as either/or dilemmas but as both/and opportunities.

Towards a new leadership paradigm

The ideal of tomorrow’s leadership, then, is not the heroic visionary alone on a stage, but the human-centered leader who creates space for others to thrive. They blend imagination with empathy, courage with humility, ambition with responsibility.

They know that in a world where machines are becoming more intelligent, it is humanity that must become more human.

As the business landscape accelerates, the paradox deepens: the faster technology advances, the more we need leaders who slow down, connect, listen, and care. The more complexity grows, the more we need leaders who bring simplicity of purpose. The more volatility intensifies, the more we need leaders whose calm resilience inspires trust.

The leaders of tomorrow will not be remembered for how well they controlled systems, but for how deeply they empowered people. They will not be measured by the size of their empires, but by the strength of their teams. They will not be celebrated for their certainty, but for their curiosity.

Ultimately, leadership for tomorrow is leadership that remembers this enduring truth: businesses may run on technology, but they are built by, for, and with people. And it is in the service of people—employees, customers, communities, future generations—that leadership finds its highest calling.

The Reinvention Blueprint

Chapter 10: Next is Now

In today’s world of accelerating change, the challenge for businesses is not simply to survive, but to reimagine themselves continuously. Markets are dynamic, technologies evolve at unprecedented speed, and consumer expectations shift almost overnight. The old rules of incremental improvement and reactive management are no longer sufficient. Organizations that succeed in the future will be those that embrace transformation proactively, spotting opportunities early, funding the most promising ideas, and reshaping their operations, culture, and business models to thrive in a world that is fast, interconnected, and unpredictable.

At the heart of this process is the recognition that the future is already present. It exists in nascent technologies, emerging behaviors, and innovative practices that are not yet mainstream. The challenge is to see the signals, connect them, and act boldly, harnessing opportunities that others may overlook. This is the essence of strategic reinvention: moving ahead of disruption and creating entirely new sources of value rather than simply optimizing what exists today.

Anyone can do anything

The modern business landscape is increasingly borderless. Digital platforms, global networks, and instant communication allow organizations to reach markets and customers anywhere on the planet. This interconnectedness creates unparalleled opportunity—but also intense competition. In this environment, businesses cannot remain inward-focused or complacent. They must develop the ability to operate fluidly across geographies, markets, and regulatory environments, experimenting with new business models, adapting to local nuances, and scaling what works globally.

The borderless nature of today’s markets amplifies the value of insight, speed, and creativity. Companies that can anticipate trends, explore multiple avenues, and pivot quickly in response to emerging opportunities gain a significant advantage. Leaders must cultivate a mindset that sees beyond borders—not just geographically, but across industries, technologies, and societal contexts—to identify connections and intersections that create entirely new value.

Technology as the big disruptor

Technology is not simply a tool for efficiency—it is a force that can redefine markets, products, and business models. Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, and biotechnology are converging to create new possibilities at speeds unimaginable just a few years ago. Leaders who see these developments not as incremental improvements but as engines of transformation can unlock entirely new ways to create value.

AI, for example, enables personalization, predictive decision-making, and automation at scale. It allows companies to anticipate customer needs, optimize complex operations, and innovate faster than ever before. Quantum computing promises breakthroughs in problem-solving, simulation, and data analysis, potentially revolutionizing industries from materials science to logistics. These technologies, when combined with human creativity and strategic vision, can accelerate the creation of products, services, and experiences that were previously impossible.

However, technology alone is not enough. It must be paired with curiosity, experimentation, and the courage to apply capabilities in new and unexpected ways. The organizations that thrive are those that explore the edge of possibility, connect emerging insights across disciplines, and translate them into tangible offerings that deliver value to customers and society.

Finding the best ideas

In a world of constant change, transformation is rarely linear. It is a journey of multiple, interconnected initiatives, each exploring new opportunities and testing assumptions. The most successful organizations adopt a portfolio approach to innovation, funding a mix of adjacent and disruptive initiatives. This allows them to experiment, learn rapidly, and scale what works.

The ability to spot ideas with high potential and allocate resources effectively is a critical skill for leaders of tomorrow. It requires a combination of strategic foresight, risk tolerance, and agility. Leaders must be willing to fund projects that might initially seem speculative, knowing that not every initiative will succeed, but that the portfolio as a whole increases the likelihood of breakthrough success.

This approach also encourages a culture of learning and experimentation. Teams are empowered to test hypotheses, iterate rapidly, and share insights across the organization, creating a dynamic environment where innovation is continuous rather than episodic.

Riding the waves of change

Transformation requires more than recognizing opportunities—it demands the ability to anticipate the trajectory of change and pivot before necessity forces action. This is what it means to ride the curves of transformation: identifying emerging signals early, interpreting their implications, and making strategic moves that position the organization for the next wave of growth.

To ride these curves successfully, companies need several capabilities:

• Early Signal Detection: Systematic scanning of markets, technologies, and consumer behaviors to identify nascent trends.

• Scenario Thinking: Exploring multiple plausible futures to understand risks, opportunities, and strategic options.

• Decisive Pivoting: Shifting resources, attention, and strategy toward the initiatives that offer the highest potential impact.

• Continuous Learning: Capturing insights from experiments and using them to refine strategy and execution.

Organizations that master these skills convert uncertainty into advantage, positioning themselves as market shapers rather than followers, able to seize opportunities that others fail to recognize.

Achieving more together

The transformation of a business is no longer a purely internal endeavor. Today’s organizations increasingly operate within complex, dynamic ecosystems of partners, suppliers, collaborators, and even competitors. These networks allow businesses to scale innovation, access complementary capabilities, and create value beyond their own boundaries.

Dynamic ecosystems thrive on collaboration and mutual benefit. They require leaders to cultivate partnerships with clear alignment of goals, shared incentives, and trust, while maintaining the flexibility to adjust as markets evolve. Ecosystems allow organizations to respond rapidly to change, amplify the impact of innovation, and access markets and technologies that would be difficult to reach alone.

Reinventing everything

At the heart of transformation is the continuous evolution of what a business offers. Reinvention often involves rethinking not just products and services, but entire business models. This could mean moving from ownership to access, product to service, or commodity to platform. It may also involve creating entirely new categories, value propositions, or customer experiences.

The process requires a customer-centric mindset, leveraging insights, data, and experimentation to anticipate emerging needs and preferences. Organizations must balance incremental enhancements to core offerings with radical bets that redefine markets and unlock new revenue streams. Transformation succeeds when businesses can simultaneously deliver value today while exploring entirely new ways of creating value tomorrow.

Transformation is ultimately a human endeavor. Even the most sophisticated technologies or boldest strategies will fail without the right people, culture, and organizational design. Companies must embrace:

• Flexible, empowered teams capable of rapid experimentation and decision-making.

• Continuous learning and reskilling, ensuring employees can adapt to new technologies and ways of working.

• Purpose-driven culture, where everyone understands and is motivated by the long-term vision.

• Leadership at all levels, encouraging initiative, creativity, and ownership of transformation efforts.

By embedding these principles, organizations create resilient, adaptive cultures capable of navigating uncertainty and seizing new opportunities as they arise.

Shape, don’t wait

At the core of transformation is proactivity. Waiting for change to arrive is no longer an option. Companies must cultivate the ability to identify nascent opportunities, invest in them early, and scale what works, often before competitors even recognize the potential. This requires a combination of foresight, courage, and execution.

Strategic reinvention is a journey rather than a project. It involves continuously scanning for catalysts of change, funding the best ideas, experimenting rapidly, and scaling initiatives that demonstrate value. It also requires building ecosystems, embracing technology, and creating a culture that supports learning, agility, and collaboration.

Those organizations that succeed are not just keeping pace with change—they are shaping the future, defining new markets, and creating value in ways that were previously unimaginable. They understand that the catalysts of change—emerging technologies, global connectivity, evolving consumer expectations, and ecosystem dynamics—offer unprecedented opportunity for those prepared to act.

The future is already here

The catalysts of change are all around us, embedded in technologies, markets, and societal shifts. The future is already here—it is visible in fragments, in nascent ideas, and in emerging behaviors—but it requires vision, creativity, and courage to connect those fragments into actionable opportunities.

Transformation is not about fixing what exists; it is about creating what could exist, anticipating change, and designing organizations, products, and business models that capture new value. Companies that embrace this approach can ride the curves of disruption, seize emerging markets, and unlock exponential growth.

The organizations of tomorrow will be those that are proactive, agile, purpose-driven, and human-centered, capable of turning uncertainty into advantage, and seeing opportunity where others see risk. By unlocking the catalysts of change, businesses can not only survive in a rapidly evolving world but thrive, lead, and define the industries of the future.

The future is not something that happens to companies—it is something they create, shape, and inhabit. For those ready to see it, connect it, and act, the possibilities are limitless.

Reinvention Tool: Market Making

Market Making is a strategic approach that goes beyond competing in existing markets. It is about identifying and creating entirely new “market spaces”—areas where customer needs, aspirations, and life activities are not yet fully addressed. These markets are not constrained by traditional boundaries of geography, sector, or capability; they emerge from changing consumer behaviors, societal shifts, and technological possibilities. Successful market makers define the rules of the game, establish the conventions, and shape customer perceptions and behaviors to create a new arena in which they can lead.

Here are some key principles of market making:

• Future-Focused Insight:
  Market making begins with observing emerging customer trends, unmet needs, and evolving life agendas. This requires a deep understanding of human behaviors, desires, and pain points, as well as the ability to connect disparate signals from technology, culture, and adjacent sectors.

• Opportunity in Unconstrained Spaces:
  Unlike traditional market analysis, market making does not start with existing competitors or market definitions. It focuses on new spaces that have no predefined rules, where value can be created from scratch. Examples include energy drinks as a lifestyle category or Superapps as an integrated digital ecosystem.

• Purposeful Market Design:
  Once a potential space is identified, market makers define the conventions, practices, rituals, and experiencesthat shape how customers perceive, use, and value the offering. This includes branding, messaging, ecosystem partnerships, and habit formation.

• Capability Alignment:
  Organizations must align their assets, capabilities, and culture to lead in this new space. Market making often requires developing new capabilities or recombining existing ones in innovative ways to deliver unique value.

• Shaping Customer Perception and Behavior:
  Creating a new market is as much about influencing customers as it is about designing a product or service. Market makers craft narratives, experiences, and incentives that educate customers, define norms, and encourage adoption.

• Network and Ecosystem Leverage:
  Many market spaces require partners, platforms, or complementary services to fully define and scale. Market makers orchestrate these networks, creating a self-reinforcing ecosystem that strengthens the value and stickiness of the market.

Approach:

1. Scan for Emerging Spaces:

   • Identify nascent customer behaviours, unmet desires, and evolving societal trends.

   • Map areas where technology, regulation, or culture is enabling new possibilities.

   • Focus on life activities, aspirations, and experiences rather than traditional sector boundaries.

2. Define the Market Vision:

   • Articulate the new space in terms of customer benefits and experiences.

   • Clarify the value proposition and potential scope of the market.

   • Describe the future behaviors, rituals, and norms the market will embody.

3. Design the Ecosystem:

   • Identify required partners, capabilities, and platforms.

   • Develop the infrastructure, incentives, and connections needed to support growth.

   • Ensure the ecosystem reinforces the market vision and encourages adoption.

4. Shape Conventions and Practices:

   • Establish the language, symbols, and rituals associated with the new market.

   • Educate customers, partners, and stakeholders about what the space represents and how to participate.

   • Influence the rules of engagement before competitors emerge.

5. Scale and Iterate:

   • Launch initial offerings to demonstrate value and reinforce the market’s relevance.

   • Collect feedback and iterate, refining the market conventions and ecosystem over time.

   • Expand the market geographically, demographically, or across adjacent behaviors as adoption grows.

Examples:

• Energy Drinks (Red Bull):
  Red Bull did not simply compete in the beverage market—it created a lifestyle category centered on energy, adventure, and performance. By defining the conventions of the space—events, sports sponsorships, and branding narratives—Red Bull shaped customer behavior and dominated a category it essentially invented.

• Superapps (Grab, WeChat):
  Grab and similar platforms redefined digital services by creating an integrated ecosystem that blends transportation, payments, delivery, and lifestyle services. The market is defined not by transportation or fintech alone but by customer life activities, making the platforms indispensable in everyday life.

• Wellness and Self-Care Markets:
  Companies that combine technology, services, and community to define wellness as an integrated life agenda are creating spaces where traditional categories like fitness, nutrition, mental health, and lifestyle converge.

Why does market making matter?

• First-Mover Advantage:
  By defining the market early, organizations can capture customer mindshare, establish norms, and set barriers to entry.
• Value Creation at Scale:
  New market spaces often allow for premium pricing, ecosystem leverage, and multiple revenue streams.
• Differentiation Beyond Competition:
  Rather than competing in crowded existing markets, market makers create uncontested spaces where differentiation is inherent.
• Resilience Through Adaptability:
  Organizations that shape markets cultivate deep understanding of customer behavior and ecosystem dynamics, enabling them to pivot or expand more effectively as trends evolve.

What matters most?

• Customer-Centric Research: Use ethnography, behavioral data, and scenario thinking to uncover emerging desires and life agendas.

• Narrative and Branding: Craft compelling stories that educate, inspire, and guide behavior.

• Ecosystem Orchestration: Identify partners and platforms that amplify value and adoption.

• Experimentation and Feedback Loops: Treat early launches as experiments to refine market definitions and practices.

• Capability Building: Align internal capabilities, technology, and culture to support the unique requirements of the new market space.

In essence, Market Making is about seeing the invisible, creating a space that does not yet exist, and shaping it so that your organization can lead. It requires foresight, creativity, ecosystem thinking, and the ability to influence customer behavior. It is a mindset as much as a process: looking beyond today’s boundaries, imagining new possibilities, and acting decisively to bring them to life.

By mastering market making, organizations can turn disruption into opportunity, define the rules of engagement, and establish a leadership position in the markets of tomorrow.

Reinvention Tool: Ideas Kaleidoscope

The metaphor of a kaleidoscope is deliberate: when you turn it, fragments of color and glass form endlessly new and unexpected patterns. Similarly, the Ideas Kaleidoscope turns different perspectives, experiences, and insights into new creative possibilities. It helps businesses avoid narrow thinking, see problems from multiple dimensions, and spark breakthrough ideas that are more original, relevant, and actionable.

The tool has three stages: Gathering Insights, Reframing Challenges, and Mashing Ideas.

Step 1: Gathering insights

The first step is to gather raw material from many different sources.

• Customers: What do they really want, struggle with, or dream about? (e.g., Airbnb started from observing travelers who wanted “to belong anywhere,” not just rent a room).

• Employees: What frustrations, hacks, or unmet needs do they see daily? (e.g., Toyota’s kaizen system relies on front-line workers identifying small problems and solutions).

• Adjacencies: What’s happening in neighboring industries? (e.g., Netflix borrowed personalization algorithms from e-commerce).

• History: What can we learn from past cycles, failures, or forgotten models? (e.g., fashion brands constantly reinvent archival styles with new twists).

• Analogies: What parallels exist in nature, art, sports, or science? (e.g., the Dyson vacuum was inspired by the way cyclones separate particles in sawmills).

• Futures: What emerging signals, weak trends, or disruptions might redefine the game? (e.g., mobility-as-a-service emerged from foresight into autonomous vehicles and urban congestion).

Outputs:

• An “insight wall” (physical or digital) with sticky notes, quotes, photos, trend cards.

• A mosaic of voices, stories, and inspirations ready to be re-combined.

Step 2: Reframing challenges 

Before you can generate better ideas, you need to define the real problem. Often, the first definition of a problem is too narrow. The kaleidoscope works by twisting perspectives to uncover what the real challenge is.

• Use the “5 Whys” technique to dig beneath symptoms (e.g., “customers don’t buy online” → why? → trust → why? → fear of scams → real problem = lack of assurance, not e-commerce itself).

• Use opposite framing (“How could we make the worst possible customer experience?”) to reveal hidden assumptions.

• Explore jobs-to-be-done: what job is the customer really trying to get done? (e.g., “I don’t buy a drill, I buy a hole in the wall”).

Outputs:

• A reframed problem statement: “How might we … ?” questions that open creative doors.

• Clear articulation of the real opportunity zone.

Step 3: Mashing Ideas

This is the generative heart of the tool – turning the kaleidoscope = deliberately colliding fragments from Step 1 to spark new patterns.

• Forced Connections: Pick two unrelated fragments and explore how they might combine. (e.g., Spotify = music + social sharing).

• Analogy Storming: “How would Pixar solve this?” “What would nature do?” “How would a child approach this?”

• Cross-pollination Workshops: Bring customers, suppliers, and employees into the same room to co-create.

Outputs:

• Idea clusters, concept sketches, “what if” prototypes.

• New metaphors or design principles that reframe the opportunity.

Step 4: Shaping Possibilities

Ideas are fragile at birth. The Kaleidoscope helps move from sparks to structured concepts, shaping patterns, developing and testing ideas:

• Storyboarding: Turn abstract ideas into visual narratives.

• Rapid Prototyping: Build quick mock-ups, role plays, or digital prototypes.

• Feedback Loops: Share early versions with diverse users to refine.

Outputs:

• 2–3 concept platforms with descriptions of value proposition, user experience, and impact.

• Early validation of which ideas resonate and which don’t.

Step 5: Reflect and refresh

The kaleidoscope never stops turning — the world changes, so ideas must evolve.

• Regularly revisit insights as conditions shift.

• Keep building new “fragments” of inspiration to feed the system.

• Treat it as a living creative capability, not a one-off brainstorm.

Outputs:

• An evolving portfolio of ideas, prototypes, and insights.

• A culture where diverse perspectives are habitually brought together.

Example: Patagonia

• Gathering insights: Customer demand for sustainable products, employee activism, analogies from circular economy, foresight into climate change.

• Reframing challenges: The problem isn’t just “sell more jackets,” but “how to reduce consumption while growing purpose.”

• Mashing ideas: Mash “fashion” + “reuse culture” → Worn Wear program. Mash “product durability” + “activism” → repair campaigns.

• Shaping possibilities: Prototyped repair vans, tested resale platforms.

• Reflect and refresh: Expanded from clothing to food (Patagonia Provisions), constantly revisiting what business should stand for.

The Ideas Kaleidoscope works because it breaks down silos of thinking, exposes hidden assumptions and reframes challenges, and encourages unlikely but fertile connections. It also makes creativity systematic rather than random, and embeds a future- and human-centred approach to problem-solving.

Chapter 11: Being a Future-Ready Business

To talk of a “future-ready” business is to accept that the future is not some distant horizon, but an ever-approaching present. The world of commerce is being reshaped daily by forces that are both exhilarating and destabilizing: technological acceleration, climate disruption, shifting demographics, geopolitical fragmentation, and the rapid evolution of consumer values. In this world, survival is not guaranteed by past success. Resilience alone is insufficient. The businesses that will thrive are those that can both deliver today and create tomorrow—operationally sound yet strategically imaginative, efficient yet experimental, stable yet constantly reinventing.

Future readiness is not a vague aspiration; it is a deliberate practice. It requires organizations to embrace uncertainty, anticipate disruption, and build the capacity for continuous transformation. It is, in effect, about becoming a business that is permanently in the business of the future.

What is a “future-ready” business?

A future-ready business is defined by three interlocking qualities:

1. Ambidexterity – the ability to manage today’s business efficiently while simultaneously exploring tomorrow’s opportunities. It delivers short-term performance but never loses sight of long-term reinvention.

2. Adaptability – the capacity to anticipate change and pivot quickly, seizing emerging opportunities and neutralizing threats before they overwhelm.

3. Purpose and Progress – a clear sense of why the organization exists and how it contributes to society, ensuring legitimacy and alignment in times of turbulence.

These qualities combine to create businesses that not only survive shocks but turn them into catalysts for growth.

How do you become “future-ready”? 

While every organization’s context differs, there are common strategic steps that can help move from aspiration to action.

1. Scan the horizon relentlessly

Future-ready businesses institutionalise curiosity. They constantly monitor weak signals of change—emerging technologies, cultural shifts, regulatory trends, and environmental pressures. This is not the occasional strategy offsite, but an ongoing discipline.

Practical actions:

• Establish dedicated “future teams” tasked with exploring trends and scenarios.

• Use foresight tools such as scenario planning, horizon scanning, and trend mapping.

• Engage with startups, think tanks, and universities to gain outside perspectives.

Example: Shell pioneered scenario planning in the 1970s and continues to use it to anticipate energy futures, shaping long-term investment decisions while competitors remain trapped in quarterly cycles.

2. Anchor in Purpose

Without an anchor, organizations can be blown about by every gust of change. Purpose provides coherence: a guiding north star that frames decisions, attracts talent, and builds trust with stakeholders. Future-ready businesses embed purpose not just in branding but in operations, strategy, and culture.

Practical actions:

• Redefine corporate purpose in terms of solving human or planetary needs.

• Align incentives and metrics to purpose, not just profit.

• Ensure leaders embody and communicate purpose consistently.

Example: Patagonia’s purpose-driven strategy—“We’re in business to save our home planet”—guides every product, partnership, and campaign. It has created fierce customer loyalty and inspired an entire industry toward sustainability.

3. Design for Agility

Size without speed is fragility. Future-ready organizations design themselves for agility: decentralized decision-making, empowered teams, and fluid structures. This allows them to respond quickly to new opportunities without waiting for layers of hierarchy.

Practical actions:

• Shift from rigid hierarchies to networked teams.

• Empower those closest to customers and technologies to make decisions.

• Replace five-year plans with rolling strategies that adapt in real time.

Example: Spotify pioneered the “squad” model—small, autonomous teams aligned by shared goals. This has allowed it to innovate rapidly in a hyper-competitive music streaming market.

4. Invest in Continuous Learning

The shelf life of skills is shrinking. To be future-ready, organizations must become learning organisms—constantly upgrading capabilities, encouraging curiosity, and rewarding experimentation.

Practical actions:

• Create platforms for employees to reskill and upskill continuously.

• Encourage leaders to model vulnerability and learning, not just expertise.

• Reward intelligent risk-taking, even when it leads to failure.

Example: AT&T committed $1 billion to reskilling its workforce for the digital age, offering employees online courses, nanodegrees, and incentives to learn emerging technologies. This investment positioned the company to stay relevant in a fast-changing telecom landscape.

5. Balance Exploitation and Exploration

Future-ready businesses master the art of ambidexterity. They extract maximum value from today’s core business (“exploit”) while investing in new opportunities that may disrupt it tomorrow (“explore”).

Practical actions:

• Allocate resources across horizons—Horizon 1 (core), Horizon 2 (emerging adjacencies), Horizon 3 (future bets).

• Create innovation labs or venture arms separate from core operations to experiment without legacy constraints.

• Develop metrics that value exploration as well as exploitation.

Example: Amazon exemplifies ambidexterity. While running its core e-commerce platform with ruthless efficiency, it has invested in cloud computing (AWS), logistics, streaming, and AI, ensuring multiple future growth engines.

6. Build Ecosystems, Not Just Enterprises

No business can thrive in isolation. Future-ready organizations think in terms of ecosystems—networks of partners, platforms, and communities that co-create value.

Practical actions:

• Open APIs and platforms to allow others to build on your capabilities.

• Forge cross-industry partnerships to address systemic challenges.

• Engage customers and communities as co-creators, not just consumers.

Example: Tesla’s decision to open-source its patents was not charity but strategy—stimulating the entire electric vehicle ecosystem and accelerating market adoption, from which Tesla itself ultimately benefits.

7. Embed Sustainability as Strategy

Future readiness is inseparable from sustainability. Climate change, resource scarcity, and social inequality are not peripheral issues—they are core business risks and opportunities. Companies that integrate sustainability into strategy are better positioned for long-term value creation.

Practical actions:

• Commit to science-based targets on emissions and resource use.

• Design circular business models where waste becomes value.

• Report transparently on social and environmental impact.

Example: Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan aligned business growth with social and environmental progress, doubling down on brands with purpose. The result: purpose-led brands like Dove and Ben & Jerry’s grew faster than the rest of the portfolio.

8. Cultivate Resilience

Future-ready businesses are designed to withstand shocks. Resilience is not just about redundancy but about adaptability—building the capacity to absorb disruption, recover quickly, and even thrive in adversity.

Practical actions:

• Diversify supply chains to reduce dependencies.

• Maintain financial flexibility to seize opportunities in crises.

• Invest in cyber resilience and digital continuity.

Example: When the 2011 tsunami disrupted supply chains, Toyota accelerated a strategy of supplier diversification and digital mapping. It emerged more resilient, able to recover from future shocks faster than rivals.

How “future-ready” are you?

How can businesses know if they are future-ready? Traditional metrics—revenue, profit, market share—measure past performance. Future readiness requires new lenses.

Key questions to assess readiness might include:

• Foresight: Do we systematically scan for emerging trends and disruptions?

• Purpose: Is our strategy anchored in a clear, lived purpose?

• Agility: How fast can we make decisions and pivot?

• Learning: Are we investing in continuous skill development for our people?

• Ambidexterity: Are we balancing today’s performance with tomorrow’s innovation?

• Ecosystems: Are we building collaborative networks beyond our walls?

• Sustainability: Are we aligning growth with social and environmental responsibility?

• Resilience: Do we have the capacity to absorb shocks and adapt quickly?

Practical tools include future-readiness audits, scenario stress tests, innovation portfolio reviews, and cultural diagnostics. Some organizations develop “future readiness indices” that combine quantitative (e.g., percentage of revenue from new products) and qualitative (e.g., employee perceptions of agility) indicators.

Becoming future-ready is not optional. The pace of change ensures that companies that cling to past models will be left behind. Kodak once dominated photography but failed to anticipate digital disruption. Nokia led mobile phones but underestimated the smartphone revolution. Blockbuster laughed off Netflix’s model, only to vanish.

The lesson is clear: yesterday’s success is no guarantee of tomorrow’s survival. The only insurance is continuous reinvention.

A future-ready business is one that sees change as opportunity, purpose as compass, learning as fuel, resilience as foundation, and ecosystems as multiplier. It is not paralyzed by uncertainty but energized by it. It delivers today while creating tomorrow.

The future is not something to be predicted. It is something to be built. And the businesses that will own it are those that are ready for it—always, relentlessly, by design.

Reinvention Tool: The Future Compass

In a world of volatility, complexity, and accelerating change, business leaders need more than traditional strategy frameworks to guide them. The Future Compass is designed as a practical tool to help organizations navigate uncertain futures, balancing clarity with agility. Like a navigational compass, it orients leaders around a set of core dimensions that together create a system for direction, sense-making, and decision-making.

Dimensions:

1. Purpose, finding your North Star

   • Purpose defines the enduring reason the organization exists beyond profit. It acts as the anchor and ultimate orientation point in uncertain times, ensuring decisions remain values-driven and credible to stakeholders.

   • Questions to ask:

     • Why do we exist, and what positive role do we play in society?

     • How does our purpose inspire both employees and customers?

     • Are our strategies and choices consistent with this North Star?

2. Foresight, making sense of change

   • Foresight equips businesses to scan for signals of change, interpret disruptive forces, and identify the drivers of the future that matter most. It is about looking beyond today’s performance indicators into emerging technologies, cultural shifts, environmental pressures, and geopolitical trends.

   • Tools to apply: horizon scanning, trend mapping, weak signal detection, systems mapping.

   • Key outcome: a sharper awareness of opportunities and risks shaping tomorrow’s playing field.

3. Scenarios, exploring alternative futures

   • Scenarios allow leaders to test strategies against multiple plausible futures rather than relying on a single forecast. By embracing uncertainty, they open space for creative thinking and resilience planning.

   • Each scenario should describe how the external world could evolve, with implications for customers, industries, and business models.

   • Practical application: “wind-tunnel” current strategies against these futures to identify strengths, vulnerabilities, and adaptation pathways.

4. Vision, defining a better future story

   • Vision transforms foresight into aspiration. It paints a vivid, compelling picture of what the organization could become in a better future — bold yet believable, ambitious yet achievable.

   • A vision is not a spreadsheet or slogan; it’s a narrative that inspires belief, fuels alignment, and guides investment.

   • Example: “To be the world’s most sustainable apparel brand, redefining fashion as a regenerative force.”

5. Strategy, the key choices, with agility

   • Strategy within the Future Compass framework is about making choices that bring the vision closer, while staying adaptable as conditions evolve.

   • This means selecting focus areas, allocating resources, and building capabilities — but also embedding agility to pivot as new opportunities and risks emerge.

   • Key principle: strategy is not a one-time plan but a living set of choices, constantly stress-tested against purpose, foresight, and scenarios.

Methodology:

Step 1: Find your purpose: Purpose is the enduring “why” of a business — its reason for being beyond profit. In turbulent times, purpose acts as a compass point that keeps decisions consistent, aligns people, and builds trust with customers, investors, and society.

• Clarify: Articulate a clear, authentic statement of why the business exists.

• Stress-test: Ensure purpose resonates with stakeholders and inspires both employees and customers.

• Anchor: Use purpose as the ultimate reference for evaluating strategies and trade-offs.

Outputs:

• A short, compelling purpose statement (e.g., Patagonia: “We’re in business to save our home planet.”)

• A purpose scorecard showing how current projects align (or misalign) with purpose.

• A “purpose manifesto” that inspires employees and partners.

Step 2: Make sense of change: Foresight is the discipline of scanning, interpreting, and prioritizing external forces shaping the future — from technological disruption to social, political, environmental, and cultural shifts.

• Horizon scanning: Gather signals of change (e.g., AI regulation, demographic transitions, climate impacts).

• Driving forces: Identify 10–15 key macro forces most likely to influence your sector.

• Critical uncertainties: Narrow down to the 2–3 most uncertain and impactful drivers.

Outputs:

• A foresight radar (visual map of forces shaping your industry).

• Trend cards with implications for your business (e.g., “AI Ethics – trust as a differentiator”).

• A set of “must-watch” uncertainties to revisit quarterly.

Example: Unilever uses foresight labs to anticipate sustainability trends and shifts in consumer values — ensuring their portfolio stays relevant.

Step 3: Explore alternative futures: Scenarios are structured stories that describe multiple plausible futures, based on how critical uncertainties unfold. They help leaders explore different contexts, test resilience, and avoid being blindsided.

• Choose axes: Select two critical uncertainties (e.g., “AI governance: tightly regulated vs. free-market” and “global climate response: coordinated vs. fragmented”).

• Create 3–4 scenarios: Describe what each world looks like in 10–15 years.

• Implications: Map risks and opportunities in each scenario for your business.

Outputs:

• 3–4 scenario narratives with names, e.g., “The AI Renaissance,” “Fortress Nations,” “Green Tech Acceleration.”

• Visual scenario matrix to communicate the stories.

• Stress-test of existing strategy across scenarios.

Example: Shell has used scenarios since the 1970s to anticipate oil shocks, energy transitions, and geopolitical risks.

Step 4: Create your future story: Vision is not just a statement but a vivid story of what a better future looks like for your business, industry, and society. It should be ambitious, inspiring, and emotionally engaging.

• Imagine: Use foresight and scenarios to picture your organisation thriving in 10–20 years.

• Translate: Describe what success looks like for customers, employees, and partners.

• Connect: Ensure vision links back to purpose and resonates across scenarios.

Outputs:

• A 2–3 page narrative “vision story,” not just a one-liner.

• A vision storyboard or prototype (e.g., customer journey in the future).

• Future “headlines” — what the media would write about your business in 2035.

Example: Tesla’s vision is not just to sell electric cars but to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” — a story that guides product and ecosystem building.

Step 5: Make the Big Choices:  Strategy is the set of bold choices a business makes about where to play, how to win, and what capabilities to build — but done with flexibility so it can adapt as futures shift.

• Identify: Based on vision, define the 3–5 most important strategic bets.

• Test: Evaluate each bet against different scenarios — is it robust across worlds?

• Build agility: Create options (e.g., pilot projects, partnerships, venture arms) to pivot if contexts change.

Outputs:

• A strategic roadmap that outlines bold bets (3–5 years) and options (1–2 years).

• Portfolio of experiments to learn and adapt quickly.

• Agility metrics (e.g., speed of reallocating resources, % of revenue from new business models).

Example: Amazon uses its “Day 1” mindset to continually experiment and reallocate resources, balancing long-term bets (AWS, logistics infrastructure) with short-term execution.

Putting it together

• Purpose = Why do we exist?

• Foresight = What’s changing around us?

• Scenarios = What alternative futures might unfold?

• Vision = Which future do we want to create?

• Strategy = What choices we make today to get there, with agility?

The Future Compass is not just a strategy exercise; it is a mindset and a discipline. It prevents organizations from getting lost in short-term firefighting or trapped by linear assumptions. Instead, it builds resilience, fosters creativity, and encourages courage in the face of uncertainty — qualities that distinguish tomorrow’s winning businesses from those stuck in yesterday.

When used as a workshop tool or leadership process, the outputs might look like this:

• One-page Compass Map: Purpose in the centre, surrounded by Foresight drivers, Scenario pathways, Vision narrative, and Strategic choices.

• Leadership Dashboard: Top 5 drivers of change, 3 scenarios, 1 vision statement, 3–5 strategic priorities, updated regularly.

• Playbook: A structured document capturing all outputs with clear links between purpose, foresight, vision, and strategy.

 

Chapter 12: A practical guide to business transformation

In an era of relentless technological disruption, shifting consumer expectations, and rapidly evolving markets, businesses face an existential imperative: the need to continuously reinvent themselves.

Companies that rest on past success, relying solely on incremental improvements, risk obsolescence. Business transformation is not merely a project or a program—it is a strategic journey to convert an existing business into a future business, capable of capturing new value, creating new markets, and multiplying enterprise worth. While the timeline of transformation can range from three to ten years, its potential payoff—measured in market relevance, competitive positioning, and enterprise value—can be enormous.

This guide outlines a practical approach to business transformation, from developing a strategic blueprint to navigating incremental and radical changes across business models, organizations, ecosystems, and offerings, while embedding the culture, capabilities, and commercial mindset required for lasting impact.

Why change management isn’t enough

Conventional change management focuses on incremental improvement—optimizing existing processes, updating systems, or implementing new technologies. It is largely reactive: identifying a problem and fixing it, usually within a linear, short-term timeframe. While such approaches are useful for operational efficiency, they are insufficient for transformation because transformation is forward-looking, holistic, and multi-dimensional.

Business transformation is not about fixing what is broken; it is about creating what does not yet exist. It requires organizations to question assumptions, redesign business models, explore new products and services, and rethink organizational structures and ecosystems. Transformation is a journey of many interdependent changes that together create the future, rather than a series of discrete fixes. It demands agility, courage, and strategic foresight to navigate uncertainty while preserving the ability to deliver today.

Step 1: Developing a Strategic Blueprint

The first phase in transformation is to define the destination and chart a plausible path forward. This is more than a vision statement; it is a strategic blueprint that aligns purpose, foresight, ambition, and practical execution.

Key components of a transformation blueprint include:

1. Purpose and North Star – A clear articulation of why the business exists, and the value it seeks to create in the future. This becomes the anchor for all transformation decisions.

2. Market and Opportunity Analysis – Understanding emerging trends, disruptive forces, and unmet needs. This includes analyzing technological shifts, regulatory changes, demographic and cultural shifts, and competitive dynamics.

3. Future Business Model Definition – Determining where and how value will be created, captured, and delivered. This may involve redefining revenue streams, customer engagement models, or channel strategies.

4. Ecosystem Mapping – Identifying partners, suppliers, platforms, and collaborators essential for the future business. Modern transformation often extends beyond internal capabilities to orchestrate ecosystems that amplify value creation.

5. Capability Gap Assessment – Evaluating current strengths and weaknesses, and identifying capabilities, skills, and technologies needed to succeed in the transformed business.

Output: A clear transformation roadmap that balances ambition with realism, highlighting the priority areas for change and investment, and setting measurable milestones for success.

Step 2: Phasing the Transformational Journey

Transformation is not a single leap, it is a phased journey that blends incremental improvements with radical shifts. This links to the embidexterous nature of transformation, and the double portfolio of exploit and explore initiatives, that run in parallel and ensure that the organisation is delivering today, and creating tomorrow

Exploit the existing business (incremental change): These are smaller, manageable initiatives that modernize the existing business while preparing it for future growth. Examples include process automation, digital marketing enhancements, customer experience upgrades, and supply chain optimization. Incremental changes are crucial for building momentum, credibility, and learning capacitywithin the organization.

Explore the future business (radical change): Radical changes involve fundamentally rethinking business models, creating new value propositions, or entering entirely new markets. This could mean launching subscription-based services in a traditional product business, pivoting from ownership to access, adopting platform models, or embracing sustainability as a core business driver. Radical change requires significant investment, cross-functional collaboration, and bold leadership willing to tolerate ambiguity and risk.

Successful transformation maintains a portfolio of initiatives across both dimensions. Incremental improvements ensure continuity and operational stability, while radical initiatives create breakthrough value and future-proof the business. Leaders must also establish metrics that capture both immediate gains and long-term strategic progress, rather than focusing solely on short-term KPIs.

Step 3: Transforming business systems

A key hallmark of transformation is the integration of business model innovation with organizational redesign.

Business Models:

Transformation often involves redefining how value is created and captured. Examples:

• Product-to-Service Shifts: Moving from selling products to offering outcomes or subscriptions (e.g., Rolls-Royce selling “power by the hour” for aircraft engines).

• Platform Models: Leveraging ecosystems to enable third-party innovation, access new markets, or monetize data (e.g., Amazon, Tencent, or Shopify).

• Circular Economy and Sustainability: Embedding regenerative practices into the business model to address environmental and social imperatives while unlocking new revenue streams (e.g., IKEA’s furniture leasing pilot).

Organizations:

Future-ready businesses require agile, empowered, and cross-functional structures. Traditional hierarchical models often impede speed and adaptability. Transformation may involve:

• Creating innovation units or business accelerators to explore new ideas without disrupting core operations.

• Flattening decision-making to enable rapid experimentation and learning.

• Building talent pipelines and reskilling programs to equip employees with the skills needed for new technologies, markets, and ways of working.

Ecosystems:

No organization transforms in isolation. Strategic partnerships, alliances, and collaborative networks amplify impact. Leaders must identify partners that provide complementary capabilities, access to new markets, or co-innovation opportunities. For instance, automotive companies partnering with technology firms to accelerate electrification and autonomous mobility exemplify ecosystem-driven transformation.

Step 4: Innovating Products and Services

Transformation requires the continuous evolution of offerings. This is not limited to new product launches; it involves reimagining value propositions, customer experiences, and service delivery models.

• Customer-Centric Innovation: Using insights from user behavior, emerging needs, and feedback loops to develop solutions that resonate deeply.

• Digital and Data-Driven Offerings: Leveraging AI, analytics, and IoT to create personalized, scalable, and adaptive products or services.

• Experimentation and Rapid Prototyping: Piloting new offerings in controlled environments to learn fast and iterate before scaling.

The goal is to build a portfolio of offerings that balances core business optimization with disruptive, high-growth experiments.

Step 5: The Cultural Journey

A transformation roadmap will fail without a cultural shift. Traditional change management often assumes compliance; transformation demands engagement, creativity, and resilience. Key cultural imperatives include:

• Purpose Alignment: Ensuring employees understand and are inspired by the long-term North Star.

• Learning Orientation: Rewarding experimentation, learning from failure, and iterative improvement.

• Collaboration and Empowerment: Encouraging cross-functional teamwork, breaking silos, and distributing decision-making.

• Leadership as Role Modeling: Leaders must demonstrate courage, adaptability, and commitment to transformation goals.

Embedding these cultural attributes creates an adaptive organization capable of sustaining transformation over multiple years.

Step 6: Commercialisation and Value Capture

Transformation is not just strategic and cultural—it is commercial. Businesses must ensure that value creation translates into measurable impact:

• Financial Planning: Allocate capital to both core business improvements and new ventures.

• Portfolio Management: Evaluate initiatives across risk, reward, and strategic alignment to prioritize investment.

• Customer Engagement: Communicate value in ways that resonate with new and existing audiences.

• Measurement and Metrics: Go beyond traditional KPIs to track transformational progress, such as ecosystem growth, innovation adoption, and new revenue streams.

Step 7: Embedding Agility and Continuous Renewal

Even after a major transformation, businesses must continue evolving. The future is never fixed. Transformation should be viewed as a continuous journey rather than a one-time event. This requires:

• Dynamic Strategy Reviews: Reassessing assumptions, market conditions, and opportunities regularly.

• Scenario Planning and Stress Tests: Preparing for multiple plausible futures to maintain resilience.

• Capability Refresh: Continually upgrading technology, processes, and skills to stay competitive.

• Cultural Reinforcement: Ensuring the organization retains its learning orientation and innovation mindset.

Transformation as a Multiyear Journey

Business transformation is a strategic, cultural, and operational journey that spans multiple years and requires sustained commitment. It is fundamentally different from conventional change management, which focuses largely on fixing existing problems incrementally. Transformation is about creating new possibilities, exploring multiple avenues of growth, and continuously reinventing business models, offerings, and organizational capabilities.

While challenging, successful transformation can multiply enterprise value, open new markets, and secure long-term relevance. By developing a strategic blueprint, balancing incremental and radical change, innovating products and services, embedding cultural shifts, and executing commercial strategies with agility, organizations can evolve from their present state into future-ready businesses.

The key lies in seeing transformation as a continuous, integrated process, rather than a series of isolated projects. Leaders who embrace this mindset—combining foresight, courage, and adaptability—position their organizations not just to survive disruption but to thrive and define the future of their industries.

Appendices

Thriving in the Age of Perpetual Disruption

In today’s business world, change is not an occasional event—it’s a permanent condition. The pace of transformation, driven by relentless technological advances, geopolitical instability, social shifts, and environmental challenges, has created an environment where adaptability is not just a competitive advantage—it’s a necessity for survival. While many view change as a threat, the most successful companies see it as a catalyst for innovation, growth, and long-term relevance. In this age of continuous disruption, change is your opportunity—if you choose to embrace it.

The Nature of Change Has Changed

In previous eras, change occurred in more predictable cycles. Industries evolved gradually. Strategic planning could be done in five- or ten-year increments. Today, those models no longer apply. Change is nonlinear, exponential, and increasingly chaotic. Disruption now comes from all directions—technological innovation, political upheaval, environmental pressures, shifting demographics, and changing consumer expectations.

Digital transformation is at the heart of this new reality. Artificial intelligence, automation, blockchain, cloud computing, and data analytics are not fringe technologies—they are reshaping entire industries. Meanwhile, climate change is upending supply chains, increasing costs, and raising the urgency for sustainability. Social movements and generational shifts are demanding greater corporate accountability, inclusion, and transparency. Geopolitical tensions, trade wars, pandemics, and resource scarcity further add to the instability.

This volatile environment creates risk—but it also creates unparalleled opportunity. Companies that resist change will become obsolete. But those that embrace it can reshape markets, lead with purpose, and build resilient, future-ready organizations.

Megatrends Driving Transformation

Several powerful megatrends are accelerating this new era of business reinvention. Understanding these forces is critical for any leader looking to turn change into opportunity:

1. Technological Acceleration: AI and machine learning are redefining what’s possible—from personalized customer experiences to autonomous operations. The fusion of physical and digital systems, often called Industry 4.0, is blurring the lines between products and services. Platforms, data, and ecosystems now drive competitive advantage.
2. Climate and Environmental Pressure: The climate crisis is not a future threat—it’s a current reality. Businesses are facing growing regulatory scrutiny, investor demands for ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) performance, and consumer expectations for sustainable practices. The transition to a low-carbon economy is one of the biggest transformations of our time.
3. Demographic and Social Shifts: Younger generations—Millennials and Gen Z—are reshaping consumption patterns, work preferences, and social values. They demand authenticity, inclusivity, and corporate responsibility. Aging populations in many parts of the world are also impacting labour markets and healthcare systems.
4. Geopolitical Volatility: From the war in Ukraine to U.S.–China tensions, global fragmentation is affecting everything from trade and investment to talent mobility and cybersecurity. Companies must operate with agility in an increasingly multipolar world.
5. Stakeholder Capitalism: The old shareholder-first model is being replaced by a more holistic approach to value creation. Stakeholders—including employees, customers, communities, and the planet—expect businesses to serve a broader social purpose.

These megatrends are not passing fads. They are tectonic forces reshaping the landscape in which every company operates. To thrive, businesses must not only adapt—they must anticipate, lead, and constantly reinvent.

Reinvention as a Core Capability

In a world of constant change, reinvention is no longer a one-time event. It must become a core organizational capability. This means embedding agility, innovation, and resilience into every layer of the business—from strategy and operations to culture and leadership.

Companies that succeed in this environment do three things exceptionally well:

1. They See Around Corners: These organizations invest in foresight. They scan the horizon for emerging trends, signals of disruption, and evolving stakeholder expectations. They use data, scenario planning, and ecosystem partnerships to shape their future rather than react to it.
2. They Act with Speed and Purpose: When disruption hits, speed matters. But speed without direction is chaos. Leading companies balance agility with intentionality. They empower teams to experiment, learn fast, and pivot quickly—while staying anchored to a clear vision and purpose.
3. They Build for Resilience: Reinvention requires more than innovation—it requires resilience. Resilient companies build adaptive supply chains, diverse talent pipelines, modular business models, and robust digital infrastructure. They are designed to bend, not break, under pressure.

Amazon, for example, has thrived by constantly disrupting itself—moving from books to cloud computing, streaming, and logistics. Microsoft reinvented its business model and culture under Satya Nadella, embracing the cloud, open-source collaboration, and purpose-driven leadership. Unilever has aligned its business around sustainable living, turning environmental and social responsibility into a strategic advantage.

These companies don’t just adapt to change—they drive it. Reinvention is not something they do occasionally—it’s who they are.

A New Mindset for a New Era

Turning change into opportunity also requires a new leadership mindset. The leaders of the future must be systems thinkers, bridge builders, and courageous change-makers. They must balance bold vision with humility, long-term thinking with short-term action, and performance with purpose.

This mindset starts with curiosity—the ability to challenge assumptions, ask better questions, and embrace learning. It requires empathy—to understand the needs of employees, customers, and communities in a complex, diverse world. And it demands courage—to take risks, experiment, and lead transformation in the face of uncertainty.

Organizations must also cultivate cultures that welcome change. Too often, corporate cultures reward stability, predictability, and control. But in the age of disruption, these values can be liabilities. The most innovative companies create cultures of psychological safety, experimentation, and continuous improvement. They reward learning, not just outcomes. They celebrate failure as a step toward progress.

Change as a Growth Engine

Ultimately, change is the engine of growth. Every disruption reveals unmet needs, underserved markets, or new ways of creating value. Businesses that stay curious, agile, and purpose-driven can turn uncertainty into advantage.

Consider the rise of the circular economy—a response to environmental limits that is now spawning new business models and revenue streams. Or the shift to hybrid and remote work, which is reshaping talent strategies, real estate, and digital collaboration tools. Or the boom in regenerative agriculture, green energy, telehealth, and fintech—industries born out of crisis and evolving expectations.

These opportunities didn’t emerge despite disruption—they emerged because of it. The key is to stop resisting change and start harnessing it. That means investing in innovation, empowering diverse talent, reimagining business models, and putting purpose at the core of strategy.

Make Change Your Superpower

The only certainty in the business world today is uncertainty. But within this uncertainty lies immense opportunity. Change is not your enemy—it is your ally. It is the force that will push you to grow, evolve, and lead in ways you never imagined.

To win in this new era, companies must make reinvention a way of life. They must see change not as a problem to be solved, but as a superpower to be harnessed. Because in a world of constant flux, those who embrace change will shape the future—while those who fear it will be left behind.

Masters of Reinvention: How Leading Companies Turn Change Into Opportunity

In a world marked by relentless disruption, only a handful of companies stand out for their ability to consistently embrace change and thrive in uncertainty. These are not the businesses that merely adapt—they are the ones that anticipate, shape, and lead change. From global tech giants to agile upstarts, they have made reinvention a core capability, embedding adaptability into their strategies, cultures, and leadership models. By doing so, they don’t just survive transformation—they turn it into a competitive advantage.

Here’s a look at some of the companies around the world that exemplify this mindset of continuous reinvention, and what others can learn from their approach to strategy, innovation, and leadership.

1. Microsoft (United States): Reinventing Culture and Cloud Leadership

Microsoft’s transformation under CEO Satya Nadella is one of the most celebrated corporate reinvention stories in modern business. When Nadella took over in 2014, Microsoft was struggling with stagnation, siloed culture, and a business model overly reliant on Windows and Office.

What changed?
Nadella shifted the company’s focus from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all,” rebuilding a growth mindset across the organization. He steered Microsoft away from a hardware-first mentality to a cloud-first, AI-powered future. Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform, became the centerpiece of a new strategy, generating billions in recurring revenue. The company embraced open source, partnered with former rivals like Linux, and prioritized empathy, collaboration, and continuous learning in its culture.

Lesson: Reinvention starts with leadership mindset. By embracing humility, empathy, and learning, Microsoft turned its massive scale from a burden into a launchpad for innovation.

2. Haier (China): The World’s Most Agile Enterprise

Chinese appliance giant Haier has gone through multiple phases of transformation since its inception, but what sets it apart is its radical approach to organizational structure. Under CEO Zhang Ruimin, Haier dismantled traditional corporate hierarchies and built a decentralized, self-organizing model known as RenDanHeYi.

What does this mean?
Haier is made up of over 4,000 micro-enterprises—small, autonomous teams that function like startups inside the larger company. These teams are directly accountable to customers and can partner externally, form new ventures, or even exit the company. This structure enables Haier to adapt rapidly to new market demands and continuously innovate across product lines and geographies.

Lesson: Structural agility—empowering teams to act like entrepreneurs—creates an organization that can evolve from within, continuously.

3. Shopify (Canada): Platform Thinking in a Digital Economy

Shopify began as a simple e-commerce platform for small businesses but quickly evolved into a full-fledged ecosystem for digital entrepreneurship. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when physical retail collapsed, Shopify became a lifeline for merchants pivoting online.

How did they do it?
Instead of owning the entire customer journey, Shopify built a modular, developer-friendly platform. This allowed a global network of app creators and partners to build services on top of Shopify, driving rapid innovation and scalability. Shopify’s leadership kept reinvesting in R&D, while maintaining a culture focused on resilience, long-term thinking, and merchant success.

Lesson: Reinvention doesn’t always mean pivoting away from your core—it can mean expanding it by enabling others to build on your platform.

4. Mahindra Group (India): Reimagining Purpose-Driven Business

The Mahindra Group, a $20+ billion Indian conglomerate, has undergone a quiet reinvention grounded in purpose and sustainability. Under Chairman Anand Mahindra, the group has invested in clean energy, smart agriculture, electric vehicles, and digital innovation—aligning its businesses with India’s development goals and global sustainability trends.

Strategically speaking:
Mahindra has repositioned from a traditional industrial conglomerate to a forward-looking group driven by ESG values. Its investment in the electric vehicle company Mahindra Electric, and its Farm Equipment Sector’s tech-driven solutions for smallholder farmers, are examples of solving big societal problems through commercial innovation.

Lesson: Reinvention anchored in purpose builds trust and resilience—and opens doors to impact-driven growth in emerging markets.

5. Schneider Electric (France): Digitalizing Sustainability

Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management and automation, has made sustainability and digital transformation its twin engines of reinvention. Recognizing the growing global demand for sustainable, efficient infrastructure, the company repositioned itself as a digital energy solutions leader.

How it’s working:
Schneider shifted its innovation focus to smart energy systems, IoT-enabled solutions, and sustainability consulting. It also transformed its own operations, achieving carbon neutrality ahead of schedule. CEO Peter Herweck emphasizes a strategy of “innovation at every level,” from connected products to AI-based analytics.

Lesson: Reinvention isn’t just about new products—it’s about redefining your value proposition around global needs and digital capabilities.

6. Spotify (Sweden): Reinventing the Business Model of Music

Spotify’s impact on the music industry is well known, but what’s often overlooked is how the company continues to evolve its business model. What began as a music streaming service has grown into a multifaceted platform for audio content, including podcasts, audiobooks, and creator tools.

What’s driving this?
Spotify has invested in exclusive content deals, acquired podcasting platforms, and built tools for creators to monetize their work—positioning itself as the central platform in the creator economy. CEO Daniel Ek’s bold vision and data-driven culture allow Spotify to continually experiment with new revenue streams, formats, and user experiences.

Lesson: Reinvention often means expanding your definition of your own market—and being bold enough to bet on new formats and business models.

7. Patagonia (United States): Redefining Leadership Through Activism

Patagonia isn’t just a sustainable apparel brand—it’s a case study in how values-driven leadership can drive radical business reinvention. The company has committed to making the planet its only shareholder, famously transferring ownership to a trust and nonprofit dedicated to environmental causes.

What does that mean in practice?
It has embedded activism into its strategy—from fighting climate denial to refusing to sell products to companies misaligned with its values. Patagonia also invests heavily in regenerative agriculture, circular economy innovations, and product lifetime extension through repair and resale programs.

Lesson: Reinvention through activism builds customer loyalty, attracts passionate talent, and creates a differentiated brand in crowded markets.

Key Principles of Reinvention Across These Companies

Across industries and geographies, these companies share some core traits that enable continuous reinvention:

• Customer Obsession: They stay close to evolving customer needs and design systems that respond fast.
• Decentralized Innovation: Innovation is not top-down. Teams are empowered to test, iterate, and own outcomes.
• Cultural Resilience: They foster cultures that value curiosity, experimentation, and learning from failure.
• Ecosystem Thinking: Rather than going it alone, they build platforms and partnerships that multiply their reach.
• Purpose and Sustainability: They align with long-term societal goals, turning purpose into a driver of strategy.
• Leadership Agility: Their leaders are not rigid commanders—they are visionaries who listen, learn, and adapt.

Final Thought: Reinvention Is a Choice

Change is inevitable, but reinvention is a choice. The companies that lead today and will lead tomorrow are those that proactively build the mindset, capabilities, and systems for ongoing transformation. They treat change not as a threat, but as fuel for growth, learning, and impact.

In the coming decades, the winners in every industry will be the ones who master the art of reinvention—not once, but continuously. The question isn’t whether you need to change. It’s whether you’re building an organization that can keep changing—strategically, creatively, and courageously.

 

Technology as the Great Disruptor: Shaping a New World

In the 21st century, technology has become the great disruptor, reshaping every facet of our lives, industries, and economies. From Artificial Intelligence (AI) to battery innovation, blockchain technology, genetics, robotics, and beyond, we are witnessing the emergence of technologies that not only challenge existing systems but also create entirely new industries and opportunities. The impact of these advancements is far-reaching, with the potential to solve global challenges, create efficiencies, and transform industries that have remained largely unchanged for decades.

These disruptive technologies are converging and overlapping in ways that make it hard to predict the full extent of their impact. However, what is clear is that they are reshaping how we live, work, and interact with the world. The companies that embrace these technological advancements and innovate around them are the ones poised to lead in the future. As we look at AI, batteries, blockchain, genetics, and robotics, we can see how they disrupt industries and societal norms, pushing the boundaries of possibility.

Artificial Intelligence: Automating and Transforming

AI has undoubtedly been one of the most significant disruptors of the last decade. At its core, AI refers to the creation of systems and algorithms that can mimic human intelligence, allowing machines to learn, make decisions, and improve over time. What sets AI apart from traditional computing is its ability to adapt, learn from experience, and make predictions or decisions based on large sets of data. AI’s impact has been felt across nearly every industry, from healthcare to finance, logistics, retail, and entertainment.

In healthcare, for example, AI is revolutionizing diagnostics. Machine learning models can analyze medical images, such as MRIs and CT scans, with accuracy often surpassing that of human doctors. AI-powered systems are capable of detecting anomalies in data and making predictions about a patient’s health, enabling earlier diagnoses and more personalized treatment plans. IBM Watson Health is using AI to help oncologists design personalized treatment protocols for cancer patients based on their genetic profiles and medical history.

In the transportation sector, Waymo, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of Alphabet (Google’s parent company), is leveraging AI to build self-driving cars that can navigate complex urban environments safely. The disruption AI brings to the automotive industry is profound—it has the potential to eliminate human error in driving, reduce traffic congestion, and revolutionize the concept of mobility, making it more efficient, safer, and sustainable.

Batteries: Powering the Future

Battery technology has become one of the key enablers of the green energy revolution and the shift toward a more sustainable future. With global concerns about climate change, the demand for clean energy and electric vehicles (EVs) has surged. However, EV adoption has been stymied by limitations in battery performance—specifically, energy density, charging speed, and cost. As battery technology advances, we are seeing the rapid expansion of electric transportation, renewable energy storage, and countless other applications that rely on improved batteries.

Tesla, a leader in the electric vehicle market, has been at the forefront of battery innovation. The company’s Gigafactories, designed to scale battery production, are helping reduce the cost of batteries while increasing their efficiency. Tesla’s progress in battery technology is not just about EVs; it also extends to energy storage solutions. With the development of products like the Powerwall, Tesla is enabling households to store solar energy, reducing reliance on the grid and empowering consumers to become more energy-independent.

Beyond Tesla, QuantumScape, a startup focused on developing solid-state batteries, promises to take battery performance to the next level by providing higher energy density and faster charging times. Solid-state batteries represent the next frontier in battery technology, potentially allowing electric cars to travel farther on a single charge and reducing the amount of time it takes to recharge them. These innovations are setting the stage for a future where electric vehicles dominate the roads, and renewable energy sources become the backbone of the global power grid.

Blockchain: Decentralizing Trust

Blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, has emerged as a disruptor in many industries, particularly in finance, supply chain management, and even voting systems. At its core, blockchain is a decentralized, distributed ledger that records transactions across a network of computers in a way that is immutable and transparent. Each “block” of data is securely linked to the next, creating a “chain” that is resistant to tampering or fraud.

The financial sector has seen some of the most significant disruptions from blockchain technology. Bitcoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency, eliminated the need for intermediaries like banks in peer-to-peer transactions. This opened the door for faster, cheaper, and more transparent financial transactions, especially for cross-border payments. Ethereum, another popular blockchain platform, enables the creation of smart contracts, which automatically execute transactions when certain conditions are met. These contracts eliminate the need for intermediaries, further reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

Blockchain’s potential goes beyond finance. In supply chain management, blockchain is being used to create transparent, traceable networks that ensure the authenticity of goods and prevent fraud. Companies like IBM and Walmart are implementing blockchain to track the journey of products from farm to table, ensuring quality control and ethical sourcing practices. The transparency offered by blockchain also has applications in the pharmaceutical industry, where it can be used to verify the integrity of drugs, preventing counterfeit products from entering the market.

Genetics: Unlocking the Blueprint of Life

Genetic technologies have advanced at an astonishing rate, unlocking new frontiers in healthcare, agriculture, and beyond. The ability to sequence genomes, edit genes, and understand the molecular basis of diseases has profound implications for how we approach health, wellness, and even the food we consume. The convergence of genetics with other technologies like AI and robotics is accelerating the pace of discovery and application in these fields.

The Human Genome Project, completed in 2003, mapped the entire human genome, providing the blueprint for understanding genetic diseases and human traits. Since then, genetic sequencing technologies have rapidly advanced, becoming faster, more affordable, and more accessible. Companies like Illumina are leading the way in genomic sequencing, offering services that enable researchers and healthcare providers to better understand the genetic basis of diseases and design personalized treatment plans.

Gene editing technologies like CRISPR-Cas9 have taken genetic modification to new heights. CRISPR allows scientists to precisely edit specific genes, offering the potential to correct genetic mutations that cause diseases like cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia. Beyond healthcare, genetic modification has applications in agriculture, where genetically modified crops can be engineered to resist pests, grow in harsher climates, or provide better nutritional value.

Robotics: Automating and Augmenting Human Effort

Robotics has been a transformative force in industries ranging from manufacturing to healthcare. Robots, which once performed repetitive tasks on factory floors, are now capable of performing complex operations, from assembling intricate products to performing surgery. Robotics, combined with AI and machine learning, is paving the way for intelligent machines that can adapt to new environments, collaborate with humans, and make decisions in real time.

In manufacturing, companies like KUKA and Boston Dynamics are developing robots that can work alongside human workers, enhancing efficiency, precision, and safety. Robots are used to assemble everything from electronics to automobiles, often performing tasks that are too dangerous or tedious for human workers.

The healthcare sector is also seeing the impact of robotics. Surgical robots like Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci system allow doctors to perform minimally invasive procedures with greater precision and control. In eldercare, robots are being used to assist patients with mobility or offer companionship, addressing the global challenges posed by aging populations.

Technology Convergence and the Future

While each of these technologies—AI, batteries, blockchain, genetics, and robotics—has disruptive potential on its own, their convergence is where the true transformative power lies. The integration of AI with robotics, for example, will lead to machines that can not only perform tasks but also learn and improve on those tasks autonomously. Blockchain can be used to securely store genetic data, enabling decentralized genetic research and personalized medicine.

As these technologies evolve, the possibilities for innovation and disruption are limitless. Industries that are currently at the heart of the technological revolution, such as healthcare, manufacturing, and finance, will continue to experience profound changes. However, new industries will also emerge, creating entirely new ways of working, living, and interacting with the world.

Conclusion

Technology is indeed the great disruptor of our time. From AI to blockchain, robotics, batteries, and genetics, the technologies that are reshaping industries today are fundamentally transforming our world. They offer the promise of new solutions to longstanding problems, create efficiencies that were once unimaginable, and push the boundaries of what’s possible. As these technologies continue to evolve and converge, we can expect even greater disruption, providing new opportunities for businesses, individuals, and societies to thrive in an increasingly interconnected and automated world. The great challenge—and opportunity—lies in how we harness these technologies to create a future that benefits all.

 

Waymo: Embracing AI and Autonomous Vehicles to Reinvent Transportation

Waymo, the self-driving car company founded by Google (now Alphabet), is at the forefront of leveraging cutting-edge technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), to transform the transportation sector. With a mission to make transportation safer, more efficient, and accessible, Waymo is not just building autonomous vehicles but also spearheading the future of mobility by embracing AI, sensor technologies, and machine learning. The company’s efforts in autonomous driving are helping to shape the future of both personal transportation and logistics.

At the core of Waymo’s technology is its AI system, which powers the company’s self-driving cars. These cars rely on a complex array of sensors, including LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), radar, cameras, and ultrasonic sensors, to perceive the world around them. The AI system processes this data in real time, allowing the vehicle to navigate complex environments, identify pedestrians, respond to traffic signals, and avoid obstacles without human intervention. The ability to combine AI and sensor technologies allows Waymo’s vehicles to make driving decisions faster and with greater precision than human drivers.

Waymo’s approach to autonomous driving involves creating highly detailed maps that provide real-time information about road conditions, traffic patterns, and potential hazards. This data is essential for the AI to understand its surroundings and make decisions in dynamic situations. The company is also investing in deep learning to improve its vehicle’s ability to handle new, unseen scenarios, such as construction zones or unpredictable weather.

The company has made significant strides in rolling out its autonomous vehicle fleet. In 2018, Waymo launched the first fully autonomous ride-hailing service without a safety driver in Chandler, Arizona, as part of its Waymo One project. This marked a pivotal moment in the industry, as it demonstrated that self-driving technology could operate safely in real-world conditions, with passengers experiencing an entirely driverless ride.

Waymo has expanded its footprint to other cities and has formed partnerships with car manufacturers like Fiat Chryslerand Jaguar Land Rover, further scaling its autonomous driving capabilities. In addition to its ride-hailing service, Waymo is also working on autonomous freight transportation, providing logistics companies with autonomous trucks capable of transporting goods without human intervention. This has the potential to significantly reduce transportation costs, improve efficiency, and enhance safety on the roads.

By embracing AI, machine learning, and sensor technologies, Waymo is not only creating a new mode of transportation but is also reinventing the traditional automotive and logistics industries. The company is reshaping the future of mobility by making transportation safer, more efficient, and ultimately more accessible to a broader audience.

Illumina: Revolutionizing Healthcare with Genomic Technologies

Illumina, a global leader in genomics, is embracing new technologies to drive its business and reinvent the healthcare landscape. The company specializes in the development and manufacture of next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms that enable scientists and healthcare professionals to decode the human genome. This capability is transforming our understanding of biology and providing new avenues for diagnosing and treating diseases at the genetic level.

At the heart of Illumina’s innovations is its sequencing technology, which allows for the rapid, accurate, and cost-effective analysis of DNA. Through its NGS systems, Illumina has revolutionized genomic research by making it possible to sequence entire genomes at a fraction of the cost and time it once required. This technology has already led to groundbreaking discoveries in cancer research, genetic disorders, and personalized medicine.

Illumina’s systems are used by hospitals, research institutions, and pharmaceutical companies to identify genetic mutations that contribute to diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular conditions, and neurological disorders. By analyzing a patient’s genetic makeup, Illumina’s technology enables doctors to develop personalized treatment plans based on the individual’s genetic profile. This is the essence of precision medicine, where treatments and therapies are tailored to the unique genetic characteristics of each patient, leading to better outcomes and fewer side effects.

The company’s innovation extends beyond diagnostic applications. Illumina is actively exploring the potential of genomics in fields such as reproductive health, agriculture, and even environmental monitoring. For example, its technologies are being used in prenatal genetic screening, where expectant mothers can be tested for genetic conditions like Down syndrome early in pregnancy through non-invasive blood tests. In agriculture, Illumina’s tools are being applied to improve crop yields, resistance to pests, and nutritional content by enabling more precise breeding of plants and animals.

Furthermore, Illumina’s BaseSpace Sequence Hub, a cloud-based platform, allows scientists and researchers to store, share, and analyze genomic data. This platform enhances collaboration and facilitates the use of large-scale datasets in research, which is accelerating the discovery of new genetic insights.

By integrating cutting-edge technologies like AI, cloud computing, and genomics, Illumina is not only driving business growth but also fundamentally reshaping healthcare. The company’s continuous reinvention through advancements in genomic sequencing, combined with its focus on precision medicine, is paving the way for a new era of healthcare that is more personalized, predictive, and effective.

Rocket Lab: Innovating Space Exploration with Small-Scale, Low-Cost Launches

Rocket Lab is a private space exploration company that is embracing new technologies to disrupt the space industry by offering small-scale, cost-effective satellite launches. In a world where the cost of space missions has historically been prohibitive, Rocket Lab is redefining how the space industry operates by developing small, reusable rockets and simplifying the process of getting payloads into orbit. This approach has the potential to revolutionize access to space, opening up new opportunities for both commercial and scientific missions.

Rocket Lab’s flagship product, the Electron rocket, is designed to launch small payloads into low Earth orbit (LEO) for a fraction of the cost of traditional space launch systems. The Electron is capable of carrying payloads of up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds) to orbit, making it ideal for small satellites, which have become increasingly popular in a range of industries, from telecommunications and Earth observation to navigation and scientific research. By focusing on smaller payloads, Rocket Lab is targeting the rapidly growing small satellite market, which is expected to be worth billions of dollars in the coming years.

One of the key innovations driving Rocket Lab’s success is its ability to rapidly and affordably launch rockets. The company has developed a unique hybrid propulsion system that is more efficient than traditional rocket engines, reducing the cost and complexity of launching small satellites. Additionally, Rocket Lab is focused on reusability, similar to SpaceX, which has revolutionized the cost structure of space launches by recovering and reusing rockets. Rocket Lab is also working on reusable Electron rockets, with plans for future missions to involve rocket recovery and reuse, reducing launch costs even further.

Rocket Lab’s focus on efficiency and cost-effectiveness is attracting a wide range of customers, from commercial companies to governments and universities. In addition to satellite launches, the company is also involved in space exploration, having been selected to provide launch services for NASA and other governmental organizations. Rocket Lab has already achieved numerous successful launches, and in 2020, it became the first private company to launch a satellite to the moon. This achievement demonstrates the potential for small-scale, low-cost space exploration to expand humanity’s presence beyond Earth.

The company is also working to expand its capabilities by offering additional services like in-space propulsion and satellite constellation management. These technologies will help customers deploy, control, and deorbit their satellites more efficiently, creating new opportunities for satellite applications in areas like global communications, climate monitoring, and military intelligence.

Rocket Lab’s embrace of cutting-edge propulsion technologies, cost-effective launch systems, and reusability is disrupting the traditional space industry and making space more accessible to businesses and governments worldwide. Through its innovations, Rocket Lab is helping to democratize space exploration, making it possible for more companies and organizations to participate in the space race and push the boundaries of what is possible.

These companies—Waymo, Illumina, and Rocket Lab—are prime examples of how embracing new technologies can drive innovation, create new markets, and reinvent industries. Each company is at the forefront of a technological revolution in its respective field, using AI, genomics, and space exploration to challenge the status quo and pave the way for a more efficient, personalized, and accessible future.

ASML: Reinventing the Future of Technology One Nanometer at a Time

ASML is one of the most important—and least well-known—companies powering the modern digital economy. Headquartered in the Netherlands, ASML designs and manufactures the world’s most advanced photolithography machines, which are essential to producing the microchips that drive everything from smartphones and AI systems to electric vehicles and data centers. Over the past few decades, ASML has gone from a small Dutch startup to a global technology leader at the center of the semiconductor value chain, thanks to a series of bold reinventions—technological, strategic, and organizational.

The company’s journey is a compelling case study in how reinvention can create long-term competitive advantage, reshape markets, and deliver extraordinary performance.

The Origins: From Underdog to Contender

ASML was founded in 1984 as a joint venture between the electronics giant Philips and a small electronics equipment maker, ASM International. Its goal was to develop lithography systems—machines that use light to etch patterns onto silicon wafers, a critical step in chipmaking. At the time, the market was dominated by Japanese firms like Nikon and Canon.

In its early years, ASML struggled. The company was undercapitalized, had limited R&D capabilities, and faced fierce global competition. But even then, ASML demonstrated a key trait that would define its culture: an unwavering commitment to long-term innovation. Rather than pursuing quick wins, it invested heavily in R&D and began cultivating deep collaborations with chipmakers like Intel, TSMC, and Samsung.

By the mid-1990s, ASML began gaining market share, thanks to innovations like its PAS 5500 system, which introduced modular design and enabled faster upgrades. It went public in 1995, gaining access to new capital for growth. But its greatest reinvention was still to come.

Reinvention Through EUV: Betting the Company

ASML’s defining moment came in the early 2000s, when it began investing in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography—a radically new approach to etching ever-smaller features onto silicon wafers using light with a wavelength of just 13.5 nanometers. EUV promised to extend Moore’s Law, allowing the continued miniaturization and performance improvement of chips. But it was a moonshot: no one had ever built a commercial EUV system, and the technical challenges were enormous.

ASML committed billions to EUV, in a strategic pivot that many considered risky. The light source needed to be 10,000 times brighter than anything previously used. Optics had to be made with atomic-level precision. The entire system would require unprecedented engineering, including a vacuum environment and mirrors that could reflect EUV light without absorbing it.

To manage the complexity, ASML forged critical alliances:

• It partnered with Zeiss for ultra-precise optics.
• It acquired Cymer, a U.S.-based company working on the EUV light source.
• It secured funding and strategic backing from major customers—Intel, Samsung, and TSMC all bought minority stakes in the company to help fund EUV development.

This co-investment model was revolutionary in itself. Rather than going it alone, ASML built a collaborative innovation ecosystem where suppliers, customers, and partners shared the risks and rewards of next-generation technology.

After more than a decade of research and development, ASML’s EUV machines finally became commercially viable in the late 2010s. Today, EUV is the gold standard for producing the most advanced chips at 5 nanometers and below, and ASML is the only company in the world that can build these systems.

Impact on Performance: A Trillion-Dollar Leverage Point

ASML’s reinvention around EUV has had an astonishing impact on its performance:

• Revenue grew from €5.2 billion in 2010 to over €27.6 billion in 2023, a fivefold increase in just over a decade.
• Market capitalization surpassed €300 billion, making ASML one of Europe’s most valuable technology companies.
• Gross margins exceed 50%, reflecting the extraordinary value of its highly specialized machines.
• Each EUV machine sells for more than $200 million and involves over 100,000 components. Some take months to assemble and are shipped in multiple aircraft.

Even more significantly, ASML has become a strategic choke point in the global technology supply chain. Virtually every advanced chip—from Apple’s iPhone processors to Nvidia’s AI accelerators—is made using ASML lithography. The company enables the production of semiconductors that drive advancements in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 5G, and beyond.

External Drivers of Reinvention

Several powerful external forces pushed ASML to reinvent itself over time:

1. Moore’s Law and Technological Demands
   The semiconductor industry’s relentless pursuit of smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient chips created constant pressure for innovation. Lithography was the bottleneck, and ASML knew it had to solve the EUV challenge to stay relevant.
2. Globalization and Supply Chain Complexity
   ASML’s success depends on a global network of precision suppliers and customers. Navigating geopolitical tensions and building resilience into this supply chain became a strategic imperative, especially as the U.S., China, and EU intensified their competition over chipmaking supremacy.
3. Geopolitics and National Security
   In recent years, ASML has been at the center of global debates about technology and national security. The U.S. government has pressured the Netherlands to block exports of EUV systems to China, highlighting ASML’s strategic importance. The company must now manage its role as a neutral supplier in an increasingly polarized world.
4. Sustainability Pressures
   Building and operating EUV machines requires vast amounts of energy and materials. ASML has responded by investing in more energy-efficient systems and committing to sustainability across its operations—a growing expectation from investors, regulators, and customers alike.

Internal Capabilities for Continuous Reinvention

ASML’s ability to continually reinvent itself is underpinned by several internal strengths:

• Long-Term Vision and Patience
  ASML doesn’t chase quarterly results—it plays the long game. Its leaders, engineers, and investors have shown remarkable patience in pursuing breakthroughs that take years or even decades to mature.
• Engineering Excellence and Talent
  ASML employs over 20,000 engineers and scientists, many with advanced degrees in physics, optics, and mechanical engineering. The company invests heavily in talent development, academic partnerships, and open innovation.
• Modular Systems Thinking
  ASML designs its machines with a modular architecture, allowing for faster upgrades and more flexible customization for different customer needs.
• Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
  Building an EUV machine requires expertise in physics, chemistry, mechanics, software, and more. ASML has cultivated a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration—both internally and across its ecosystem.
• Customer Co-Innovation
  By deeply involving customers in roadmap planning and product development, ASML ensures alignment and de-risks its massive innovation investments.

Shaping the Market and the Future

ASML has not only reinvented itself—it has reshaped the entire semiconductor industry. Its EUV systems have enabled chipmakers like TSMC, Intel, and Samsung to push the boundaries of computing power, making possible everything from generative AI to autonomous vehicles.

Moreover, ASML has become a bellwether for geopolitical tensions and technological sovereignty. Its machines are so advanced and strategic that nations are now competing to secure access—or restrict it. In essence, ASML’s innovation has become a matter of national interest for global powers.

The company is now pushing beyond EUV toward High-NA EUV—the next frontier in chip miniaturization. Once again, ASML is reinventing the limits of what’s physically and economically possible.

Conclusion: Reinvention at the Atomic Scale

ASML’s story is one of visionary leadership, deep collaboration, and extraordinary perseverance. It shows what’s possible when a company dares to bet big on long-term innovation, even in the face of daunting odds. ASML has reinvented itself multiple times—not by changing what it does, but by redefining how it does it and why it matters.

In doing so, it has become not just a supplier to the world’s leading chipmakers, but an enabler of the entire digital future. Its machines power the progress of every connected device, AI model, and smart system on the planet.

Few companies demonstrate more clearly that reinvention isn’t just about responding to change—it’s about creating it.

Ping An: Reinventing the Future of Integrated Finance and Technology in China

Ping An, one of the world’s largest and most innovative financial services groups, has continually reinvented itself over the past three decades. Founded in 1988 in Shenzhen as an insurance company, Ping An has grown into a sprawling conglomerate covering banking, asset management, health care, real estate, mobility, and technology. As of 2024, it serves over 230 million retail customers and 700 million internet users, making it not just a financial giant but a digital ecosystem leader.

The company’s success lies in its unique ability to balance short-term performance in its core businesses with long-term investment in emerging opportunities. It has strategically pivoted from a traditional financial services model to a tech-powered platform approach, driven by both internal vision and external pressures—especially digital disruption, demographic shifts, and evolving consumer expectations in China.

Reinvention 1.0: From Insurance to Integrated Finance

Ping An’s first major reinvention came in the 1990s and early 2000s, as it evolved from a pure-play insurer into a comprehensive financial services group. Recognizing the limitations of a monoline insurance business in a rapidly expanding Chinese economy, Ping An began adding banking, investment, and asset management services. It built a “one customer, multiple products” model, aiming to meet every financial need of its growing customer base.

This strategy helped Ping An diversify revenue streams, cross-sell products, and reduce risk. It also laid the groundwork for customer-centric innovation—a principle that would become central to the company’s future transformations.

Reinvention 2.0: Becoming a Tech-Powered Ecosystem

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Ping An faced a new challenge: the rise of internet giants like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, which began encroaching on financial services through mobile payments, online lending, and digital wealth management. Rather than fight the tech tide, Ping An embraced it—and decided to reinvent itself as a technology-first company.

Chairman and CEO Peter Ma led a bold pivot, investing heavily in AI, cloud computing, blockchain, and big data. By 2023, Ping An had more than 100,000 technology professionals—nearly a third of its total workforce—and had filed over 44,000 technology patents globally. It also built a network of independently branded tech subsidiaries to drive innovation and diversification.

The most prominent of these include:

• Ping An Good Doctor (Healthcare)
• AutoHome (Mobility)
• Lufax (Wealth and Lending)
• OneConnect (Fintech infrastructure for other institutions)
• Smart City and Real Estate platforms

Each venture combines data, AI, and industry-specific expertise to create new business models and ecosystems beyond traditional financial services.

Dual Strategy: “Finance + Technology” and “Finance + Ecosystem”

Ping An’s transformation has been guided by a two-pronged strategy:

1. Finance + Technology: Using advanced technologies to improve operational efficiency, reduce risk, personalize customer experience, and scale core financial services.
2. Finance + Ecosystem: Expanding into adjacent sectors—especially healthcare, real estate, and mobility—where consumers’ needs are deeply intertwined with financial decisions.

This dual strategy enables Ping An to optimize for the present while exploring the future. Core financial services continue to deliver short-term profits, while ecosystem ventures create long-term growth engines and data assets that enhance customer lifetime value.

Healthcare: Creating China’s Leading Health Ecosystem

China’s aging population, rising chronic disease burden, and healthcare access issues have made health a strategic priority for consumers and the government alike. Ping An saw this early and made healthcare the centerpiece of its ecosystem expansion.

Ping An Good Doctor, launched in 2014 and listed in Hong Kong in 2018, became one of the largest online healthcare platforms in the world, with over 400 million registered users. The platform offers AI-powered online consultations, hospital referrals, medication delivery, and health management tools. It integrates insurance products and connects users to Ping An’s own network of medical professionals and offline clinics.

Ping An’s investment in smart healthcare infrastructure—such as AI diagnosis systems, electronic medical records, and health scoring algorithms—has helped reduce costs, improve access, and support public health goals. It also enhances Ping An’s risk modeling in health insurance and creates powerful cross-selling opportunities.

Success metrics:

• Good Doctor users: over 400 million
• AI consultations per day: over 1 million
• Offline healthcare partnerships: 3,000+ hospitals and 100,000+ pharmacies

Ping An’s healthcare ecosystem now generates revenue across insurance, services, and data monetization—a multi-angled business model that creates value far beyond premiums.

Mobility: From Auto Insurance to Smart Mobility

Ping An’s mobility business began with auto insurance, but has evolved into a full mobility ecosystem encompassing car sales, maintenance, financing, and data services.

Autohome, acquired by Ping An in 2016, is China’s leading online automotive marketplace, serving over 800 million monthly users. It integrates listings, content, reviews, financing tools, and insurance offerings, making it a one-stop shop for car buyers and owners.

Ping An also launched Smart Auto Brain, an AI system that supports connected car services, driver behavior monitoring, and accident prediction. This allows Ping An to offer usage-based insurance (UBI) and develop partnerships with automakers and ride-sharing platforms.

Key achievements:

• China’s largest car insurance provider
• UBI programs for millions of drivers
• Vehicle finance and leasing expansion via Ping An Bank

By controlling touchpoints across the entire vehicle lifecycle, Ping An extracts data that fuels personalized pricing, proactive risk management, and cross-sector growth.

Real Estate: Building Smart Cities and Property Ecosystems

In real estate, Ping An has moved far beyond mortgage finance. It is helping shape the future of smart cities, sustainable housing, and property technology (PropTech).

Ping An Urban Tech, part of its Smart City initiative, develops AI-based urban planning tools, facial recognition systems, and city governance platforms. These technologies are used in over 150 Chinese cities to enhance transportation, public security, environmental monitoring, and public health management.

Ping An Real Estate, meanwhile, develops commercial and residential properties, often integrating smart home systems, green building technologies, and tenant finance products. These projects reflect a belief that real estate is not just a product—it’s a platform for financial engagement and lifestyle services.

Key contributions:

• Smart City platforms active in 100+ cities
• Investments in green real estate and urban renewal
• Integration of real estate with financial products (e.g., mortgages, life insurance, wealth planning)

Internal Enablers: How Ping An Balances the Now and the Next

Ping An’s success in managing dual horizons—exploiting the present while exploring the future—rests on several internal enablers:

• Data and AI Infrastructure: The company operates one of China’s largest proprietary data networks, integrating user data across platforms to enable dynamic pricing, real-time risk modeling, and personalized service.
• Talent and Culture: Ping An invests heavily in upskilling its workforce, fostering a culture of experimentation, and rotating leaders between business units to spread innovation.
• Platform Thinking: Each ecosystem business is structured as a platform—open, scalable, and tech-enabled—which creates exponential growth opportunities through partnerships and user network effects.
• Customer Ownership: The company’s unified customer ID system allows seamless service across businesses. A user of Ping An Good Doctor can easily become an insurance, banking, or real estate customer, and vice versa.

Financial and Strategic Outcomes

Despite a slowing Chinese economy and tighter regulations, Ping An has continued to deliver strong performance:

• 2023 revenue: over RMB 1.2 trillion (~USD 165 billion)
• Operating profit from tech and ecosystem ventures now contributes over 15% of group profit
• ROE: ~17%, among the highest in global financial services
• Listed subsidiaries such as Lufax and Good Doctor contribute to market capitalization and liquidity

More importantly, Ping An has positioned itself as a hybrid—a tech-powered financial giant with real-world infrastructure. Its ability to generate and monetize data across domains gives it a strategic edge not only in China, but increasingly across Asia and emerging markets.

Conclusion: A Blueprint for the Future of Financial Services

Ping An is more than an insurance company. It’s a next-generation digital platform that integrates finance, health, mobility, and property into a seamless ecosystem. By continuously reinventing itself—structurally, strategically, and technologically—it has created a business model resilient to disruption and rich with optionality.

Its example offers a powerful lesson: the future belongs to companies that can simultaneously optimize the present and invent the future. Ping An doesn’t just manage risk. It manages reinvention.

Xiaomi: Reinventing the Smart Life Ecosystem from Smartphones to Smart Living

Xiaomi, the Beijing-based technology giant founded in 2010 by serial entrepreneur Lei Jun, has become one of the most compelling examples of business reinvention in the global consumer tech landscape. While the company first gained attention as a low-cost smartphone disruptor in China, it has since transformed itself into a diversified innovation powerhouse, spanning everything from AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) and smart homes to electric vehicles.

Today, Xiaomi is not just a smartphone maker—it is the architect of a connected lifestyle. This evolution reflects a series of deliberate reinventions, both strategic and operational, in response to shifting markets, technologies, and consumer expectations. Xiaomi’s ability to balance agility with ambition, affordability with innovation, and short-term performance with long-term vision has enabled it to thrive in one of the most fiercely competitive industries on the planet.

Reinvention 1.0: Smartphone Disruption and Internet DNA

Xiaomi’s initial reinvention of the smartphone industry came through a blend of low pricing, premium quality, and direct-to-consumer digital marketing. It challenged incumbents like Samsung, Huawei, and Apple by slashing distribution costs, crowdsourcing product feedback via social media, and launching online-only flash sales to generate hype.

The company’s first product, the Mi 1 smartphone, sold over 300,000 units without a single retail store. It quickly scaled to become the #1 smartphone brand in China by 2014, and one of the top five globally by 2018.

Key enablers:

• Internet-first operating model (direct e-commerce, user forums, online fan communities)
• Low-margin, high-volume pricing (with profits made from services rather than hardware)
• MIUI software: A custom Android skin, updated weekly based on user feedback

This strategy allowed Xiaomi to scale rapidly while staying lean. Its user-centric approach and community-building DNA differentiated it from traditional OEMs, especially in emerging markets like India and Southeast Asia, where it became the market leader.

Reinvention 2.0: From Phones to AIoT Ecosystem

As competition in the smartphone market intensified, Xiaomi realized it couldn’t rely solely on hardware sales. In 2016, it began shifting its strategy toward a broader “Smartphone x AIoT” vision, positioning itself as an ecosystem company for the connected lifestyle.

Under this model, smartphones serve as the central hub for a growing universe of smart devices—including wearables, TVs, home appliances, air purifiers, security systems, and more. The idea was to lock in users not just through phones, but through a seamless, intelligent product experience across the home and daily life.

To drive this vision, Xiaomi took a platform approach:

• Launched its own AI voice assistant, XiaoAI, embedded across all devices
• Invested in over 300 ecosystem partners and startups, including Roborock (robot vacuums), Huami (wearables), and Viomi (kitchen tech)
• Integrated cloud services and mobile apps to create unified control and intelligent automation

By 2023, Xiaomi had more than 655 million connected AIoT devices (excluding smartphones and laptops), and over 13 million households using 5 or more Xiaomi devices.

This strategic shift boosted brand stickiness, created new monetization streams via services and data, and positioned Xiaomi as a global leader in the smart home sector.

Reinvention 3.0: Global Expansion and Brand Evolution

While early success came in China and India, Xiaomi’s third major reinvention involved a global push and a shift upmarket. Starting in 2018, the company began expanding aggressively into Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East—markets where Chinese brands had previously struggled to build trust and distribution.

At the same time, Xiaomi began upgrading its brand image from “cheap and cheerful” to “affordable premium.” It invested in:

• Flagship stores in major cities worldwide
• Higher-end devices like the Xiaomi 12 and 13 series, with improved cameras, displays, and processing power
• Strategic partnerships with Leica to enhance photography credibility
• Design awards and global marketing campaigns, including sponsorships with F1 and UEFA

This strategy paid off. Xiaomi became the #3 smartphone maker globally by shipments, and in some quarters, it briefly overtook Apple and Samsung in Europe.

Reinvention 4.0: Entering Electric Vehicles and Smart Mobility

In 2021, Xiaomi announced its entry into the electric vehicle (EV) market with a $10 billion commitment over 10 years. This move was more than diversification—it was a strategic leap into the future of mobility, data, and energy.

By 2024, Xiaomi had launched its first electric car, the Xiaomi SU7, under the newly formed Xiaomi EV unit. The car reflects the company’s core design philosophy: minimalist aesthetics, deep integration with mobile and AIoT ecosystems, and aggressive pricing. The SU7 was marketed not just as a vehicle, but as an extension of the Xiaomi smart life experience.

The EV venture leverages:

• Xiaomi’s AI and software expertise for autonomous driving
• Its hardware and supply chain scale to reduce production costs
• Existing user base and brand trust to drive adoption

It also aligns with broader macro trends—urbanization, climate action, and the digitalization of transportation.

External Drivers of Reinvention

Xiaomi’s ongoing transformation has been shaped by several major external forces:

1. Hyper-competition and commoditization in hardware
   As margins in smartphones shrank and rivals copied its playbook, Xiaomi had to move beyond hardware sales and find stickier, higher-margin business models.
2. Digital lifestyle convergence
   With consumers seeking seamless, multi-device experiences, Xiaomi saw an opportunity to build an integrated ecosystem around the phone as a central control hub.
3. Geopolitical uncertainty and supply chain risks
   US-China tensions, export restrictions, and supply chain disruptions pushed Xiaomi to diversify markets, source components flexibly, and innovate locally in global regions.
4. Sustainability and smart city demands
   As governments prioritize green tech and consumers seek efficient homes and mobility, Xiaomi’s expansion into energy-efficient appliances, wearables, and EVs positioned it to meet emerging needs.

Internal Enablers of Reinvention

Xiaomi’s reinvention capacity stems from several internal strengths:

• Founder-led vision: CEO Lei Jun has maintained a clear long-term vision while adapting tactics with agility. His “Triathlon Strategy” (Hardware + Internet Services + New Retail) guides Xiaomi’s evolution.
• Agile R&D and modular design: Xiaomi innovates quickly through a modular product architecture and rapid iteration cycles.
• Community-driven innovation: User feedback loops are built into product development, keeping the company close to its customer base.
• Asset-light ecosystem partnerships: Rather than build everything in-house, Xiaomi invests in or partners with specialized startups to expand its offerings while keeping capital efficiency high.

Financial and Strategic Impact

Xiaomi’s reinvention has yielded impressive results:

• 2023 Revenue: RMB 271 billion (~USD 39 billion)
• Net income: RMB 19.3 billion (~USD 2.8 billion)
• Smartphone shipments: Over 145 million globally
• AIoT device users: 655+ million
• EV business: Thousands of SU7 orders on launch, signaling strong demand

More importantly, Xiaomi has built a diversified business model:

• Smartphones and tablets (~60% of revenue)
• AIoT and lifestyle products (~20%)
• Internet services and advertising (~10%)
• EVs and smart mobility (early-stage but growing rapidly)

This diversification reduces risk, deepens customer engagement, and sets Xiaomi apart from hardware-centric rivals.

Shaping the Market and the Future

Xiaomi has redefined what it means to be a consumer electronics company in the 21st century. It is not just chasing device sales but designing an integrated “smart life” ecosystem—one that spans devices, data, services, and mobility.

Its ability to compete on price and innovation, reach massive scale quickly, and bridge the online and offline experience has reshaped expectations in the global tech market. In doing so, Xiaomi has blurred the lines between hardware maker, internet platform, and lifestyle brand.

Conclusion: The Power of Reinvention at Scale

Xiaomi’s journey from smartphone startup to global lifestyle tech ecosystem is a testament to the power of reinvention. The company has consistently responded to external challenges—not with retrenchment, but with reinvention. Each pivot has expanded its relevance, deepened its ecosystem, and unlocked new value.

With EVs, AIoT, and a growing global footprint, Xiaomi is positioning itself not just as a follower of trends, but as a creator of the future. Its story is a reminder that in a world of constant change, agility, ambition, and a willingness to rethink everything are the ultimate competitive advantages.

DSM: A Century of Reinvention and the Future of Health, Nutrition, and Bioscience

Royal DSM, originally founded in 1902 as a Dutch coal mining company (Dutch State Mines), is today a global leader in health, nutrition, and biosciences. Few companies in the world can claim a transformation as radical and complete as DSM’s—shifting from fossil fuels to specialty chemicals, then to life sciences and sustainable innovation. Its story is not just one of adaptation, but of strategic reinvention in anticipation of change—rooted in a long-term vision, guided by evolving societal needs, and executed with operational and cultural agility.

DSM’s journey over more than a century demonstrates how companies can navigate external disruption, internal complexity, and shifting stakeholder expectations. It’s also a case study in how to create value not by chasing trends, but by setting them—using science and purpose to shape markets and redefine industries.

The First Transformation: From Coal to Chemicals (1902–1960s)

DSM began as a state-owned coal mining operation in Limburg, the Netherlands. For the first half of the 20th century, it played a vital role in Dutch energy security and industrialization. But by the 1950s and 60s, the decline of coal as an energy source—and the discovery of natural gas in Groningen—forced the company to consider alternatives.

External drivers:

• The rise of oil and gas as dominant energy sources
• Government-led energy transitions in the Netherlands
• Environmental concerns and labor shifts in mining

Strategic response: DSM pivoted toward petrochemicals and fertilizers, using its infrastructure and industrial know-how to build a new base in bulk chemicals. This marked the company’s first major reinvention—from extraction to manufacturing.

The Second Transformation: Specialty Chemicals and Globalization (1970s–1990s)

As global competition increased and commodity chemicals became less profitable, DSM shifted again—this time into specialty chemicals and performance materials. It began divesting non-core businesses and reinvesting in higher-margin, higher-tech areas.

Internal drivers:

• A realization that scale was not DSM’s competitive advantage
• A new generation of leaders focused on R&D and value-added products

Strategic moves:

• Acquisitions in engineering plastics, resins, and elastomers
• Focus on advanced materials for automotive, electronics, and construction
• Greater investment in international markets beyond Europe

This phase helped DSM increase profitability and broaden its innovation footprint. But the company knew another shift was on the horizon—toward sustainability and life sciences.

The Third Transformation: Nutrition, Health, and Sustainable Innovation (2000s–2020s)

The most profound transformation in DSM’s history came in the early 2000s, under the leadership of CEO Feike Sijbesma. The company made the bold decision to pivot toward life sciences, human and animal nutrition, and sustainable materials—areas where science could create positive impact and long-term value.

This shift involved:

• Selling its petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals divisions
• Acquiring businesses in vitamins, enzymes, probiotics, and bio-based materials
• Reorganizing around the megatrends of health, food security, climate change, and circularity

DSM repositioned itself as a purpose-driven company: “Doing Something Meaningful.” Its new focus was on solving global challenges—malnutrition, aging populations, agricultural sustainability, and climate change—through bioscience and innovation.

Key External Drivers of DSM’s Latest Transformation

1. Sustainability and climate crisis
   The growing urgency of decarbonization and climate-resilient food systems pushed DSM to abandon fossil-based legacy businesses and invest in bio-based and circular technologies.
2. Health and wellness revolution
   Aging demographics, pandemic-related awareness, and rising consumer demand for personalized nutrition created massive new markets for health-focused ingredients.
3. Global food system challenges
   Food security, animal welfare, and antibiotic resistance reshaped the animal and human nutrition industries, requiring new solutions in feed, fortification, and precision fermentation.
4. Regulatory and investor pressure
   ESG requirements and sustainability-linked finance increased pressure on companies to align growth with impact. DSM was early to embrace carbon pricing, science-based targets, and integrated reporting.

How DSM Reinvented Its Business Model

DSM moved from being a diversified industrial conglomerate to a focused innovator in health and sustainability. Its business model now rests on three pillars:

1. Human Nutrition & Health
   Supplying vitamins, nutritional lipids (like omega-3), probiotics, and personalized nutrition solutions for food, beverages, and supplements. The company also uses digital diagnostics and apps to support tailored health outcomes.
2. Animal Nutrition & Health
   Creating feed additives, enzymes, and alternatives to antibiotics to improve livestock productivity and sustainability. DSM’s innovation here reduces methane emissions and improves animal welfare.
3. Health, Nutrition & Care
   Targeting specialty markets like early life nutrition, medical nutrition, and beauty-from-within products. This area leverages scientific R&D and partnerships in biotech and healthcare.

Internal Enablers of Transformation

DSM’s ability to reinvent itself consistently stems from key internal capabilities:

• Science and R&D focus
  With over 20% of revenues derived from products launched in the past five years, DSM places R&D at the core of its growth engine. It operates innovation hubs globally, collaborating with startups, universities, and governments.
• Cultural transformation and leadership
  DSM’s culture evolved under leaders like Feike Sijbesma and Geraldine Matchett, who championed inclusive capitalism, purpose-driven leadership, and long-term thinking. This mindset permeated hiring, incentives, and governance.
• Digital and data integration
  The company built digital tools for everything from smart farming and feed optimization to personalized wellness and consumer apps—embedding data into value creation.
• Sustainability as strategy
  DSM integrated sustainability into product development, portfolio management, and capital allocation. It was one of the first to apply an internal carbon price and link executive pay to ESG metrics.

Impact on Company Performance

DSM’s reinvention has paid off—financially, strategically, and reputationally.

• Consistent growth in EBITDA and margins, driven by higher-value products and services
• Stronger resilience during economic downturns, thanks to diversified health and nutrition offerings
• Increased market capitalization as investors valued its ESG alignment and innovation potential
• Top-tier ESG ratings from agencies like MSCI and Sustainalytics
• Global leadership in essential markets: DSM is a key supplier to companies like Nestlé, Unilever, Danone, and global pharmaceutical firms

DSM’s Merger with Firmenich: A New Chapter

In 2023, DSM merged with Firmenich, the Swiss fragrance and flavors company, to create DSM-Firmenich—a $12 billion company at the intersection of nutrition, scent, and bio-innovation. The move accelerates DSM’s reinvention by combining science, sensory experience, and sustainability.

This merger allows DSM to:

• Access high-growth markets in wellness, beauty, and sensory experiences
• Leverage Firmenich’s strengths in fragrance, natural ingredients, and consumer insight
• Broaden its biotechnology and fermentation platforms

The new DSM-Firmenich entity aims to shape the future of sustainable living—from what people eat and how they care for themselves, to the scents and sensations that define everyday life.

Shaping Markets and Industries

Through its reinvention, DSM has helped reshape entire sectors:

• Nutrition: DSM has advanced biofortification, tackled malnutrition through UN partnerships, and pioneered personalized nutrition.
• Agriculture: Its methane-reducing feed additive, Bovaer, has set a new global standard in livestock sustainability.
• Health: By integrating data, diagnostics, and supplementation, DSM is pushing health from treatment to prevention.
• Materials: It has divested petrochemicals but left a legacy of innovation in biodegradable plastics, bio-based resins, and climate-smart coatings.

Conclusion: A Blueprint for Long-Term Reinvention

DSM is a rare example of a company that has reinvented its core not once, but multiple times—each time guided by a clear view of future needs and societal impact. From coal to chemicals to life sciences and now to sensory innovation, DSM has turned disruption into opportunity through strategic foresight, science-led innovation, and purpose-driven leadership.

In a world marked by climate crisis, health challenges, and shifting values, DSM shows how companies can thrive by aligning performance with purpose. Reinvention is no longer optional—it is the strategy. And DSM is writing the playbook.

Schneider Electric: Reinventing a Legacy to Power the Future of Sustainability and Digitalization

Schneider Electric is one of the most enduring and dynamic examples of corporate reinvention in the modern industrial world. Founded in 1836 as a steel and heavy machinery manufacturer in France, it has evolved into a global leader in energy management, automation, and sustainability-focused digital solutions. Its transformation from a 19th-century industrial firm into a 21st-century technology and services powerhouse has been driven by a continuous response to megatrends such as decarbonization, digitization, urbanization, and the changing demands of customers and stakeholders.

Schneider’s story is not just one of strategic pivots, but of visionary leadership, bold acquisitions, internal culture shifts, and a commitment to making sustainability and digital innovation inseparable from business growth. Its ability to anticipate and embrace change has allowed it to shape industries, outperform competitors, and lead in areas where many incumbents have struggled to adapt.

Phase 1: Origins and Early Diversification (1836–1980s)

Schneider Electric began as a foundry and armaments manufacturer in Le Creusot, France. For over a century, it was deeply rooted in the traditional industrial economy—producing steel, locomotives, shipbuilding materials, and weapons. However, the decline of Europe’s heavy industry after World War II, coupled with decolonization and a global shift toward technology-driven economies, forced the company to rethink its future.

In the post-war period, Schneider began to diversify into electrical distribution and automation equipment. It acquired key companies in France such as Merlin Gerin (a leader in electrical distribution) and Telemecanique (specialized in industrial control systems), which would lay the foundation for its transformation.

Key external drivers at this stage:

• Deindustrialization of Western economies
• Emergence of electronics and automation
• Shifting energy infrastructure and urbanization

Phase 2: Strategic Focus on Energy and Automation (1990s–2000s)

In the 1990s, under CEO Didier Pineau-Valencienne and later Henri Lachmann, Schneider made a decisive break with its past. It sold off its steel, construction, and defense businesses to focus purely on energy management and automation. This focus reflected growing awareness of energy efficiency as a business imperative, and the increasing complexity of power systems across industrial, commercial, and residential environments.

Strategic moves:

• Acquisitions of Square D (USA), Lexel (Sweden), and Clipsal (Australia), establishing a truly global presence
• Building an integrated portfolio of low- and medium-voltage products, circuit breakers, and control systems
• Early bets on digitization of electrical infrastructure and automation

By the early 2000s, Schneider was transforming from a hardware manufacturer into a provider of integrated energy solutions. Its ambition was not just to sell products, but to help customers manage energy better—reducing waste, improving efficiency, and lowering costs.

Phase 3: Digital + Electric = The New Schneider (2006–2020)

The arrival of Jean-Pascal Tricoire as CEO in 2006 marked the beginning of Schneider’s most radical and successful reinvention: the fusion of digitization and electrification. Tricoire recognized early that the convergence of IT and operational technology (OT), combined with the rise of renewable energy and the urgent need for sustainability, would redefine the company’s future.

Schneider repositioned itself not as an industrial player, but as a digital partner for sustainability and efficiency. This meant embedding intelligence into every device, system, and process Schneider touched—from smart buildings and factories to data centers, power grids, and homes.

Key internal and external drivers:

• Climate change and decarbonization mandates
• Global energy transition and electrification of everything
• Digital transformation of industrial operations (Industry 4.0)
• The rise of smart cities, IoT, and AI in infrastructure

Strategic Acquisitions and Technological Integration

To accelerate this shift, Schneider made a series of bold acquisitions:

• Telvent (2011): Strengthened capabilities in smart grid and infrastructure software.
• Invensys (2014): A game-changing move that gave Schneider deep process automation and industrial software capabilities, including Wonderware and Foxboro.
• Aveva (majority stake in 2018): Enabled Schneider to create a powerful industrial software platform by integrating data, design, simulation, and operational intelligence.
• EcoStruxure (platform launched in 2016): A foundational architecture that brings together IoT, analytics, and cybersecurity to optimize energy use and automation systems across sectors.

These moves repositioned Schneider as a hybrid of industrial company and software company—able to offer end-to-end solutions that combined hardware, software, and services.

Sustainability as a Core Business Strategy

Perhaps Schneider’s most visionary reinvention has been its embrace of sustainability as a business model, not just a compliance goal. Long before ESG became mainstream, Schneider aligned its growth with environmental and social outcomes.

Key initiatives:

• Set aggressive net-zero and science-based targets
• Developed tools to help clients decarbonize—such as Schneider Sustainability Consulting and its energy-as-a-service offering
• Pioneered Green Premium™ labeling for eco-designed products
• Linked executive compensation and financial products to sustainability performance

In 2021 and 2022, Schneider was named the world’s most sustainable corporation by Corporate Knights, recognizing its leadership in climate action, energy efficiency, and inclusive growth.

Business Impact and Market Performance

Schneider Electric’s strategic reinvention has translated into strong business outcomes:

• Revenue: Over €36 billion in 2023, with strong growth in digital services, software, and electrification
• Global presence: Operations in 100+ countries; significant growth in Asia, North America, and Africa
• Recurring revenue streams: Shift from one-time product sales to recurring digital services and software subscriptions
• Industry leadership: Recognized as a leader in energy management systems, building automation, and industrial digitization

By creating a value chain that integrates customers’ economic, environmental, and operational goals, Schneider has become indispensable to companies seeking to transition to net-zero and future-proof their operations.

Shaping Markets and Setting the Agenda

Schneider Electric’s reinvention has not only transformed its own trajectory—it has also reshaped markets:

• Energy Management: By pushing energy efficiency and digital power, Schneider has made energy visible, measurable, and controllable, transforming how buildings, factories, and cities use energy.
• Industrial Automation: With digital twins, predictive maintenance, and real-time monitoring, Schneider has helped usher in Industry 4.0 and the future of smart manufacturing.
• Buildings and Infrastructure: Schneider is helping redefine construction and urban planning by embedding intelligence and sustainability from the ground up—reducing emissions and improving quality of life.
• Sustainability Services: The company is now a trusted partner in ESG transformation, helping global giants decarbonize operations and navigate complex sustainability reporting.

Cultural Transformation and Leadership

Schneider’s reinvention has been underpinned by a deliberate cultural shift:

• A decentralized model with “local empowerment, global impact”
• Investment in diversity, equity, and inclusion, becoming a top employer in multiple countries
• A strong emphasis on continuous learning, digital skills, and innovation at scale
• Leadership that is long-term oriented, stakeholder-driven, and values-led

Jean-Pascal Tricoire’s tenure has been marked by humility, strategic foresight, and a strong belief in business as a force for good—qualities that have become embedded in Schneider’s DNA.

Conclusion: A Blueprint for Reinvention in the Digital and Sustainable Age

Schneider Electric’s transformation from an old-world industrial manufacturer into a global leader in sustainability and digital transformation offers a masterclass in corporate reinvention. Its journey has been defined not by reactive change, but by proactive, strategic reinvention in anticipation of what the world would need next.

It saw the future coming—electrified, digitized, decentralized, and decarbonized—and reshaped itself to lead in that future. Today, Schneider is not just managing energy and automation. It’s empowering the future—a future that is smarter, cleaner, and more resilient.

In an era of relentless change, Schneider Electric proves that legacy is not a limitation. It can be a launchpad—for the next great transformation.

Reliance Industries: Reinventing India’s Industrial Powerhouse for the Digital and Green Era

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) stands as one of the most powerful examples of business reinvention in the global South. From its origins as a textile company in the 1960s, RIL has continuously evolved—expanding from petrochemicals to refining, from telecom to retail, and now into digital platforms, green energy, and advanced technologies. At each inflection point, Reliance has leveraged its core strengths—financial acumen, execution scale, and strategic foresight—to reshape its identity, address India’s emerging needs, and influence global markets.

Under the visionary leadership of founder Dhirubhai Ambani and later his son Mukesh Ambani, Reliance has transitioned from a manufacturing-led conglomerate to a platform-based ecosystem business, aligned with the megatrends of digitalization, decarbonization, and domestic consumption. Its capacity for reinvention has made it a bellwether for India’s economic trajectory and an influential player in global business strategy.

Foundations: The Polyester and Petrochemicals Era (1960s–1990s)

Reliance began in 1966 as a small textile manufacturer under the brand “Vimal,” producing polyester fabrics for India’s growing middle class. Recognizing the need to secure upstream integration and cost control, Dhirubhai Ambani steered the company into petrochemicals—a move that laid the groundwork for a vertically integrated business model.

By the 1980s and 1990s, Reliance had built the largest polyester and fiber intermediates capacity in India. It expanded into refining and petrochemicals, establishing the Jamnagar Refinery in Gujarat—the world’s largest refinery complex—with a capacity to process over 1.2 million barrels of crude oil per day.

Key drivers of early transformation:

• India’s growing demand for synthetic fabrics and energy
• Government incentives for industrialization
• Ambani’s ability to mobilize capital through public markets and build massive infrastructure rapidly

Reliance became synonymous with Indian industrial ambition—delivering scale, cost leadership, and self-reliance across the petrochemical value chain.

Phase 2: From Industrial Giant to Consumer Powerhouse (2000s–2015)

As India’s economy liberalized and its middle class expanded, Reliance recognized the opportunity to diversify into consumer-facing sectors—particularly telecom, retail, and digital services. This marked a pivot from B2B and industrial sectors toward B2C growth platforms.

Telecom Foray – The Birth of Reliance Infocomm: In 2002, RIL launched Reliance Infocomm, offering affordable mobile services and pushing digital connectivity as a mass-market utility. Although the initial venture was separated during the Ambani family demerger in 2005, the ambition to dominate telecom and digital services remained.

Retail Expansion: In 2006, Reliance entered organized retail through Reliance Retail, targeting food, grocery, electronics, fashion, and lifestyle. This move was visionary—India’s retail sector was largely unorganized, and the growing middle class created a demand for better service, quality, and price.

Internal drivers:

• Long-term commitment to vertical integration and value chain control
• A culture of bold, high-capex bets with a long-term payback period
• Talent recruitment from global best-in-class companies
• Use of data and logistics to manage massive scale

By 2015, Reliance had created India’s largest retail network by revenue and store count, demonstrating its capacity to execute at national scale in a new sector.

Phase 3: Digital Reinvention with Jio (2016–2020)

Perhaps the most dramatic reinvention of Reliance came with the launch of Jio in 2016, which redefined not only the company, but India’s digital economy.

Reliance Jio Infocomm disrupted the telecom market by offering free voice calls and low-cost high-speed data to hundreds of millions. This forced incumbents to consolidate or exit, and catapulted India to become the world’s largest consumer of mobile data.

Jio was more than a telecom service—it was the foundation for a digital ecosystem, including:

• JioFiber (home broadband)
• JioCinema, JioTV (entertainment and OTT)
• JioMart (e-commerce)
• JioMeet, JioSaavn, JioChat, and more

External drivers of Jio’s launch:

• Explosion of smartphone adoption in India
• Government push for Digital India and financial inclusion
• Pent-up demand for affordable, high-speed connectivity
• Global investor interest in India’s digital growth story

Impact:

• Jio gained over 400 million users in four years
• India’s data prices dropped to among the lowest globally
• Enabled a surge in digital services, e-commerce, fintech, and content platforms
• Attracted over $20 billion in investment from global giants (Facebook, Google, Silver Lake) into Jio Platforms in 2020

Through Jio, Reliance reinvented itself as a technology-driven platform company, with ambitions to rival global tech firms in a uniquely Indian context.

Phase 4: The Green Energy Pivot (2021–Present)

In 2021, Reliance announced its most recent—and potentially most transformative—reinvention: a $75 billion commitment to clean energy. Recognizing the global and domestic shift toward decarbonization, Mukesh Ambani declared Reliance’s intention to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2035 and become a global leader in the energy transition.

The Reliance New Energy initiative includes:

• Gigafactories for solar PV modules, hydrogen electrolysers, fuel cells, and energy storage in Jamnagar
• Partnerships with global cleantech firms (e.g., REC Solar, Stiesdal, Faradion)
• Investment in green hydrogen, EV battery storage, and advanced materials
• Integration of digital capabilities into energy optimization and grid intelligence

External drivers:

• Climate change and global net-zero goals
• India’s renewable energy targets and clean energy demand
• Geopolitical shifts away from fossil fuel dependence
• Investor interest in ESG and green innovation

Internal drivers:

• Vision to stay ahead of the global energy curve
• Leverage financial strength to fund massive green infrastructure
• Use of scale and supply chain control to reduce clean energy costs in India

This pivot mirrors earlier transformations—only now, Reliance is applying its model of vertical integration and national-scale ambition to climate action and sustainable innovation.

Strategic Themes Behind Reliance’s Reinvention

1. Visionary Leadership
   Both Dhirubhai and Mukesh Ambani have shown the ability to anticipate change, bet on future growth engines, and mobilize capital and talent accordingly.
2. Execution at Scale
   Reliance excels at turning bold ideas into large, integrated operations—whether in refining, retail, telecom, or green energy.
3. Platform Thinking
   With Jio and retail, Reliance built ecosystems, not just standalone businesses—linking services, infrastructure, and consumer touchpoints.
4. Vertical Integration
   From polyester to solar, Reliance controls upstream, midstream, and downstream components to reduce costs and capture margin.
5. Global-Local Synergy
   Reliance combines global best practices and partnerships with deep knowledge of Indian consumers, logistics, and regulation.

Impact on Company Performance and Market Leadership

• Market Cap: Reliance is India’s most valuable company, with a market cap exceeding $220 billion (as of early 2025).
• Revenue Diversification: While legacy refining and petrochemicals remain important, digital and retail now contribute over 50% of operating profit.
• Employment and Innovation: Over 350,000 employees and a growing investment in R&D, cleantech, and digital platforms.
• Shaping Markets: Reliance has reshaped telecom pricing, digitized retail supply chains, catalyzed a start-up ecosystem, and now leads India’s green energy narrative.

Conclusion: Reinvention as a National and Global Force

Reliance Industries’ journey is more than a business transformation—it is a reflection of India’s own evolution from a manufacturing-led to a services- and technology-driven economy. Through every phase of disruption—be it economic liberalization, the digital revolution, or the climate imperative—Reliance has reinvented its role from industrial operator to ecosystem builder and platform orchestrator.

Its ability to embrace long-term vision, deploy capital strategically, build new capabilities, and drive systemic impact makes Reliance one of the most compelling examples of continuous reinvention in the 21st-century business landscape. As the world transitions toward a digital and sustainable future, Reliance is positioning itself not just to follow the curve—but to shape it.

Fujifilm: A Masterclass in Strategic Reinvention

Fujifilm’s transformation from a traditional photographic film company into a diversified technology and healthcare enterprise is one of the most compelling reinvention stories in business history. While many of its peers, including its iconic American rival Kodak, failed to adapt to the decline of analog photography, Fujifilm embraced change head-on. It recognized the inevitability of digital disruption early and proactively reinvented itself—leveraging its core technologies to enter and lead new industries. This story is not only about survival but about bold vision, strategic diversification, and a relentless focus on innovation and long-term value creation.

Origins in Photography: The Film Era (1934–1990s)

Founded in 1934 as Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., the company initially focused on producing photographic films and materials for Japan’s burgeoning consumer and professional imaging markets. Throughout the 20th century, Fujifilm became a dominant global player in the photographic industry, building expertise in film, optical devices, photo processing, and medical imaging.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Fujifilm held a significant market share worldwide and competed directly with Kodak. It developed a strong reputation for quality, innovation, and reliability. Its revenues were heavily reliant on the analog photography business, which was highly profitable at the time.

However, signs of disruption began to appear in the 1990s, as digital cameras and digital imaging technology emerged. While Kodak had pioneered some of this technology, it remained too committed to protecting its film profits. Fujifilm took a radically different path.

The Digital Disruption Wake-Up Call

The late 1990s marked the beginning of the end for traditional photographic film. As digital imaging gained traction, consumer preferences shifted rapidly. Smartphone cameras, online photo sharing, and digital printing meant fewer people needed to buy film rolls, and traditional photo printing volumes plummeted.

Fujifilm’s leadership, particularly then-CEO Shigetaka Komori, recognized this threat early and with clear-eyed realism. Internally, Komori conducted a detailed scenario analysis that showed the company’s core film business would eventually disappear. Instead of resisting the inevitable, Fujifilm made bold and deliberate moves to diversify, restructure, and reimagine its future.

Strategic Reinvention: “Second Foundation” Strategy

Komori launched a sweeping transformation initiative in the early 2000s, often referred to as Fujifilm’s “Second Foundation.” This reinvention was based on three major strategic thrusts:

1. Diversification through Core Capabilities
   Fujifilm had built deep scientific knowledge in areas such as collagen, nanotechnology, chemical synthesis, and imaging—all originally used for film production. Instead of letting these capabilities wither, Fujifilm applied them to new fields. This led to:

• Entry into pharmaceuticals and cosmeceuticals
• Development of advanced materials for electronics
• Growth in medical systems, such as digital X-ray diagnostics and endoscopy

• Digital Imaging and Printing
  Rather than abandoning imaging altogether, Fujifilm invested heavily in digital photography, software, and high-end printing technologies. It moved from film rolls to mirrorless digital cameras (such as the popular X-series), professional imaging systems, and digital photo printing platforms.
• Aggressive Restructuring and M&A
  Komori led a painful but necessary internal restructuring:

 

• Closure of unprofitable film factories
• Layoffs and reallocation of talent to growth divisions
• Major investments in R&D and M&A

A pivotal moment came in 2006, when Fujifilm acquired Toyama Chemical and Daiichi Sankyo’s diagnostics division, paving the way for a full-fledged entry into healthcare and life sciences.

External and Internal Drivers of Transformation

External Drivers:

• Technological Disruption: Digital imaging technologies eliminated the need for analog film.
• Changing Consumer Behavior: Smartphones and online platforms redefined how people capture and share memories.
• Demographics and Healthcare Needs: Japan’s aging population created demand for medical diagnostics, elder care, and pharmaceuticals.
• Environmental Pressures: Increasing regulation and awareness around sustainable practices necessitated cleaner technologies.

Internal Drivers:

• Leadership Vision: Komori’s clarity and decisiveness were instrumental in making bold changes before crisis hit.
• R&D Culture: Fujifilm consistently invested 6-7% of revenue in R&D, fostering a deep well of innovation capacity.
• Organizational Resilience: The company cultivated a culture that embraced reinvention, retrained workers, and repurposed assets.
• Cross-Domain Leverage: Scientists and engineers collaborated across business units, applying film technologies to new domains like skincare or semiconductor materials.

New Growth Engines

1. Healthcare and Life Sciences

Today, healthcare is one of Fujifilm’s most promising businesses. It spans:

• Medical Systems: Leading in digital radiography, CT, and endoscopy.
• Biologics Manufacturing: Through Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, the company is a top contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) for biologics and vaccines.
• Regenerative Medicine: Investing in stem cell therapies and regenerative tissue.
• COVID-19 Response: Fujifilm’s antiviral drug Avigan was tested globally as a potential treatment for COVID-19.

2. Cosmetics

Leveraging its collagen research, Fujifilm launched the Astalift cosmetics line. It combined nanotechnology and antioxidant know-how with brand credibility in science and precision—positioning itself as a high-end skincare brand in Asia.

3. Advanced Materials and Imaging Solutions

Fujifilm now supplies cutting-edge materials used in:

• Semiconductors (photoresists, color filters)
• Flat-panel displays
• High-performance films for solar cells and batteries

Meanwhile, in imaging, it has carved out niches in high-end mirrorless cameras, instant photography (Instax), and professional photo labs.

Impact on Performance and Market Perception

Despite the near-collapse of its legacy film business, Fujifilm emerged as a highly diversified, profitable, and future-oriented company. Key results of its reinvention include:

• Sustainable Revenue Mix: By 2023, over 85% of revenues came from non-film businesses, including healthcare, imaging, and materials.
• Resilient Growth: Even during global downturns, healthcare and electronics segments provided counter-cyclical strength.
• Global Recognition: Fujifilm is now seen as a leader in biopharma manufacturing, medical imaging, and niche consumer electronics.
• Brand Renewal: Its transformation revitalized its image—not just as a camera company, but as a science-driven innovator.

Lessons in Strategic Reinvention

Fujifilm’s transformation offers timeless lessons for leaders navigating disruptive change:

1. Don’t Cling to the Past
   Rather than defending a dying business, Fujifilm proactively invested in the future—even when it meant disrupting itself.
2. Build on Core Capabilities
   The reinvention wasn’t a leap into unknown territory. It was a reapplication of deep scientific know-how to new markets.
3. Balance Vision with Execution
   Komori combined bold strategic moves with disciplined cost management, restructuring, and long-term investment.
4. Innovate Beyond the Obvious
   Cosmetics and biologics weren’t obvious adjacencies for a film company—but they became major growth areas.
5. Organize for Resilience
   By decentralizing R&D and fostering a flexible, entrepreneurial culture, Fujifilm encouraged cross-functional innovation.

Conclusion: From Film to the Future

Fujifilm’s journey from analog film to healthcare, biotechnology, digital imaging, and advanced materials is not just a story of diversification—it is a blueprint for reinvention in the age of disruption. By embracing change early, leveraging internal strengths, and investing in long-term innovation, Fujifilm didn’t just survive the digital revolution—it shaped entirely new markets.

In an era where many companies face accelerating disruption from AI, climate change, and geopolitical volatility, Fujifilm stands as proof that bold, science-led reinvention is not only possible—it’s the path to enduring relevance.