The Future of Business - A Checklist for Tomorrow

As the global pace of change accelerates, there are multiple and concurrent issues, trends, forces, developments, and ideas that could shape society, government, the economy, the role of science and technology and the way we think. 

Across the 60 chapters of our recent book on The Future of Business, a total of 62 contributors from 22 countries highlighted the resulting implications for business and the critical questions leaders should be asking themselves as they seek to map a path to tomorrow - what are the priority drivers of change we should focus on?

For most of us, the first step is to boil all these critical drivers down into a list of key developments that we are more than likely going to have to deal with in the next one to five years – depending on how fast they might impact our sector, the extent to which we want to get ahead of or alongside the front edge of change and how quickly we choose to act. To get you started, here we highlight 20 such developments that we think businesses of every size will need to face up to as they chart their course to tomorrow.

Strategic Management

1.   Cognitive dissonance - long term vs. right here, right now – Many leaders are challenged with how to deal with a growing leadership juggling act. On the one hand, they clearly see radical changes taking place and a very different future emerging. However, on the ground this isn’t always reflected in the immediate requests coming from customers. They also know from experience that the change starts off imperceptibly slowly at first and then take off can often happen very fast. This tension between focusing on the here and now and allocating time and resource to an uncertain future is likely to grow rapidly. Developing the capacity to lead in this “new normal” will become a critical priority – learning how to balance the “urgency of now” with the “importance of next”. 

2.   Future awareness - the smart, the smug and the humble – Businesses typically fall into three categories when it comes to future readiness. Some organizations and their leaders can rightly be proud of their level of awareness about the factors that might shape their world in the coming years and they are prepared for a range of possible scenarios. They have strategies that can kick in if the economy suddenly nosedives or if growth opportunities develop faster than expected. The second group are happy to rest on their laurels, believing that they are bulletproof, that their offerings are always going to be in demand and that their client relationships are cast in stone. This group are often the slowest to respond to change and feel the most negative impacts when it happens, as they are least prepared for it. 

The final group are honest enough to say they are uncertain about what might happen next, how change might impact them or how to prepare for future uncertainty. Knowing where you stand is a critical start point. The next step is to ensure that across the organization, leaders and managers are investing their own time and encouraging their staff to scan the horizon, read about impending changes and think about possible implications and responses. If they lead by example, their teams will follow.

3.   Starting from zero – In the past, companies might have started their annual planning knowing that at least some proportion of our business was repeatable and they would see recurring revenues in the year ahead. However, in many cases, contracts are shortening, retainer relationships are being dissolved and organizations are having to start from zero when analysing where next year’s revenues might come from. Budgeting from zero is a mindset and capability that needs to be developed across the business. At one extreme, this is driving firms to reduce headcount and adopt a more contingent workforce model, at the other we are seeing innovative strategies to try and lock-in longer term customer commitments. 

4.   Exponential organizations – The idea of driving exponential or bigger improvement at speed is going to capture attention across the board. Most commentators focus on the big technology-enabled examples e.g. AirBnB handling 90 times more bedrooms per employee than the typical hotel group or Local Motors generating new car designs for its 3D printed Strati 1000 times cheaper than the average car manufacturer. However, equally attractive are the simple innovations that can deliver rapid improvements – such as airports introducing parallel loading bays at security checkpoints to double or treble the flow of passengers. Leaders will be expected to encourage the pursuit of exponential gains and lead by example in the search for opportunities. 

5.   Ecosystem thinking – Faced with the complexity of modern business, rapidly changing markets, short-lived opportunities, and exponential rates of development in technology, firms have little choice but to work with a network of external partners. This helps both to absorb the constant onslaught of change and provide the capacity to respond faster. A mindset shift is taking place from “not invented here” to “who can do it better, cheaper and faster”. To make these ecosystem models work, there is critical requirement to develop leaders, managers, and staff with a collaborative mindset and a willingness to share, learn and create solutions in partnership rather than through dictat.

Societal Shifts

6.   Brokenomics / economic warfare – stuck in the middle – There is a growing awareness that the economic, financial and monetary control systems that govern our world have become overly complex and unworkable. Many have been extended long beyond their useful life and represent a source of significant risk. Emerging risks include an estimated US$4 quadrillion in derivative contracts (the global economy is about US$78 trillion), seemingly non-viable pension systems, and personal, corporate and government debt obligations collectively running at many times global GDP. In the face of these potential time bombs, our governance mechanisms no longer seem fit for purpose. At the same time, more nationalistic political agendas are emerging around the world and could drive intense economic warfare. Firms already find themselves stuck in the middle and increasingly coming under government pressure to invest locally rather internationally. Robust scenario planning and a rapid execution capability are both vital in these circumstances. The former can help explore the possibilities and map out the options, the latter can help reduce the time to value and avoid projects being stuck in limbo.

7.   Gagging on green – Firms may find it an increasing challenge to honour their environmental targets in an uncertain commercial landscape. Failure to do so could be reputationally damaging. Some are adopting the policy of pushing the responsibility to suppliers – demanding that they meet both cost and environmental requirements in order to win supply contracts. Others may increasingly seek low or no-cost ideas from staff that can be actioned with little capital outlay.

8.   Facts as an art form – the post-truth society – Terms like “alternative facts” and the “post truth society” have entered our vocabularies and the concern is that it will require sophisticated AI to fact check everything before we accept something as true. At one level, these terms are amusing descriptions of a culture where for some, the “facts” and what is said or shared are distant relatives. At a deeper level, they highlight an erosion of trust in the veracity of what governments, businesses, public agencies, the media, and fellow citizens are saying. As individuals, we crave honesty and naturally favour organizations that we trust inherently. This offers a critical future opportunity for firms to differentiate themselves because of their commitment to radical honesty.

Digital Choices

9.   Artificial intelligence vs. genuine stupidity – Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer the stuff of science fiction. From airline autopilots to smartphones and call centre chatbots to automated legal contract generation – the technology is firmly embedded in society and its scope, functionality and processing power is increasing. Sadly, many in positions of power are refusing to invest the time to understand how AI could transform their business and generate new market opportunities. Under the guise of pragmatism and risk avoidance, they are actually putting the future of their business at risk. Even carving out a small amount of time to understand the technology, how it is being applied and what it could mean for your sector could help you form a perspective on how and when to approach it.

10.   Hooked on transformation and the race to obsolescence – It is not uncommon for large firms to be investing hundreds of millions of pounds on digital transformation projects. For many, they are playing catch-up and following the prescriptions of advisers who are promoting similar strategies to their competitors. The danger here is that the faster we automate, the easier it is to copy what we do and the harder it is to sustain a point of digital differentiation for any length of time. The risk is that many are locked in a race to the bottom – commoditising their offering and potentially sowing the seeds of their own demise. A vital role here for leaders is to challenge those involved to explain how the outcomes will help us stand out and enable us to be more innovative and responsive than competitors pursuing a similar path.

11.   Born digital and hollow – An increasing number of new businesses are adopting a very lean resourcing model – automating wherever possible from the outset in their pursuit of exponential growth and the much coveted billion-dollar “Unicorn” valuation. Indeed, we will see a proliferation of so called Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), for example, that exist only in software and literally have no employees. There is a critical and continuous conversation required on how to monitor the entirely digital entities we create and how to ensure that somewhere in the system the organization has sufficient human talent with the capacity to spot emerging changes, risks and opportunities and respond innovatively.

12.   I serve the system – no human to turn to – One of the most soul withering phrases we hear today is “I’m sorry, the system won’t let me do that.” As we automate more and place increasing authority in the hands of technology, leaders have to be mindful of what this could do to brand identity and public discourse about us in social channels. Firms will need to make clear choices over the extent to which they will allow humans to exercise discretion in the service of the customer, what our back up plan is when the technology fails in a highly-automated system, and whether there are differentiation opportunities in having a more human face to the business.

13.   Surveillance capitalism – As individuals we are becoming ever more willing to both give away our personal data and to allow firms to see the content of our social media, emails and online searches. The firms that provide these “free” services can extract valuable data from our activity which can be resold and used to target us more effectively. Some suggest that by using predictive analytics and machine learning tools to analyze between 64 and 200 of the items we like on Facebook, a detailed profile can be developed of everything from our likely purchasing behaviour to what we might watch and our voting intentions. This notion of “surveillance capitalism” is likely to increase in the coming years. As businesses, we need to decide the extent to which we’ll try to extract commercial value from our customer data and whether we’ll look to protect ourselves from others’ exploiting the data we have provided.

People and the Workplace

14.   Swarm organizations – For firms cutting back to the barest minimum of human resources, they are increasingly likely to adopt an accelerated “swarm resourcing” concept to respond to new opportunities. The model is based on the approach favoured by film producers - pulling together teams for critical projects on demand - drawing on contractors, partners, agencies, staff on zero hour contracts, and internal resources. The core challenges here are getting the team formed, bonded, up to speed, aligned, and functional in the shortest possible time and having the right internal capability and management processes to support such an approach.

15.   Privacy vs. performance in the always-on society – A range of workplace cameras, motion monitoring devices, sensors, and wearable technologies mean that – when coupled with data from employees’ mobile devices, laptops and desktops – we will increasingly be able to monitor literally every employee all the time. Some firms are already monitoring factors such as concentration, reading rates and typing speeds to assess employee productivity. There are obvious benefits to be gained from constantly tracking the health, wellbeing and productivity of employees. Businesses will need to decide whether this constitutes an infringement of rights or an invasion of privacy and what the implications might be for employee motivation and corporate reputation when adopting such “big brother” surveillance tactics. 

16.   Alpha male vs. embracing the feminine – As firms automate and become more numbers-focused and control-orientated in their thinking and management structures, there is a feeling that this could drive out essential feminine traits that can differentiate us in the marketplace. While the issue of gender balance itself will undoubtedly persist for some time to come as firms fail to take full advantage of available talent, concern is also now over the loss of feminine traits that help define our culture and distinguish our brand in the marketplace. Leaders will need to pay serious attention to the challenge of ensuring that crucial feminine factors such as culture, connection, serendipity, empathy, and compassion don’t get devalued or eliminated as we pursue efficiency and give greater agency to the machine. 

17.   Human augmentation – The trend towards people enhancing their brains and bodies is only likely to accelerate. Over the next five years it will be increasingly commonplace for people to use “nootropic” drugs and supplements to enhance their cognitive capacity. This will be happening alongside the use of genetic modification techniques to change everything from eye colour and hair thickness to skin pigmentation. Similarly, the use of exoskeletons, 3D printed body parts and super smart materials will also enable physical augmentations that make us stronger, faster and less susceptible to pain. The age of the superhuman is beginning and leaders and HR need to think about the pros of cons of encouraging such practices and addressing their potential impact across the organization. 

18.   Always on the way-out and something on the side – Someone entering the workforce at the age of 18 today could easily live to 100 and do anywhere from 20 to 40 jobs in that time – if they are still working at all in 50 year’s time. Hence, new employees will always have an eye to the next job and many will be pursuing side-businesses – hopefully in their spare time. While such entrepreneurialism is increasingly encouraged, firms are going to be challenged to find ways of motivating and getting the full commitment of people who are “always on the way out” from the day they arrive. 

19.   Workplace stress – Each successive wave of workplace research suggests that stress levels are rising and leading to unhealthy, unproductive and potentially dysfunctional behaviours. Mindfulness meditation, yoga, sleep advice, dietary improvements, and regular health checks can help mitigate stress. However, the real answer lies in radical shifts in the way we run our businesses, set personal targets, measure performance, and manage people. Those firms which have the courage to pursue a different approach and offer an alternative, less damaging path to success could find themselves in greater demand as employers. 

20.   A very human business – As a direct response to many of the forces outlined above, there are a growing number of businesses which are deliberately swimming against the tide and genuinely putting people at the heart of their strategies. While they are still using technology, it is seen as a productivity aid that helps free up the time of smart people to engage more deeply with customers, develop new strategies, be creative, experiment, and build more sustainable points of difference that are embedded in people not technology. 

Rohit Talwar is a global futurist, keynote speaker and the CEO of Fast Future Publishing where he is applying the principles of exponential thinking to create a new model for publishing. Rohit works with clients around the world to help them understand, anticipate and respond to the forces of change reshaping business and the global economy. He has a particular interest in Artificial Intelligence and is the editor and contributing author for a recently published book on The Future of Business, editor of Technology vs. Humanity and co-editor of a forthcoming book on The Future of AI Business.

Fast Future Publishing is a fast track publishing firm which produces books from future thinkers around the world. These books explore how developments such as AI and robotics could transform existing industries, create new trillion-dollar sectors, reinvent businesses and transform society over the next decade. See: www.fastfuturepublishing.com

Other recent articles by Rohit:

• Today's children could live to 120 and work to 100, what's all the fuss?
• Artificial Intelligence and the exponential growth opportunity for accounting firms
• Unleashing the true potential of AI - building the exponential law firm
• Healthcare Embraces Artificial Intelligence