Follow the Signals to prosperity

Just as our vision of society has been transformed by the pandemic, so have the ways companies operate as they confront the massive challenges it has created.

Change is everywhere: business models have been reinvented, supply chains have been restructured, and scientific breakthroughs have been realised at breath-taking speed.

But only by having a clear grasp of the opportunities that change can offer can businesses take full advantage of the new market emerging from crisis.

Therefore, understanding what is changing and why is critically important if businesses are to rethink their role for a profoundly different tomorrow.

The future is now

Leading businesses are increasingly looking ahead for strategic insights to anticipate dramatic changes in markets and working patterns-what Accenture calls “Learning From the Future”.

Superior forward-looking capabilities driven by data, analytics and artificial intelligence create opportunities to capture unforeseen opportunities and prepare for unexpected risks.

Empowered by remote working, leading companies are also engineering internal changes by rethinking hierarchies, shifting power to networked autonomous teams at their “edges”.

Many organisations are building sustainability and social responsibility into their operational fabric, thereby discovering the power of purpose. For those that struggle to match rhetoric with results-what we call the “intention-delivery” gap-the pressure to act will only intensify as stakeholders hold them to account.

Supply chains play a critical role in sustainability, and leading organisations are moving production to the point of demand with massive potential for reductions in carbon footprints.

Another sign of change is the proliferation of virtual environments — ”real virtualities” blending virtual and physical worlds-which create new ways to work, consume, and socialise.

Such innovations reflect a more profound application of scientific methods as the pandemic places scientific innovation firmly back at the top of the agenda.

Embrace change

All these signs of change abound, and offer critical lessons for the new era. But businesses must be bold.

To “Learn from the Future,” they must consider the wider analytical potential of data, and organisations must go “flat” by shifting away from conventional hierarchies towards networked structures.

They must put value on purpose, radically redesign existing supply chains and infrastructure, and blend the virtual and real worlds.

And scientific disruption demands that they completely reimagine the design-build-test-learn cycle to use digital and AI for better outcomes.

These diverse changes speak to a single, common theme: the embrace of a new sense of responsibility founded upon sustainability.

Today, that is the only viable pathway to growth.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.