Disruption is the New Normal
At one time, business growth was predictable and followed a linear path, with few disruptions.
However, the business landscape has changed tremendously over the last decades. Even before the
pandemic, companies were transitioning from old world practices to new world realities.
Bottom line: Volatility is here to stay and businesses - large and small – must embrace a constant state
of experimentation, iteration and change. More insights on disruption can be found in the article
below.
Every Company is a Tech Company Now. The Disruption is Just Beginning 1
BY EDWARD FELSENTHAL Editor-in-Chief and CEO of TIME
APRIL 27, 2021 6:23 AM EDT
In March 2020, as businesses across the world sent non-essential workers home to slow the
spread of the coronavirus, a 2.6 million-sq.-ft. General Motors plant in Kokomo, Ind., sat idle.
At the same time, ventilators—the breathing machines essential to keeping critically ill COVID19 patients alive—were in frighteningly short supply. And so within a week of pausing the
plant’s operations, GM CEO, Mary Barro, launched it back into action, quickly transforming a
dormant engineering building into an assembly line that delivered 30,000 ventilators in five
months.
Barra says that approach, incubated in the crisis of the pandemic, is now a permanent cultural
shift that has already led to faster timetables for GM’s bet-the-company push to sell only
electric vehicles by 2035. “Now as we approach different projects, we say, ‘You know, we’ve
got to go at ventilator speed because we know we have the capability to do that,’” Barra says.
Amid the disruption, pain and loss of 2020, the global pandemic provided a rare window into
the future of business as it unfolded in real time. As governments in the U.S. and elsewhere
stumbled, business loomed larger than ever: developing vaccines at record speed; providing
the technology that enabled remote school and work; and keeping millions of people fed,
clothed, entertained and in touch with ramped-up digital services.
The scope and speed of change was unprecedented, accelerating digital adaptation by as much
as five years in a 12-month period. Disruption ruled, as legacy companies imploded. Everything
that could be digitized was, from education and exercise to currency and cars. Nearly every
business has become a tech business, one reason stocks have soared even as the pandemic
devastated lives and livelihoods across the globe. Meanwhile, inequality also soared: almost 1
in 8 American adults reported that their household didn’t have enough to eat as 2020 headed
toward its close; 9 million U.S. small-business owners fear their companies will close by the end
of 2021. This too tells a story about the future of business.
We’re in the midst of a reset, one that is already transforming the economy and what
employees, customers and our broader communities expect of co mpanies. Remote work has
fundamentally changed how many of us experience our jobs and even the kind of work we do,
throwing into high relief the benefits, such as flexibility and less commuting, as well as
alarming shortcomings in areas such as childcare and protections for the most vulnerable
workers. Millions of workers are reevaluating their priorities. How much time do they want to
spend in an office? Where do they want to live, if they can work from anywhere? What kind of
company is attractive to them and provides meaning beyond the paycheck? Surveys suggest
unusually large percentages of workers globally are considering leaving their jobs this year,
with those figures even higher for women—millions of whom quit during quarantine because of
the impossible juggle of work and home-schooling—and higher yet for women of color.
And employees increasingly expect their companies to become leaders in social causes. This is
a wholesale redefinition of corporate leadership, which for decades has focused on
shareholder return. “In certain respects there’s a greater social conscience in business than
when I look across some of our elected officials,” says Ken Chenault, a former CEO of American
Express, who co-founded Stop the Spread—a nonprofit devoted to pulling the private sector
into the COVID-19 fight—and more recently helped organize a group of 72 Black executives
calling on companies to take a stand against voting-rights restrictions now under consideration
in nearly every state.
In talking with the leaders of these businesses—which are large and small, U.S. and
international, public and private—it’s clear that this is only the beginning. Innovations in AI,
5G, nanotechnology and biotech have kick-started what World Economic Forum chair Klaus
Schwab calls a fourth Industrial Revolution that will fuse the physical, digital and biological
worlds.
For all of these worlds to prosper, we must preserve our global home: sustainability pledges
are another powerful development marking the future of business, and a number of influential
companies are singled out for actions on this front. While bad actors abound here, as do
unsubstantiated “greenwashing” claims by major polluters, pressure to disclose, reduce and
offset emissions is steadily growing, as are opportunities to do well by doing good. The
revolutionary electric-car maker Tesla, for example, brought in $1.6 billion last year from
regulatory credits it earned through selling zero-emission vehicles.
Ikea built its business on mass-produced and almost disposable furniture, but it is now working
to bring about change with the goal of becoming climate positive, to reduce more greenhouse
gases than it produces by 2030. “The only way we can exist as a business tomorrow … is by
being sustainable,” says Jesper Brodin, CEO of Ikea parent Ingka Group. (Harvard Business
School professor Rebecca Henderson, author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, puts
it more bluntly: “Business is screwed if we don’t fix climate change.”)
How we shop and pay for purchases is also in rapid transformation. A shift to digital payments
was already under way, but as in so many industries, it was greatly accelerated by the need in
the pandemic to reduce human contact. “People no longer want to handle cash,” says Dan
Schulman, CEO of PayPal, which recently enabled customers to buy goods using their
cryptocurrency on its platform. Fast-food giant Yum China, is now using face-recognition
software in some locations that allows customers to simply walk up, order and pay digitally, a
sign of the possibilities but also the pitfalls of these new technologies for privacy and security
1https://time.com/5958823/future-of-business-covid-19/