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What do you think is the most important trend in your industry today?
The most important trend is the ability to materially change a business or industry through shared economies, digital transformation and industry disruption.
Out of the top 500 companies that existed in 1955, today only 60 remain. That is 12%. The prediction is only 50% of today’s Fortune 500 will be here 10 years from now. So the big question is what do these companies need to do to ensure they survive?
I believe the way to ensure success is to look at three categories: 1) What is the company’s “Why”? 2) Is the company operating “inside out” or “outside in”? and 3) How do they envision their future as it relates to technology and data, employees, and their industry.
As Simon Sinek explains, a company’s Why allows the company to align all of its actions to a common goal. When you look one level deeper, the reason many behemoths fail is because they forget the basic tenets of what made them grow huge to begin with: qualities like creativity, originality, agility, disruption and new ideas, including but not limited to data-centric strategies, shared economies, industry disruption, value-chain maximization and technology.
The second success category relates to whether the company is operating “inside out” or “outside in”. As companies grow and expand, so do its leadership levels, bureaucracy and processes. Companies which were once agile and dynamic become slow and formulaic. As the companies become successful, they often get stuck in the “this is how we’ve always done it” stage. At times, their processes become more important than the actual subject that is being worked through. Risk aversion can easily break the back of ingenuity. Excessive process can kill new ideas. While these items are normal, all large, successful, long-living companies, need to do everything in their power to not let success blind them from focusing on the customer, employee, new ideas and their own success.
Lastly, each company needs to take the time and focus, to envision their future using both technology and data, to add new value to their existing customer base, to acquire new customers, to excite and inspire their employees, and to become transformative engines within their industry.
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