The Enterprise of the Future

IBM has just published a new global survey among more than 1000 CEO’s to find out what the company of the future would look like. The findings highlight the growing importance of successful change management:

• Organisations are bombarded by change and many are struggling to keep up
• CEO’s view more demanding customers not as a threat but as an opportunity to differentiate
• Nearly all CEO’s are adapting their business models, two-thirds are implementing extensive innovations
• CEO’s are moving aggressively toward global business designs, deeply changing capabilities and partnering more extensively
• Financial outperformers are making bolder plays

Before reading those findings, I would certainly have expected something about the intensity of change, but not to a point where CEO’s claim to be bombarded by it. This is really striking.
From these findings, the study defines what the enterprise of the future will look like:

• Hungry for change
• Innovative beyond customer imagination
• Globally integrated
• Disruptive by nature
• Genuine, not just generous

In other words, businesses need to adopt a very proactive stance towards change and as IBM puts it in the study, the question leaders must ask themselves is: “Does your organisation have a healthy appetite for change?”