Reinventing your company for growth

There’s a shakeup coming for global businesses, as a once-in-a-lifetime mix of possibilities and constraints ushers in a decade of innovation and industry reconfiguration. What emerges will be vibrant new zones of economic activity—‘domains of growth’—that promise massive pools of value for a range of players across sectors.

Though the opportunities will be universal, some companies will struggle to seize them, because they have yet to reach the necessary threshold of performance across their business, operating and technology models. Companies perform progressively—today’s performance is the foundation for tomorrow’s—so some are better positioned to thrive in the decade ahead. In fact, PwC research finds that companies with the winning mix of performance traits—the top 20% of organisations—capture more than 80% of today’s profitable growth. It’s no stretch to assume that many of today’s winners will be successful tomorrow, increasing the urgency for the 80% of companies currently on the outside looking in.

In this article, we’ll explore what you and your management team can do about that—whether it’s catching up to the leaders via innovative business, operating and energy models or mastering key sources of advantage to better compete on trust, advanced technology and resource access. We’ll also focus on areas where everyone can likely improve—stubborn capability gaps, tax and regulatory strategy, and possibly even leadership and decision-making. With the right effort, these obstacles can be tomorrow’s catalysts for growth.

The graphic below depicts these moves. The illustration’s shape suggests how interrelated these approaches are (your leadership, for example, can fuel trust that helps your innovation efforts), and it serves to remind us all of the dynamic nature of the task—the need to reinvent our companies continually.

As daunting as that sounds, there’s plenty of scope for optimism as you and your leadership team prioritise your next moves. Whether you’re entering this exciting new era as a leader or laggard, by focusing on the moves that matter, you can start to create a resilient, thriving organisation that’s as exciting as the future we’re barrelling towards.

The coming decade will be a wild ride. This year alone, companies reinventing their business models will account for up to US$7.1 trillion in redistributed revenues, according to PwC research, as value shifts among legacy players and new challengers alike. Trillions more will be up for grabs annually over the decade ahead, as two powerful forces—advanced technologies and climate change—reshape the economy and emerging growth opportunities. These won’t be ordinary shifts, and they won’t have ordinary effects. What is likely to emerge in a decade’s time will be a very different industrial system than the one we’re starting with. The task awaiting you as a leader is to work out the implications of these two discontinuities across every aspect of your business so you can prioritise action.

Two shocks to the system

The first discontinuity we’re experiencing is artificial intelligence. Whether it’s deployed on its own or with other advanced technologies, AI will create enormous possibilities for innovation and productivity growth. PwC research finds that the global economy could be nearly 15% bigger than expected in 2035 if that productivity boom reaches its potential. And if AI is not trusted or is used irresponsibly? Then AI’s contribution to global economic growth could be negligible.

The second discontinuity, climate change, will impose significant economic constraints between now and 2035 as the damages from debilitating heat, fires, floods and drought increase with rising temperatures. These physical risks—still poorly understood by many companies—are poised to leave the global economy nearly 7% smaller in 2035 than it would have otherwise been, absent the effects of climate change.

More aggressive near-term decarbonisation over the decade ahead could reduce these growth constraints over the long haul. Decarbonisation creates opportunities to innovate, as do near-term costs in the form of stranded assets and other transition risks. For individual companies, these short- and long-term pressures create an imperative to better understand the serious, often surprising array of physical climate risks they face (and to stop equating insurance coverageOpens in a new window with a viable climate-risk strategy), at the same time as they are decarbonising. 

Our colleagues write about these two discontinuities and how they may play out across three scenarios in this companion article. The good news is that under some scenarios, a sizeable AI dividend could eventually create enough economic surplus to compensate, from a macroeconomic perspective, for rising climate risk and ambitious decarbonisation efforts over the decade ahead.

Global industry, reconfigured

As these shocks to the system play out, we anticipate that something remarkable is going to happen—a ‘great reconfiguration’ of industrial activity. How? AI, climate change and other megatrends are driving shifts in demand (customer preferences evolving as populations age, AI-driven insights surfacing latent wants, and more people prioritising sustainability). They’re also driving shifts in supply (with climate change disrupting supply chains, and new technologies enabling offerings that weren’t viable previously). To create new value propositions in response, companies will need new business models, supported by new capabilities, often including the capabilities of ecosystem partners. These partnerships, in turn, will be easier to integrate as technology drives down transaction costs.

Emerging from all this flux, we believe, is a constellation of players coming together, collaborating, forming and reforming in dynamic ways to serve a set of basic human needs—how we move, how we make and build things, how we feed and care for ourselves, and how we fuel and power society. These are the domains of growth we’d mentioned above—and you can think of them as value pools, markets or zones of economic activity. We’ve identified (and quantified) nine of them in the graphic below.

This is a different way of looking at our economy, one in which companies meet human needs by combining their capabilities and engaging with partners in new ways. The new value pools will reward heightened specialisation, with new technology combinations enabling positive feedback cycles and the creation of products and services that were not possible before. Similar dynamics in recent years brought us ride-sharing, peer-to-peer property rental and other disruptors, but what’s coming next will be on a larger scale.

We’ve depicted all this analytically, by distributing portions of traditional economic sectors (on the left side of the chart below) to those core human needs (on the right), played out to 2035. For a fuller look at the economic rationale, more evidence for this view of the future and contemporary examples of the dynamics at work, see ‘The leader’s guide to value in motion.’

Of course, having a view of the future is a far cry from being ready for it. Whether your company is starting the race ahead or behind, it’s crucial to prioritise the moves you need to make now. Start by examining your business, operating and energy models, as these areas are the most likely to require big changes.

For example, consider the power utility that realised that its very business model—using large, coal-fired power plants to generate energy and then trade it—was unsustainable in a decarbonising world. This led the utility to help its commercial customers generate their own electricity with solar panels and batteries. Although this cannibalises the traditional business, the company prefers disrupting itself to waiting for rivals to do so—and besides, managing customers’ assets is an attractive new business.

Innovate your business model

As industry boundaries blur, smart companies will seek out new business models that transform how they create, deliver and capture value. There is already considerable pressure to do so. A PwC analysis found that for 17 of 22 global sectors, the pressure to reinvent—driven by performance and attractiveness, innovation and global shocks, among other factors—is at or near a 25-year high. This same research identified some $7.1 trillion in revenues that’s up for grabs from business model reinvention in 2025 alone.

Whether your company is motivated by the carrot of revenue growth, the stick of rising competitive pressure, or both, PwC research suggests that when companies take actions to reinvent their business model, they enjoy higher profit margins.

The reinvention actions you prioritise will of course depend on your company’s unique situation and the opportunities you identify. These opportunities might arise in changing customer demographics, breakthrough technologies, the transition to a low-carbon economy, adaptations made in response to physical climate risks or anywhere else your leadership team is inspired to look. And though some new business models will represent radical breaks from your past, many will arise from applying existing strengths in new ways. This can be particularly appealing for companies in slower-growth industries, or where business development muscles are underdeveloped.

A good example is Japan-based Sumitomo Chemical. To pursue growth opportunities in the circular economy, the company created a digital platform that draws on Sumitomo’s deep skills in material analysis. The platform, called Biondo, connects buyers and sellers of a wide range of materials useful in recycling and upcycling. The effort is relatively new, but already benefits Sumitomo and its ecosystem partners, with the promise of more benefits to come as the platform grows and network effects take hold.

Notably, company leaders had the foresight to view the project as the start of its business-building efforts, not the culmination. The multidisciplinary team behind Biondo, dubbed ‘Value-nauts,’ are tasked with exploring and commercialising new businesses through data utilisation. By learning how to better anticipate customer needs, and to create test-and-learn projects with confidence, the Value-nauts are building a real-time portfolio of business innovation options—of which Biondo is just one example.

Taking a test-and-learn approach is key. Our experience suggests that the most successful new business models are created iteratively, nurtured as a series of learning steps. MVP (minimum viable product) approaches let you test changes to your business model that you can learn from, adapt and scale. Implicit in the concept of an MVP is that it allows for a minimum consistent design—the new business has what it needs to start adding value without being overly elaborate. Failures can be set aside quickly, and winners ramped up. MVP approaches can also generate revenues that fund the immediate effort while creating longer-term strategic options.

Innovate your operating model

Your operating model is the beating heart of your company, essential to how it functions, competes and grows. And given new developments in AI and other advanced technologies, leaders have an unprecedented chance to address any number of operational priorities, such as building climate-resilient supply chains, rewiring functions and tasks, or pursuing growth through operating model transformation. PwC analysis shows that generative AI (GenAI) alone could boost operating margins by double digits across many industries.

If you plan to turbocharge your company’s operating model with AI, be sure to focus on process innovation and not just cost-cutting. Efficiency is important, but the business promise of AI is much greater, and includes reimagined workflows, processes and growth-orientated business models.

Consider one consumer goods company that had been overwhelmed by manual reportingOpens in a new window and analytics in its HR, procurement, finance and other functions. Collectively, these teams generated more than 100,000 reports, and spent considerable time gathering data, analysing it and producing the reports themselves. But instead of automating existing processes with AI, the company used AI to innovate them, improving operations and reducing costs. To avoid falling behind, the company created a centre of excellence for reporting, which enhanced the value-added aspects of the work and focused them on growth.

Another way that winning companies elevate their operating models is through the smart use of managed services partnerships (MSPs). Here again, look beyond cost reduction. PwC research finds that when companies also use MSPs to close capability gaps, they gain a 15 percentage-point advantage in performance premium (the combined effect of profit margin and revenue growth, adjusted by industry) over companies that use MSPs only to cut costs. MSPs deliver even greater benefits when used more strategically, as we will see later.

Innovate your energy model

To be sure, every sector faces unique levels of regulatory and market pressure to decarbonise. And every business must ultimately assess its own sustainability profile and plan to respond accordingly. Nonetheless, practically any company can make immediate progress on decarbonisation—as well as respond to energy risks, cut costs and even establish new streams of revenue—by focusing on their own energy demand. Research from the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with PwC, finds that companies can use today’s technology to reduce their energy consumption by more than 30%, and save $2 trillion a year—without sacrificing growth. Consider these examples. 

• A company in Southeast Asia used energy efficiency upgrades, solar panels, battery storage and EV charging at 2,000 sites to boost its energy-related EBITDA by about 80%.

• By upgrading to electric motors, fixing leaks in compressed air systems and optimising lighting-control software, a European manufacturer cut energy use by 10%, cut annual costs by €2 million ($2.1 million) and cut carbon emissions by 3,000 metric tons a year.

• A food manufacturer used onsite renewable and thermal energy to reduce its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 68%.

You’ve no doubt heard the quote from ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky about skating to where the puck is going, not to where it’s been. It’s a classic business aphorism, a colourful way to help leaders connect the present to the future. But what if you don’t even have skates?

This was the case—figuratively speaking—for a transportation company that was on the fence about a big cloud modernisation project. Some executives there took it as a given that any company needed to invest in the cloud. Others had cold feet, asking, what’s the real context for investing this much in tech? Ultimately, it was the company’s recognition of shifting value pools in the ‘how we move’ domain—and of the capabilities needed to address them—that led to its significant investment in cloud modernisation. Without the basics in place, the executives realised, they’d be hard-pressed to capture the sorts of opportunities they could imagine.

As you chase new growth opportunities, which foundational sources of advantage will you rely on, and how robust are they? Or in other words: how sharp are your skates? Although any potential source of competitive advantage is worth this scrutiny, we’ll focus on three that we believe will be most indicative of outperformance in the decade ahead: technology, trust and finding opportunities in scarcity.

Compete on tech

As we noted at the outset of this article, today’s business landscape is a ‘winner takes most’ world, in which the top 20% of companies enjoy a performance premium worth more than 13 times that of their peers. Everyone else is playing catch-up.

Technology is key to this non-linear advantage, specifically the mutually reinforcing investments that winners make in their technology, operating and business models. Top companies pursue tech investments beyond a threshold level. They don’t just migrate certain aspects of the business to the cloud, for example; they move entirely to cloud-native technologies.

A recent PwC US survey found that top performers hold a similar edge over rivals when it comes to implementing data modernisation to take advantage of GenAI. Top companies were also far more likely than others to have their front-, middle- and back-office data in the cloud.

If your company hasn’t done these things, let this be your wake-up call. Sorting out your technical debt, eliminating legacy IT, fully embracing cloud technology and modernising your data to make productive, responsible use of AI are arguably table stakes already. Don’t let deficiencies in these areas set you back further.

As you look to close technology gaps and make up lost ground, you should again consider MSPs. The same PwC research that described the ‘winner takes most’ world found that when companies use MSPs for strategic advantage—for example, to keep pace with changes in technology—they have a whopping 43 percentage-point advantage in performance premium over companies that use MSPs just to cut operating costs.

Compete on trust

Every leader knows that trusted organisations attract customers, talent and investors. Trust is also vital for growth in new domains. Consumer trust gives you the credibility to test new business models in new sectors, whereas trust with your ecosystem partners improves collaboration and unlocks value—in part by lowering the transaction costs that could otherwise gunk up your operations with costly sludge. Yet as important as trust already is, it is likely to become even more crucial in the decade ahead. The reality is that the underlying data, processes, controls and governance that companies rely on to operate in a trusted fashion will be less effective in responding to the new opportunities—or threats—that industry reconfiguration brings. 

Consider the enterprise-level trust that your organisation will need to manage increased complexity at speed, or indeed to make successful use of advanced technology in the first place. For example, are you trying to instil confidence in a new, tech-enabled business model? Not if that flawed algorithm you didn’t anticipate has its way. Now you’re exposing customer data, introducing business risk, worrying regulators or courting any number of other terrible outcomes. 

Or think of a simple ERP (enterprise resource planning) implementation, and how advanced technology will challenge you to reexamine privacy, security, identity, access management, cloud controls and sustainability reporting. All of these elements—and more—need to be incorporated with trust in mind so they run smoothly and securely. The reality is that the same breakthrough technologies that will enable your growth opportunities can inadvertently wreak havoc across your data, processes or controls—damaging trust with all your stakeholders.

Don’t let it happen. Instead, start building a solid foundation of institutional trust on the three pillars in the figure below. Improvements here will help you reinvent the business with greater speed, confidence and, ultimately, success.

Of course, trust is more than data, processes and controls—it’s your people, too. Don’t be the kind of leader who focuses on trust only after it’s been damaged or lost. Bear these principles in mind:

Start with behaviours. One way to spot trust gaps in your company culture is to see how your leaders react to failures or simply to dissenting views. These behaviours reflect cultural norms that link to trust. Measure whether your leaders practise what they preach, as ‘say–do gaps’ are particularly corrosive to trust.

Earn trust, don’t assume it. Ninety percent of executives in PwC’s 2024 Trust Survey believe customers trust them, but only 30% of consumers agree. And 86% of executives think that employee trust is high, whereas only 67% of employees agree. Instead of assuming trust, prioritise trust-building as a differentiator. By nurturing trust with intention, you’ll increase the odds it will be there when you need it most.

Managers matter. Trust deficits at the grassroots level affect the entire company. Additional research on data from PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023 finds that the more employees trust their immediate managers, the more likely they are to say they behave in ways that align with company values—and to be satisfied at work.

Leaders aren’t immune. The 2024 trust survey found a larger trust gap inside the C-suite than outside it. Only 44% of C-suite leaders trust their peers ‘to a great extent.’ Employees need leaders to trust one another if they’re to feel trusted themselves, enabling openness and collaboration. A lack of top-level trust torpedoes your business’s ability to reinvent itself.

Compete for scarce supply

With rare exceptions, modern business history has been a story of abundant supply. No longer. Today, physical climate risk, geopolitics and other megatrends (PDF) (file size: 2.0 MB) are creating debilitating scarcities, and chaos, in global supply chains.

Semiconductor shortages, for instance, have at one time or another delayed product launches for consumer electronics manufacturers, stopped production of automobiles and rattled global supply chains everywhere. Similarly, as the world moves to a low-carbon economy, the race is on to lock up supplies of lithium, cobalt and other minerals that support clean energy technologies. In addition, many supply chains face risks from the physical effects of climate change. PwC research into nine critical commodities found that heat stress and drought threaten all of them. Such challenges don’t just hurt companies; they threaten human prosperity as well.

No company can change the underlying trends causing these scarcities, but you can take steps to minimise your company’s exposure to them. For example, a wealth of climate data is available to determine how your operations will be affected—which warehouses face wildfires, which sub-supplier is most likely to be cut off by flooding, which customers will be most affected by which shortages. A PwC analysis of the value chain of a typical smartphone, for example, highlighted more than 30 locations at risk—from a mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo to shopping malls in Rome and Thessaloniki, Greece.

Your own analysis will inevitably yield surprises, as was the case with the global industrial equipment maker that learned a flagship product—vital to its business—would malfunction in certain locales where climate change made conditions wetter. Thankfully, the company had time to redesign the product and retrofit its installed base.

When it comes to supply chain–related actions, start here:

• Expand scenario planning. Use real-time data and advanced modelling to explore ‘what if?’ scenarios and build supply chain resilience. To help you navigate dependencies and unexpected events, the scenarios should include your suppliers, logistics providers and even customers. 

• Use advanced technologies. Create AI-enabled ‘control towers’—connected dashboards that provide real-time data to decision-makers—to resolve supply chain issues swiftly (for example, when you need to shift sourcing within a supply network).
• Create options. Several global carmakers have invested in mining companies to ensure a more reliable supplyOpens in a new window of raw materials that will support the development of electric vehicles.

The coming decade will challenge you to rethink fundamental questions about where and how your company competes, but it also offers a unique opportunity to transform common obstacles into enablers of growth. Though these blockers will likely include organisation-level challenges such as capability gaps and key business functions that go underutilised, we recommend starting even closer to home—by examining your own leadership and decision-making.

Unblock leaders (and human capital)

The coming decade, with its collision of AI, physical climate risk and other megatrends, will create an environment—figuratively and literally—that’s dramatically different from the one you grew up in. To thrive, you will need to set aside mindsets and behaviours that may block you and instead find ways to help your organisation keep challenging itself, evolving and adapting. This starts with your leadership. 

A set of characteristics—five leadership differentiators—will help you clarify the challenge and codify your aspirations. Learn more in the figure below.

If you’re not sure where to start, prioritise areas where your influence and example as a leader can immediately begin benefitting your team and the organisation.

The first of these areas is decision-making, which has a strong correlation to profits, according to PwC’s 28th Annual Global CEO Survey. A decision-quality index created from the survey data found that companies in the top 20% on decision-making processes enjoyed industry-adjusted profit margins almost 30% higher than those of other companies.

Many organisations, however, approach decision-making inconsistently at best. For example, only half of the CEOs in the survey said their company regularly employs the full suite of techniques to help counter confirmation bias in strategic decisions. By simply following best practices—making decision criteria transparent, say, or seeking contradictory voices and views—you will improve the quality of your decisions.

You can also bolster trust. Additional analysis of data from PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023 found that managers who were most trusted by their direct reports were also the most likely to encourage dissent and debate—behaviour that improves both decision-making and psychological safety in teams.

A third area where purposeful leadership aids reinvention is resource allocation. Proven best practices can help you de-bias budgeting decisions so you’re more likely to rebalance investments according to opportunity, not company politics. But as you look for ways to improve your resource allocation, don’t forget your people. Actively reallocating staff was associated with higher profitability in PwC’s 28th Annual Global CEO Survey, and it energises your people if done well. Recent PwC research finds workers are frustrated by receiving too little upskilling or too few chances to demonstrate existing skills. Adopting a skills-first talent approach can help allocate talent where it’s needed and motivate your employees. 

Strengthen critical capabilities

Every company has strengths and weaknesses in capability development, but three capabilities deserve close attention due to their direct link to value creation: ecosystem cultivation, deal-making and risk management. These are crucial in a world where advanced technologies, climate change and shifting geopolitics demand radical rethinks—like re-engineering supply chains through collaboration with various stakeholders; identifying, managing and reporting physical climate risks more extensively; and responsibly leveraging rapidly evolving technologies that few organisations have the skills or assets to master or scale on their own.

Ecosystems. Most companies are better competitors than collaborators, but you’ll need to be both in order to become a top 20% player. Top-performing organisations already generate greater than 60% of their revenues from business ecosystems and expect that percentage to increase in the future.

Even more significant is how leading companies use ecosystems to outperform. PwC research finds that leading companies are 1.6 times as likely as other companies to leverage ecosystems in search of new customers and markets; take advantage of privileged insights such as data on customers’ needs; and identify complementary skills and capabilities. In effect, these leaders participate in and contribute to a system of capabilities supporting a collective value proposition that is more compelling than one that any company could provide on its own.

The benefits to companies are valuable not just in isolation—they can also have powerful ‘flywheel’ effects on performance. Consider, for example, how privileged insights into what customers want can help companies identify capability gaps that, when addressed, support new or improved customer value propositions, which bring in more prospective customers for companies to tap for further insights. 

Deals. Tales of value-destroying mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are legendary, but why do some deals succeed? PwC research finds that the secret is capabilities, and that focusing on the acquisition and enhancement of capabilities is a bigger driver of deals success than the strategic rationale for the deal (the two, of course, can be highly correlated). If you want your M&A efforts to add value, focus your deal-making on bolstering the unique combinations of processes, tools, technologies, skills and behaviours that can help your company outperform. Deal-making isn’t the only way to acquire capabilities, of course (you should build and ‘rent’ them, too, as needed), but if M&A is in your future, taking a capabilities-led approach will increase the odds of success.

Begin by examining your portfolio: Are your businesses coherent, leveraging a common set of differentiating capabilities? Which businesses should you seek to acquire because your strengths would boost them into a whole new league? By assessing the universe of potential acquisitions from a capabilities perspective, you’ll be better placed to know which assets in your industry might be a better fit with you than with their current owner. 

Risk. Risk-taking is the mechanism for reinvention and growth. Organisations with strong risk systems, processes, technology and infrastructure are better equipped to take risks intelligently. PwC’s 2023 Global Risk Survey found that top players are 2.6 times as likely as others to identify new commercial opportunities and to experience improved financial performance due to effective risk mitigation. A strong risk function also supports healthy business ecosystems and builds trust with customers, partners, employees and regulators.

To improve your risk function, start with risk culture. A strong one helps your leaders better understand and tailor their risk appetite responsibly and empowers employees to identify, and manage, issues with confidence. Data-led simulations, meanwhile, can help you review your risk landscape, identify blind spots and build resilience (including climate resilience, as physical risks pile up). That, in turn, will allow you to anticipate and absorb shocks, respond faster and emerge stronger when crises—or opportunities—arise.

Reappraise your tax and regulatory strategy

Shortsighted business leaders tend to view regulations and taxes as costs of doing business, requirements to comply with. Too few leaders see their upside: how climate regulation can spur innovation, say, or how business model changes, when properly aligned with tax incentives and outcomes, can fund business model reinvention. Companies whose leaders can embrace such connections will have a decided advantage in the decade ahead.

The European Green Deal, for example, can be a worthwhile prompt for companies to make a host of smarter decisions about strategy, capital spending, innovation and other fundamental drivers of success. Likewise, mandatory sustainability reporting can generate data that reveals potential operations improvements, product enhancements and growth strategies. Such efforts can have positive payoffs in business terms: research from Harvard Business School’s George Serafeim and his colleagues finds that when companies steer their product portfolio towards climate solutions, they enjoy a revenue premium of about 2 to 3 percentage points a year.

The key is to turn would-be obstacles into enablers. For example, a large consumer goods company saw that removing plastic from one of its product lines would help it compete amid new and proposed packaging regulations, make progress on its sustainability goals, and reach new customer segments. Launching the new product, however, would require new technology, new R&D skills and even new manufacturing facilities. By involving its tax team in footprint decisions, the company ensured its new operations were both efficient and tax-efficient. Today, for every dollar of profits the new product line earns, the company sees a 2–3% tax savings—a number that will grow as more of the new operations come online and scale up.

Similarly, a chemicals company explored how the proposed anti-dumping regulation in a key market could spur the company to disintermediate its supplier and make a particular chemical itself. The economics of the change—informed by the tax implications—will play a big part in the company’s strategic thinking. In other situations, we have seen companies use their real-time understanding of the indirect tax environment to influence transaction flows and site locations, among other business model considerations.

As you seek growth through industry convergence, you’ll encounter new or unfamiliar regulatory environments—each with unique requirements. Moreover, the new business models you’ll harness to serve new markets bring compliance risks as you change systems, data, operations or sales channels. In such cases, a strong compliance function can be the difference between speeding up—and tripping up. Strong compliance functions embrace advanced technology to enhance their response to regulation—securing benefits such as faster and more confident decision-making, and increased productivity and cost savings.

The decade ahead will test imaginations and stretch capabilities, as AI, climate change, and other megatrends pressure—and ultimately reshape—an industrial system that’s endured since the mid- to late-19th century. But despite the new landscape, it will still be a ‘winner takes most’ world. To get beyond games of catch-up, and to lay the groundwork for a prosperous future, focus on innovating your business, operating and energy models; learning to compete on trust, advanced technology and scarce resources; and closing stubborn capability gaps.