How well are the organizations of today suited to prosper in the future? Not well at all argues Grant McCracken for the Harvard Business Review. Ironically, the culprit is the success enjoyed by the modern corporation. The very things corporations do best, such as marshal resources, opportunity evaluation, and careful execution will not have the same utility in the future because the speed of change and technology development will overtake them.
The military has a term for this: operating inside an opponent’s decision cycle. It’s C3I strategy, when properly executed, allows it to take a series of actions before the opponent can react to the first action. McCracken believes most all of today’s corporations will find themselves in similar straits. Adaptation will be so challenging, in my opinion, precisely because the current models have proven so successful.