Winning the ’20s

Book excerpt: Over the past decade, businesses have faced relentless change on multiple dimensions, and the list of the world’s largest companies has changed enormously. The keys to success are likely to be just as different for the new decade. Winning the ’20s analyzes the new competitive environment that businesses face and outlines what will it take to win in the 2020s. To stay ahead of the trends that are reshaping business, leaders need to rethink existing assumptions and retool their companies. Both traditional incumbents and younger digital giants will face very different but equally critical challenges in the 2020s—and would do well to learn from each other’s strengths. This book discusses the new dimensions of competition that will affect corporate strategy in the next decade and how leaders can reinvent their organizations to be better suited for the new environment. The companies that succeed in the 2020s will look very different than they do today—they will have evolved their businesses to harness new technologies and reshaped their external relationships, organizations, and approaches accordingly. Winning the ’20s will help business professionals as well as academics and students with an interest in strategy and leadership answer this critical question for the start of this decade: How should you prepare your company to avoid being left behind and emerge as a winner in a rapidly evolving business landscape?