INTRODUCTION
Recode

BUSINESS NEEDS A NEW CODE FOR SUCCESS.

Change is dramatic, pervasive and relentless. The challenges are numerous. The opportunities are greater. Incredible technologies and geopolitical shifts, demanding customers and disruptive entrepreneurs, environmental crisis and social distrust, unexpected shocks and stagnating growth.

The old codes that got us here are insufficient, or obsolete.

Business Recoded is for business leaders who seek to thrive in today's world, and to create the best companies of tomorrow.

It describes how to lead a better future, to reimagine your business, to reinvent markets, to reenergise your people, to redefine success. It brings together fresh insights and ideas from the leaders of many of the world's most innovative companies right now - Alibaba to BlackRock, Corning and Danone, Ecoalf to Fujifilm, Glossier and Haier, and many more.

And it's about you, developing your own codes for personal and business progress. And having the courage to step up - to be more, to achieve more, to be extraordinary.

WHY DO WE NEED TO RECODE?

We live in a time of great promise but also great uncertainty.

Markets are more crowded, competition is intense, customer aspirations are constantly fuelled by new innovations and dreams. Technology disrupts every industry, from banking to construction, entertainment to healthcare. It drives new possibilities and solutions, but also speed and complexity, uncertainty and fear.

As digital and physical worlds fuse to augment how we live and work, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics enhance but also challenge our capabilities, whilst ubiquitous supercomputing, genetic editing and self-driving cars take us further.

Technologies with the power to help us leap forwards in unimaginable ways. To transform business, to solve our big problems, to drive radical innovation, to accelerate growth and achieve progress socially and environmentally too.

We are likely to see more change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years.

• Markets accelerate - 4 times faster than 20 years ago, based on the accelerating speed of innovation and diminishing lifecycles of products.
• People are more capable - 825 times more connected than 20 years ago, with access to education, unlimited knowledge, tools to create anything.
• Consumer attitudes change - 78% of young people choose brands that do good, they reject corporate jobs, and see the world through the lens of a gamer.

However, change goes far beyond the technology.

Markets will transform, converge and evolve faster. From old town Ann Arbor to the rejuvenated Bilbao, today's megacities like Chennai and the future Saudi tech city of Neom, economic power will continue to shift. China has risen to the top of the new global business order, whilst India and eventually Africa will follow.

Industrialisation challenges the natural equilibrium of our planet's resources. Today's climate crisis is the result of our progress, and our problem to solve. Globalisation challenges our old notions of nationhood and locality. Migration changes where we call home. Religious values compete with social values, economic priorities conflict with social priorities. Living standards improve but inequality grows.

Our current economic system is stretched to its limit. Global shocks, such as the pandemic of 2020, expose its fragility. We open our eyes to realise that we weren't prepared for different futures, and that our drive for efficiency has left us unable to cope. Such crises will become more frequent, as change and disruption accelerate.

However, these shocks are more likely to accelerate change in business, rather than stifle it, to wake us up to the real impacts of our changing world - to the urgency of action, to the need to think and act more dramatically.

THE FUTURE ISN'T LIKE IT USED TO BE

Business is not fit for the future. Most organisations were designed for stable and predictable worlds, where the future evolved as planned, markets were definitive, and choices were clear.

Dynamic markets are, by definition, uncertain. Whilst economic cycles have typically followed a pattern of peaks and troughs every 10-15 years, these will likely become more frequent. Change is fast and exponential, turbulent and unpredictable, complex and ambiguous, demanding new interpretation and imagination.

Yet too many business leaders hope that the strategies that made them successful in the past will continue to work in the future. They seek to keep stretching the old models in the hope that they will continue to see them through. Old business plans are tweaked each year, infrastructures are tested to breaking point, and people are asked to work harder.

In a world of dramatic, unpredictable change, this is not enough to survive, let alone thrive.

• Growth is harder. Global GDP growth has declined by more than a third in the past decade. As the west stagnates, Asia grows, albeit more slowly.
• Companies struggle. Their average lifespan has fallen from 75 years in 1950 to 15 years today; 52% of the Fortune 500 in 2000 were gone by 2020.
• Leaders are under pressure. Only 44% of today's business leaders have held their position for more than 5 years, compared to 77% half a century ago.

Profit is no longer enough; people expect business to achieve more. Business cannot exist in isolation from the world around it, pursuing customers without care for the consequence. The old single-minded obsession with profits is too limiting. Business depends more than ever on its resources - people and partners, local communities, natural environments - and will need to find a better way to embrace them.

Technology is no longer enough; innovation needs to be more human. Technology will automate and interpret reality, but it won't empathise and imagine new futures. Ubiquitous technology-driven innovation quickly becomes commoditised, available from anywhere in the world, so we need to add value in new ways. The future is human, creative, and intuitive. People will matter more to business, not less.

Sustaining the environment is not enough. Two hundred years of industrialisation has stripped the planet of its ability to renew itself, and ultimately to sustain life. Business therefore needs to give back more than it takes. As inequality and distrust have grown in every society, traditional jobs are threatened by automation and stagnation, meaning that social issues will matter even more, both globally and locally.

THE NEW DNA OF BUSINESS

As business leaders, our opportunity is to create a better business, one that is fit for the future, that can act in more innovative and responsible ways.

How can we harness the potential of this relentless and disruptive change, harness the talents of people and the possibilities of technology? How can business, with all its power and resources, be a platform for change, and a force for good?

We need to find new codes to succeed. We need to find new ways to work, to recognise business as a system that is virtuous, where less can be more, and growth can go beyond the old limits. This demands that we make new connections:

• Future + Today . to achieve more progress
• Purpose + Profits . to engage all stakeholders
• Technology + Humanity . to drive more ingenuity
• Innovation + Sustainability . to deliver positive impact

We need to create a new framework for business, a better business - to reimagine why and redesign how we work, to reinvent what and refocus where we do business.

Imagine a future business that looks forwards not back, that rises up to shape the future on its own terms, making sense of change to find new possibilities, inspiring people with vision and optimism. Imagine a future that inspires progress, seeks new sources of growth, embraces networks and partners to go further, and enables people to achieve more.

Imagine too, a future business that creates new opportunity spaces, by connecting novel ideas and untapped needs, creatively responding to new customer agendas. Imagine a future business that disrupts the disruptors, where large companies have the vision and courage to reimagine themselves and compete as equals to fast and entrepreneurial start-ups.

Imagine a future business that embraces humanity, searches for better ideas, that fuses technology and people in more enlightened ways, to solve the big problems of society, and improve everyone's lives. Imagine a future business that works collectively, self-organises to thrive without hierarchy, connects with partners in rich ecosystems, designs jobs around people, to do inspiring work.

Imagine also, a future business which is continually transforming, that thrives by learning better and faster, develops a rich portfolio of business ideas and innovations to sustain growth and progress. Imagine a future business that creates positive impact for the world, benefits all stakeholders with a circular model of value creation, that addresses negatives, and creates a net positive impact for society.

Creating a better business is an opportunity for every person who works inside or alongside it. It is not just a noble calling, to do something better for the world, but also a practical calling, a way to overcome the many limits of...