5 Strategies to Keep Up with the Ever-Increasing Pace of Change

Every business and industry has been impacted by change in the past year and, it is evident that these changes are accelerating. In fact, more change is expected to occur in the next 10 years than in the past 50 years. So, how can businesses keep up?

Staying agile in an evolving environment requires a different set of thinking, skills, and capabilities. Below are five strategies your organization can keep up with the ever-increasing pace of change:

Focus on your customers – today and emerging

Focusing on the customer. This will allow organizations to prioritize what problems to solve and which opportunities to pursue. Meet with your customers to discuss and define their evolving needs and concerns. Listen and observe – it’s about what they are both saying and not saying. By keeping your customers at the center of your business strategy, you will better understand which problems to solve and which new capabilities to build.

Get a seat at the table – corporate venturing

Keep a pulse on the pace of change with corporate venturing. Startups look to solve emerging problems and showcase how quickly next generation solutions and business models are gaining traction…or not! Invest in startups that are a strategic fit with your organization to learn firsthand about the evolving problems and opportunities in your interest areas while building your network.  However, don’t let great strategic fit get in the way of being critical around financial health and potential. A start-up must be in business to get the strategic returns you are looking for.

Co-create and learn with partners

Collaborate to disrupt. Whether with startups, customers, universities or even competitors, be open to opportunities to co-create. Collaborative projects allow each organization to learn new skills and capabilities and help drive further change within your industry.

Identify and build next capabilities

Change encourages innovation. Be open to finding the opportunities to nurture new technologies, solutions, and businesses within your organization. Motivate your designers, engineers, and architects to build prototypes, run pilots and develop products that build new capabilities to help solve the problems of today and tomorrow.

Rethink your business model

The transformation from physical to digital assets and experiences required many organizations to shift their business models. Continuously adapting to changing consumer behaviors and industry trends is necessary and being willing to add new business models is key to maintaining long-term success. Business models, just like products, require testing and learning with your customer or user. Take a hypothesis-based approach as you form the value chain and monetization strategies for new models. 

In September 2021, Erin Spring, Senior Director of New Ventures at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, hosted a webinar for the Center for Operational Excellence on how an organization can use collaborative tactics to build new capabilities and solutions. Spring shared her learnings from corporate venturing and co-creation to illustrate how to effectively engage with new technologies and partners and solve problems collaboratively. If you missed this webinar, it is available in COE's Members Only Digital Content Archive. Don't have an account? Create one here.