All change! or your company will vanish before 2020

LONDON | Most company leaders forecast that business structures will inevitably change. A 63 per cent predict a shift to decentralised mechanisms with a far-reaching devolution of business decision-making authority. The majority assume that customers will generate almost as many new ideas for the improvement of business processes as employees. And by 2020, customers will generate the most new product or service ideas.

Business leaders are expecting wrenching change to their industry sectors due to the impacts of technology, according to the latest research by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Ricoh Company, Ltd., a Fortune Global 500 company specialising in technology.

The data, set for full release in March 2012, reveals 37 per cent of leaders surveyed believe their organisation will be unable to keep up with technology and they will lose their competitive edge. One third of IT industry leaders believe their businesses will disappear altogether, while six out of ten survey respondents said markets where they operate will be significantly altered between now and 2020, bearing little similarity to today.

David Mills, Executive Vice President, Operations Ricoh Europe commented:

“Over the last two decades we’ve experienced more technology driven change in business than any other. It is also clear that more change will happen and it is employees and customers that will play a key role in driving the changes by the way they are using it. That is why we believe that the successful businesses of 2020 will be those that place greater emphasis upon process innovation.

“Business leaders need to ask the question: Are the information infrastructures inside our organisations future proof?”

In addition, 59 per cent of those surveyed agree that the concept of non-digital information will be utterly foreign to most employees by 2020.

Denis McCauley, Economist Intelligence Unit said that

“Despite the uncertainty for some when anticipating the future, the majority of business executives (70 per cent) are sure there are significant opportunities for technology to improve the way they conduct business.”

The research, undertaken by the Economist Intelligence Unit, is the most comprehensive analysis to date on the impact of technology on the future workplace, and was developed through dedicated interviews with 567 senior business leaders across the globe within 20 sectors.

* The information for this article can be found here.

About the Author

The Corner
The Corner has a team of on-the-ground reporters in capital cities ranging from New York to Beijing. Their stories are edited by the teams at the Spanish magazine Consejeros (for members of companies’ boards of directors) and at the stock market news site Consenso Del Mercado (market consensus). They have worked in economics and communication for over 25 years.

Be the first to comment on "All change! or your company will vanish before 2020"

Leave a comment