ENTREPRENEURS are no strangers to risk and disruption. Indeed, many thrive on change, which often opens whitespace and greenfield opportunities that fuel their blue-sky ambitions.
However, the world today is more complex than before, characterised by traits including non-linearity, volatility and interconnectedness, which creates more challenges, imperatives and opportunities for companies.
In navigating an unpredictable world, leading entrepreneurs recognise the need to adopt a two-pronged approach: planning for disruptions to identify common threads and make no-regret moves, while simultaneously transforming their enterprises for agility.
Planning for disruption
At first glance, planning for disruption may seem counterintuitive. However, it is exactly the unpredictability in the pace, magnitude and nature of disruptions that companies must proactively prepare for.
To that end, companies must evolve their approach to future visioning and planning, to one that is iterative, adaptive and prepared for course-correction.
First, future visioning needs to consider the increased complexity of the new operating environment. This includes scanning more widely, beyond the confines of the business or legacy sector, and incorporating the impact of interconnections between disparate forces.
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For example, there is no knowing where or when the next war, geopolitical tension, trade dispute or tariff swing will arise. Beyond that, geopolitical tension is also creating contestation between business and technology, as nationalism leads countries to develop their own technological innovations.
The interactions of these different disruptive forces at play have broad and significant impact on business, affecting supply chains, market growth plans and profitability.
Second, entrepreneurs must prepare for multiple potential futures: Given the heightened complexity and uncertainty, it is no longer sufficient to develop a single vision of the future.
For instance, the focus on supply chain resilience has shifted dramatically in recent years. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses prioritised ultra-lean, just-in-time supply chains. However, the disruptions caused by the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts and extreme weather have made investing in supply chain resilience imperatively relevant across multiple future scenarios.
This raises a fundamental challenge: How do entrepreneurs prepare for multiple futures simultaneously? The answer lies in anticipating both certain and uncertain changes, as well as making strategic, no-regret moves.
Agility through reimagining the enterprise
While planning for disruptions allows businesses to chart a long-term course through uncertainty, entrepreneurs need to simultaneously transform and reimagine their enterprise for greater agility.
This transformation encompasses several key areas:
Business model innovation: In a business climate that is increasingly interconnected, new business models will succeed by harnessing the power of connections. One example is combining multiple emerging technologies, which can deliver breakthrough offerings that are more than the sum of the parts.
Additionally, companies may consider adopting a portfolio approach and developing multiple business models simultaneously. This enables increased resilience amid increased volatility, which allows them to be prepared for multiple versions of the future. Importantly, business model innovation needs to be ongoing and continuous.
Rethinking operating models: Legacy business processes and functions may no longer be fit for purpose. In reviewing operating models, companies should recast them to be better aligned with artificial intelligence (AI).
AI – including its generative and agentic variants – holds the key to unlocking transformation across the enterprise, from back office to front office. Beyond adopting the technology for improvements in efficiency and productivity, companies should view AI as an enabler for new value creation while reducing cost and friction to serve customers and stakeholders.
Often, the cost of investment in the technology is seen as a barrier. Yet, the biggest obstacle may well be the organisational mindset. Entrepreneurs will have to take the lead in fostering an AI-ready culture and talent pool as they seek to operate with a healthy appetite for AI innovation and ecosystem collaboration.
In doing so, they should consider the merits of reshaping organisational structures around smaller teams, with the goal of building flat networks rather than hierarchical trees. This involves re-engineering talent models, information flows, business processes and functions to enable the deployment of AI across the enterprise, as well as creating organisational structures that are more adaptive and nimble.
Furthermore, it requires rethinking incentive structures and performance metrics to support these changes. Over time, these shifts will lead to the creation of a “superfluid enterprise”: an organisation characterised by seamless operations and adaptability.
Comprehensive risk management: In a time of accelerating change and increased volatility, traditional risk management practices risk being too slow, intermittent, siloed or disparate to adopt methodologies suited to modelling and managing non-linearity.
Aligning risk management with uncertainty requires comprehensive transformation. This includes sharpening practices such as integrated risk management and enterprise risk management. Risk transformation will mean reshaping organisational structures and operating models to make risk management pervasive across the enterprise.
Transforming transformation itself: Historically, major transformations have been lengthy endeavours, often spanning years. How do businesses chart a steady course over such an extended timeframe in an environment where new surprises and tipping points could suddenly emerge to upend your strategic plans, assumptions and cost-benefit calculations?
The answer lies in rethinking traditional approaches to transformation.
As companies seek to identify, orchestrate and realise value more quickly, fixed transformation initiatives that span several years may no longer be feasible. Instead, iterative and adaptive approaches will be favoured, allowing businesses to respond dynamically to emerging challenges and opportunities.
Leading with confidence
Setting the tone at the top is crucial in fostering a culture of innovation and better communicating a vision that encourages teams to embrace uncertainty and adapt to rapid changes with agility.
In a world that has fundamentally changed – and continues to change – entrepreneurs must rethink their approaches to succeed.
The entrepreneurial spirit that once fuelled the birth and scaling of the business against all odds remains highly relevant. Combined with an unwavering commitment to purpose and innovation, courage to embrace complexity, and a proactive stance on risk management, entrepreneurs can continue to excel in what they do best: shape their businesses and industries with confidence.
The writer is EY Asia East deputy regional managing partner, Asean managing partner and Singapore and Brunei country managing partner, Ernst & Young Solutions. The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organisation or its member firms.
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