BY PEET VAN BILJON
Today’s business environment is anything but stable. Shifting trade, energy, and industrial policies. The AI revolution. Changing customer expectations. Fast-moving competitors. These aren’t isolated trends – they’re converging forces reshaping entire industries.
Executives and boards increasingly talk about resilience and adaptability. But what really makes an organization adaptable?
An unanticipated insight from my doctoral research: Innovation and adaptability rely on the same core capabilities.
Organizations that performed well under constantly shifting regulatory and market conditions consistently scored higher on my Innovation Capability Index.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Schumpeter described innovation as the engine of evolution in the economy: a process of creative destruction where new concepts replace the old, and only the fittest organizations survive.
Modern evolutionary economics builds on this thinking, emphasizing dynamic capabilities – the ability to reconfigure products, operations, markets, and even business models – as central to business success.
So, what does that look like in practice?
Think about your organization:
– Are you actively scanning for emerging technologies and shifting customer needs?
– Are you monitoring market signals?
– Do you have a strong process for developing new products and services?
– Are you able to rapidly update existing products in response to opportunities or threats?
– Can you experiment and test quickly, and then scale what works?
– Do your teams collaborate effectively across functions and with external partners?
– Are you placing smart bets on technologies and trends?
– Do you invest in a balanced set of initiatives, and can you rebalance that when needed?
These are key innovation capabilities. But they also make you adaptable.
Just like people take up kickboxing or martial arts not to fight but to build full-body fitness, organizations can build innovation capabilities to enhance overall agility and resilience.
That’s where I come in. I help leadership teams assess where they are today and craft tailored innovation capability programs that improve adaptability; and often lead to new innovations in the process.
Let’s talk if you want to future-proof your organization by strengthening the capabilities that drive both innovation and adaptability.
Contact me to start a conversation.