In the early 2010s, leaders at the consulting firm Accenture watched technology disrupt industry after industry. They eventually reached a critical realization: the same would happen to them. Accenture's core businesses—professional services and outsourcing—would become commoditized. It was time for reinvention.of reinvention. The firm reported doubling its market cap in just five years to more than $100 billion as a result.
But that mindset is outdated, Nunes says. Instead, the wise pivot focuses on transforming an organization in three lifecycle stages: the “old,” the “new” and the “now” lines of business. Maintaining and improving the old lines of business help to preserve profitability, ultimately supporting more innovative ways of doing business in the now and allowing for investment in the new.
But we're finding it's increasingly important to every industry because every industry evolves at the pace of its fastest-changing technology. The major upgrade in connectivity will unleash a wave of new technologies because of increased reliability."Innovation is bottled up because there's a huge difference between 90% availability and 99% availability," Nunes says."A mobile payments app only becomes your preferred method when it’s extraordinarily reliable."
"You can no longer create those partnerships at the pace of punctuated change or the pace of wanting to do something," says Nunes."The time is now to begin identifying dance partners and experimenting with new forms of collaboration and co-investment."Accenture's outcome of a doubled market cap is no small endorsement of the wise pivot strategy. But for Nunes, metrics are just part of the story.