Future-Proofing Your Business: A Trend Book and Framework
By Emek Yeşilyurt and Marco Cigaina
The Envision Beyond Journal is a monthly publication of the Intelligent Enterprise Institute, the think and do tank of SAP to help business leaders inspire and accelerate change.
The issue is about Future-Proofing Your Business: A Trend Book and Framework. This month, we’re offering a comprehensive trend book and a framework tailored to help business leaders understand what challenges and opportunities the future may bring.
Don’t miss the Food for Thought section below to hear from other perspectives!
By Emek Yeşilyurt and Marco Cigaina
The business world is increasingly characterized by interconnected changes that are shaping the future of life and work. This evolution, enabled by technology, takes place within the broader context of societal and environmental changes. These individual trends and technologies are not isolated phenomena but part of a larger system. Therefore, they should be approached with a systemic analysis is required to fully understand their impact on businesses.
Businesses are not just passive spectators in this process; they have a crucial role to play, being uniquely positioned to respond to global problems. Businesses need a proactive approach to take control of the future and to turn challenges into opportunities.
With that in mind, the SAP Intelligent Enterprise Institute has published a Trend Book that is structured around the idea that business evolution in the context of a changing society and environment is enabled by technology.
Within the Trend Book, what surrounds business is organized in terms of society and environment. Business trends are mapped onto business model components, i.e., partnerships, value propositions, channels, operations, and resources. Technology trends are organized as a stack that comprises human-digital interaction, artificial intelligence, data, infrastructure, and physical technologies.
You can access the SAP Intelligent Enterprise Institute Trend Book here . This is and here below you find an overview of the trends it contains:
To navigate this complex and rapidly evolving landscape, businesses can leverage a suggested framework that views the future through four key lenses: people, enterprises, business networks, and the sustainable world. The technology stack, serving as the base, supports the integration of these lenses.
This framework allows companies to consider business at all scales and connects them in a structured, comprehensive, and consistent way.
Each lens offers a unique perspective on the future of business and how it is shaped by the impact of each trend. The people lens emphasizes the role of human talent and consumer behavior. The enterprise lens focuses on the internal dynamics of businesses and their operational efficiency, as well as business models and solutions offered to customers. The business network lens explores the relationships between businesses and their partners. Finally, the sustainable world lens emphasizes the long-term survival and responsible growth of businesses within the context of global sustainability.
We first introduced the Future of Business Four Lenses Framework in our initial issue of the Envision Beyond Journal, and since then we have been using this framework to explore the topics from the Trend Book.
Regarding the “business evolution” category of the Trend Book, we covered business networks, prosiliencey, and circular manufacturing and the future of work.
In the context of “changing society and environment”, we dedicated monthly issues to the building trust, the future of energy, the sustainability gap, and the life-centered economy.
In the area of technology, we focused on the metaverse concept and on generative AI, both in terms of capabilities and limitations and in terms of business case identification.
In our upcoming article in January, we will leverage the framework to analyze the implications of Artificial Intelligence on business.
Keeping an eye on evolving trends, even those that seem irrelevant at the moment, can help businesses anticipate potential challenges and opportunities. The call to action for businesses is clear: harness your potential and find the optimal balance between managing the present and innovating for the future. The presented framework, with the related trends, offers a structured approach for businesses to understand and respond to these changes is a tool to assist businesses in this journey. It encourages helps with preparedness and proactivity, the two key qualities that ensure business longevity and relevance in the face of change. We highly encourage you to spend some time to review our trend book and reach out with your thoughts and perspectives.
We have created the Intelligent Enterprise Institute Trend Book designed to look at trends impacting the business environment though a unique lens. We discuss a wide range of key trends such as artificial intelligence, business ecosystems, sustainable energy that are driving innovation and transformation. These trends, though seem diverse, are interconnected fragments of a larger systemic analysis. Understanding this interconnectedness is essential to future-proofing your business.
Delve into our Trend Book here.
The Intelligent Enterprise Institute helps business leaders understand the transformative potential of different forms of intelligence and use it for their organizations and life. It provides a platform to inspire and accelerate change, supported by market trends and SAP’s vision to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. By generating new insights and bringing together unheard voices and unique perspectives from leading thinkers and doers of the world, the Intelligent Enterprise Institute aims to foster different qualities in enterprises and their stakeholders alike, taking them into action for desirable outcomes.
