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Futures Report: Turning disruption into new value

Disruption is here to stay. But closely tracking potential paradigm-changers now can position companies for future growth.

2024 Futures Report: From disruption to business value
Executives who track the trends driving future disruption – and act now to take advantage of them – position their organization to realize new business value.

Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes

Disruption is as much a part of business today as surprise software updates and conference call glitches. 

But while that conference call snafu can be solved quickly (“You’re on mute, Tom”), macro business disruption is much harder to manage. Get it right, and your business can endure and grow. Get it wrong, and your company may be gone.

Look no further than the Fortune 500: In the last 25 years, 52 percent of its listed companies have either fallen out of the rankings or simply no longer exist.1

That disruption can be a force-multiplier for both rapid growth and rapid decline is a dynamic that most business leaders understand. In a recent KPMG survey2 of senior executives, 76 percent expected disruption to affect their business within the year, and 84 percent believed that operationalizing innovation across the org could deliver significant competitive advantages.

The catch: Only 60 percent of those executives said their companies were fully prepared to manage disruption, and just 33 percent were highly confident they were making the right investments to ensure future competitiveness.

A roadmap for disruption

Clearly, managing disruption is table stakes for doing business today. But, as our survey suggests, there’s a gap between expectations and preparations. Closing that gap—“We know it’s coming, but we’re not quite ready”—is a huge opportunity, as we detail in our new 2024 Futures Report.

There’s no way to predict the future, of course. But closely monitoring potential disrupters and how they might affect your business is critical to staying on the right side of disruption’s double-edged sword. 

To frame this evaluation, we suggest tracking disruption trends across specific frontiers of opportunity. These are arenas that have the potential to create profound disruption—and deliver wide-open new opportunities to create value. Four frontiers that we are tracking:

1

Steady disruption: Change with momentum that occurs over time

2

Big bang disruption: Sudden, significant change

3

Horizon disruption: Change that is poised to happen for some time, and then does

4

Renaissance disruption: Reflective of a past change, but reinvented for a new era

Mining these frontiers requires steadfast monitoring, regularly modeling the disrupters that best fit your company’s profile, and allocating resources and investment accordingly. 

Here’s a closer look at the four frontiers, with a specific business case for each:

Frontier #1: Industry 4.0 (steady disruption)

What to know:

Industry 4.0 is the next step in the digitization of the enterprise, merging advanced technologies (AI, blockchain, automation, et al) to revolutionize manufacturing and production processes. This convergence facilitates smarter, more resilient, and highly efficient production capabilities that can quickly adapt to changing consumer demands.

What to watch:

  • Human-machine collaboration, including evolving AI and generative AI (GenAI) capabilities
  • Rapid advances in automation and robotics within manufacturing and supply chains
  • Expanding and more specialized as-a-service supply chain options

Frontier #2: The AI age (big bang disruption)

What to know:

AI and GenAI capabilities are moving from pilot to scale at an unprecedented pace. Maintaining trust with stakeholders and mitigating risks is the next big arena. Trusted AI frameworks will ensure responsible, ethical AI programs—and having humans in the loop to mind the regulatory guardrails will be essential.

What to watch:

  • Emerging signals that suggest opportunities for new markets and business models
  • Partnerships that maximize speed to market, reduce up-front costs, and mitigate risks
  • Growing scrutiny of the environmental impact of energy-hungry AI technologies

Frontier # 3: Quantum computing (horizon disruption)

What to know:

Long a theoretical game changer, quantum computing may be near its tipping point. Using quantum physics, quantum computing can process complex tasks exponentially faster than classic binary computers. It has enormous potential for industries with complex processing demands and scenario matrices, such as financial services and life sciences.

What to watch:

  • Growth trends such as venture capital investment and merger and acquisition activity
  • Security concerns around quantum computing’s threat to existing encryption practices
  • Organizations that actively pilot quantum computing, rather than just investing in research

Frontier #4: The space economy (renaissance disruption)

What to know:

The second space race has arrived, and this one is being led by competing companies, rather than competing countries. The commercialization of space has significantly reduced costs and expanded access to satellite networks, geospatial research, in-orbit manufacturing, and more. Building awareness now can generate advantages over time.

What to watch:

  • Cost trends for satellites, launches, and other related space infrastructure
  • Top engineering and entrepreneurial talent moving into space segments
  • Patent filings related to space innovations

Reading the “D” leaves

As our new report details, executives who track the trends driving future disruption—and act now to take advantage—can position their organizations to create new value. To do that, business leaders need a framework for evaluation that can help them closely monitor the disrupters most likely to affect their companies.

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Business planning will still benefit from lookbacks at where the business has been. But with rapid change now a business constant, leaders will need to closely monitor the signals from the frontiers of disruption to help them fully understand where their companies can go next. 

Download our 2024 Futures Report now for much more about the frontiers of disruption, what business leaders can do today to stay ahead, and a five-step plan for building a future-ready innovation strategy.

Footnotes:

1 Ilan Mochari, “Why Half of the S&P 500 Companies Will Be Replaced in the Next Decade,” Inc. (March 23, 2016)

2 KPMG LLP Executive Pulse Survey (2024).

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Meet our team

Image of Cliff Justice
Cliff Justice
National Leader of Enterprise Innovation, KPMG US
Image of Stephanie Kim
Stephanie Kim
Executive Director, Enterprise Innovation, KPMG US

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