Change

Change pervades global business and society, but few firms or nations adapt quickly enough.

From 1960 to 2020, the number of US patents quintupled. The iPhone passed 50 million users in its first three months. Firms that made it to the S&P 500 Index once stayed on it for an average of 30 years; today they last about 17 years.

The pace of change now proves so fast that the current era of business and government may well have reached an end. The scale of change and disruption in the economy, and throughout industry, is driving leaders to make dramatic internal changes to keep pace. However, human nature and the design of most organizations resist change and reduce its trajectory, leaving the rate and scale of change in most organizations and governments insufficient. Leadership must come from more people and at all levels of organizations and society.

When change does not occur fast enough or deeply enough, organizations aren’t the only ones to suffer. Globally, pandemics, climate change and other dangers threaten future generations. Slow, good-enough organizational change is no longer enough. Small, incremental...