Insights that drive leadership

Software stocks have been in freefall, and a new word has entered the business lexicon: "SaaSpocalypse." The thesis is that AI is poised to undermine the business model that made enterprise software one of the most profitable industries on the planet, built on high margins, recurring revenues and customers locked in by painful switching costs. Drawing on roundtables with senior business leaders in San Francisco and New York, this Fortune piece identifies three structural forc

Ecosystems—not standalone firms—are fast becoming the unit of competition. They are not the same as clusters: clusters are geographic concentrations of related actors; ecosystems are role- and rule-based collaborations organised around a user job and shared rails (identity, data, APIs, governance). Ecosystems may sit inside clusters, but they are not defined by geography and often cut across sectors and regions. AI and GenAI lower search and coordination costs, turning intent

This project is the result of a joint effort between PwC Strategy& and Evolution Ltd. This project draws on PwC Strategy&'s deep...

The supremacy of Big Tech increasingly rests on their ability to build and manage digital ecosystems, but power does not always translate into profit. Meta's costly metaverse experience offers a cautionary tale: by the time Horizon Worlds had been live for two years, fewer than 200,000 people used it monthly, and content creators were paying fees of up to 47.5% on virtual goods sales, draining the incentive for complementors to participate. Apple is now making a strikingly si

Web3 is not dead, but it is different. The grand metaverse dream may have faded, but beneath the disillusionment a quieter, more purposeful shift is underway: stablecoins now top $130 billion in global circulation, blockchain is tracking diamonds, carbon credits and airplane parts across complex supply chains, and Citi estimates that $5 trillion in central bank digital currencies could be circulating by 2030. This Fortune piece argues that companies need to update their think

Making sense of GenAI and preparing for the future GenAI may contribute to corporate inequality, though it holds potential to narrow...

Will the ongoing transition from Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles to Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) disrupt the incumbent automaker...

Platforms and ecosystems provide structures for constellations of economic actors to engage and interact as they seek to create and capture value. We consider how the constructs of platforms and ecosystems relate and explore why they have become more ubiquitous by focusing on the nature of their value-add. We propose that they emerge as a response to distinct market failures, which we identify, and we explain which specific externalities they help overcome. We also identify p

Tourism is booming, but the accounting is off. Mass tourism is damaging the planet through CO2 emissions and resource depletion, diluting local cultural identities and concentrating economic benefits among large investors rather than host communities. Drawing on research and advisory work, including the pioneering case of Valencia's collaborative tourism model, this Forbes piece argues that business ecosystems offer a path toward a more sustainable tourism paradigm. It ident

Despite headlines about Disney disbanding its metaverse unit and Meta scaling back its ambitions, the metaverse is far from dead: monthly active users crossed 500 million in early 2023, and companies from Walmart to BMW are quietly pressing ahead. But as businesses enter virtual worlds, they face a new category of risk that most are not prepared for. This Fortune piece argues that companies must take "Digital Social Responsibility" seriously in the metaverse, addressing three

Ecosystems open the door to new customers, broader value propositions and greater innovation, yet many companies still stumble over a fundamental question: what role should they actually play? Too often, firms assume they should be the orchestrator, underestimating the time, resources and capabilities that role demands, and end up confusing ecosystems with "egosystems." This strategy+business article offers a practical framework for deciding where to focus, which role to adop

2022 was not a year of black swans but of "grey rhinos": large, slow-moving threats hiding in plain sight. In this wide-ranging annual outlook published on LBS Think, the piece surveys the landscape at the intersection of strategy, technology, disruption and ecosystems. It examines the end of the era of cheap capital and naive platform thinking, the structural dominance of Big Tech despite market corrections, the evolving nature of competition under what is called a "Mark III

Gamification, originally seen as a means of motivating employees, is now being used in more and more industries to engage users, attract...

Interconnected value chains, digital platforms, and multi-product ecosystems are all becoming increasingly common, raising the question...

The metaverse may be in its infancy, but the major players are already placing enormous bets, and in doing so, shaping the architecture that everyone else will have to navigate. Drawing on natural language processing analysis of public announcements by five leading metaverse builders, this BCG Henderson Institute article identifies four competing visions of how the metaverse could take shape: Complete Control, Infrastructure Control, Content Control, and Platform Control. Eac

As consumers grow ever more inundated with choice, FMCG brands face a double challenge: how to transcend traditional industry boundaries, and how to reinvigorate both customer experience and brand perception in the process. Drawing on research and advisory work by Evolution Ltd with Lavazza, this piece identifies three strategic paths available to companies, ranging from innovation within existing boundaries, through cross-industry collaborations, to the building of full expe

As consumer goods businesses engage in an accelerating innovation arms race, competing for increasingly scarce consumer attention we...

Our inductive case study of the mobility industry in Southeast Asia shows how an innovative digital platform entrant, Grab, first tried...

From a strategy vantage point, 2021 saw consumers increasing their shift to digital distribution channels. As habits provoked by COVID...

One of the most profound changes in the industrial landscape in the last decade has been the growth of business ecosystems- groups of...