Disruptors are challenging time-tested models and re-writing the rules across economies and industries, from manufacturing and banking to education and retail. Robots and artificial intelligence are changing the very look of factory floors and offices.

There are tangible social changes as the nature of work evolves in a newly-minted, globalised and connected world, where there is less friction than ever between producers and their customers, or capital and labour. Populations are ageing in many western nations and marketing channels are rapidly evolving.

Behind the noise, there are significant cost savings and opportunities ahead for companies, employees, and policy-makers.

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Companies with the right outlook, data, structures and processes can make the most of these opportunities. Other components of the economy will need to modernise too, as employees upskill or retrain and pressure comes on governments to introduce policies that incentivise business innovation, discovery, and evolution.

In this cycle, certain resources — if tapped strategically – can rapidly improve thinking and execution. Specifically, there is more data available to inform strategy and decision-making.

Companies and policymakers are sitting on new mountains of ever-evolving sets of data. Computing power advances are making it easier to dissect it, and extrapolate product and services demand, and model out potential changes in market prices for all kinds of variables.

This report is broken into three sections where there are opportunities to modernise: Technology, Workforce, and Organisational Structure and Processes. Among other areas, it looks at how the gig economy, technologies like and block chain ledgers and cloud computing, agile methodology, and innovations in corporate investment can be harnessed to help unlock new levels of productivity, and discover new products and services fit for the modern age.

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