I call it the era of Disruption. And I have been writing frequently about it, because it forces us to rethink how we manage and position our companies.
Globantone of the most prominent technology companies in Latin Americagives us a powerful case study.
Shocks directly impact our business models, through their effect on business actors. Our role is to position ourselves and reconfigure ourselves at the speed imposed by the environment.
It is not easy, and it becomes more complex due to the rigid structure of repetition and planning that models originating from another era that we continue to call companies have.
Globant did nothing wrong in traditional terms. Maintained margins, gained customers, invested in innovation.
But the emergence of generative artificial intelligence and the accelerated growth of no-code development challenged the very heart of its value proposition: access to technical talent at scale for third parties.
If an AI can do the work of five engineers, why continue to outsource the same way?
No business model is immune, no matter how successful it may be. Google has recently suffered this with the emergence of Open AI. And it continues to struggle to tune up its Cloud and Gemini ecosystem (with powerful launches that are then not reflected in practice).
Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), Google (GPC), IBM, Oracle will suffer when the status quo of the cloud is challenged by exponential technologies that, via the 6Ds (dematerialization, demonetization, democratization), encourage decentralization again.
Black Swans (unexpected events with significant impact) and Gray Rhinos (predictable high-impact events that we choose to ignore, such as climate change), multiply, now adding wars, decentralization of powerful technologies and powerful individuals multiplied by communities.
As an entrepreneur, consultant and trainer, I have seen this story repeat itself many times. Clayton Christensen baptized and explained the phenomenon in 1997 in his Innovator's Dilemma.
But it has never happened at this speed, nor with such short cycles, to the point that a single update of an LLM generates a cataract of opportunistic disruptions, as I explain in "Competitive strategy in the era of AI and Agents: Startups, SMEs and Corporations."
Disruption does not warn, it does not wait for us to be ready, and most complex, it rarely looks like what we expect.
For more than a decade I have been working on formulating a new business theory for disruption. A theory that allows us to build flexible, adaptive organizations oriented toward continuous learning. May it help us position ourselves antifragilely, combining resilient models with a permanent vocation for exploration: the conscious search for white swans, those unexpected events that can generate a transformative and positive impact on our organizations.
In my work with companies of all sizes, from startups to multinational corporations, I insist on three pillars to build adaptable organizations:
Dynamic business models with active management of fixed and asset costs (resilient). If your value depends on a heavy structure, you leave yourself exposed. If your model can adapt quickly funded by customers, with a high % of variable costs, without assets tying you up you are more likely to adapt.
Strategy as a system of elections and not as rigid planning. Abandon the long-term plan. As Roger Martin says, strategy is a theory for winning on a playing field of your choice (based on hypotheses that are disproved all the time). We cannot afford to continue repetition without adopting iterative, incremental and continuous experimentation methodologies. We must encourage trade-offs, decide what to stop doing, and redesign structures.
Exploration and exploitation as a dual system. Companies that only exploit what they already know how to do are doomed to become obsolete. Those who only explore often fail to sustain themselves. The key is to combine both worlds, as Geoffrey Moore proposes with the 4 Zones and the logic of offensive and defensive disruption.
Globant reacted to the shock quickly and is reconfiguring its model. Its AI Pods represent an attempt to pivot from selling programmer hours to selling AI-leveraged solutions.
It is incorporating its own tools, adopting a product logic rather than a service one. Will it be enough? We don't know yet. But we do know that they are doing the right thing: reexploring, redesigning, reinventing themselves.
Did you have a chance to anticipate the shock? Was the emergence of no-code a black swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) or a gray rhinoceros? (Michele Wucker)
For those of us who lead organizations, the message is clear: we cannot afford to manage as if the world has not changed.
We need to design antifragile companies, positioned for shocks. Companies that can co-create value with their clients, that finance themselves with them, that do not depend on five-year plans but on continuous learning cycles and an innovation mentality.
Globant is a company that has sufficient resources, business model strengths and a privileged position to reinvent itself.
It won't be easy. But it can become a competitive advantage if they decide to undertake a true business transformation and not a patch. One that turns it into a learning organization, light, with flexible models and an antifragile position.
Because it won't be the last shock he will suffer. And the rest of the companies will not stop going through this either. It is time for us all to take the inevitable business transformation seriously.
Note: Elite consulting firms are too lost trying to figure out how to save their own business model to support you. Before deciding on them, I recommend you read: They have already destroyed agility, now they are going after the agents. What they offer is NOT the way.
Delighted to meet with you to evaluate these issues in your own company and offer you my vision.
