Ignore business agility at your peril. It may sound like jargon, but it’s fast becoming the defining factor between enterprise businesses that thrive and those that struggle to keep pace. While many business leaders broadly understand the concept of business agility, far fewer understand how to move from theory to implementation.
Here, we explore how businesses can become agile organizations capable of adapting to rapid changes in market conditions and improving their time to market. We’ll examine real-world implementations of the agile practices organizations are deploying to seize emerging business opportunities right now.
Understanding modern business agility
Today’s economic landscape calls for a level of organizational flexibility that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago. Market leaders are discovering that traditional business models can create barriers to growth. Built for stability rather than adaptability, these models focus on economies of scale. But today, economies of speed are equally important. It’s not a trade-off—both are required to survive and thrive.
In commerce, custom platforms illustrate the point well. A decade ago, building a custom platform was the right decision for many businesses. Unique business requirements and rapidly evolving regulations meant companies needed as much control as possible. But over time, custom platforms became really difficult to manage. This was the case at Daily Harvest, according to YuJin Yong, VP of digital. YuJin says that instead of bringing business-changing ideas to life, Daily Harvest’s engineers spent most of their time fixing issues that popped up daily with their custom built platform.