PIVOT TO THE FUTURE

A book on the lessons learned by the global consulting firm, Accenture, offering a radical new business model for thriving in the face of constant competitive threat and ceaseless technological disruption.

It will be based on major new research by Accenture (of over 1,000 companies across 30 industries across the globe) and backed by significant resources toward publicity and marketing from Accenture. The framework and practices detailed in the book are a priority within Accenture and with its clients around the world. The book will be fundamental to a companywide set of marketing activities built around their newest research initiatives.

Competitive threats can come out of nowhere, confronting every business with the possibility of extinction. Based on an extensive, multiyear Accenture research project, Pivot to the Future shows how to turn these threats into golden opportunities. Leaders must understand how to mold a business capable of winning in three timeframes: the "old," the "now," and the "new" - wisely pivoting between today's revenue needs and tomorrow's opportunities.

In markets driven by continuous, technology-based change, leaders must generate revenue and keep investors happy (improve the "old" and grow the "now") as well as reach the next generation of customers and retain top talent (scale the "new" the instant markets are ready for it). One pivot is followed by the next and the next, creating inter-connected, rolling strategies that continually reallocate assets and investments to balance old, current, and new lines of businesses and markets.

Omar Abbosh is group chief executive of Accenture's Communications, Media & Technology operating group and is a member of Accenture's Global Management Committee. He has served as the global client lead for leading multinational companies where he advised client executives on major strategic issues for their businesses. Mr. Abbosh joined Accenture in 1989 and became a partner in 1998. He holds a degree in electronic engineering from Cambridge University and a master's degree in business administration from INSEAD.

Paul Nunes is the global managing director for thought leadership at Accenture Research and leads the company's principle business research programs that shape its strategic vision. He is coauthor of three books, Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation (2014). He has written for MIT Sloan Management Review, Fast Company, Conference Board Review, The European Business Review, Rotman, Strategy and Leadership, and Wired. Nunes' research findings have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, BusinessWeek.com, Forbes.com, Inc.com, CFO, CIO, CIO Insight, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune.

Larry Downes is an Internet industry analyst and author on developing business strategies in the age of disruptive innovation. He is the co-author of Big Bang Disruption and author of New York Times business best-seller, Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance, (1998) which was named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the five most important books ever published on business and technology. He is a columnist on innovation for both The Washington Post and Forbes and writes regularly for Harvard Business Review. Downes has held faculty appointments at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Northwestern University School of Law, and the University of California-Berkeley's Haas School of Business, where he was Associate Dean of the School of Information. Since 2014, he has served as project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy.