Adaptive Businesses: lean machines

Overview

As we move into The Code Age, it seems like the time is right for Adaptive Businesses to take off. I think we will see the emergence of Adaptive Businesses in 2023.

An Adaptive Business is: 

• Founder-led: A small number of founders architect, curate and provide the human element

• Code-first with zero touch operations: efficient and scalable, the code does the heavy lifting and operations are automated

• Leverages community, ecosystem or platforms to create unique offerings or experiences

Other attributes could include:

• High quality and high volume: providing customers with a valuable offering that was not previously possible or is now significantly better value than prior offerings 

• Customer-centric: the customer is at the centre of the experience, mass personalisation or customisation are used to increase engagement 

• Sustained innovation: the offering improves over time the more it is used, the rate and speed of learning increases, and it adjusts to changing environments

Adaptive Unicorns: a billion dollars, no employees

An adaptive unicorn will likely have $50m+ revenue, 70%+ margins and no employees. It might be owned by one person, a group, a company, or have distributed ownership. 

They might be in a new category or playing in a niche. Either way, they are probably going to be highly profitable over time.

Looking for adaptive opportunities 

I’m looking for examples of adaptive businesses. Please reach out if you know of one (or are running one); I’m keen to learn more.