Vodafone publishes international research on the future of businesses

At the start of this project, Vodafone Business approached us with an intriguing question. Like us, it was interested in whether business outlooks and attitudes, especially about the introduction of new technology, affected company performance. Given our background in international business, the global scale of the research was very appealing.Vodafone Business had already done a lot of work on this question, having undertaken research about corporate strategy and behaviour, especially in the tech sector, for some years. From this, it has developed the interesting concept of a ‘fit for the future’ business. Working together, Vodafone Business wanted us to develop a rigorous methodology to discover whether these businesses across countries are more likely to thrive commercially in the face of the current business trends. Moreover, it also wanted to know if these businesses made a greater contribution to the social good. To achieve this, we concentrated on developing a framework to explain why businesses that were better prepared for the future might perform better as well as proposing ways to measure both the commercial and social return.We quickly realised that Vodafone Business’ concept of being ‘fit for the future’ had some parallels to an established strategy model; “entrepreneurial orientation”. In this strategic framework, company performance is improved by organisational processes, managerial practices, and leadership styles which draw on an entrepreneurial mindset. Vodafone Business’ notion of managerial future readiness bears some resemblance to this thinking, though with a more technological focus. Importantly for this report, a number of previous studies have established how characteristics of management strategy – such as openness to new technology, adaptability, and a positive attitude to change – may be associated with superior financial performance. The parallels between the two strategic concepts – entrepreneurial orientation and ‘fit for the future’ orientation – adds weight and credibility to Vodafone Business’ analysis.