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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsA resilient business model can adjust when customer needs, technology, competition or operating conditions shift—without automatically requiring a complete pivot. Build that adaptability into how your organization creates and delivers customer value and captures revenue: connect the offer to the channels, activities, resources and costs that make it viable, then revisit those connections as conditions change.
What does it mean to build a business model for change?
A business model is the system through which a company creates value for customers, delivers it and captures revenue or profit. It is more than pricing. The customer promise depends on choices about sales channels, operations, resources, capabilities, costs and revenue logic. Changing one part can affect the others.
Research on business models and dynamic capabilities describes sensing opportunities and reconfiguring capabilities as part of business-model design and change. In practice, that means treating the model as a connected system: a new channel may require different skills or fulfillment arrangements, while a changed customer offer may alter costs and revenue. Long Range Planning’s 2018 review of business models and dynamic capabilities provides a conceptual account, not a guaranteed recipe for performance.
What parts of the model need to adapt?
Look for changes that affect whether the organization can still meet customer needs and deliver its promise. The relevant parts vary by business, but four areas make a useful starting point:
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- Customer value: Whether the problem you solve, the benefits customers expect or their willingness to pay are changing.
- Channels and sales: How customers discover, evaluate, buy and receive the offer, and whether current channels still reach them effectively.
- Operations and supply: Whether the organization can reliably produce and deliver the offer under changing conditions.
- Resources and capabilities: Whether the people, technology, partners, information and other resources behind delivery remain adequate.
These elements are interdependent. Before changing one, consider how the change affects the customer experience, delivery capacity, costs and revenue logic. A promising offer that the organization cannot deliver reliably is not a resilient model.
How do I make my business more resilient to change?
Use a recurring management loop rather than treating resilience as a one-time transformation project. It should connect early signals to tested choices, staged action and regular review.
- Track pressures on the model. Monitor shifts in customer needs, competition, technology and regulation. Ask which assumptions behind the offer, channels, operations and revenue logic those signals might challenge.
- Build a small set of scenarios. Describe plausible futures that bound the uncertainty facing the business, rather than pretending to predict exactly what will happen. McKinsey’s March 2, 2021 article states: “Scenarios are not intended to serve as forecasting tools but rather as a means of bounding the uncertainty you confront.” The article frames scenarios as a way to test choices across possible futures.
- Stress-test possible moves. For each strategic choice, ask whether it would remain useful across several scenarios or relies on one forecast; how much of the current model it changes; whether investment can be staged or reversed; what it means for customers and delivery; and how it affects resilience across the organization.
- Keep a portfolio of moves. Make larger bets where evidence justifies them, use conditional or staged commitments when uncertainty is high, and pursue no-regret improvements that remain useful across scenarios. This avoids treating every decision as an all-or-nothing pivot.
- Review assumptions and choices regularly. Revisit the signals, scenario assumptions and commitments as conditions change instead of relying only on an annual planning cycle. McKinsey describes monthly strategy meetings as one observed approach, not a universal prescription.
- Check resilience across the system. Assess financial, operational, technological, organizational, reputational and business-model resilience—not just available cash. McKinsey’s May 17, 2021 framework names these six dimensions in “The resilience imperative: Succeeding in uncertain times”.
- Match the response to the evidence. Adjust the existing model where that is enough; transform it when it can no longer serve customers or remain viable under changed conditions.
Does resilience require a complete business-model transformation?
No. Adaptation can mean small adjustments around a stable model, or broader transformation when the existing arrangement no longer works. A 2024 study by Grego, Magnani and Denicolai examined 336 Italian companies during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020. It identified two resilience paths: an adaptive path involving business-model transformation, and an absorptive path in which innovative and more internationalized firms were more likely to remain resilient without transformation. The authors also report that high resilience could be achieved through small adjustments around a stable equilibrium. These findings describe that sample and period; they do not establish a universal formula. The study appears in the Journal of Business Research.
The practical question is not whether change is large enough to justify a pivot. It is whether the current model can still create and deliver the value customers need, while remaining viable. If it can, focused adjustments may be sufficient. If core assumptions no longer hold, more fundamental redesign may be warranted.
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What did the COVID-era business surveys show?
McKinsey reported in 2021 on a survey of approximately 300 senior executives in Europe conducted amid the COVID-19 crisis. Roughly half said the crisis exposed weaknesses in their companies’ strategic resilience; three-quarters said their companies undertook business-model innovation initiatives in response; and 60 percent expected those innovations to persist beyond the crisis. These are period-specific survey responses, not current global prevalence or proof that innovation caused resilience. McKinsey’s report gives the survey context.
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