While the average human lifespan has increased in recent decades, the average business isn’t faring quite as well. S&P 500 companies in the ‘60s and ‘70s could count on three good decades of livelihood, but that lifespan has been steadily dropping—expected to shorten to 15-20 years during this decade. The small business owner faces even more dire statistics, with only 50% of small businesses surviving past year five.
Those are tough odds, but there’s good news in all of this. Businesses with the foresight to anticipate change, and the flexibility to adapt to it, can handily beat those odds. It’s called having an adaptive mindset—and while it’s not a new concept, its urgency and importance as a competitive advantage has never been more apparent.
