In 2016 and 2017, Tieto conducted a study with 500 Nordic executives from a wide variety of industries across Finland, Sweden and Norway on their views of the future. These interview and survey responses from Nordic business leaders form the foundation of the findings in Tieto’s Future Perspectives study.
The results show that 69% of Nordic leaders estimate that the rate of disruption will accelerate in the next 5 years. However, 74% foresee disruption coming from outside their own industry – with tech start-ups as the main drivers of digital disruption.
Financial services, media and retail & wholesale industries are being most heavily disrupted by new tech players. Disruption by tech-startups is most evident in Sweden, where 51% of executives see disruption coming from tech start-ups, followed by Norway (38%) and Finland (34%). Media, retail and healthcare industries are anticipated to have the shortest business model life spans, with an expected three years until becoming obsolete.
“Across the board, executives agree on one prediction: current business models now
have shorter lifespans. Accordingly, the majority – more than 80% – believe their value chain will change drastically, and seven out of ten believe that their current business model will be obsolete in just a few years. As digital disruption is the new normal, Nordic executives should focus on what business opportunities emerging technologies present”, says Ahmad Qureshi, Head of Digitalization and Strategic Development at Tieto.
Nordic leaders are missing out on future business opportunities
In the study, Tieto identified the so-called “Valley of Opportunity”, which consists of under-utilized opportunity domains with huge potential, especially as businesses and whole industries continue to digitalize.
Nordic leaders, however, are not yet investing in domains including technologies such as virtual reality, real-time retail, e-learning and smart health monitoring systems. For example, only 18% of executives interested in smart health monitoring showed a high interest in investing in this area. Additionally, a greater amount of Finnish executives (24%) pursue competitive advantages from selected opportunity domains relative to their Norwegian (18%) and Swedish (17%) colleagues.
“Nordic executives appear to strongly emphasize the importance of people and how they are led in achieving success in new business opportunities. Indeed, around half of executives consider culture and leadership as the most important factors supporting these changes – a number considerably higher than, for example, the little over one fifth of executives considering technology and processes as the most important”, concludes Ahmad Qureshi, Head of Digitalization and Strategic Development, Tieto.
