The best practice for creating a business model that will endure the 21st century involves a few key principles:
- Innovation: In this rapidly changing digital era, businesses need to be innovative and be ready to adapt to new technologies. Companies that can predict trends and adapt to them will have a competitive advantage.
- Customer centricity: Businesses should be built around meeting customer needs. This involves understanding your customers, their pain points, and their desires.
- Sustainability: With increasing awareness about environmental issues, it is crucial for businesses to incorporate sustainable practices. This doesn't just mean environmentally, but also financially and socially.
- Digital Transformation: Embracing digital transformation is not an option but a necessity. This means leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data to optimize operations and provide better service to customers.
- Agility: The ability to quickly respond to changes in the market is crucial. This means having flexible operations and the ability to pivot when needed.
- Partnerships and Collaboration: In today's interconnected world, it's often more efficient to collaborate with other businesses and form partnerships. This can lead to synergies and new opportunities.
- Social Sustainability: is the ability of a community, society or a business to maintain and improve its social well-being over the long term. Factors include education, health care, social protection, reducing inequality, rights of indigenous people, gender equality, and political freedoms.
In the context of a business, the highest calling is to adopt a social sustainability agenda. Which means contributing to the social good, providing fair wages and working conditions, promoting diversity and inclusion AND having a positive impact on the communities where your business operates.
Remember, the best business model is the one that can adapt to changing circumstances and continually meet customer needs in a profitable way.