The global economy has undergone numerous shifts, each one more dramatic than the last. New technology means that offices are unrecognizable from even just a few years ago. Even what motivates staff has changed, thanks to a new millennial workforce who have different priorities to their predecessors.

Embracing The Remote Office

For years, many businesses and startups have been experimenting with and implementing scenarios for working remotely. Email, texting, web-based video conferencing, and the growth of electronic documents allow more employees to do their jobs from home (and often save money on childcare, too). The coronavirus has ramped up the use of these enabling technologies to encourage social distancing.

Meetings, conferences, and social events are now occurring regularly, and teleconferences among various countries are activated with both dial-in and dial-out formats. In almost every financial or information-based sector, telecommuting affords little disruption in operations.

Cryptocurrencies

Twenty years ago, David Chaum and the online Digi-cash project were well underway but crashed in 1998 as Chaum’s business was driven into bankruptcy. Various attempts were made to revive the effort, imagining cryptocurrencies to be a faded pipe dream.

The most successful of these attempts was the popular electronic transaction standard introduced by PayPal. According to a brief history of cryptocurrencies found at Bitcoin Mag, 2008 marked the introduction of the Bitcoin paper by Satoshi Nakamoto.

After 2008, the rise of Bitcoin has spawned an entire online exchange of cryptocurrencies, some of which are considered viable forms of currency for engaging in business-related transactions today. Not only have cryptocurrencies been used in traditional businesses, but they also reside as unofficial mediums of monetary exchange in many less-publicized private online markets.

Finding new purpose

In a comparable way, the purpose-driven mission of preventative healthcare has spurred major change at other large organizations that made the list. China’s AIA Group has moved beyond insurance to become a wellness company, whereas Dutch electronics giant Philips has largely divested its legacy lighting business to focus on healthcare technology.

The technology companies on our list have also discovered ways to infuse purpose into their organizations as part of their fundamental change.

Siemens moved beyond the purpose of maximizing shareholder value to a mission of “serving society.” This transformation began in 2014 with a plan called Vision 2020 that called for harnessing technologies such as AI and the Internet of Things. However, changing the mission also called for changing the culture.

“The biggest obstacle to any transformation is literally just the way we’ve always done things,” says Siemens USA CEO Barbara Humpton. Infusing a higher purpose into the company called for pushing decision-making out from the center to every business unit so that managers and rank-and-file employees feel they have a stake in future success. “Ownership culture is central to everything,” Humpton says.

This shift in the culture at Siemens has propelled plans to divest its core oil and gas business and redeploy the capital to its Digital Industries unit and Smart Infrastructure business, focused on energy efficiency, renewable power storage, distributed power, and electric vehicle mobility.

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