Stonebank’s core DNA is focused on this premise. Companies need to evolve significantly in order to grow above market rates, achieve outsized valuations, and to be most relevant to customers. Business models have been shifting in all industries, such as moving from products to services orientation, to moving from brick-and-mortar to e-commerce, product sales to subscriptions, and many other variations.

Making these changes while managing the core traditional business is immensely challenging. It requires CEO commitment, new strategies with a tolerance for risk and less known, rebalancing investment focus in R&D and M&A, leveraging new business partners, and business processes and culture to drive execution.

Some of the questions that every CEO should ask:

• What does the future in my industry look like in 5 and 10 years?
• What are the most important evolving opportunities and risks?
• How are my customer needs and expectations evolving and will we be the solution of choice?
• What are new business opportunities associated with adjacencies, unmet customer needs, and looking beyond my current business and market?
• What are new types of innovative business models we could establish?
• Is our R&D portfolio sufficiently addressing new offerings or appropriately balanced?
• Is my organization setup to capitalize on these opportunities?
• Do I need to buy, build, partner to establish the best in market solutions and positioning?
• Are we sufficiently innovating our operations to be most efficient, taking advantage of latest technologies and business practices?