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Is your organization ready to thrive in a world of constant disruption? Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva, Chief Reinvention Officer and founder of the Reinvention Academy joins Terry Onica and Jan Griffiths on Auto Supply Chain Prophets to explore why reinvention has become the top priority for businesses worldwide.

The days of long business cycles are over. Today, the average lifespan of a business model is down to just five years. With change accelerating across industries, companies can no longer rely on incremental improvements—they must embrace reinvention as an ongoing, proactive process.

But what does reinvention look like? From Philips' shift from consumer electronics to medical imaging to how a Slovenian heating company found its future in the automotive sector, Dr. Nadya's real-world examples reveal how rethinking strengths and opportunities can open new doors.

She also introduces The Titanic Syndrome, her groundbreaking book that draws a parallel between the Titanic's fate and the challenges modern businesses face. With striking examples—from Kodak's demise to startling statistics about Fortune 500 turnover—Dr. Nadya challenges leaders to rethink their approach before their organizations hit their own iceberg.

The real challenge? Culture. To address this, Dr. Nadya offers practical advice for leaders: gather your team for a "75-5 Exercise" that encourages them to rethink long-held assumptions and establish new rules for thriving in today's fast-paced world.

Dr. Nadya's message is clear: Stability is gone, and disruption is here to stay. Leaders must adjust their mindsets and embrace reinvention as a continuous journey. By doing so, they can turn challenges into opportunities and ensure their organizations not only survive but thrive.

Themes discussed in this episode:

• The rapid decline in business model lifespans, from decades to just five years, and what this means for the industry
• Why incremental changes are no longer enough in today’s fast-paced world
• How Philips’ pivot to medical imaging and Hidria’s transition to automotive demonstrate the power of rethinking strengths
• The concept of The Titanic Syndrome and how overconfidence, resistance to change, and lost knowledge are leading businesses to failure
• The cultural transformation needed to embrace continuous reinvention across teams and leadership
• Practical tools like the “75-5 Exercise” to challenge old assumptions and create new strategies for today’s evolving market
• Why leaders must see disruption as the new normal and treat reinvention as an ongoing, proactive process

Featured on this episode: 

Name: Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva

Title: Founder & Chief Reinvention Officer, Reinvention Academy

About: Known as “The Reinvention Guru” and “The Queen of Reinvention,” Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva is a scientist, entrepreneur, and acclaimed author with expertise in resilience and reinvention. She has guided organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Coca-Cola, Cisco, L’Oréal, Danone, Henkel, Erste Bank, Danfoss, and Knauf Insulation in transforming their products, leadership strategies, and business models to adapt to shifting market demands and anticipate future disruptions. Nadya has delivered keynotes and workshops to over 500,000 executives, including four TEDx talks. Her award-winning books, along with her contributions to Forbes and Harvard Business Review, further solidify her as a thought leader in her field.

Connect: LinkedIn

Mentioned in this episode:

• HBR article "Constant Change Is Rewriting the Psychological Contract with Employees"
• Nadya's latest book, "The Chief Reinvention Officer Handbook: How to Thrive in Chaos"
• For CEOs, reinvention momentum is building
• Titanic Syndrome: Why Companies Sink and How to Reinvent Your Way Out of Any Business Disaster

Episode Highlights:

[03:30] Why Reinvention Matters Now: The lifespan of a business model has shrunk from 75 years to just five. Dr. Nadya explains why reinvention must be a continuous, proactive process—more like brushing your teeth than a one-time project—to keep up with today’s fast-paced world of change.

[06:39] What Reinvention Really Means: Dr. Nadya defines reinvention as managing a diverse portfolio of changes—ranging from incremental tweaks to radical transformations. She emphasizes that there’s no universal formula; each company must develop its own approach, blending continuous innovation and system-wide reinvention to adapt and thrive.

[09:33] Rebuilding Trust in Change: Employee support for change has plummeted—from 74% in 2016 to just 43% 5 years later. Dr. Nadya explains how broken psychological contracts and constant disruptions fuel resistance and why quick wins and confidence-building are key to re-engaging teams.

[14:47] Reinvention in Action: What do you do well, and who else might need it? Philips transformed from TVs to medical imaging, and Hidria pivoted from heating systems to automotive parts, proving the power of aligning core strengths with new market opportunities.

[18:23] The Titanic Syndrome: Dr. Nadya shares how her consulting journey began unexpectedly and led to her groundbreaking book, The Titanic Syndrome. She explains how overconfidence, resistance to change, and lost knowledge spell disaster for modern companies.

[23:04] Turning Crises into Opportunity: Dr. Nadya introduces the “75-5 Exercise,” a powerful team activity that revisits outdated rules from the long-cycle era and creates strategies tailored to today’s fast-changing environment. By rethinking old methods and embracing the new normal, teams can turn constant disruption into a competitive advantage.

[29:29] A Painful Business Metaphor: Using a live example with CEOs, Dr. Nadya demonstrates how many businesses are stuck in temporary fixes, refusing to adjust for long-term change. Her advice? “Adjust your chair” and embrace reinvention as a permanent mindset to stop the discomfort.

Top Quotes:

[05:13] Nadya: “If in the 20th century, the average life cycle of a business model was 75 years. This year, the average life cycle of a business model, including monopolies, mining, metals, and all those very long-cycle companies, is five years. Meaning you have to reinvent faster than you have ever done before. And 20% of companies today are reinventing faster than the budgetary price cycle, faster than every 12 months. So, when you are at this speed of change, things are moving very fast: new technology, new regulations, new customer demands, new competitors; you have to go faster and faster. And that's why reinvention is becoming such a big, big thing. Is that we recognize that incremental change is no longer sufficient. You still need to do it, but you cannot limit yourself only to incremental change.”

[10:20] Nadya: “Just in 2016, on average, 74% of employees were willing to support enterprise change, 74%. Five years later, it was only 43% and falling. Most employees today are actually trying to prevent their companies from changing, and statistics from another organization, Gallup, actually show that an average of 15% of employees are actively sabotaging their businesses, their companies, and their bosses in trying to prevent change from happening. So, they're in a state of active sabotage. That's Gallup 2024 research. Those two numbers combined, those two studies combined, tell me that the way we approach change is all wrong.”

[19:48] Nadya: “By 2014, the number of companies that were in desperate need of reinvention and were facing bankruptcy was through the roof. And I couldn't figure out what it is, because most of them think it's a technical or technological problem. If we only figured out the right technology, we would solve it. That's a very typical mistake. When I stand in front of a group of people and ask them, "What killed Kodak?" They say, "Digital photography." Great answer; the problem is Kodak invented digital photography; it was their own R&D. And that is the case for most companies; they think if we gather winning technology, this would be solving all our problems. No, it's a mindset problem. It's a management system problem.”

[27:45] Nadya: “Stop thinking this is temporary. If it's not electric China, it will be COVID. If it's not COVID, it will be elections. If it's not an election, it will be a recession. If it's not a recession, it will be God knows what. But something is going to shake you up in the next six months. So, now the question that you should be asking yourself is, what are the rules of the game in a permanent shit storm? And I tell you, statistics are on your side when we look at statistics of a typical crisis all the way down to the eighties. In a typical crisis, about 17% of companies disappear, and 17% go bankrupt; it is not horrible. I think it's kind of actually cleansing, but 10% of companies become stronger by sales, profits, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction. You can use every shitstorm to grow and develop. You just need to think of it, as your strategy, not be in a defensive position, but be on the fence.”

[30:46] Nadya: “I'm standing in front of the room with my slides, and I said something, and then I move around the room, and I stand in the back next to flip chart and start facilitating discussion. All the CEOs and owners turn around and kind of bend their necks and start looking at me. And I was there for five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, and at that moment, I asked them how's their neck doing. And they're like, "It hurts. It's very uncomfortable." And then my next question is, "Why haven't you moved the chair so far?"  Because that's the biggest metaphor in business. Most businesses are right now operating, thinking that this is temporary for the last 10 years; they're stuck with their necks, losing their mind, their necks hurting, and their people screaming because they made short-term adjustments thinking this is temporary instead of making full, meaningful reinvention, understanding this is permanent. Adjust your freaking chair! Your neck will stop hurting.”

[Transcript]

So, when you are in this speed of change, things are moving very fast: new technology, new regulations, new customer demands, new competitors, you have to go faster and faster. And that's why reinvention is becoming such a big, big thing. Is that we recognize that incremental change is no longer sufficient. You still need to do it, but you cannot limit yourself only to incremental change. And second, we realize that at this speed of change, it's more like brushing your teeth than doing it once in a blue moon. It's not like you cannot brush your teeth for seven years and then brush them very well for two weeks and be done. No, by the time you get to it, half of your teeth will be gone. Same with reinvention, this is about a continuous proactive process rather than an occasional, accidental, ad hoc, one-time project.

So, what is reinvention? In our research, we identified nine types of reinvention, that includes everything from radical innovation to incremental change. The true meaning of reinvention is managing a portfolio, a diversified portfolio of initiatives where you are including a mix between the radical and incremental and everything in between.

So, a truly reinventive company is a company that has a nice cadence, reinventing every few months. Some of those reinventions are more on the incremental side. So, talking about the automotive sector, looking just at the transmission system or looking just at the particular process and reengineering, but a lot of it on a regular basis is a more radical, whole system, and very often, ecosystem reinvention that includes suppliers, customers, roads, core technologies. So, I was recently visiting a pilot road that uses wireless charging, so the car drives on the road, and the road provides the charge. This is, you know, we're going into the business of road building now. This is what the automotive sector is connecting to. So, this is ecosystem reinvention, not only my own company or a piece of my product. So, the essence of reinvention, continuous reinvention is building the right heartbeat where you are intersecting the moment of radical and the moment of incremental reinvention and managing a portfolio of initiatives in the process.

From my own sector, if we come close to automotive, one of my dearest friends, clients, and people I love is Hidria, which is a tiny company in Slovenia. In 2004, they produced heating and cooling equipment. They are out of their wits trying to figure out the future for their company because they're squeezed in the West by more known brands, such as Danfoss, and in the East, by low-cost producers, such as China. They're out of opportunity, and they produce massive heating and cooling systems. Let's say, take an entire Las Vegas hotel, and that would be the system they would install. So, they asked themselves the same question. What do we really know very well, and who else might need it? And they looked around, they looked at all of the assets, all of their knowledge, all of their competence, all of their know-how, and they looked at the market. And there was a market that truly needed one thing they did well, which is electric motors, because inside the strong heating and cooling system is electric motors. And in 2004, there was one industry that was in desperate need of knowledge of electric motors, and that was the automotive sector. They introduced their first automotive part in 2005. By 2015, during the economic crisis, they became the predevelopment supplier to everyone from BMW to Renault and everything in between. And today, every six cars in the world has Hidria parts. That is a typical story of heating and cooling to automotive. It's not that far of a jump as you might think.

And then in 2007, I was standing in front of an executive MBA class, and the CEO of a retail agriculture mix, so it's a kind of grocery chain with their own private label agriculture, was sitting in front of me. And he said, "You speak so well, I almost believe you, and you have zero business experience. So, I think you need to go work first before standing in front of us and telling us what to do." And I thought that was a divine intervention. I love that comment. So, he was my first client. At that point, I was a full-time professor and part-time consultant. And by 2014, with over 100 subcontracting consulting businesses in our network. We couldn't accept any more clients. We had a wait room, waiting list over one year. That meant, by 2014, the number of companies that were in desperate need of reinvention and were facing bankruptcy was through the roof. And I couldn't figure out what it is, because most of them think it's a technical or technological problem. If we only figured out the right technology, we would solve it. That's a very typical mistake. When I stand in front of a group of people and ask them, "What killed Kodak?" They say, "Digital photography." Great answer; the problem is Kodak invented digital photography; it was their own R&D. And that is the case for most companies; they think if we gather winning technology, this would be solving all our problems. No, it's a mindset problem. It's a management system problem. And the management system of the Titanic is very, very illustrative. And just around that time, another fellow professor of mine, teaching in the next room, Juan Serrano, who I love and adore, was using the case of Titanic, the ship, and he would show the video from the movie that is done so historically accurate and draw parallels between the movie and the business. And I stood there listening to him, and I'm like, that's very similar to what I'm seeing in my client organizations. All of these markers are almost identical. This refusal to believe that we can be sunk. This idea is that we are unsinkable by default. We are too big to fail. We will be bailed out. We're too good to fail. We are untouchable. We are the institution of the society. We are too meaningful for this region or for this state. Excuse me, look at every company that was untouchable and disappeared. So, one is a mindset, part of it is a systems issue. The famous story of binoculars that at the moment of collision the person who was responsible for noticing the incoming risks and trends, the two lookouts had a lot of things in their disposals, but binoculars were not them. Why? Because there was this idea that, you know, we don't need to worry about it. They were locked up. The key left the ship at Belfast together with the fired first officer. How often do you hear this in business when we fire some senior people and they were the holders of tacit knowledge, and now we have no clue how we did that process in the past or why that contract was set up this way, or who in the supply chain relations is the one I need to pay attention to and who is full of fluff. All of that tacit knowledge usually lifts the ship. We are too confident. We are too sure we are adaptive enough to move around the iceberg so that by the time we hit, we are all disoriented and company on to the company. Look at the recent years, that was Silicon Valley bank, for example, a company that had massive amount of cash and was bailed out and restructured and saved in name only. It's amazing to me that we are seeing, again and again, most companies not surviving, and to give you a statistic, 52% of Fortune 500 companies have left the list since 2000. 52% of companies.

I love demonstrating agility and reinvention right in the room so usually, I spread out the flip charts throughout the whole room. So, I'm standing in front of the room with my slides, and I say something, and then I move around the room, and I stand in the back next to the flip chart and start facilitating discussion. All the CEOs and owners turn around and kind of bend their necks and start looking at me. And I'm there for five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, and at that moment, I asked them how's their neck doing? And they're like, "It hurts. It's very uncomfortable." And then my next question is, "Why haven't you moved the chair so far?" Because that's the biggest metaphor in business. Most businesses are right now operating, thinking that this is temporary for the last 10 years; they're stuck with their necks, losing their mind, their necks hurting, and their people screaming because they made short-term adjustments thinking this is temporary instead of making full, meaningful reinvention, understanding this is permanent. Adjust your freaking chair! Your neck will stop hurting.