Chris Hagedorn

In 2026, the business of Transformation stands at a pivotal moment. Never before have macro-level incentives for systemic enterprise reinvention been matched by the technological ability to execute that change at scale. As the rapid onset of generative and agentic AI challenges long-held business norms and threatens to render more narrowly defined transformations insufficient, change leaders have the chance to push a far more assertive agenda. Genuine business transformation is suddenly not just a concept, but a necessary, unavoidable reality. What's more, the scope and scale of those transformations is exponentially greater. It might even be that the entire organisation needs to be rebuilt, from the ground up.

The purpose of this opening panel is to mimic all good Transformation projects, establishing a North Star around which the rest of the conference can rally. Before we proceed to the business of delivering change in practice, this session seeks to establish a vision for the future enterprise, something tangible towards which we can transform. To enable that exercise, our panellists and audience are asked to step into the future under the following scenario:

Our Scenario:

It's 2036, 10 years ahead of the present day. The working relationship between human and machine has evolved and AI agents are a mainstay of the workforce. The elevated pace of change and decision-making is an accepted norm. The macroeconomic environment remains complex, markets remain globally interconnected but with lingering barriers to global trade and ongoing supply chain disruption squeezing margins and demanding agility.

Our panel of Transformation leaders will build the enterprise required to confront this scenario, using the following pillars as their foundations:

• Business Model & Decision-Making: What does the target operating model look like? Do conventional business functions still exist, or are there value streams which are cross-cutting or entirely functionally-agnostic? Is the organisation much flatter in structure than the large enterprises of the past? Are smaller, distributed and autonomous teams the norm?

• The Value Preoccupation: How does the enterprise define value beyond profit? Is radical customer-centricity a standard norm driven by market competition?

• The Data Layer and AI Integration: Do core systems like the ERP remain, or have they been rendered redundant by AI? How is the enterprise using an advanced, AI-driven data analysis to drive performance and business value? Is the concept of human in the loop still holding and what level of autonomy for AI systems is tolerable?

• The Talent Pool: In a hybrid human/machine workforce, how has the talent requirement evolved in a workforce where so many core tasks have been outsourced to an agent? What has been the outcome of a decade of upskilling?

• The Cultural Imperative: What are the prevailing cultural values in the new enterprise? How has the business built uncertainty tolerance and adapted its culture to embrace an exponentially higher rate of change?