134  Blockchain

that need employees to be physically present to carry out the work,

but they can also change their model to have online presence or

make the backoffice processes online to reduce the impact.

• Demographic change: There has been changes in the demographics

within our society. There have been changes in the society with regards

to older population, retired population, growth of women in working

class and also the younger generation called millenniums. There are

also population changes happening with regards to rich, middle class

and poor. A lot of developing counties like India are growing with

lot of educated middle class population. All these changes are forc-

ing businesses to change their business models to attract a variety of

people towards their products and services.

• Challenges from FinTech and other start-ups: Over the few years,

there has been a significant growth in upcoming entrepreneurs. This

has changed the footprint of incumbent and non-incumbent players

within a variety of sectors such as financial, healthcare, supply chain,

research, education and technology. Incumbents’ players are forced to

change their business model or face severe business impact including

financial distress and insolvency.

• Digitalisation: Digital has become a de facto term within every single

business around the globe. Businesses are unable to survive without

some sort of digital presence either for customer facing websites/

mobile applications or for their back and middle office process digi-

talisation. The external competitive forces have created a domino

effect whereby businesses without digital presence must change their

business model to have online presence or have severe financial and

brand impact. Many businesses without online presence have either

gone out of business or are in financial loss. Some of the examples

of external threats from competitors can be easily described from a

company like Amazon.

• Innovation: Innovation needs to be built into every business operating

and nervous systems. There have been multiple examples of incumbents

who were mega successful but ignored the external forces of competi-

tion. They went out of business. Some of the examples are as follows:

⚬

⚬Nokia lost most of the business to smart phone introduced by Apple.

⚬

⚬Kodak lost its business due to digital cameras.

⚬

⚬Blackberry lost its business to Apple and Samsung innovative

smart phones.

Each successful incumbent needs to start adopting innovation ideas in

parallel to the existing business model. This will make sure that they

are ready to compete when a competitor becomes a threat.

• Globalisation: Globalisation has also impacted multiple businesses

and is still forcing businesses to change their business model to com-

pete. Businesses in developed countries had to adopt to globalisation

due to cheaper labour, cheaper manufactured products and also raw

materials available globally. Most of the companies now outsource

the skilled labour globally and also make their products globally to