Transforming Legacy Organizations

INTRODUCTION

We live in the age of the entrepreneurs. New startups seem to appear out of nowhere and challenge not only established companies, but entire industries. Where unicorns were once mythical creatures, the word unicorn now refers to the startups that have a value of at least one billion dollars, and, at the time of writing this, there are more than 260 of them worldwide.¹ In 2018 alone, 53 unicorns were added to the list. You have probably never heard of the most valuable one. It's called ByteDance and it comes from China; it is a kind of a mix between Google and Facebook, and it is valued at $75 billion.² The fastest unicorn, the software company Uptake, took only 236 days to reach billion-dollar status from their first invested dollar.³ And the Nordic countries, where I come from, actually make up the largest unicorn region in the world, after Silicon Valley, in large part thanks to Stockholm which represents success stories like Spotify, Klarna, and King.⁴

Not long ago, young people dreamed of becoming doctors and lawyers. Today, an increasing number of youths are dreaming of becoming entrepreneurs and creating companies that can change the world – just like the new heroes Elon Musk (Tesla), Larry Page (Google) or Jeff Bezos (Amazon). The whole unicorn wave is so great that it has moved into the mass market. So if you have children between the ages of 8–10 who want teddy bears, suits and clothes from H&M with unicorns on them, their preferences are examples of how ...