Roundtables

Planning for uncertainty

South African CIOs have risen to the challenge of keeping businesses open over the last few months of Covid-19 restrictions. As lockdown starts to lift, the question is, what next? And the answer is that no one really knows.

05 October 2020

Professor Saras Sarasvathy, one of the world’s leading experts on entrepreneurial thinking, encourages businesses to deal with uncertainty by acting like a startup. After all, founders face uncertainty from day one, and what makes a good entrepreneur is the ability to manage that. As Sarasvathy puts it, the mantra for new businesses is: ‘I don’t know where the future is headed. I don’t have any resources. But I’ll be adaptive, responsive, resilient, persistent, quick and nimble. When things change, I’ll change, too, and that’s how I’ll make it.’ Now the same mantra is essential thinking for all of us.

How does the need to be adaptive translate for businesses on the ground here? How are they using IT to be prepared for a future that can’t be comfortably predicted?

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