Over 20 leaders of MNCs in the UK gathered at a breakfast discussion, chaired by board practice chair Virginia Bottomley, at Odgers Berndtson’s London office yesterday [26 June], to discover how businesses in APAC are tackling the disruption driven by the accelerating pace of change across all industries.

Consumers and customers were all behaving differently, thanks to the increasing digitisation of the world, Braithwaite said. In general, corporate executives were not entrepreneurs. However, because leaders tended to be younger – especially in China – they showed a greater appetite for risk. In APAC, leaders would trial new business models; and if they failed they would try something new.

And in turn this would encourage or give permission to their employees to take risks, without fear of comeback. Braithwaite said organisations in APAC were looking for “spikey” people, people who think differently and who were maybe not a similar fit to the culture.

A leader at the discussion asked how do companies find out if they were being disrupted and by what. From his research, Braithwaite suggested that if a company has not yet felt the effects of disruption, scanning the market would be the first step. In APAC, some companies have even been investing money into incubators to trial various strategies.

Another question was on the gig economy and whether it was prevalent in Asia. “Not yet,” Braithwaite said. Although there was a really strong desire among people in the region to be entrepreneurs, he said “the gig economy is non-existent – it hasn’t started in APAC”.

Leadership Disrupted by Braithwaite sets out how much strategies, talent and leadership in changing and how the hottest innovation is coming from Asia.

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