WHY ORGANISATIONAL SPEED NOW DEFINES VALUE

AI will shorten every competitive advantage. But so dramatically that no company can project cash flow beyond five years?

The idea has certainly gained traction. Chamath Palihapitiya's 'Collapse of Terminal Value' post pulled 1.2 million views. Investors took note. Because if stocks need to be repriced at 5x earnings, the S&P 500 drops 75%.

It's a credible take - average company lifespans have already fallen from 33 years in 1965 to a projected 14 this year.

But what does this mean for organisational design?

Well, if you're not in a complex regulated industry the logical response is to be the one always finding the next competitive advantage. That ability will continue to supply a series of moats. Individually transient. Collectively permanent.

If you're in a complex regulated industry things are, as usual, more complex. The compliance barrier that protects margins today - licensing, regulatory approval, embedded workflows - is real, but it's a bridge, not a fortress.

Compliance-as-code is coming. And when it arrives, organisations that treated their regulatory moat as permanent will also likely find themselves disrupted.

Ultimately, it seems that we all need rates of internal change that are faster than the market's commoditisation rate. We'll all have to learn, decide and redeploy faster than competitors can copy.

So what's today's in-the-end-at-the-end?

Chamath is right that moats are shortening. But he's probably wrong that capital will flee.

It may, however, reshuffle toward the organisations whose metabolism can keep pace.