When Is the Right Time to Reinvent Your Business?
Spot the signals. Act with precision.
Change is the only constant—and business models are no exception. In their article “When Is the Right Time to Reinvent Your Business?”, Wayne Borchardt, Lang Davison, Matthew Duffey, and Nicole Wakefield at PwC explore how companies can read the signs—before they’re forced to move. Waiting too long or acting too soon can both be costly. What matters is getting the timing right.
The Pressure Index: Your Early Warning System
Borchardt, Davison, Duffey & Wakefield introduce the Business Model Reinvention (BMR) Pressure Index, a tool built from six sector-level indicators that tend to precede major shifts in how firms create, deliver, and capture value. These are:
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Performance – When industry returns decline, firms feel the heat to adapt.
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Attractiveness – New value and new players emerging put pressure on incumbents.
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Innovation – Breakthrough technologies and business models force rethinking.
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Shocks – Economic or demand shocks accelerate the need for change.
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Regulation – Shifting policy or regulatory landscapes disrupt established models.
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BMR Intensity – The degree to which peers are already changing; market share shifts show the momentum.
When these indicators rise, they often precede important reinvention eras in various sectors.
Real Cases & Lessons Learned
Using 30 years of data for industries like retail, insurance, telecom, and technology (in the US, UK, Germany, and other markets), the authors show how spikes in the Pressure Index accurately predicted eras like:
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The Dot-com Era
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The Omnichannel Era
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The Online-First Era
They highlight stories of both successes and failures—companies who caught the signals early, adapted, and thrived; and others who either ignored them or jumped too soon.