What qualifies as 'Firm of the Future'?

From what markets and investors are rewarding worldwide and from what I see , the following are the qualities of 'Firm of the Future'

1. Asset Light / 'Light' Assets : The firm is light on assets which keeps the asset servicing costs quite low and makes it easy for the firm to 'Pivot' to a new product/market/business model. Its more powerful to have 'light' assets such as Data and Intellectual Property which are lot more rewarding from a perspective of Return on assets. They are also that much harder for a competitor to replicate.

2. People Light: Most of the firm's activities do not depend /directly related to number of humans required to run them. This makes it easy for the firm to reduce/avoid attrition/training/retraining/skill gap/demand -supply issues.

3. Cost Variability - Bulk of the costs of the structure are variable and hence can be directly fine tuned to the market demand. Even better are those whose costs are not linked to revenues !

4. Scalability - A platform is easily scalable vs a manufacturing plant or a services factory. The combination of #3 and #4 means the Profit growth can be geometric and not linear.

5. SMAC - Businesses connect to /leverage Social Media, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud. You might note that all these are closely connected to how millennials live /work and play!

6. Assets  to Services to  Platform : Owning a platform is in many ways a business that relates to the above than a services business or an asset based business.

7. Pivot - The ability to pivot to market demands/poor business model/ business model obsolescence/ better business idea etc - How easy/able is your business to pivot ?


How does your business/ business idea  relate to the above ?