Most business leaders are looking in the wrong direction

There's a familiar pattern in boardrooms and leadership teams when the environment turns difficult. Someone points at inflation, or interest rates, or geopolitical instability, and the room nods. The wind is against us. What can you do.

In my experience, that framing is usually wrong - or at least, it's incomplete in a way that costs businesses dearly. The macroeconomic environment shapes the water you swim in. It doesn't determine whether you sink or float. The fundamentals of your own business do that.

I've spent the last six months working on something that I think cuts across both.

Together with a group of investors, advisers, and operators through Angel Investors Bristol, I've been leading a working group to build a rigorous investment and strategic thesis around what the AI era actually means - not for tech businesses, but for every business and the leaders running them. The result is a document we're calling Investing Through Disruption.

It covers the technology landscape, the regulatory picture, foundation model economics, and where value is likely to accrue through the AI stack. It includes a defensibility framework that any business can use to stress-test whether its competitive position is as solid as it looks, or whether AI is quietly eroding the foundations. And it maps three economic transition scenarios through to 2033 - because the range of outcomes from here is genuinely wide, and the business implications of each are meaningfully different.

What excites me about this work is that it sits in the space I care most about: helping leaders see what's coming down the track clearly enough to do something about it before the pressure arrives. I've never been particularly interested in crisis work as an end in itself - patching up a business, restructuring the debt, cutting the cost base, and walking away. What I'm in this for is building the kind of discipline and foresight into businesses that means they don't need rescuing in the first place, and that when the environment shifts, they're the ones moving forward while competitors are still trying to work out what happened.

The follow-up to this thesis is already underway - practical guidance for business leaders on the tangible risks and the tangible actions, rather than more analysis. I'm also speaking at three events over the coming months to bring the framework to life, with more in the pipeline.

If you'd like a copy of the thesis, or if you'd like me to come and work through the implications with your leadership team or at an event you're running, I'd be genuinely glad to hear from you.

The businesses that navigate the next decade well won't be the ones that got lucky with the wind. They'll be the ones that did the work.

Investing Through Disruption is available on request. DM me or drop me an email at marc@marcdrichard.com.