Business transformation is key to resilience and sustainability. Competitors will try to copy best practices and processes to enhance their competitive advantage. When a competitor achieves the same degree of competitive positioning, there is little to choose between the two, and you start losing market share, and the decline begins.
Technology disruption is another factor that leads to business obsolescence and loss of market share and competitiveness.
Competitiveness can be maintained by periodic re-invention and business transformation. The re-invention process can be a big bang or incremental. Big bang changes cause disruption that has to be handled with care. The big bang approach is adopted when businesses are already in a state of disrepair. I use that when turning around a sick entity.
For healthy entities, it is best to undertake incremental changes. These changes could be adopting new technologies, re-engineering business processes, re-focusing and re-structuring the organization, re-education and retraining the workforce, etc.
Periodic introduction of new products and services also helps maintain resilience and sustainability.
I have found that sustainability and resilience require a mix of both major and incremental change. The choices will vary with market condition evolution and organization internal dynamics.