Ready for Everything: How the Best Companies Build for Any Future

by Howard Yu

From the leader of the Future Readiness Center comes your data-driven guide to getting ahead—and staying ahead—in an ever-shifting, fast-moving world.

Why do some companies prosper in both good times and bad, seemingly ready for everything, while others shatter at the first tremor of change? What are the levers that great leaders pull to prepare their organizations to be future-ready in a world of uncertainty?

To find out, Professor Howard Yu and his colleagues at IMD's Future Readiness Center developed a proprietary Future Readiness Indicator that uses hard data to assess a company's ability to prepare for long-term trends. Now, in Ready for Everything, Yu translates those insights into a practical guide that will help leaders prepare their own organizations for an uncertain world.

According to Yu, staying ahead means learning what's next, pioneering new approaches in the areas you know best, and believing in the compounding effects of continuous small improvements to drive sizeable long-term advantage.

Through detailed case studies, Yu shows that in fast-changing industries incumbents, even century-old companies, can hold a powerful edge—but only if they keep evolving quickly. He explains what future-ready leaders do to set their firms apart. And he lays out a new framework with tools you can put to work immediately to help your organization become ready for everything.

Kindle Edition

Expected publication October 12, 2027

About the author

Howard Yu is the LEGO professor of management and innovation in the prestigious IMD business school in Switzerland as well as the director of its signature program, the three-week Advanced Management Program (AMP), an executive education course. In 2015, Yu was selected by Poets&Quants as one of “The World’s Top 40 Business Professors Under 40,” and in 2018 he appeared on the Thinkers50 Radar list of thirty management thinkers “most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led.” He has delivered customized training programs for leading organizations including Mars, Maersk, Daimler, and Electrolux. His articles have appeared in Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, and The New York Times. Yu received his doctoral degree from Harvard Business School. Prior to his beginning his doctorate, he worked in the banking industry in Hong Kong.