"At least 40% of all businesses will die in the next 10 years, if they don't figure out how to change their entire company to accommodate new technologies" - John T. Chambers - Former CEO of Cisco Systems
Nearly half of today’s S&P 500 companies may vanish within the next decade. Digital platforms and AI are redrawing the competitive landscape faster than most incumbents can adapt. But the greatest threat isn’t disruption itself—it’s leadership inertia. Too many companies hesitate to act on shifts in digital business models, customer expectations, and experience transformation.
Design executives may be the difference.
From Walmart to Target, Disney to The New York Times, industry leaders have invested in strategic design leadership at the VP and SVP level—not as a layer of polish, but as a core business capability. These leaders are helping companies build new moats, accelerate relevance, and earn customer loyalty through differentiated experiences.
Strategic design leadership is no longer optional for companies with marketshare risks.
It’s become essential to how legacy brands are defending and growing market share in a digital-first world.
The ground beneath market leaders is shifting quickly. What once defined dominance—scale, brand equity, distribution—no longer guarantees staying power. Giants that once seemed untouchable are seeing their moats under siege. Digitally native companies have become the new titans of industry.
In 1965, the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company was 33 years. Today, it’s closer to 20. By 2030, it could drop to just 15. In this context, strategic design leadership isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity for any company serious about remaining relevant, resilient, and competitive.
AI is accelerating competitive erosion
AI isn’t just introducing new tools—it’s reshaping how markets operate. It lowers barriers to entry, accelerates operational speed, and exposes inefficiencies. For incumbents, the margin for error is narrowing. One or two wrong moves, and the moat crumbles.
But the decline isn’t inevitable. Companies that apply strategic design leadership—early and intentionally—are not only protecting market share; they’re building new forms of it.
Design is helping retail defend relevance
Brick-and-mortar retailers like Target are proving this. Once at risk of becoming a casualty in the Amazon era, Target invested in customer experience—digitally and physically.
Target: In Q3 2024, Target’s digital comparable sales grew by 8.7%, driven by nearly 25% growth compared to last year in same-day services such as Drive Up and Target Circle 360™.
Same-day services like Drive Up, redesigned stores, and a tightly integrated app experience are now central to its moat. Customers don’t just shop at Target—they return, repeatedly, because it feels designed for them.
Walmart: In Q4 2025, Walmart’s global eCommerce sales grew by 16%, led by store-fulfilled pickup & delivery and the U.S. marketplace; this contributed to a 4.6% increase in U.S. comparable sales, highlighting strong demand for general merchandise.
Walmart, facing down Amazon’s logistics juggernaut, has turned to design-led innovation. From intuitive app experiences to AI-enhanced shopping tools and InHome delivery, it’s blending operational scale with customer-centered simplicity. Design helped Walmart shift from commodity pricing to value experience.
Legacy media is fighting back—with design
The New York Times: In Q4 2023, The New York Times surpassed 10 million digital-only subscribers, generating over $1 billion in digital subscription revenue.
They transformed from a legacy newspaper into a digital subscription leader. How? Not just by chasing clicks—but by designing bundled, multi-sensory experiences around news, games, recipes, and more. Design didn’t just package the content—it made the customer feel seen and served.
Disney+: In Q1 2025, Disney’s streaming services, including Disney+, maintained stable subscriber numbers, supported by strategic pricing adjustments and content offerings.
Disney, too, is evolving. Beyond content, it’s applying system-wide design thinking to unify streaming, data, and product teams under one experience vision. In competing with Netflix, Disney is no longer just relying on IP—it’s betting on experience cohesion.
Legacy banks are actively fending off digital banking upstarts
Top U.S. institutions—including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo—have made major investments in strategic design leadership to stay competitive. As fintech disruptors gain ground, these incumbents are reimagining their digital ecosystems—moving beyond the branch to deliver seamless, personalized experiences across web and mobile.
In 2024, Bank of America unified its banking, investing, and retirement apps into a single, design-led platform—simplifying financial management for over 57 million digital clients. This move reflects a broader shift: user experience is no longer a nice-to-have, but a core strategic advantage.
At Capital One and JPMorgan Chase, the appointment of Chief Design Officers signals just how deeply embedded design has become. These teams work across fraud prevention, servicing, credit innovation, and more—making trust, clarity, and simplicity central to the business.
Meanwhile, digital-native challengers like Robinhood, Chime, PayPal, Stripe, and Square continue to gain market share with frictionless onboarding, transparent pricing, and intuitive design—setting new expectations around speed and ease.
To compete, legacy banks are betting on experience-led transformation. From BofA’s AI assistant Erica to Chase’s mobile-only UK platform, design leadership is helping incumbents modernize, protect market share, and remain relevant in a digital-first world.
Design is defense—and offense
Across these sectors, design isn’t just making things look better. It’s making companies more adaptive. It’s helping them see around corners, act sooner, and align faster. Strategic design leaders are translating ambiguity into advantage. They’re guiding companies to seize whitespace opportunities—before someone else does.
Too often, good ideas die not from lack of insight, but lack of follow-through. Design executives are changing that. Positioned within the C-suite, they’re empowering companies to act boldly, not cautiously. Especially in the AI era, where waiting equals losing, design gives organizations the ability to move with speed and clarity—without sacrificing customer trust.
Modern moats aren’t built from capital. They’re built from coherence
What strategic design executives bring to the table isn’t just aesthetics—it's integrating customer-centric insights with competitive digital business model opportunities that match consumer expectations in a digital-first world. They ensure that companies don’t just digitize—they differentiate. They don’t just chase efficiency—they earn loyalty.
As AI widens the gap between the fast and the forgotten, design becomes a multiplier of impact. It ensures technology serves people—not the other way around. And it positions companies to compete not just on products, but on experiences, ecosystems, and emotion.
The future won’t be inherited—it will be designed.
To protect and grow their moats, companies must redesign their approach to leadership. It’s not enough to have technologists and operators. Without design at the table, decisions risk becoming efficient—but detached.
In the AI era, the companies that win won’t just respond to disruption. They’ll design through it—with courage, clarity, and creativity at the center of how they lead.
