I recently sat with the leadership team of one of the highest-performing med-tech companies in a major private equity portfolio.
I asked each executive to physically stand in a spot representing how much of their business they believed would need to be completely redesigned by 2026 to win in the AI era.
Every single one stood between 80% and 100%.
The team was shocked and relieved all at once — because they were glad their peers saw the magnitude of what they saw too and were ready to act.
The CEO said something that stayed with me:
“We’re in a position right now, given our performance and assets, to take charge of this and reimagine our future ourselves. If we wait, it will be done for us — and we won’t like that answer.”
That is the choice many leadership teams now face.
Headlines have called it a “SaaSpocalypse.” That’s hyperbole. What’s actually happening is a structural reset — one that forces leaders to rethink how their companies operate and win.
SaaS is simply the first place we can see the reset. Not only because of its economics, but because software is so malleable. Code can be rewritten. Interfaces regenerated. Entire workflows collapsed.
Other industries will feel the same pressures, just on a slower timetable.
For two decades, the software playbook barely changed: build tools, sell seats, add features, renew. AI doesn’t eliminate the customer need those products serve, but it radically changes how that need can be met.
Which means many companies now must rethink not just their products, but how the entire enterprise works.
Among the companies I advise, responses are already diverging.
Some leadership teams are leaning into this moment. Others, however, are cautiously adding AI features, doing pilots, and hoping the underlying model holds.
The difference is rarely technology. It is leadership posture.
And posture becomes visible very quickly.
The teams moving decisively tend to share five instincts:
They Stay Anchored in Purpose
When everything else suddenly feels negotiable — products, pricing, operating models — purpose becomes a stabilizing force.
The most thoughtful leaders start by asking a deceptively simple question: “If we were founding this company today, knowing what AI can now do, how would we solve this problem for customers?”
Products, pricing, organization design, and operating models can all change if they remain anchored in the problem the company exists to solve.
They Name the Scale of Reinvention Early
The “80–100%” exercise was not theatrical. It was clarifying.
Once every executive physically stood in that corner of the room, there was no ambiguity about the magnitude of change they were committing to pursue. The conversation quickly moved beyond technology to product architecture, pricing models, cost structures, talent mix, and capital allocation.
Naming the scale of reinvention early forces alignment. The real risk is assuming you have more time than you do.
They’re Not Afraid to Cannibalize Themselves
Some of their own products will not survive what is now possible — and the best leaders know it.
When electricity arrived, we no longer needed gas lamps. When Netflix shifted from DVDs to streaming, the transition was uncomfortable — but necessary.
Self-disruption fails because organizations are built to defend the current model — not dismantle it.
Which makes the willingness to cannibalize your own revenue streams one of the defining leadership tests of the next decade.
They See Incumbent Strengths as Advantages
Many established players worry they are too encumbered to compete with clean-sheet startups. Scale does bring legacy drag.
But incumbents also possess advantages startups cannot quickly replicate: trusted customer relationships, regulatory expertise, embedded workflows, proprietary data, and capital.
Those assets don’t eliminate the need to reinvent. But they can provide a powerful head start — if leaders are willing to use them.
They Put Serious Operators on the Future
The clearest difference is where leadership attention actually goes.
In one company we discussed, the “number twos” now run day-to-day operations. The most senior leaders are instead spending the majority of their time redesigning what the company should look like going forward.
That’s not symbolic — it’s a deliberate structural choice about where scarce leadership time flows.
Reinvention at this scale cannot be a side project. The real question is not technology. It’s whether the company is actually organized to pursue the future while still running the present.
If your best leaders are fully consumed running the current model, the future model will lag.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
