Business agility is moving beyond project management and operational flexibility to become a core capital-allocation discipline as investors increasingly expect companies to redirect resources, accelerate decisions and reinvent business models in response to technological and market disruption.
Business strategist and entrepreneur Jose Daniel Duarte Camacho says organizations can no longer define agility simply by how quickly teams execute projects. The more consequential measure, he argues, is whether leadership can recognize changing conditions and rapidly move people, capital and management attention toward the opportunities that matter most.
New research indicates that investors are placing growing importance on that capability.
According to PwC's 2025 Global Investor Survey, nearly three-quarters of investors — 73% — believe companies should increase their allocation of resources to business-model agility. Investors also said executives should devote only about 36% of their time to maintaining the existing business model, while the remainder should focus on expanding into new markets, customers, capabilities and business models.
Yet many organizations remain structurally constrained when it comes to reallocating resources.
PwC's Global CEO Survey found that approximately half of CEOs move 10% or less of their financial and human resources between projects and business units from year to year, while more than two-thirds reallocate less than 20%. Over the previous five years, only about 7% of company revenue on average came from distinctly new businesses.
For Duarte Camacho, that disconnect represents one of the central management challenges facing organizations today.
“Business agility is not the ability to react to every new trend. It is the ability to recognize what has materially changed, make a decision with sufficient information and then move resources before the opportunity or threat has passed,” said Jose Daniel Duarte Camacho. “A company can have talented people, advanced technology and an ambitious strategy, but if capital and decision authority remain trapped in yesterday's priorities, the organization will still move slowly.”
Agility Is Increasingly Measured by Where Resources Move
Traditional approaches to strategic planning often assumed that capital, teams and priorities could remain relatively stable throughout annual planning cycles.
That assumption is becoming more difficult to sustain.
Artificial intelligence, changing customer expectations, geopolitical uncertainty, new competitors and rapid shifts in digital business models are forcing organizations to reconsider priorities more frequently.
Duarte Camacho argues that one of the most revealing tests of agility is therefore not how frequently executives discuss transformation, but how readily an organization can stop, expand or redirect initiatives when evidence changes.
That requires leadership teams to distinguish between maintaining strategic consistency and protecting investments simply because significant time or money has already been committed to them.
“Organizations frequently associate stability with keeping plans unchanged,” Duarte Camacho said. “But strategic stability should come from a clear purpose and clear priorities. Execution should remain flexible enough to respond when new information demonstrates that resources can create more value somewhere else.”
Decision Speed Separates High-Performing Teams
The ability to reallocate resources also depends on how decisions are made.
Deloitte's research into high-performing teams found that members of those teams were 2.5 times as likely to report that their teams could quickly change direction and support one another during periods of change. They were also three times more likely to experience greater autonomy.
Separate Deloitte research cited in its 2025 Global Human Capital Trends report found substantial differences in decision practices between high- and low-performing organizations. High-performing organizations were 22 times more likely to openly discuss how decisions would be made, nine times more likely to teach decision-making capabilities and seven times more likely to provide tools that support higher-quality decisions.
Duarte Camacho believes those findings demonstrate why agility cannot be created simply by adding another layer of technology.
Digital systems can make information available faster, but organizations still need clear decision rights, accountability and leadership structures capable of acting on that information.
“When every important decision has to climb multiple levels of an organization, speed disappears,” Duarte Camacho said. “Leaders need to define which decisions require executive oversight and which should be made closer to the customer, the operation or the data. Agility improves when authority and information meet at the right level.”
Agile Businesses Are Showing Stronger Growth Outcomes
Recent business performance data also suggests a relationship between agility and growth.
PwC's 2025 Global Family Business Survey found that businesses demonstrating greater agility in responding to market shifts, customer demands and operational challenges were considerably more likely to report strong commercial results.
Among the surveyed companies identified as agile, 31% achieved double-digit sales growth, compared with 21% across the overall sample. At the same time, only 3% of surveyed family businesses said they were actively seeking to reinvent their businesses, highlighting the gap between the need for transformation and the willingness to pursue it.
Technology is increasing that pressure. The same survey found that 60% of family businesses viewed AI as a growth opportunity, while technological advancement and digital transformation ranked among their leading growth priorities.
For Duarte Camacho, AI makes organizational agility more important rather than less important.
Companies can increasingly analyze information, automate processes and identify patterns faster. However, those capabilities generate limited competitive advantage if organizations cannot translate insight into decisions and decisions into execution.
From Annual Planning to Continuous Resource Allocation
Duarte Camacho expects organizations seeking greater business agility to place more attention on several management disciplines:
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Resource mobility: Creating mechanisms that allow capital and talent to move toward higher-value opportunities rather than remaining locked into annual allocations.
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Decision clarity: Establishing clear ownership so teams understand which decisions they can make independently and which require escalation.
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Shorter feedback cycles: Evaluating initiatives using current operational and customer evidence instead of waiting for traditional annual reviews.
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Strategic prioritization: Reducing the number of competing initiatives so resources can be concentrated where they have the greatest impact.
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Operational visibility: Giving decision-makers timely access to financial, customer and performance information.
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Leadership adaptability: Building a culture in which changing direction based on evidence is viewed as disciplined management rather than inconsistency.
The objective, Duarte Camacho emphasizes, is not constant organizational change.
Instead, businesses need enough structural stability to execute effectively while maintaining sufficient flexibility to respond when circumstances materially change.
“Agility without discipline becomes constant motion,” Duarte Camacho concluded. “Discipline without agility becomes inertia. The competitive advantage comes from combining the two — maintaining clarity about where the business is going while being prepared to change how resources are deployed to get there.”
As investors place greater emphasis on business-model agility and companies confront increasingly compressed technology and market cycles, the ability to move capital, talent and decisions efficiently is becoming a measurable component of corporate performance.
For business leaders, the challenge is shifting from simply recognizing disruption to building organizations capable of acting on it before competitors do.
About Jose Duarte Camacho
JD Duarte is originally from Heredia, Costa Rica. He has been an entrepreneur and business owner for more than 20 years and divides his time between his existing operations and researching new possibilities in which to invest. When he's not dedicating time to his businesses, He spends time with his supporting wife and two children.
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