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More than six years after a Boeing 737 Max jetliner crashed in Ethiopia, the first civil trial stemming from the disaster that killed all 157 people on board the plane appears poised to move forward. Boeing has settled most of the dozens of wrongful death lawsuits that families of the victims filed against the aircraft maker after the March 2019 crash, but two of the remaining cases are scheduled to open before a federal court jury as soon as Tuesday. The trial in Chicago, where Boeing used to have its headquarters, isnt expected to examine the companys liability. Boeing already accepted responsibility for what happened to Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and for a similar 737 Max crash off the coast of Indonesia that killed 189 passengers and crew members less than five months earlier. Instead, an eight-person jury would be tasked with deciding how much Boeing should pay to the families of Mercy Ndivo, a 28-year-old mother originally from Kenya, and 36-year-old United Nations consultant Shikha Garg, who was from India. The fatal crash happened minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport. Ndivo and her husband were returning from her graduation ceremony in London, where she had earned a masters degree in accountancy. The couple are survived by their daughter, an infant at the time who is now almost 8. Ndivo’s parents sued Boeing on her behalf. Like a number of the other passengers, Garg, a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme, was on her way to attend a U.N. environmental assembly in Nairobi, Kenya. She is survived by her husband and parents. In a statement Monday, Boeing told the families of the 346 passengers and crew members killed in both crashes that it is deeply sorry. “We made an upfront commitment to fully and fairly compensate the families of those who were lost in the accidents, and have accepted legal responsibility for the accidents in these proceedings,” Boeing said, adding that it respected the families’ rights to pursue their claims in court. The two cases pending before U.S. District Judge Jorge Luis Alonso originally were among a group of five that potentially could have gone to trial this week. But Alonso said Monday that only two could proceed due to the U.S. government shutdown; an out-of-court settlement in either or both still could be reached at any point, even after a jury is empaneled and lawyers present their evidence. Details of prior settlements, many reached just before the start of scheduled trials, were confidential and have not been publicly disclosed. Robert Clifford, a Chicago lawyer whose firm represents many of the victims’ families, said attempts to reach a pre-trial settlement through mediation failed in recent months. Boeing accepted full responsibility for the senseless and preventable loss of these lives, yet they have not been mediating in good faith to come to a resolution for these devastated families, Clifford said in a statement. We are determined to achieve justice for every one of them. From nearly the moment pilots flying for Ethiopian Airlines took off in their new Boeing jetliner, they encountered problems with the plane. A device called a stick shaker began vibrating the captains control column, warning that the plane might stall and fall from the sky, and for six minutes, the pilots were bombarded by alarms as they fought to fly the plane. U.S. prosecutors later charged Boeing with conspiracy to commit fraud in connection with both crashes, accusing the company of deceiving government regulators about a flight-control system it developed for the 737 Max. In both crashes, the software had pitched the nose of the planes down repeatedly based on faulty readings from a single sensor. The Justice Department asked a federal judge in Texas to dismiss the felony charge and to approve an agreement between prosecutors and Boeing that is pending. If it is approved, the deal would allow Boeing to avoid prosecution in exchange for paying or investing another $1.1 billion in fines, compensation for the victims families, and internal safety and quality measures. Rio Yamat, AP Airlines and Travel Writer
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Saudi oil giant Aramco reported Tuesday a $26.9 billion profit in the third quarter, down slightly from last year as global energy prices remain depressed over concerns of too much oil being on the market.Aramco’s results serve as a bellwether for the wider oil industry, which is still digesting the OPEC+ decision this weekend to halt planned production increases in the first quarter of next year over supply worries. Benchmark Brent crude, at just under $65 a barrel, has been fluttering near a four-year low.In filing on Riyadh’s Tadawul stock exchange, Aramco, formally known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., reported overall revenue of $111 billion in the third quarter, compared with $123 billion in the same period last year. Its profit in the third quarter last year was $27.5 billion.The figures slightly beat analysts’ projections.“Aramco’s ability to adapt to new market realities has once again been demonstrated by our strong third quarter performance,” Aramco President and CEO Amin H. Nasser said in a statement. “We increased production with minimal incremental cost, and reliably supplied the oil, gas and associated products our customers depend on.”Under IFRS accounting standards, Aramco reported a net profit of $27.9 billion based on an adjusted bookkeeping.On Sunday, OPEC+ met and decided to increase its production by an additional 137,000 barrels of oil beginning in December. However, it said other adjustments planned in January, February and March of next year would be paused “due to seasonality.”OPEC+ includes the core members of the cartel, as well as nations outside of the group led by Russia.Aramco provides money crucial for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ‘s expansive development plans for the kingdom, including hosting the upcoming FIFA 2034 FIFA World Cup.Saudi Arabia’s vast oil resources, located close to the surface of its desert expanse, make it one of the world’s least expensive places to produce crude. For every $10 rise in the price of a barrel of oil, Saudi Arabia stands to make an additional $40 billion a year, according to the Institute of International Finance.The Saudi government owns the vast majority of the firm’s shares. Saudi Aramco publicly listed a sliver of its worth back in late 2019 and has weighed offering more shares publicly. Jon Gambrell, Associated Press
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When I think about the changes in the context for strategy across my career, my view contrasts starkly with the consensus view. Most obsess about rising VUCA (the combination of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) as the key change. I dontand I explain my position in this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) called What has Changed the Most for Strategy: Implications for Your Strategy. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. The VUCA narrative I started advising executives on strategy in 1981. The question I pondered for this piece is how has the context for strategy changed over the past 44 years? The general answer I get from observers is that the context for strategy has gotten more VUCA, a concept borrowed from military strategy, which adopted it in the late 1980s and has gotten ever more obsessed about it since. And that obsession has rubbed off on the business world. It is a bit like SWOT. The acronym rolls off the tongue and is very evocative. The narrative holds that as a strategist, you must recognize that you live in an increasingly VUCA world, so you must do SWOT analyses (ugh) and set out OKRs (double-ugh) to deal with that scary world. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/martin.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/Untitled-design-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Subscribe to Roger Martin\u0027s newsletter","dek":"Want to read more from Roger Martin? See his Substack at rogerlmartin.substack.com.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Sign Up","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/rogerlmartin.substack.com","theme":{"bg":"#00b3f0","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91412496,"imageMobileId":91412493,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} I just dont buy the notion that the world generally, or specifically the business strategy world, has gotten more VUCA and wrote about it three years ago in this series. Perhaps my feeling is informed by the particular time I entered the business work world and my subsequent tenure in it. I graduated into my first full-time job from business school in 1981, when the economy was in the middle of the third year of by far the greatest three-year inflation (39%) since WWI (19161918). U.S. unemployment was well on the way to hitting 10.8% in December 1982, its highest rate by far since the Great Depression. The Federal Funds rate (the basis for all interest rates) crested over 19% as I graduated. Policymakers had to invent a new name for the combination of high unemployment with high inflationstagflationwhich my economics courses taught me was impossible. Suffice it to say, it was pretty damn VUCA. Neither governments nor businesses had a clue how to deal with itand simply made stuff up as they went along. Then we had the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and Desert Storm to followalong with another deep recession. Then we had the dotcom bubble and crash between 1999 and 2001, followed by 9-11 in 2001, followed by the global financial meltdown from 20082009, followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. I think it is impossible to argue that it has not been nonstop VUCA for the past (at least) 44 years. Honestly, I think the VUCA narrative is so popular because it makes a great excuse: We are doing badly because it has gotten so VUCA. While the breakdown of the Soviet Union is cited as the motivation for the U.S. War College adopting the VUCA narrative, my own belief is that it had as much to do with being outsmarted by the Viet Cong in the catastrophic Vietnam War that ended a decade earlier in 1975. Faced by the then-dominant U.S. doctrine of overwhelming air and technical superiority, the Viet Cong said no thanks and played an entirely different game, and won against what in the old game would have been an overwhelmingly superior force. But to rationalize the loss, the losing side saw it as a manifestation of this terrible new phenomenonVUCA. It is not dissimilar to competing against Microsoft in personal computer operating systems. No competitor has been able to dent its near monopolistic share. However, the true competitors changed the game and worked on making an alternative device the “computer” of choicei.e. the smartphone. In that more broadly defined game, Android is the big winner with a share 50% greater than Windowswhich probably felt pretty VUCA to Microsoft. Dominant winning strategies always have and always will create VUCA responses as if out of thin air. While the world simply hasnt gotten demonstrably more VUCA, two changes have generated the biggest impact on strategy over the time of my career: fixed/variable cost mix and price/value discovery. Fixed/variable cost mix Historically, and still as of 1981, variable costs dominated the cost structure of business (as I chronicled in this Harvard Business Review (HBR) article. Historically, companies were mainly factories (whether product or service factories) with a thin veneer of office tower overhead. The biggest proportion of costs varied with production and a tiny proportion were fixed. The auto industry is a perfect historical example. When the customer wants a car, the auto company must buy thousands of parts, assemble them, and physically deliver the producta whole lot of variable costs. But beginning in the 1960s, large companies started to get really big, growing revenues 5.3 times in real terms between 1960 and 2000huge growth. And they doubled again in real terms since. As they grew, they built up fixed costsin categories such as branding, R&D, and distributionin part because they became big enough to take advantage of scale economies in these fixed cost categories. As a result, cost-of-goods-sold (COGS) as a percentage of revenues has fallen dramatically since 1981 and the share of sales, general & administration (SGA) has grown similarly. That in turn has driven scale. If you dont spread your fixed costs over great volume, you are going to get out-invested by someone elseand then you are in trouble because your product wont be as advanced, wont be as branded, wont have the distribution. In this way, scale begets more scale. Indusries that have the lowest fixed costs (as a percentage of revenues) remain the most fragmented, as with the auto OEM industry that has been famously consolidating for decades yet the biggest player, Toyota, still has a mere 12% market share and the next highest is below 10%. Industries with highest fixed costslike software where variable costs are minisculeare consolidated or consolidating. For example, in cloud software services, three companiesAmazon, Microsoft, and Googlehave 63% market share. In smartphone operating systems, Android has 75%, iOS 24% and everybody else combines for 1%. Across sectors, this shift in fixed/variable cost has driven increased concentration, which I discussed in the HBR article above and is shown in various pieces of research including this University of Chicago study. Price/value discovery The second huge change impacting strategy is the dramatically increased speed and efficiency of price/value discovery. As of 1981, it was genuinely hard to compare prices and assess value of offerings, whether in B2C or B2B. Competitive prices were not easily available. You might need to go physically from store-to-store to compareand in many B2B businesses it was even harder. And to get accurate assessments of quality/value, you would need to subscribe to Consumer Reports or Car & Driver magazine and wait for the issue that dealt with the offering for which you were interested. In B2B, pioneer Gartner Group only came into existence in 1979. In B2C, if a seller could lure you into its physical location, it had a decent chance to sell you something without you knowing what it cost elsewhere or how the offering actually performed. In B2B, a salesman visited you to sell you person-to-person and use the relationship to get you to buyagain often without knowing competitive prices or performance. Obviously, it is completely different 44 years later. In most industries, there is ease and efficiency of price comparison. There is very little you buy today without knowing the price relative to competitive offerings. And there are endless customer reviews available to provide a (relatively) unbiased assessment of value. Price and value discovery happens instantly and cheaplya few clicks and you have what you need. Implications for strategy For me, there are three big implications for strategy of the intersection of these two fundamental changes. More deterministic Strategy has become more deterministic. With customers able to discover price and value quickly and efficiently, companies cant hide or obfuscate. Either you have invested more fixed costs wisely in making your product more appealing, or not. And that will determine results. Of course it isnt perfectly deterministic. Nothing in life isexcept death and taxes! But it is far more deterministic today than in 1981 when obfuscation was much more effective. Quicker to logical conclusion The path to a logical competitive conclusion is shorter. In 1981, mediocre companies could survive as viable entities for decades. It was a controversial statement for Jack Welch to say in his famous 1981 speech that GE would either be #1 or #2 in its industry or exit the business. That seemed overly extreme#3 or #4 players could be profitable for a long time, couldnt they? They could then but they cant now. If you cant find a Where-to-Play (WTP) in which you can put in place a How-to-Win (HTW), the clock is ticking fast for your demise. Winners get on an upward spiral of being able economically to invest more fixed costs in greater winning while losers get on a downward spiral of investments becoming unaffordableand these upward and downward spirals are happening quicker than ever before. Peakier Winners are winning bigger than they have ever before. As I discussed in the HBR article above, in 1978, the 100 most profitable firms earned 48% of the profits of all U.S. publicly traded companies combined, but by 2015 the figure was 84%. Even more narrowly the so-called Magnificent Seven (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Telsa) have been responsible for a huge proportion of stock market growth in recent years, as I have written about in this series earlier (though Telsa less so recently). While these winners are winning big, losers are losing bigwhether Rite-Aid, Tupperware, Silicon Valley Bank, Neiman Marcus, Spirit Airlines, etc. Practitioner insights The first insight is that strategy is more important than ever in this deterministic, speedy, and peaky business context. Please ignore the voices who argue that seeking competitive advantage is fruitless in this VUCA world. They are 180 degrees wrong, and their advice is deadly to your health. Pick a WTP in which you aim to create a matching and powerful HTW. Invest in that WTP/HTW combination quickly and aggressively. If your WTP is too broad and/or your investment is slow or tentative, someone else will be able to out-invest youand customers will figure that out fast. And when they do, it is a quick downward spiral for you. If you are investing energy and capital in activities without an intention of winning, you are fooling yourself. I hear it all the time: Roger, we cant exit that mediocre product line/business unit because our overall sales will shrink. They foolishly assume that their position in that mediocre business is stable. It isnt. It will be crushedquicker than ever. And it will continue to bleed investment resources away from product lines/businesses that have a chance of an upward spiral. Figure out a place to standand fight to win. Out-invest your competition. If you cant, you are fooling yourself. If you can, double down and take the fight to your competition. Encourage transparency in price/value discovery. Be like Progressive Insurance and show your competitors rates on your own website. If you are truly superior, the more transparency the better. It is the age of “killer apps” (which I mean metaphoricallyF-150 is a killer app). Few offerings will win and win big. Many offerings will lose and lose entirely. If your chances of creating a killer app while doing X things is A%, it will be >A% if you focus on doing .5X things. Simply, what has changed most in strategy is the diminished efficacy of throwing spaghetti at walls and playing-to-play. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/martin.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/Untitled-design-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Subscribe to Roger Martin\u0027s newsletter","dek":"Want to read more from Roger Martin? Seehis Substack at rogerlmartin.substack.com.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Sign Up","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/rogerlmartin.substack.com","theme":{"bg":"#00b3f0","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91412496,"imageMobileId":91412493,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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