| August 2025 | How AI is Changing the Future of Work |
As Firstsource approaches its 25th anniversary, I find myself reflecting on the remarkable journey that has brought us here—and the even more extraordinary path that lies ahead. The BPO industry is now about 35 years old, and we’ve been part of this evolution for nearly 25 of those years.
Our industry has undergone seismic shifts, evolving from its origins in the early 1990s through multiple transformative phases.
But what we’re experiencing today isn’t just another incremental change. We’re witnessing a convergence of forces unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Look around you. Geopolitical tensions span the globe. Five generations in the workforce. Resurgent economic nationalism.
Inflation pressures. And a technological revolution in AI that makes even recent innovations seem antiquated. These forces aren't hitting us sequentially—they're hammering us concurrently. The degree of "unknown unknown" is unprecedented.
This is why we launched UnBPO™.
But as I look to the next 25 years, I’m asking an even bigger question: How do we build organizations that don’t just survive these disruptions but thrive because of them? How do we create businesses with the potential to last not decades, but centuries?
The answers may lie in an unexpected place: Japan.
Japan houses over 52,000 companies that have survived more than a century. They have a word for these businesses: shinise. The oldest company in the world, Kongō Gumi, has operated for an astonishing 1,445 years since constructing its first Buddhist temple in 578.
What’s even more remarkable is that Japan faces natural disasters with staggering frequency—about 1,500 earthquakes every year.
Yet these businesses have endured through centuries of disruption, through wars, natural disasters, technological revolutions, and economic upheavals.
While we in the business services industry celebrate survival across decades, these Japanese firms measure their journeys in centuries. What can we learn from them?
The shinise operate on fundamentally different principles than most modern businesses:
These principles offer profound lessons for organizations aiming to build lasting value in a rapidly changing world.
As your business moves beyond its first few decades, you must fundamentally reimagine what your organization can be. This means challenging every assumption about how your industry operates.
For us at Firstsource, the traditional labor arbitrage model is no longer sufficient. Location dispersion creates unnecessary complexity. Traditional metrics of success—headcount, revenue control, hierarchical position—are yesterday’s proxies of power.
Drawing from both innovative industry approaches and the longevity secrets of the shinise, here’s a vision for building organizations for the next century:
The shinise teach us that businesses that last centuries don’t try to be everything to everyone. They focus on being “an inch wide and a mile deep.” For today’s business services providers, this means moving beyond generic process execution to develop true domain mastery in select industries.
This isn’t just about specialization – it’s about building institutional knowledge that compounds over decades rather than quarters. When AI can replicate generic processes in seconds, the competitive advantage becomes deep domain expertise that can’t be automated.
For businesses, this means engaging with partners who truly understand their business context, who can anticipate needs and identify opportunities that generic service providers would miss entirely.
Labor arbitrage is now table stakes. The new frontier is technology arbitrage. But unlike the shinise of Japan, which maintained traditional craftsmanship, your industry must embrace technological revolution.
The mistake would be viewing technology as merely a cost- saving tool. Instead, we must see it as a means to elevate human potential. Advanced AI platforms aren’t just automating processes—they’re enabling people to deliver outcomes that were previously impossible, such as helping healthcare organizations identify high-risk claims before they incur penalties or enabling communications companies to resolve customer issues before they’re even reported.
The future isn’t AI or humans. It’s AI plus humans. But that plus is multiplicative, not additive.
Technology is also leveling the playing field globally. Today, we support European clients from Asia with near-zero language barriers thanks to real-time translation technologies. The boundaries that once dictated location decisions are disappearing, creating new possibilities for where and how services are delivered.
For businesses, this creates opportunities to access expertise regardless of geography and to benefit from technologies that might otherwise be out of reach for their organizations.
The shinise have maintained family structures for centuries, but our future demands network organizations that can adapt rapidly to change. This means dismantling deep-rooted hierarchies and creating organizations where value creation—not headcount or budget—determines influence.
Businesses must focus on what I call “the messy middle”—those mid-level managers who translate strategy into execution. They’re the most consequential group in any transformation, yet often the most neglected. Organizations must equip them with new skills, new tools, and a new mindset that prioritizes speed over perfection.
For businesses, this means rethinking their internal organizational structure and working with partners who can move quickly, adapt to changing requirements, and deliver results without unnecessary bureaucracy.
The most powerful lesson from the shinise is how they invest in their communities during crises. They understand that business resilience doesn’t come from cutting costs when disaster strikes—it comes from strengthening the ecosystem in which you operate.
When the 2011 tsunami hit Japan, the convenience store Lawson delivered nearly 200,000 meals to victims, not because it was profitable, but because it was right. When those same communities recovered, they remembered who had supported them when it mattered most.
For businesses, this means rethinking relationships with customers, employees, partners and communities. It means proactively evolving business models before they become obsolete. It means adopting commercial models that align success directly with customer outcomes.
Most importantly, it means treating employees not as resources but as partners in building multi-generational institutions. Businesses that invest in community impact create a workforce that’s more engaged, more loyal, and more motivated to deliver exceptional client experiences.
5. Orchestrating a Symphony of Partnerships No organization can navigate today’s complex environment alone. The shinise survived for centuries because they were embedded in their communities, forming networks of mutual support that could weather any crisis.
Similarly, the most effective organizations must see themselves as orchestrators of a symphony of partnerships. This means cultivating relationships with startups, technology providers, academic institutions, and even competitors to create an ecosystem that’s more resilient than any single organization could be.
This isn’t just about filling capability gaps—it’s about creating businesses that are antifragile, that actually strengthen under stress rather than merely surviving it.
For businesses, this provides access to an entire ecosystem of innovation and expertise that no single provider could deliver alone.
As we consider building an enduring organization, perhaps the most powerful lesson comes from Warren Buffett’s favorite investment—a small California chocolate company called See’s Candies.
Founded in 1921, See’s faced an existential challenge during the Great Depression and World War II when butter, sugar, and cream were severely rationed. The company had two choices: use inferior ingredients to maintain sales volume, or stick to high- quality ingredients and sell much smaller batches.
See's chose quality over quantity. They closed their stores each day when inventory ran out rather than compromise on their standards.
This decision seems counterintuitive from a short-term business perspective. But it created something far more valuable than quarterly profits: unshakeable trust.
By focusing on consistent quality rather than rapid expansion, See’s generated billions in profits for Berkshire Hathaway—a remarkable return on investment.
The parallel to our industry is striking. In a world where short- term cost-cutting is standard practice, how many businesses would choose to deliver fewer products or services rather than compromise on quality? This is exactly the paradigm shift your business must make.
The question every leader must ask today isn’t "How do I optimize for the next quarter?"" It’s "How do I build for the next quarter-century?"
This new approach to business isn’t just a response to current market conditions—this is about laying the foundation for the next century and beyond. While your business may not achieve the 1,445-year history of Kongō Gumi, you can certainly build organizations designed to thrive across generations.
The convergence of forces we’re experiencing—geopolitical, economic, social, technological—creates discontinuities. Discontinuities create imperfections in the marketplace. And imperfections create opportunities for those bold enough to seize them.
Every organization today has a choice: Will you play defense, clinging to traditional models as they crumble? Or will you play offense, reimagining what your industry can become?
The question facing us isn’t whether your industry will transform— it’s who will lead that transformation. At Firstsource, we’re reimagining our industry with UnBPO™, challenging every traditional process and focusing on outcomes rather than inputs.
As any industry continues to evolve, the most successful companies will be those founded on the same principles that have sustained the world’s most enduring enterprises—an unwavering commitment to quality, a focus on deep expertise, and the courage to prioritize long-term value over short-term convenience.
This is the future we must build. Not just for ourselves, but for generations to come.
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