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Advancements in digital technology, collectively known as Industry 4.0, are profoundly changing dynamics in multiple industries. The coaching industry is impacted by this shift, as companies offering digital coaching technologies begin to take market share. To effectively serve clients in this rapidly changing market, coaches must adopt a digital mindset, upskill their capabilities, and transform their business models to leverage current and nascent technology.

Organizations are increasingly including executive coaching as part of their leadership development interventions to improve their executive leaders' abilities. Previous studies have linked outstanding leader performance to an intentionally developed relational climate. Therefore, the relational climate crafted between the coach and executive leader is critically important to create shared purpose, experience compassion, energize interactions, impact performance, and realize a quality, effective executive coaching engagement.

This is the first study to explore relational climate as a driver of coaching relationship quality. My empirical findings reflect that relational climate has a significant, positive impact on coaching relationship quality, which in turn contributes to an executive leader's effectiveness. The three goals of this study are: (1) to understand the factors that contribute to crafting a quality and effective coaching relationship; (2) to address scholarly gaps in past research regarding the relationship between a coach and client; and (3) to provide clarity for coaches how to better address, leverage, and realize an executive coaching relational climate within the context of Industry 4.0. Those crafting effective and quality coaching relationships should ensure that there is shared vision between the coach and client, that both parties demonstrate compassion, and that the coach and client each infuse the relationship with positive energy and vitality to create relational energy.

Morality is primarily a system of values, meanings, convictions, beliefs, principles, and drivers of good behavior and good outcomes in any organization. Using systems thinking concepts and applications introduced and developed during the last 50 years or so by various scholars from MIT, Stanford, and Wharton, such as Chris Argyris, Russell Ackoff, G. K. Forrester, Peter Senge, Stephen Covey, and Jim Collins, this chapter seeks to explore various past and contemporary market systems and challenges in terms of specific inputs, processes, and outputs. Systems thinking reckons everything in the cosmos (usually classified as subjects, objects, properties, and events) as a system (composed of two or more interactive parts with individual and interactive effects) that is connected to every other system in the universe. Various systems thinking laws and archetypes that have been developed thus far by systems thinkers will be introduced in order to identify basic patterns, structures, and constraints of human thinking and reasoning that create market phenomena. The academic and managerial challenge is to identify, explore, and capitalize such nonobvious connections for creating and developing new markets and corporate growth opportunities in the highly turbulent markets of today. In a globalized, digitized, and networked planet and universe, systems thinking is a very effective tool for analyzing turbulent market systems holistically and in an inclusive and integrated manner, with their specific inputs, processes, and outcomes. Several contemporary market cases will be included to illustrate the contents of this chapter.

This chapter explores the role of individual cognitive abilities in the radical innovation of business models and their value proposition. The focus on a specific cognitive construct – metacognition – contributes to understanding the specificities of “criticism,” an approach relevant to addressing the challenges of the radical innovation of value drivers. Based on empirical data, this exploratory research identifies the characteristic elements of criticism from a metacognition perspective, pinpointing the key moments and attitudes of innovators, i.e., cognition of own cognition. The analysis of the findings shows that successful innovators are able to leverage the perception and control of own cognition to more effectively develop and negotiate the radical innovation of the business model in their organization, going beyond the dichotomy between rational and affective mental states. This chapter concludes with a discussion and future research outlook.

The over 125-year-old economic miracle called the Corporation is suddenly shaken in its foundations. The corporate business world is rapidly changing not only in the USA, but also across the globe. The front covers of business magazines and dailies, once dominated by names and faces of “Corporate Giants,” are now being replaced with success stories of great startups and small business entrepreneurs. The reasons for these radical changes progressively reveal the imperfections existing in the current corporation and the business boardroom paradigm. For over a century, huge corporate entities spawned by capitalism have established and entrenched themselves in their respective industry arenas and have since been ruling the world, dominating money, capital, cash, and market opportunity. Once they provided solutions to people’s employment and career needs, they have made a fortune for themselves thereby. In the course of their evolution, the businesses have transformed into corporations, seeking people’s money for doing business and, in turn, giving a share of proportionate ownership to the investor people in the form of dividends and capital gains. Such a brilliant method of raising capital has empowered the corporations to grow and expand beyond physical and political boundaries. Today, however, the corporations are run by the BOD, most of whom are representing gigantic promoter-investor institutions. That is, the main administrative role is now replaced by private equity firms and hedge funds that provide the required capital but who also exert undue pressures on CEOs to focus on short-term strategies that have massive profitability potential, thus defying the usual business management model and paradigm the CEOs were trained for in B-schools. The massive CEO exodus that has migrated from the traditional corporations to newly created startups and smaller business entrepreneurial ventures has also made the corporation an endangered species. In such a market turbulence, how do we redefine, redesign, and reinvent the morally embattled corporation? This chapter explores solutions.