Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-In-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life

Shortlisted, 2025 Breakthrough Idea Award, Thinkers50

What if you could have whatever you want, produced and provided immediately and affordably no matter how customized―with minimal environmental impact? Products, services, and experiences on demand. Just-in-time anything, anywhere, anytime. This radical change is underway, as digital technologies push the production and provision of value ever closer to the moment of demand.

Robert C. Wolcott and Kaihan Krippendorff provide an indispensable guide to the Proximity revolution, showing how it’s transforming every industry―and our lives. Offering unparalleled foresight for leaders and innovators, they reveal how pervasive this trend will be. Proximity represents an entirely new way to serve customers, with critical implications for corporate strategy, investing, public policy, supply chain resilience, and sustainability. Incremental changes to existing business models won’t suffice.

Through interviews and compelling examples, Proximity shares stories of the people and companies leading the way. The book places rapidly advancing technologies―from generative AI and 3D printing to lab-grown meats, renewable energy, and virtual reality―in context and explores the factors accelerating the transformation.

Proximity offers a playbook for business leaders, investors, and entrepreneurs to win this rapidly emerging game―and for each of us to consider the implications for our careers, families, communities, and lives.

Kaihan Krippendorff is the founder of growth strategy and innovation consulting firm Outthinker. He has written four books, most recently Outthink the Competition (John Wiley & Sons, 2011).