The frenetic pace of business today has reduced the life expectancy of corporations and the tenure of CEOs. The response has been a call for agility, the ability to move quickly to take advantage of change. But definitions of agility vary, and implementing it is difficult. Previous BTM Institute research showed that companies that had converged their management of business and technology realized higher profits and faster growth than their competitors. It further showed that these companies were agile. This paper builds on that research to examine the attributes of agility and how successful companies employ technology to achieve it. Agile companies create the processes and structures that allow them to know what is going on internally and externally. They then develop the mechanisms to act on that knowledge. Although technology is seen by some as the solution, the evidence is that agility is achieved through basic management principles, the imagination to see the organization in a different light, and a willingness to change. In the end, the proof of agility is survival in an ever more turbulent global environment.
