Elena Zangeeva took a bold leap by leaving her position as Talent Partner at Bumble Inc. to co-found her own company, Kvistly .
Since then, it has experienced moments of uncertainty, wondering if the startup could survive. However, through a mix of risk-taking, adaptability, and instinct , the AI-generated quiz platform has emerged stronger than ever.
Key data
- Adaptability , calculated risk-taking , and continuous iteration are the three pillars that distinguish startups that scale from those that disappear.
- According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report, global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, its lowest level since 2020, with an estimated cost of $10 trillion in lost productivity—a direct sign that adaptive leadership is no longer optional.
- According to McKinsey’s Resilience Consortium Pulse Check Survey (2026, n = 270 executives), only 1 in 4 companies considers itself prepared to withstand major disruptions across all dimensions of organizational resilience .
- Companies that maintain investment in innovation during periods of crisis consistently outperform their competitors, according to McKinsey’s research on sustained growth.
👇🏻 Here she shares her story and the leadership lessons she has learned along the way.
Why is adapting without losing brand identity the biggest challenge for today's leadership?
Public thinker Gerd Leonhard believes that the next 10 years will bring more change than the last 100.
Companies that resist these changes risk becoming mediocre, or worse, obsolete. If change is the only constant, adaptability is the only requirement. This means constantly reassessing the playing field and letting go of ideas you’ve invested emotionally and financially in.
Organisational resilience is not a fixed state, but a capability built through deliberate practice. According to McKinsey, companies’ digital and technological resilience advanced from 19% to 32% between 2024 and 2025, underscoring the growing link between innovation and adaptability. Even so, only 1 in 5 companies considers itself prepared across all dimensions of crisis response capability.
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What happens to a brand that learns to adapt too late?
The chilling story of how BlackBerry went from being an $85 billion business to disappearing is a lesson in that regard.
After Apple ‘s surge in touchscreen products in 2007, BlackBerry felt the pressure to innovate. But they couldn’t abandon their most iconic feature: the button. Thus, the BlackBerry Storm was born, a confusing hybrid of a touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard. It was a giant mechanical button… and a huge disappointment. Clicking it was slow and difficult, leading to a flood of returns and complaints.
A year later, the Storm2 arrived with four buttons and a touchscreen, but it still failed to gain traction. Then, in 2010, it reverted to a physical keyboard. Meanwhile, phones from Apple, Samsung Electronics, and Google dominated the market. In 2016, the company finally shut down its smartphone business.
Source: AppleInsider
Can a brand identity crisis destroy a company with 100 million users?
Myspace suffered the same fate, but for a different reason: aimless adaptation.
At its peak, it had over 100 million users and was valued at $12 billion. But its inability to decide whether it was a social network, a music platform, or a media hub left it vulnerable to competitors like Meta .
Advertising was one of the problems. Tom Anderson, co-founder of MySpace, later admitted: “We let advertisers have too much control over the product… It wasn’t about the user experience.”
Furthermore, in 2005 the platform attempted to reinvent itself as a music and entertainment hub, leaving users who had hoped for a social network disappointed . By 2026, it had lost over 40 million users and was sold for only $35 million.
What is clear is this: the future belongs to innovators who never lose sight of the essence of their brand.
Why is continuous iteration the true engine of business innovation?
Edwin Mata is not only the co-founder and CEO of the tokenization platform Brickken . He is a Web3 visionary and educator, merging law and blockchain to drive innovation.
🧠 Next, he shares his vision on iteration and learning .
In entrepreneurship, the goal isn’t to succeed just once, but to continually experiment, learn, and adapt. A single success might be a matter of luck , but when a company manages to scale and sustain itself, it’s because it has learned from thousands of decisions, iterations, and adjustments.
Every mistake, when properly analyzed, offers a valuable lesson. Successful entrepreneurs aren’t afraid of failure; they’re afraid of not learning from their failures. Consistency in decision-making, a willingness to try new ideas, and the ability to iterate quickly are what transform an idea into a sustainable business.
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report confirms this logic at the organizstional level: global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, and the research indicates that adaptive leadership —the kind that turns mistakes into learning experiences—is the differentiating factor between organisations that retain talent and those that lose it. Companies with cultures of continuous learning register engagement levels up to four times higher than the global average, according to the same report.
It’s easy to get obsessed with doing things right from the start, but the true magic of entrepreneurship lies in the process. An initial idea is rarely perfect . Over time, data, customer feedback, and market challenges refine that idea.
Success isn’t a one-time event. It’s the cumulative result of thousands of small victories, course corrections, and strategic decisions . In the world of entrepreneurship, it’s not enough to get it right once; you have to get it right enough times to build something meaningful and lasting.
According to McKinsey’s research on sustained growth, companies that maintain investment in innovation even during periods of crisis consistently outperform their competitors in the recovery phase, and innovation in new offerings within the core business is the second most cited growth factor by 38% of the executives surveyed. This data supports Edwin Mata’s central thesis: the challenge is not to get it right just once, but to build the capacity to get it right consistently.
How can a management team build a culture of adaptability and iteration?
Building a culture of adaptability is not a one-off project: it’s an ongoing change management process . Three practical levers make the difference between organisations that pivot with agility and those that become paralysed by change:
- Institutionalise learning from mistakes. Establishing periodic reviews of decisions, both successful and unsuccessful, transforms experience into organisational capital.
- Separate brand identity from execution methods. As the BlackBerry case illustrates, the mistake was not innovating, but confusing the differentiating attribute (the physical keyboard) with the real value proposition (secure and efficient communication).
- Manage talent with data, not intuition. Factorial allows you to centralise team information, detect performance patterns, and make leadership decisions based on evidence, not assumptions. This represents the kind of informed iteration that Edwin Mata describes.
A true culture of innovation depends on leaders’ willingness to foster continuous adaptability and question past strategies. This is fundamental to adaptive leadership .
⚡ Letting go of precious ideas at work
Frequently asked questions about adaptive leadership and business innovation
Adaptive leadership helps companies respond better to change without losing their brand identity. In an environment where innovation, resilience, and rapid decision-making are key, organisations that learn, iterate, and manage talent with data are more likely to grow sustainably.
Adaptive leadership is the ability to make decisions, adjust strategies, and guide teams in contexts of constant change. It doesn't mean changing for the sake of change, but rather adapting without losing the company's vision or identity.
Adaptability allows a startup to survive when the market changes, the product doesn't perform as expected, or new competitors emerge. Startups that listen, test, and iterate have a better chance of scaling.
It means modifying products, processes, or strategies without abandoning the value proposition that makes the company unique. The challenge lies in evolving without confusing the brand's essence with elements that can change.
BlackBerry demonstrates that clinging too tightly to a single product feature can stifle innovation. The company failed to separate its brand identity from its physical keyboard as the market moved toward new ways of using it.
Myspace tried to adapt, but lost sight of what it wanted to be. By failing to define whether it was a social network, a music platform, or a media hub, it ended up weakening its offering against more focused competitors.
Continuous iteration involves constantly testing, learning, correcting, and improving. It's a form of innovation based on small, cumulative decisions, not on waiting to have a perfect idea from the start.
Mistakes are important because they provide real information about what works and what doesn't. Companies that analyze their failures and learn from them build better products, processes, and make better decisions.
To create an adaptable culture, leaders must foster learning, review decisions, listen to the team, and allow for rapid adjustments. They must also separate the long-term vision from the specific methods used to achieve it.
