Navigating the future: Rio Tinto's 4.0 Pioneer Lab

The fourth industrial revolution will change entire systems of production, management and governance. To prepare the ASX-listed mining company for a changing world, the Executive Committee set up the 4.0 Pioneer Lab. The aim: to move Rio Tinto firmly into the 21st century.

With this mandate a team of six carefully selected emerging leaders from around the world got to work. They interviewed experts across a wide range of fields, from technology to geopolitics and from production to sustainability, to develop extensive scenarios for the organisation's future global operating environment.

The patterns that emerged, along with the new and credible insights gained, formed the basis for the development of their adaptive strategy.