Read the recap below or watch the recording here.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Future Planning
The reality facing scholarly publishers today is stark: "The only honest answer that we've got is that the future is too uncertain at the moment. We can't really anticipate what's going to happen." Between integrity crises, threats to international collaboration, political instability affecting research funding, and the pervasive influence of AI, the scholarly publishing landscape feels increasingly volatile. Even more challenging, our customers—researchers, institutions, and libraries—face the same uncertainty, making it difficult for publishers to anticipate and deliver solutions when stakeholders themselves don't yet know what they'll need.
The presentation drew on a powerful metaphor: Honduras's Choluteca Bridge, an architectural marvel designed to be indestructible. When Hurricane Mitch struck in 1998, the bridge survived intact—but the hurricane carved an entirely new channel for the river, leaving the bridge stranded, connecting nothing. "This really represents the risk that we are facing right now with the changes and shifts that we are seeing at every turn. The last thing that we really want to do is to be this bridge and to be left in the middle of nowhere."
This is the risk for publishers who build elaborate plans for a future that shifts beneath their feet. The question becomes not how to predict the unpredictable, but how to build organizations capable of responding to whatever comes next.
Rediscovering Core Purpose
For Emerald, preparing for an unpredictable future meant returning to fundamentals. The organization had to confront difficult questions about its identity and capabilities.
"We are a publisher. That's what we're here for. We're here to publish impactful research. We're here to drive societal change. That's where we can add the value... What it turns out that we weren't was a technology company, and that's probably what we were trying to do."
This realization came after Emerald's experience building and maintaining a proprietary platform - a decision that initially seemed to promise greater control and agility but instead consumed resources needed for customer-facing innovation. The organization found itself spending enormous effort on the unglamorous work of platform maintenance: security, stability, uptime, and accessibility. "Everything was getting jostled together. Everything for the platform, everything for the rest of the business, it was in this massive queue, probably barely seeing the light of day."
The roadmap items that mattered most to customers - the innovations that would genuinely enhance their experience - remained perpetually out of reach, buried beneath operational necessities. The prospect of developing truly transformative capabilities seemed impossible when the organization couldn't even deliver on basic customer requests.
Embracing Strategic Partnerships
Emerald's solution involved a significant mindset shift about technology and partnership. Rather than trying to master every aspect of their infrastructure, they needed to think about "getting the most out of technology and not bending the technology to our will" - an admission that spoke to many publishers' tendency to over-customize solutions until they become unsustainable.
The decision to migrate from their proprietary platform to Silverchair represented both a practical change and a philosophical one. By configuring rather than customizing, and by trusting partners to handle foundational capabilities, Emerald could redirect internal resources toward their unique value proposition. Looking back at the original roadmap before the platform launch revealed the impact: "To just sit there and be able to say, right, well, that's already there, that's there, that's there, that's done on this whole list of things just from moving platform was just a little bit overwhelming."
This approach doesn't mean abandoning customer-centricity. Rather, it requires discipline in distinguishing between responding to every individual request and serving the broader community's needs. "Just because we don't respond to every single customer in the way that they want, it doesn't make us not customer centric." The space created by not managing infrastructure in-house has allowed Emerald to experiment with AI tools, pilot research integrity solutions, and explore innovations that would have been unthinkable when all resources were consumed by maintenance.
Cultivating a Culture of Change
Perhaps the most critical element of readiness isn't technological at all - it's cultural. Bringing an organization along on a transformation journey proves especially challenging when that journey involves acknowledging past mistakes. When Emerald announced they were moving off their proprietary platform, reactions ranged from skepticism ("we've done this before") to concern about job security as automated systems replaced manual workarounds.
The key to managing this transition has been transparency and consistent communication about why change is necessary and how it serves the mission. "That's the most important thing that you need to take out of it, that learning. You've got to be able to acknowledge the wrong turns. You've got to be able to accept them as a wrong turn in order to pivot and be on to the right thing."
This cultural work remains ongoing. Emerald continues working to help team members understand that automation of their current work doesn't diminish their value - it creates space for them to contribute in new ways. Celebrating small changes and innovations across the organization, not just major initiatives, helps build adaptability into the organizational DNA.
Building Organizations for What's Next
Emerald isn't yet the speedboat it aspires to be, but it's no longer the tanker it was. The organization occupies somewhere in between, still working through backend system improvements and cultural evolution, but now capable of pursuing opportunities that were previously impossible.
For an industry facing unprecedented uncertainty, this perspective offers both realism and hope. Publishers may not be able to predict the future, but they can build organizations capable of responding to whatever comes next. That means being honest about core capabilities, strategic about partnerships, and intentional about fostering cultures that embrace rather than resist change. "I think the most successful, but I think also the happiest, seem to be the people who are embracing the change."
The session underscored a fundamental truth: in uncertain times, adaptability isn't just a competitive advantage - it's a survival strategy.
View all of the Platform Strategies 2025 session recordings here.