McKinsey's Big Arenas of Competition: Why Digital Commerce Is at a Turning Point

In a groundbreaking report from October 2024, McKinsey outlines a new era of competition: “The Next Big Arenas of Competition.”

The complete report can be viewed at McKinsey.

This is part 1 of our blog series about this report

The consulting firm identifies 18 industries poised to fundamentally reshape global economic power dynamics by 2040. Unsurprisingly, one of them is Digital Commerce.

What do these industries have in common? They aren’t just growing — they’re transforming. These are no longer “established markets,” but arenas — high-intensity battlegrounds where innovation, disruption, and global scale collide.

This blog series explores what this shift means for companies — and why simply modernizing your commerce systems is no longer enough.

Welcome to Part 1 of our series:

“How to Win in the Next Arena of Digital Commerce”

What Are Competitive Arenas?

McKinsey defines them as:“Industries that capture outsize growth and experience dramatic shifts in market share due to innovation and investment.”

In other words, we’re not talking about incremental growth — we’re talking about structural upheaval.

Typical traits of these arenas include:

• Step-change dynamics: technological leaps rather than slow evolution
• Escalatory investments: massive capital inflows, often from new players
• Global redistribution of competitive advantage

Put simply: If you can’t keep up, you’ll be pushed out.

Why eCommerce Is One of Them

Few industries embody this dynamic as clearly as Digital Commerce:

• Revenue growth: from $15 billion (2005) to $874 billion (2020)
• Market capitalization: from $87 billion to $3.2 trillion in the same period
• Outlook: $14–20 trillion in revenue by 2040

But what’s even more telling is who is driving this growth: More than 50% of the market leaders in 2020 didn’t even exist in 2005.

This shift makes one thing clear: The playing field is wide open — but only for those ready to radically rethink their model.

This Isn’t Just Growth — It’s Transformation

What we’re witnessing isn’t a digital upgrade — it’s a paradigm shift.

The rules of success are changing:

• From managing individual features to orchestrating entire processes
• From traditional launch roadmaps to continuous automation
• From “digitizing the old” to “enabling the new”

Successful companies no longer ask, “Which feature are we missing?”

They ask, “What operating model do we need?”

What’s Next?

If the playing field is changing so dramatically, why are so many companies still running yesterday’s systems?

That’s exactly what we’ll explore in Part 2 of the series:
“From Monoliths to Orchestration: A Dynamic Shift in the Business Model”

We’ll break down why traditional commerce platforms — whether monolithic or headless — no longer meet today’s demands. And what modern orchestration really means.

Stay Tuned

That was Part 1 of our series on the transformation of Digital Commerce. In the upcoming posts, we’ll show how companies can rethink their commerce strategies — and why technology is only half the equation.

Part 2 coming soon.