CVS' proposed acquisition this week of health 
insurance giant Aetna is a big deal.
It will combine a pharmacy retailer with more than 9,000 stores, with a health insurance giant with more than 22 million members.
And, at a $77 billion purchase price, it is one of the largest mergers in the history of healthcare and will enrich Aetna shareholders to the tune of a 29% percent premium on their stock shares.
But that is the least interesting part of the deal.
Far more interesting is what it means for the rest of us.
How this deal is just yet another signal that all of us - no matter the size of our companies or the conservatism of our industry - are faced with a very intense"Disrupt, Innovate or Die" choice and challenge each and every business day.
For CVS and Aetna, theirs is a bold strategic stroke to build a more efficient healthcare delivery model in sync with our information economy and technological age.
Now some will say that too strong a profit motive, per the mindset of retail and insurance executives, might have deleterious effects when placed too front and center for so many of the healthcare choices that we and our loved ones are often faced with, but...
...at abareminimum simply having a viable alternative to the so complex, byzantine, bloated, institutionalized system that is modern healthcare has to be an unambiguously good thing.
Even more interesting will be the competitive response - from the traditional retail and insurance competitors like Walgreens, Anthem and Humana.
And from the Walmarts, the Amazons, the Apples and Googles of the world - large, deep pocketed players with the ambition and the intellectual and innovation capital to look at this $3 trillion+ industry and simply say we can do better.
A lot better.
Yes, it is this mode of thinking and feeling that we should take away from CVS buying Aetna.
That fear is a good motivator.
For CVS, the fear of Amazon coming into their market and squeezing them, as they have done to so many others, so hard that margins just evaporate.
For Aetna, the existential fear that in a world of big data, predictive analytics, and financial disintermediation of why do big insurance companies like them need to exist at all anymore.
These kinds of fears are present in the minds of every thoughtful and forward thinking business leader.
That what once worked won't do so forever.
And that it is far better to be the proactive agent of change and disruption than the victim of it.
Once we work through these fears and re-frame and channel them into determination, into fight and will and the desire to win...
...what comes out on the other side is enthusiasm to take our swings and do things different and better than the same old same old.
And so like those bold CVS and Aetna executives, we too have the golden opportunity to move past our fears and make of our old, tired, and threatened businesses and perspectives...
...something new, potentially beautiful, and in congruence with the tenor and flow of modern life and business.
Let’s do this!
Rather Innovate than Die? Like to explore what bold strokes like CVS buying Aetna are possible for your business in 2018?
Or simply interested in selling your business in the next few years, or growing sales and profits in the New Year?
Well, then complete this short questionnaire and we’ll reach out with our thoughts to help you.