A Century of Reinvention: Nicholas Wilson on How Businesses Can Stay Relevant Through Change

A 100-year milestone invites a company to look backward. For Nicholas C. Wilson, chairman and CEO of Gatestone, it also raises a more important question: What does a business have to preserve when everything around it changes?

When Gatestone was founded in 1926, its work was rooted in a world of paper, ledgers, and personal contact. The company began in Winnipeg, Manitoba, selling insurance by hand and providing administrative support to the insurance business. A century later, Gatestone operates globally as a business process outsourcer and managed service provider supporting customer experience, back-office functions, technology, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence. 

The distance between those two points is considerable. The principle connecting them, Wilson argues, is remarkably consistent.

“Historically, the changes in our business have been driven by changes in the tools available to us,” Wilson says. “But if you actually look at where we are today, our foundations have remained the same. We have always been managing high-volume, high-trust interactions between our clients and their customers. Only the tools have evolved over time.”

According to him, that distinction offers a useful lesson for companies confronting another period of technological acceleration. “Businesses can often become so focused on adopting new technology that they lose sight of the purpose that made them valuable in the first place,” he notes. Wilson believes longevity depends on knowing which elements of an organization should evolve and which should remain deeply rooted.

The company moved into call center operations during the 1960s, handling sales, receivables management, and administrative work. As computing and telecommunications advanced, its capabilities expanded. By the 1990s, Wilson says, the company had developed into a complete business process outsourcing and managed services provider, extending beyond telephone-based interactions into technology, email, customer service, and other operational functions.

“The internet accelerated that trajectory. So did advances in computing, telecommunications, and digital communications. Technology has changed what organizations could accomplish and how customers could interact with them. Gatestone adapted by expanding its capabilities around those changes,” Wilson states.

Today, that same pattern is playing out with artificial intelligence. Stanford HAI’s 2026 AI Index reports that organizational AI adoption reached 88% in 2025, while generative AI was used in at least one business function at 70% of organizations. Wilson says, “The scale of adoption underscores how quickly AI has moved from an emerging technology to an operational consideration for mainstream businesses.”

For Wilson, the challenge is therefore becoming less about access to AI and more about judgment. “Organizations have to determine where the technology belongs, how it should be integrated, and how people should work with it,” he notes. “That requires more than selecting a tool. It requires understanding processes, customers, risk, and the business itself.”

According to him, the real question is no longer about access to technology. It is how effectively and responsibly it is used within a business. He adds that this perspective is especially relevant to a company whose own evolution has repeatedly followed technological change.

Gatestone positions its services around technology, operations, and design while connecting them with the best of human talent. Its capabilities span automation and AI, omnichannel support, and analytics. It also emphasizes continuous testing, learning, and optimization as part of both organizational evolution and customer experience transformation.

Yet technology is only one part of Wilson’s view of longevity. “Relationships are a measure of whether an organization has built something durable,” he says. “Some of our clients have remained with us for more than 60 years. And many of our employees have also built their decades-long careers with us, with some even reaching 45 years of service.”

Those relationships reflect a culture Wilson sees as central to the company’s ability to adapt. He believes businesses can lose their identity as they grow if they focus too heavily on acquiring capabilities from outside while neglecting the people who understand their culture and operating model from within.

For Gatestone, developing people internally is therefore a strategic priority. The goal, Wilson explains, is to build teams that understand the business deeply, including its culture, its customers, and the industries it serves. “Institutional knowledge can become particularly valuable during periods of technological change, when leaders must make decisions without losing sight of the organization’s underlying purpose,” he notes. 

For Wilson, that continuity is the foundation that makes innovation possible, especially when technology changes faster. He believes a century of business history also changes the meaning of innovation. Wilson’s perspective suggests that reinvention is most durable when it is connected to continuity.

“Technologies can change from paper ledgers to computing, from telephone systems to cloud-based services, and from digital platforms to Agentic AI. The responsibility to serve customers with trust and consistency will remain,” he says.

As Gatestone marks its centennial, Wilson sees the occasion as an opportunity to look forward rather than simply backward. He believes the next generation of leaders will inherit technologies that are advancing faster than many organizations can absorb. Their challenge, he adds, will be to use those tools without allowing them to define the organization’s identity.

“A hundred years teaches you that the tools will always change,” Wilson says. “What matters is knowing who you are, understanding what your customers need, and having the right expertise to carry that forward. That is how a company stays relevant for another hundred years.”