Activist investors who expect to raise returns by influencing strategic decisions are having a meaningful impact on many industries from consumer-packaged goods to aerospace and defense. And the odds that your company, or industry, may find itself targeted by an activist are going up. Activists launched 159 campaigns in 2015 focused on shareholder value maximization, nearly double the 88 that were launched the year before. If you are a senior executive in a company concerned about activists, you have two potential paths: take the defensive (and perhaps expected) posture of defending your current strategy, or embrace the challenge and reassess your company’s path to value creation.