Global trade patterns are reconfiguring. More shifts are likely and businesses need to be aware of the potential trade-offs of different paths ahead. At a glance Introduction Trade reconfiguration has been making headlines. In 2023, Mexico became the United States’ largest goods trade partner. Vietnam’s trade with China and the United States has been surging....

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A dual focus on developing people and managing them well gives a select group of companies a long-term performance edge. MGI’s previous research has shown that human capital development pays off for workers, with skills learned on the job accounting for almost half of the average person’s lifetime earnings. But does investing in people actually benefit...

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Human capital represents two-thirds of wealth for the average individual—and work experience contributes almost half of that value. he most important resource in any economy or organization is its human capital—that is, the collective knowledge, attributes, skills, experience, and health of the workforce. While human capital development starts in early childhood and continues through formal education,...

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Funding for logistics start-ups tightened in 2022. Where are investors focusing their interest now? After surging in 2021, funding for logistics start-ups slowed substantially in 2022. Among the causes of the slowdown: a more challenging macroeconomic environment coupled with a decline in the growth of e-commerce. Investment in logistics start-ups fell by nearly 50 percent year...

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Generative AI has hit the ground running—so fast that it can feel hard to keep up. Here’s a quick take pulled from our top articles and reports on the subject. Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, it’s been all over the headlines, and businesses are racing to capture its value. Within the technology’s first...

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As artificial intelligence informs more decisions, companies’ AI systems must be understood by users and those affected by AI use. Actions in two areas can maximize AI’s benefits and minimize risk. Businesses increasingly rely on artificial intelligence (AI) systems to make decisions that can significantly affect individual rights, human safety, and critical business operations. But...

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Generative AI and other foundation models are changing the AI game, taking assistive technology to a new level, reducing application development time, and bringing powerful capabilities to nontechnical users. In the spirit of this article’s topic, we asked ChatGPT—a generative AI language model that can create original content in response to a user prompt—how it would...

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Motivated reasoning can lead people to believe everything’s fine despite evidence to the contrary. Here’s how to counter emotions with facts. Despite their best intentions, executives fall prey to cognitive and organizational biases that get in the way of good decision making. In this series, we highlight some of them and offer a few effective ways...

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Too many employers pay too little heed to the needs of the lower earners in their company. Here’s why—and how—they should shift gears. The late Brazilian car-racing champion Ayrton Senna once said, “You cannot overtake 15 cars in sunny weather, but you can when it’s raining.” Well, there’s been no shortage of downpours in recent years....

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Procurement organizations are uniquely positioned to catalyze cross-functional actions that promote efficiency and resilience in rapidly evolving market conditions. Procurement leaders are facing one of the toughest market environments of their careers. A combination of macroeconomic factors—including COVID-19 shocks, trade policy shifts, workforce scarcity, energy transition, and even extreme weather events—have upended long-running trends that...

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Too many companies equate strategy with hitting financial goals. They underestimate the difficulty—and the value—of the real thing. The word “strategy” means an approach to dealing with a difficult challenge, especially that of competing with a clever opponent. To have a strategy is to have an approach to overcoming critical obstacles and difficulties. However, through many...

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Nearly half of the employees who voluntarily left the workforce during the pandemic aren’t coming back on their own. Employers must go and get them. Here’s how to start. No, you aren’t imagining it: workers are leaving your company faster than you can replace them. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 4.3...

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Few chief executives have faced the challenge of leading a company through an inflationary spike like today’s. Lessons from strong leaders and bold action can help CEOs make the decisions that only they can make. ast year, policy makers, economists, and financial-market participants fiercely debated the higher inflation then under way. Was it a transitory problem,...

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Two decades of research show that, while large deals still have their place, programmatic M&A strategies continue to create gains in excess total returns to shareholders, at lower levels of risk. M&A is having a moment—again. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has had to adjust its premerger review process to manage the tidal wave...

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Structural shifts in the labor market have left companies struggling to recruit and retain workers. But a set of concrete actions can help address this imbalance across value chains. As the US economy recovers post-pandemic, demand for labor has outstripped supply. Companies are facing the “Great Attrition,” coupled with increased competition for labor. The transportation and...

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Post-pandemic skill gaps need filling, and formal learning alone won’t do the trick. Scaling the lost art of one-on-one learning can make the difference. Recognize this situation? A manager asks a team member to prepare a presentation. The draft falls short of what’s needed, so the manager expresses her disappointment and offers feedback via email, then...

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New research shows how resilient organizations thrived through the pandemic. Here’s how to use those lessons to craft a better approach to how work gets done across time (real and asynchronous) and space (digital and physical). In May 2020, we published an article arguing that the return to the workplace was a new muscle that organizations...

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When redesigning a supply-chain organization, it’s intuitive to look to successful companies’ design choices. But our research finds that other factors correlate better to bottom-line performance. How do decisions about the design of supply-chain organizations affect the overall performance of a business? We recently analyzed the supply-chain organizations of more than 50 companies in a...

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Today’s leaders have never been under so much pressure. Even as they navigate the evolving COVID-19 crisis—keeping their customers and employees safe and their businesses viable—expectations are sky-high. Shareholders are calling for foresight, bold strategies, agility, and resilience, while governments and communities increasingly expect businesses to support broader goals, such as sustainability and social justice. For...

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Has there even been a time when customers were more demanding of the companies serving them? Industry 4.0 technologies—many barely imaginable only a decade ago—have already enabled genuine breakthroughs in cost, convenience, and customization, creating extraordinary value for buyers while raising the performance bar for producers ever higher. And then there’s the volatility that never entirely disappears,...

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Ecosystems create powerful forces that can reshape and disrupt industries.  In healthcare, they have the potential to deliver a personalized and integrated experience to consumers, enhance provider productivity, engage formal and informal caregivers, and improve outcomes and affordability. We define an ecosystem as a set of capabilities and services that integrate value chain participants (customers,...

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Imagine you are a tenured CEO of a company. You have led your organization through many adverse events.  You have followed a playbook, and moved to a “command and control” style to address the cascading effects of various perils. But now you’re dealing with a crisis unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. There is no playbook...

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In a decade from now, what will people be saying about your organization?  It is a fascinating question and one that may have some interesting answers. There will be new job titles and roles by around 2030 and the skillsets required to run and organisation perhaps dont even exist yet. The mind boggles.. Read More

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There have been some significant advances in computer power in the last decade.  Today supercomputers are able to do just about anything and in the pharmaceutical industry this processing power is being put fo very good use. When supercomputers, quantum computing and enzymes come together amazing things happen.. Read more

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Business has to meet growing and more challenging expectations from society.  The younger generation of customers especially need to know and understand more about what a company is doing with and for the world and much more besides. In the eyes of younger customers there is a greater global awareness of what is going on...

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For individuals and organizations to get ahead and stay ahead there must be a culture of continuous learning in the workplace.  For leaders, this creates a new set of challenges and further demands as they effectively take on a new and slightly unfamiliar role of Learning facilitator-in-chief.  McKinsey discusses, delves into and begins to define...

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McKinsey puts it simple in this article, by stating that the ability to develop, deliver, and scale new products, services, processes, and business models rapidly is a muscle that virtually every organization needs to strengthen. Their latest research highlights a growing performance gap separating innovation “winners” from companies that merely muddle along, with the intent...

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McKinsey & Co means that embracing AI promises considerable benefits for businesses and economies through its contributions to productivity growth and innovation. At the same time, AI’s impact on work is likely to be profound. Some occupations as well as demand for some skills will decline, while others grow and many change as people work...

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This article means a surefire way to shoot yourself in the foot when you’re leading a large-scale change effort, is to ignore what’s on the minds of your employees. Using a metaphor to explain ideal management, McKinsey achieves what they intend to: When employees become open to new ways of looking at what’s possible for...

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McKinsey & Co means that most executives we know have a powerful, intuitive feel for the rhythm of their businesses. They know how hard and fast to pull strategic levers, move their organization, and drive execution to achieve their objectives. Or at least they did. But in the light digitization that has intensified the rhythm...

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