Strategy, management and communication are becoming more complicated as the environment in which firms must operate continues to change for better and for worse—and in hard-to-predict ways. Who could have foreseen the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Arab Spring, or the rise of China’s ICBC to become the world’s largest bank? Understanding issues that are bigger than business, and that will shape the global economy in the future, is key not only to seizing new opportunities for growth but also to managing risk.
In this article, The Economist Intelligence Unit outlines both the cyclical forces dictating global trading conditions in the here and now, and the looming structural changes for which business must prepare. Each side of this coin, which we will address in turn, presents opportunities, constraints and threats. US monetary “tapering”, the recovery phase of Europe’s debt crisis, globalisation, politicised social media and the increasingly nuanced dynamics of China’s economic development are all issues that businesses must understand.
