McKinsey & Company

Throughout 2024, the US dairy industry experienced numerous operational headwinds. Reduced herd sizes, inflation, and ongoing labor challenges put pressure on volume, prices, and costs across the dairy value chain, and in March 2024, avian influenza was discovered in North American cows. These challenges have evolved in 2025, and shifting international trade policies have added more unknowns.But the news hasn’t been all bad. Consumers increasingly choose dairy, driving overall volume…

Companies are now turning to building new businesses to fuel innovation and open new revenue sources. Half of CEOs surveyed in the fifth annual McKinsey Global Survey on new-venture building view the development of new businesses as one of their top three strategic priorities, and 90 percent of investors advocate for increased or maintained new-business-building investments. Furthermore, according to other McKinsey research, new ventures are expected to drive over half…

There’s been a growing gap between air travel demand and the aviation industry’s supply of new aircraft to meet it. While passenger demand has rebounded from pandemic-era lows and is projected to keep growing, delivery times for newly manufactured aircraft—and maintenance turnaround times for aircraft in existing fleets—have slowed. What are the implications of this aircraft shortage for key stakeholders along the aviation value chain? What future scenarios are possible?…

For many large medtech companies, scale and diversification were intended to drive innovation and efficiency. Large, diversified companies in other industries have delivered superior shareholder returns by rationalizing fixed costs, mobilizing their balance sheets, and building broad-based relationships with customers. But while many large medtechs are among the industry’s most profitable, their diversification has not brought the same improvements in shareholder value as in other industries (Exhibit 1). Diversification has…

Airlines are often categorized into groups differentiated by their business models—in particular, their cost structures and revenue approaches: Legacy carriers (also known as full-service airlines) tend to offer multiclass cabins and a wide range of amenities, with many service features included in the ticket price. Examples include American Airlines, British Airways, and Cathay Pacific. Low-cost carriers and ultra-low-cost carriers—a combined group known as (U)LCCs—tend to sell discounted base-fare tickets and…

In 2020, CG Power and Industrial Solutions, an Indian multinational in the motor, power systems, and railway industries, was on the brink of bankruptcy. Plagued by a host of challenges, the company clearly needed a transformation to survive. Under the leadership of Natarajan Srinivasan, CG Power experienced a remarkable turnaround. Once a company teetering on the brink of collapse, CG Power has now seen a significant rise in its stock…

M &A activity is down, as is private equity investment, and companies are facing a range of new geopolitical tensions. Still, there is a path to growth through M&A for those companies that maintain an active acquisition strategy, understand their capabilities, and avoid certain assets, says McKinsey Senior Partner Jake Henry. On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, he and McKinsey Senior Partner Mieke Van Oostende join McKinsey Editorial Director Roberta Fusaro…

Airline planning is inherently challenging, in part because many planning inputs are outside an airline’s control. The global aviation ecosystem relies on interwoven networks shaped by competing stakeholder priorities. Travel demand patterns are forever shifting and tough to forecast. Unpleasant surprises—including major storms, airport infrastructure breakdowns, IT failures, ground staff shortages, and aircraft delivery delays—can add significant uncertainty to any projections. This can be further exacerbated by global crises, geopolitical…

Running an airline isn’t for the timid. Weather events, infrastructure failures, and fickle passenger demand can make an already-tough business even more challenging. As this article goes to publication, economic uncertainty and geopolitical tension are both threatening to alter travel flows, piling yet more stress on airline executives. These business challenges show up on ledger sheets. Since 2005, we’ve analyzed the financial performance of the aviation value chain. Our research demonstrates…

McKinsey: How has Europe’s TMT sector performed compared to the United States and Asia? Ruben Schaubroeck: It’s no secret that Europe has lagged behind both America and Asia over the past years, and looking at different metrics, you can see that. If you look at, for example, total TMT market capitalization, Europe’s share has dropped from 30 percent to 7 percent, which represents an $8 trillion loss. Secondly, if you…

The healthcare industry has long been a leader when it comes to women’s representation in the workforce. It has proved to be an attractive destination for the roughly 40 percent of US STEM college graduates who are women. In fact, in the United States, nursing is the largest healthcare profession, and 88 percent of nurses are women. And while women in healthcare have found it tough to climb the career…

Expanding tariffs may be capturing the headlines, but industrial-policy measures are on the rise as well. Governments have long implemented subsidies, incentives, and other interventions in domestic economies to support employment, critical manufacturing, and other national priorities. However, as the establishment of the World Trade Organization and the expansion of global trade made free-market and free-trade policies the global norm, many countries put less emphasis on supporting domestic industries. The…

Enterprise technology spending in the United States has been growing by 8 percent per year on average since 2022. This surge is not surprising, given the increasing role technology plays in how businesses function and create value. The issue lies in what companies are getting for that spend, and the track record on that score is mixed. While analysis linking tech spend to labor productivity is notoriously inexact, labor productivity…

The rapid adoption of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists is changing the life sciences landscape, with ripple effects extending well beyond cardiometabolic and obesity care. Global prescriptions of GLP-1 agonist therapies grew at a remarkable rate of roughly 38 percent annually between 2022 and 2024—sales are forecast to reach $100 billion by 2030. This growth has prompted interest in the downstream effects across healthcare and life sciences. In the medical aesthetics…

At a glance A global healthcare worker shortage of at least ten million is expected by 2030. Closing that shortage could avert 189 million years of life lost to early death and disability and boost the global economy by $1.1 trillion. While known supply-side interventions that enable the workforce to grow, thrive, and stay can add about 5.6 million healthcare workers, this is not enough to close the gap. Closing…

Amid overall uncertainty, including about the future that AI will bring, two things are clear. One, jobs and occupations will change as new technologies are used to handle and support more tasks. The transition to AI is already underway, according to the results of the latest McKinsey American Opportunity Survey (AOS) in which roughly 20 percent of employed respondents say that they have used gen AI for work purposes. Two,…

Since 2015, McKinsey, in partnership with LeanIn.Org, has conducted annual original research on women’s participation in the formal workforce in the United States and Canada through the Women in the Workplace report series. This report extends that pioneering research to new countries—India, Nigeria, and Kenya—for the first time, addressing a major data gap and deepening our understanding of women’s representation in the formal sector in these critical markets. Our analysis…

The rapid rise of gen AI has captured the world’s imagination and accelerated the integration of AI into the global economy and the lives of people across the world. Gen AI heralds a step change in productivity. As institutions apply AI in novel ways, beyond the advanced analytics and machine learning (ML) applications of the past ten years, the global economy could increase significantly, improving the lives and livelihoods of…

Modernization is one of the most pressing challenges facing the property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry. In the past decade, core systems built for a slower, paper-driven insurance model have evidently become no longer fit for purpose. They leave carriers struggling with operational inefficiencies, rising IT maintenance costs, and growing pressure to meet customer expectations for real-time responsiveness, such as instant quotes and faster claims payouts. Staying competitive demands adopting…

John Chambers, founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures and the former CEO and chairman of Cisco Systems for more than 20 years, grew Cisco to nearly $50 billion in annual revenues, helping companies around the world transform by leveraging the internet. On this episode of the At the Edge podcast, he joins host and McKinsey Senior Partner Lareina Yee to discuss the urgent need for companies to adopt AI and what this…

About 1.8 billion people in the world don’t get enough exercise. Physical inactivity is a global problem—but there are solutions. That’s one of the big themes in Sporting Goods 2025, a report published by McKinsey in partnership with the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI). This fifth edition of the annual report is titled, “The new balancing act: Turning uncertainty into opportunity.” In a recent webinar, four of…

Excellent governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) is a common aspiration, but how often is it a reality? For most companies, GRC is a work in progress, according to McKinsey’s 2025 Global GRC Benchmarking Survey (see sidebar, “Our survey methodology”). Despite efforts to broaden expertise at senior levels, corporate leaders see a “need for improvement” across numerous aspects of all three GRC pillars. There are many reasons for GRC shortfalls, some…

For years, McKinsey has tracked the steady rise of female-controlled assets and analyzed its potential implications in the United States and in Europe. McKinsey recently surveyed more than 13,000 US and European investors, of whom almost half were female financial decision-makers. The team also interviewed wealth managers in the United States and Europe to better understand the challenges involved in attracting and retaining female clients. The survey and interview responses…

People are asked to update the operating systems on their phones all the time. What if leaders applied that same kind of polishing and bug fixing to themselves? McKinsey research shows that executives who periodically review and revise their priorities, roles, time, and energy tend to be more productive, work more consciously, and drive change more effectively. In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey Senior Partner Arne Gast joins McKinsey…

The biopharmaceutical industry is experiencing a surge in demand for large molecules, driven by advances in biotechnology and the need for innovative treatments for complex diseases. With an annual growth rate of around 6 percent, the sector's role in global healthcare is more critical than ever. However, existing production capacities are struggling to keep up, even though the pharmaceutical industry is spending around $57 billion every year on new facilities.…

Latin America is consolidating as the world’s fastest-growing and most profitable region for insurance. Insights from McKinsey’s Global Insurance Report 2025 find that while it accounts for just 3 percent of the world’s insurance market, gross written premiums grew at 11 percent annually from 2019 to 2024, and the region retains significant room to grow. Penetration levels across Latin America remain lower than in other major markets (Exhibit 1). Claim levels have…

Resilience is critical in today’s organizations, given the state of uncertainty and permacrisis in which most teams and individuals operate. Yet McKinsey research suggests that many leaders and organizations aren’t spending enough time building that resilience. A full 84 percent of leaders report feeling underprepared for future disruptions, and 60 percent of board members say their companies are not ready for the next major event. Discussions with global CEOs reveal…

Now that the second quarter of 2025 is fully underway, it is increasingly evident that China’s consumer market has settled into a “new reality” characterized by single-digit consumption growth. Citing Chinese consumers’ “lack of confidence” and “trading down” behavior, market analysts continue to raise a series of challenging questions: Have pockets of growth narrowed? Has lower sentiment dampened spending intent? Our latest research reveals that, while challenges do remain, the…

The popular yarns about “work from home” and “return to the office” tend to be absolutist. First, there’s the notion that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was in the office every day. Next, the idea is that during and after the pandemic, no one went in at all. Lately, the story goes that offices are packing up to the rafters yet again. The truth, underscored by the findings from…

The telecommunications (telco) industry has become an indispensable driver of economic growth worldwide. Mobile phones have transcended their traditional role as communication devices and developed into powerful tools that drive social and economic progress. From facilitating remote education and healthcare to empowering small businesses and boosting agricultural productivity, the impact of mobile technology is far-reaching—and expanding—especially in Africa. While African operators face headwinds, including regulatory complexities and infrastructure gaps, the…

There is an adage that people don’t leave their jobs; they leave their managers. This reality is particularly critical given how important managers are to the overall success of an organization and its people. Indeed, middle managers are the heart of any organization, deeply influencing talent, culture, and employee experience. They are the face of leadership for the front lines and the bridge from executive strategy to implementation. Middle manager performance…

In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Roberta Fusaro speaks with McKinsey Partner Tim Koller about the latest edition of the seminal practitioner guide, Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies (Wiley, May 2025), coauthored with Marc Goedhart and David Wessels. Now in its eighth edition, Valuation has been a trusted resource for executives, financial professionals, and others seeking a deeper understanding of the valuation process and…

A global system of full economic integration—the aspiration of decades of negotiations and the worldwide underpinning of corporate strategy—has never been fully realized. The latest round of global trade talks sputtered to an inconclusive end in the early 2010s. But even as views on the benefits and fairness of the system diverged among countries, there was no overt challenge to the framework of global trade. That changed on April 2,…

In today’s business landscape, more and more companies are focused on reducing both carbon emissions and costs simultaneously. This dual mission is not just a strategic choice but a necessity driven by rising costs and increasing regulatory pressure, such as from Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and European Trading Scheme (ETS, now extended under ETS2), and new disclosure standards taking effect in Australia and Japan. Yet to date, only…

In a world shaped by accelerating change, resilience is essential for both survival and success. Today’s leaders are increasingly seeing that resilience is about not only enduring crises but also thriving in the face of them. Strikingly, research from the World Economic Forum (WEF) and McKinsey suggests that 84 percent of companies report being underprepared for current trends and uncertainties. To understand the role resilience plays in large, global organizations, McKinsey…

Profitability and growth dynamics in the semiconductor industry have shifted dramatically in recent years. The industry as a whole has experienced impressive economic profit growth, rising from $38 billion in the 2000–09 period to $450 billion in 2010–19, according to McKinsey analysis. In October 2024, the McKinsey Global Institute noted semiconductors as one of 18 industries poised to transform the future business landscape, with anticipated value of between $1.7 trillion and…

As our America at 250 series highlights, today’s public sector leaders must navigate choppy seas—and the winds of change may only intensify. For both new and established government leaders, reality may look quite different from the bridge of their ship than from how they imagined it would be based on previous experiences. They must be prepared to learn and adapt. As retired US Navy Admiral Eric Olson notes in McKinsey’s new…

When is a medical-device manufacturer not just a medical-device manufacturer? When it’s also an online marketplace for consumers to buy wellness products and get advice from healthcare providers. Amid unrelenting pressure from digital-first competitors, McKinsey analysis finds that established companies across sectors are increasingly building new business-to-consumer (B2C) businesses to capture their share of the $25 trillion B2C market. B2C business building is gaining traction because the traditional corporate strategy…

Individual and collective health are paramount to productivity, happiness, and overall societal progress in America. Truly enhancing well-being requires adopting an approach to health that adds not only years to life but also life to years. Health is “not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” according to WHO. Good workplace health involves holistic health, which is an integrated view of an individual’s mental, physical, spiritual, and social functioning. To…

Cutting through all the noise about AI, Vijay Guntur, chief technology officer and head of ecosystems at global IT consulting company HCLTech, talks about the inevitable pursuit of ROI and how he sees it not just in financial terms. In a conversation with Abhay Mital, a partner with McKinsey’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications Practice in India, Vijay opens up about deriving value from AI, the challenges of change management, going…