Business, Management, Marketing, Money, Tax, Law, People

At a glance The global trade system is in flux. Since 2017, economies have traded less with geopolitically distant partners. Recent announcements on tariffs, trade, and industrial policy have deepened uncertainty. Trade will grow by $12 trillion by 2035 in a baseline scenario. The trade increase would boost today’s global trade value by about 35 percent, to $45 trillion. In a diversification scenario (in which companies seek new sources of…

Imagine the weekly meeting of a company’s executive team. The chief marketing officer (CMO) reports that all marketing metrics are on the rise. Brand awareness and web traffic are strong due to the latest ad campaign, which is loved by consumers and the press alike. Everyone is feeling good—until later in the meeting, when the CFO shares the latest financial results. Sales and market share are declining, and last quarter’s…

Choosing where to invest and seek funding are among the most fundamental decisions business leaders make. Recent geopolitical shifts are complicating the analysis, however. Across the globe, governments are increasingly regulating investment flows into and out of their territories and industries. While countries have long applied constraints on inbound foreign direct investment (FDI) to advance their economic and national security interests, the use of investment laws has increased significantly and…

The 2025 edition of the Aerospace Industries Association’s (AIA) annual aerospace and defense (A&D) workforce study was written as part of an ongoing collaboration with McKinsey that included a survey of AIA member companies and their executive leaders. The survey revealed that persistent core talent shortages and high attrition rates threaten to limit future progress of the A&D industry, which continues to grow at a robust 4.8 percent year over year. A&D…

At a glance Nearly eight in ten companies report using gen AI—yet just as many report no significant bottom-line impact. Think of it as the “gen AI paradox.” At the heart of this paradox is an imbalance between “horizontal” (enterprise-wide) copilots and chatbots—which have scaled quickly but deliver diffuse, hard-to-measure gains—and more transformative “vertical” (function-specific) use cases—about 90 percent of which remain stuck in pilot mode. AI agents offer a…

Back in 1959, our former colleague Gil Clee cowrote an article in Harvard Business Review that urged CEOs to embrace the challenge of creating “world enterprises.” Given the rapid expansion of international trade taking place at that time, the article advised CEOs “to view [their] responsibility as global in scope … and to organize [their] corporation in such a way that its major decisions are considered and made in the…

Just under a year before what is now the Carrier Global Corporation was to complete its spin-off from United Technologies, David Gitlin was elevated to the position of president and CEO of Carrier. And in the final months before that spin-off was completed, the world shut down in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a challenging start to a new CEO’s tenure by any measure, despite Gitlin’s previous…

Today, Jeniffer Ramnath spearheads innovation in her role as chief digital and information officer at the Mastercard Foundation (the Foundation), which works to advance education and financial inclusion for young people in Africa. However, she hasn’t forgotten her humble beginnings as a call center agent in a bustling, unfamiliar Gauteng, South Africa’s most populous province—nor what it takes to break through in an industry that often privileges men over women.…