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In this interview, Horace Tiggs IV, a partner in McKinsey’s Detroit office, speaks with W. David Tarver, president and founder of the Urban Entrepreneurship Initiative (UEI), about spurring innovation and entrepreneurship within urban communities, how that drives economic mobility, and the challenges it faces today. They also discuss the importance of connecting entrepreneurs to ecosystems that lead to new solutions and scale. This transcript has been edited for clarity and…

In an era when digital experiences are closely tied to customer loyalty and financial success, credit unions stand at a crossroads. In a 2024 article, we spotlighted the growing chasm between credit unions and their competitors, a gulf that’s particularly noticeable among younger generations. Despite credit unions’ inherent advantages over banks, such as stronger member relationships and community ties, they are losing ground in the digital space.Furthermore, changing demographics spell…

Let’s look at the next chapter of AI—agentic AI, and how it could unlock the next generation of operational excellence and productivity in service operations. We dig into the high stakes of continued investment in digital transformation and the potential payoffs. We discuss collaborations between the chief information officer (CIO) and COO, and how thoughtful talent strategies can set organizations up for continued digital success.In this episode of McKinsey Talks…

Although the momentum has slowed in recent years, a large share of leading companies around the world have set bold decarbonization targets, and in the coming years, many will need to tackle the Scope 3 emissions linked to the materials embedded in their products. This article, which focuses on glass—particularly the flat glass industry—is part of a series of articles on how materials industries can decarbonize and increase circularity, offering…

Across the copper value chain, companies are setting ambitious targets to reach carbon neutrality in the next decade. This push for decarbonization coincides with increasing demand for copper—driven by the metal’s significance in future-facing applications such as batteries, renewable energy, and electricity transmission and distribution—as well as restricted supply. In fact, the world is expected to face a refined-copper shortfall of about 3.6 million metric tons (Mt) by 2035, according…

In today’s volatile environment, transformation at scale is more critical than ever for leaders looking to achieve a lasting performance advantage. Our research shows that one way to gain and sustain that advantage is to upgrade the procurement function. We analyzed thousands of companies’ transformation results across more than 340,000 transformation initiatives, which collectively represent more than $200 billion in value (see sidebar, “Scope of analysis”). We find that procurement…

The $450 billion global beauty industry, a darling of the consumer goods market, has been white hot, but is the industry’s momentum finally cooling? For years, a seemingly insatiable appetite for newness in beauty fueled robust volume and even greater pricing growth, with the sector growing 7 percent annually from 2022 to 2024. Now, geopolitical and economic uncertainty, market saturation, and evolving consumer preferences threaten that progress, requiring industry leaders…

Plastics production accounts for about 3 percent of humanity’s global carbon emissions footprint. In addition, about 1.0 billion to 1.2 billion metric tons of fossil CO2 is bound up in plastic per year and may be released at the end of that plastic’s life if not treated in a circular way or buried, according to McKinsey analysis. Plastics are used in almost every industry, in products as simple as plastic…

Imagine two financial institutions. The first manages its loan origination process through a patchwork of task-level automation and predictive models. It uses historical credit scores, rigid underwriting rules, and batch processing to move applications through a series of sequential steps. While some parts of the process have been digitized, many decisions still require human intervention—whether due to exception handling, regulatory compliance checks, or risk flagging. This results in slower decision-making,…

Senior housing is designed for people to live in as they age and may be located within communities that provide catering and social activities, as well as medical care. But even in the most developed markets, only 5 percent of seniors move in. How can the senior-housing industry help support aging societies while expanding successful businesses? McKinsey’s Sam O’Gorman explains to McKinsey Global Publishing’s Katy McLaughlin how operators can address fears…

The post-2020 era has been one of enormous upheaval. The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly changed consumer behavior and preferences, and uncertainty and disruption have continued to be major features of the global economy ever since. For example, the United States has been through a period of comparatively high inflation, there is global geopolitical uncertainty, and many countries have been roiled by the energy crisis and volatile financial markets. The result, as…

Executives view innovation as their companies’ primary source of competitive advantage for delivering growth. However, in many sectors, that belief doesn’t align with companies’ spending on innovation or the returns they get on those investments, the latest McKinsey Global Survey on innovation finds. During times of economic volatility, business leaders tend to focus on short-term profitability, often putting longer-term projects designed to spur growth on the back burner. Yet as our…

The United Kingdom is home to one of the largest capital markets in the world and provides liquidity to a range of national and multinational companies. It continues to serve as a hub for export services as well as technology and business process innovation, with a flourishing private capital market. Yet negative narratives about the dynamics of UK capital markets persist, with a consensus that UK companies are undervalued compared with…

The global quality-of-life (QoL) market is expanding beyond its traditional roots in health and life sciences to become a strategic priority for all sectors, including real estate, technology, and consumer-facing industries. Executives prioritizing QoL estimate that related offerings could represent 9 to 15 percent of annual sector revenues over the next decade, potentially amounting to $6.7 trillion to $11.2 trillion in market growth by 2034. What’s more, investment in QoL-related…

Growth in the generative AI era looks like a classic case of “two steps forward, one step back.” As companies come to grips with the unique complexities of gen AI, initial progress leads to reversals and redos, in some cases threatening to stop development altogether.There are many sources of frustration and delay, from a lack of sufficient talent to ongoing data quality issues. But our experience working closely with more…