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

Here’s the challenge facing brands and retailers: Communicate clearly with a vast array of consumers who speak thousands of languages, hail from countless different cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds, and make purchasing decisions based on highly personal preferences. It’s no easy feat to reach all of these consumers on a broad scale in an authentic way. For some time now, companies have been trying to address customer needs through personalization, using…

Closing the approximately $700 billion annual nature financing gap is essential to halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030. Alongside the necessary governmental action, the private sector has a critical role to play in mobilizing the funding needed. To support businesses in these efforts, this road map outlines the steps to develop and implement a nature strategy and a nature finance action plan. While focusing on biodiversity credits, the considerations…

Recent volatility has added new layers of complexity to a topic that already challenges business leaders: prioritizing investments. When executives want to understand the trade-offs between different initiatives, they typically compare the projects’ net present values (NPVs)—the measure of an investment’s worth over its entire lifetime discounted to today. In theory, these analyses should balance near-term and long-term financial viability. In practice, however, that’s increasingly difficult to do because uncertain…

Making government more productive offers substantial rewards for the public. A McKinsey study across 42 countries found that if public services could reach the productivity levels of the leading performers in their peer groups, the improvement would be worth an estimated $3.5 trillion per year. Since then, governments have spent more on public services, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Allowing for this increase and inflation, the productivity gap could be…

By 2040, Asia could contribute 42 percent of global GDP, be home to 60 percent of the Fortune Global 500 companies, and have 55 percent of the world’s total workforce. These factors form a favorable macro backdrop for Asian companies, driving the emergence of what we call Asian global players. Asian companies are making rapid advances in areas such as digital services, fintech, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, and clean energy. Their…

We have finally left 2024 behind us and are looking forward to what the new year 2025–the Year of the Snake–will bring for China consumption. Looking back at 2024, we’ve seen a steep contrast between perception and reality. Consumer and business sentiment remains at an all-time low, and there is no evidence that this will change anytime soon. At the same time, China yet again delivered 5.0 percent gross domestic…

Trade relationships are continuing to reconfigure, and changing geopolitics is a major reason. The United States has continued to shift trade away from China and toward other economies such as Mexico and Vietnam. In some cases, this is due to these economies forming an intermediate step in trade flows between China and the United States. European economies have moved away from trade with Russia and increased trade with other partners,…

With the energy transition gathering pace, businesses are prioritizing cleaner energy sources and electrification to meet decarbonization goals and reduce energy costs. They are taking a more active role in managing their energy supply with the associated services, for example, through the direct procurement of clean energy via power purchase agreements (PPAs). This is being achieved by generating and managing on-site energy as “prosumers” and optimizing equipment and installations that…