All of us, no matter how wise, have our cognitive biases. Indeed, there’s research to show that elites are less likely to part with their biases than the ordinary person. This is probably because they believe themselves to be better educated and informed than the masses, which may well be true.
Yet many members of the elite were caught utterly unaware by Brexit and by the rise of Donald Trump. These events simply did not fit the mental model of the world so many of us have worked with for the past several decades.
So, what is the next big thing the global elite is missing? Quite possibly deglobalisation. Just as so many top corporate executives missed the rise of populism, so the global business establishment is in danger of missing the fact that a far-right/far-left consensus is building in the US around a nationalist economic agenda. This is in some ways reminiscent of the shared concerns of the populist Five Star and League coalition that recently came to power in Italy.