Over the course of my 50-year career, with the exception of the 2008 financial crisis, I have never seen the public and private sectors buffeted by so much risk. These new risks are not financial, but they are unprecedented in their character, not just their scope.
Businesses face heightened political risks. While this is not new, in the past such risks simply shaped the context in which global firms operated. Successful companies could navigate through them. Now, politics threatens to disturb the foundations of the global system.
Governments, meanwhile, confront unprecedented business risk because the private sector generates so much disruptive innovation. Even authoritarian governments can no longer expect to exercise exclusive control over their domestic economies. This is not just due to hardware innovation. Communication and data flowing through privately controlled platforms have enabled social and political mobilisation that challenges the state’s role.