Key factors that will shape business strategy in the future

Article released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) based on the discussions from more than 250 Chief Strategy Officers (CSO) from more than 20 industries sharing their views on the inflexion points over the next three to five years that can push them to make fundamental change in their business strategy and that should be on the radar of every company.

Five potential triggers that can speed up a change of strategy within the company:

• New hubs, new corridors: Although deglobalization seems the general trend the WEF observe he emergence of new economic corridors that are yet to consolidate but that might soon overtake the major ones we know today. Movement of capital, goods and people and new economic forces such as energy transition, could point to more globalization rather than less creating a new set of interdependencies and trade corridors that must be understood by companies when setting their strategy.
  
  
• Understanding the green economy: The green transition will create winners and losers within and across countries. New strategic resources such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite will be key to define the new economic players anc companies need to understand potential implications for their business.
  
  
• The Great Unretirement: According to the article one of the most underappreciated trends concerned employees who are over 50 years old and how they will affect labor markets over the next few years. On the one hand there is a need to avoid talent shortages, and a significant loss of knowledge and experience within the workforce once the Baby Boom generation begins  to retire (by 2031) but at the same time there is an opportunity for companies to capture senior talent: The development of a multigenerational workforce and better opportunities for older employees could drive an increase of 19% of GDP per capita over the next 30 years according to OECD.
  
  
• From owning data to data-sharing: most companies are yet to realize the potential of shared data and its ability to unlock new opportunities, the article suggests that organizations that promote-data sharing will outperform their competitors on most business value metrics.
  
  
• Beyond the hype of exponential AI: The article contains interesting data on how this technology will reshape business models: By 2030, a major blockbuster film could be released with 90% of the film generated by AI. In fact, it comments that while ChatGPT has focused a lot of our attention recently, it represents only one of the many applications of generative AI, which could also include drug design, development of new materials, synthetic data etc.