Risk Advisory’s seventh annual strategic forecast and the first fully interactive digital edition.
Strategic Outlook 2021 is a global intelligence estimate for those whose decision-making relies on the anticipation of geostrategic security risks. Its aims are to provide early warning and reduce the potential for unanticipated risks to help our clients plan safe, secure and profitable business activity.
For nearly every global organisation, 2020 was a year of significant disruption, setbacks and losses. Estimates of the economic cost of the pandemic run as high as $15.8 trillion. The damage to states, societies, systems of governance and international relations is less calculable but equally profound, and will almost certainly perpetuate a myriad of risks for years to come.
In Strategic Outlook 2021 we forecast what kind of world will probably emerge after a year of pandemic, lockdowns and restrictions. The rollout of vaccines raises the possibility that the coronavirus will be brought under some semblance of control by the end of the year. But recovery is likely to be uneven and highly politicised, and come amid significant change, uncertainty and instability.
For many global businesses, 2020 was a year of hibernation and damage control if not a catastrophe. Decision-making early on focused on safeguarding the workforce, closing sites, complying with restrictions, reducing losses, and ensuring business resilience, continuity and survival.
In 2021, decisions will in time shift to when, where and how to reactivate and recover as countries reopen for business as mass vaccinations take effect. Many organisations will face a world that has changed markedly. Knowledge of conditions in different markets will have diminished and many organisations will restart travel and commercial activity with a reduced sense of stability and security risks, and the full impacts of the pandemic. We aim here to help improve that sense now.
Strategic Outlook 2021 comes as always with a caveat: forecasting is a probabilistic exercise. Our goal is to ensure that decision-makers have a more informed estimation of the future to prepare and plan. While our forecasts may well prove wrong, we believe that forecasting is a vital component of taking greater possession of the future, of resilience and preparedness and for stimulating discussion to further those ends.
Experts have long warned of the growing likelihood of pandemics. The most probable pathogen scenario was and remains influenza, not a coronavirus. Yet despite such warnings, the world was poorly prepared. The lesson for consumers of forecasts is perhaps this: anticipated pathways to outcomes often prove wrong, it is the impacts and contingencies that matter. It is these that we aim to foresee and advise be planned for and continuously recalibrated with ongoing intelligence.
Fortune favours the bold, as the saying goes, but the future undoubtedly favours those with foresight. We hope Strategic Outlook 2021 serves as a useful resource that can be referred to on an ongoing basis for what will undoubtedly be a challenging year ahead.
Henry Wilkinson
Chief Intelligence Officer
Image: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
Risk Advisory’s seventh annual strategic forecast and the first fully interactive digital edition.
Strategic Outlook 2021 is a global intelligence estimate for those whose decision making relies on the anticipation of geostrategic security risks. Its aims are to provide early warning and reduce the risk of unanticipated risks to help our clients plan safe, secure and profitable business activity.
For nearly every global organisation, 2020 was a year of significant disruption, setbacks and losses. Estimates of the economic cost of the pandemic run as high as $15.8 trillion. The damage to states, societies, systems of governance and international relations is less calculable but equally profound, and will almost certainly perpetuate a myriad of risks for years to come.
In Strategic Outlook 2021 what forecast kind of world will probably emerge after a year of pandemic, lockdowns and restrictions. The rollout of vaccines raises the possibility that the coronavirus will be brought under some semblance of control by the end of the year. But recovery is likely to be uneven and highly politicised, and come amid significant change, uncertainty and instability.
For many global businesses, 2020 was a year of hibernation and damage control if not a catastrophe. Decision making early on focused on safeguarding the workforce, closure of sites, compliance with restrictions, reducing losses,
and ensuring business resilience, continuity
and survival.
In 2021, decisions will in time shift to when, where and how to reactivate and recover as countries reopen for business as mass vaccinations take effect. Many organisations will gear back into a world that has changed markedly. Knowledge of conditions in different markets will have diminished and many organisations will restart travel and commercial activity with a reduced sense of stability and security risks, and the full impacts of the pandemic. We aim here to help improve that sense now.
Strategic Outlook 2021 comes as always with a caveat: forecasting is a probabilistic exercise. Our goal is to ensure that decision-makers have a more informed estimation of the future to prepare and plan. While our forecasts may well prove wrong, we believe that forecasting is a vital component of taking greater possession of the future, of resilience and preparedness and for stimulating discussion to further those ends.
Experts have long warned of the growing likelihood of pandemics. The most probable pathogen scenario was and remains influenza, not a coronavirus. Yet despite such warnings, the world was poorly prepared. The lesson for consumers of forecasts is perhaps this: anticipated pathways to outcomes often prove wrong, it is the impacts and contingencies that matter. It is these that we aim to foresee and advise be planned for and continuously recalibrated with ongoing intelligence.
Fortune favours the bold, as the saying goes, but the future undoubtedly favours those with foresight. We hope Strategic Outlook 2021 serves as a useful resource that can be referred to on an ongoing basis for what will undoubtedly be a challenging year ahead.
Henry Wilkinson
Chief Intelligence Officer
Image: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images