Companies are evolving all the time: they grow; split off into smaller parts; acquire and divest; innovate products, processes, and services; adopt new technologies; and engage differently with their customers and employees. And so it has been for centuries. But today, companies are grappling with fundamental paradigm shifts. Disruptive forces are rendering company and industry-wide structures obsolete, profoundly altering the way we work and how companies create value. The shattering of long-held business truths requires the reengineering of business models and processes.
These changes are materializing during a slowing period in the economic cycle. Our Global Economic Outlook 2019 estimates global growth peaked in 2018 after reaching 3.2 percent and will begin declining, dipping to 2.9 percent by the end of the next decade. In this year’s C-suite Challenge™ survey, 1,426 CEOs and C-suite executives outline their vision for addressing these challenges today and in 2025.
Not surprisingly, when asked for the top three issues that will require their greatest attention in 2019 in the external environment, global C-suite executives ranked recession risk as their top concern. In Spain, 45 percent of respondents ranked it as their second-most important external risk. C-suite executives based in Spain ranked Global political instability as the top external risk (it ranks third globally). This is not surprising since policy volatility in general is higher in Europe than in other regions, due in part to trade tensions and the stalling of the departure of the UK from the EU.
