Once you start looking at how many crises began with clear but essentially ignored warning signals, it becomes strikingly clear how often we miss opportunities to head off predictable problems.
Author: Michele Wucker
Michele Wucker
Michele Wucker is a policy and business strategist and author of four books including YOU ARE WHAT YOU RISK: The New Art and Science of Navigating an Uncertain World and the global bestseller THE GRAY RHINO: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore. Read more about her at https://www.thegrayrhino.com/about/michelewucker
Predictions may be imperfect, but we do have tools at hand to help us think about what developments are most likely to sideswipe our plans. Every year, analysts compile lists of top risks for investors and policy makers.
The first Top Gray Rhinos list sorts through “top risks” lists to create a comprehensive set of global risks, published on Seeking Alpha PRO. Highlights: European instability still leads top threats to businesses, economies, and markets. The potential for liquidity shocks has risen modestly. Fractures within the European Union Financial market liquidity shocks U.S. political instability and rising nationalist populism Climate change Middle East instability Read more HERE.
Why a Crisis Is Too Late to Pick a Woman to Lead Amid the chaos following the Brexit vote, Theresa May is Britain’s new Prime Minister after her main opponent—also a woman—pulled out of the contest to lead the Conservative Party. In the corporate world, meanwhile, Marissa Mayer, hired in 2012 to turn Yahoo around, announced that the company would be sold to Verizon after her efforts to turn it around failed. It’s no more a coincidence that a country and company in turmoil both looked to women to lead than it is that a last-ditch “Hail Mary Pass” effort…
Was the Brexit vote a highly improbable black swan or an obvious gray rhino?
The top right hand quadrant of the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Report is home to highly likely, high impact dangers that have not been resolved: climate change, weapons of mass destruction, water scarcity, mass forced migration, and energy price shocks. All too often, policy and business leaders neglect risks like these even after recognizing them.
Throughout history, technological breakthroughs have created industrial revolutions that have shaped not only how we produce goods and services but also the movement of people around the world. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as the New Machine Age, is no different. As increasing automation makes some jobs obsolete and additive manufacturing moves industries and jobs across national borders, these technological changes will upend the politics and economics of global labour migration. Spindles, steam, bytes The First Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the 18th century with new machines that switched textile production from hands to machines. In turn,…
The talk I gave at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 26, 2013 grew into THE GRAY RHINO book. Watch above.