What lessons can we learn from our distinguished panel of business leaders? ADL identified five key takeaways:

1. Businesses need to face up to a radically different, regionalized trade environment. The shift away from relentless globalization toward regionalization, and from rules-based international cooperation toward economic-power politics, is here to stay. Businesses need to adapt their strategies, structures, and operations to suit it.
2. The decoupling and diversification of supply chains need to progress further. For most large businesses, the US leadership transition is just another example of the constant uncertainty and disruption that started with the global financial crisis and continued through the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses must continue to make moves to decouple, diversify, and localize their supply chains and operations.
3. ESG and the energy transition are here to stay, even if the emphasis changes. Even with a short-term downturn in ESG, energy transition activity and investment will endure. However, the shift away from regulation presents an opportunity for businesses to differentiate themselves based on technological innovation, which is the key to addressing the ongoing challenges of climate change.
4. Companies need to stay even closer to their customers. Uncertainty in global geopolitics means businesses must become even more adept at listening closely to their customers and understanding their customers’ needs in various regions and markets. These needs may be more diverse than before and change more rapidly.
5. Resilience and responsiveness are more important than ever. One thing is clear above all — the era of stable, rules-based trade is over, replaced by a more politicized, transactional, and power-based global economic environment. Uncertainty is the norm. Businesses must adapt to this new era and prioritize enhancing their resilience and responsiveness in the face of ongoing disruption. Being successful in this environment means continuously adapting and innovating, avoiding short-term distractions and hype, and focusing even more on long-term stability and purpose.

“The vast, open globalization kind of framework — that’s over, right? We are in a different mode now, so adapting to that, understanding it, and then obviously focusing again on your purpose, that’s what’s important.”
[Healthcare group]