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Artificial intelligence is the most significant and pervasive technological, societal, and business development of this century. With investments hovering at $1.6tn since 2013, and a further $5.2tn projected to be spent on data centers alone by 2030, its central importance is difficult to overstate. The relationship users build with AI now will …

Six months of data since the Busan Accord shows China shipped the world more rare earth magnets than in any of the previous four years. A year earlier, China had threatened to restrict rare earth supply altogether. This briefing examines how those supplies were shared unevenly across China’s major trading partners.

Executive churn at the top of organizations is at a record high and expected to accelerate through 2027 and beyond. Meanwhile, Gen X and older leaders are retiring at historic levels, and as technological disruption continues to tear up the competitive rule book, a perfect storm is brewing –one that exposes a critical weakness in the way that mo…

In 2022, Novo Nordisk was transitioning from its longstanding focus on diabetes treatments to multiple therapeutic areas while navigating other important challenges: • Changing market, competitive and regulatory environments • Dramatic growth due to blockbuster medications for diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular health • Increasing complexity b…

Digital ecosystems have moved to the top of the strategic agenda. Seventy-four percent of senior leaders rate them as a high or top priority, and 82% plan to increase engagement. Yet beneath this consensus lies a structural disconnect. Most organizations share data only moderately with partners, only 9% have achieved joint cross-organization dat…

This 2026 edition of the IMD Future Readiness Indicator covers technology, financial services, and automotive. It arrives at a moment when the leading companies in each of the three sectors have outgrown the labels news headlines still use to describe them. A car company is also the world’s largest deployer of stationary battery storage. A credi…

The proposed US-China Board of Trade failed to materialise at the May 2026 Trump-Xi summit. Statements by US officials now place the initiative in sharper relief. On examination, its scale is modest, its institutional necessity is unclear, and the most plausible reading is that this Board’s creation is a vehicle for an incremental, politically m…

As the United States proposes a bilateral Board of Trade to govern its commercial relationship with China, the empirical record of managed trade arrangements that the United States negotiated with Japan in the 1980s provides a relevant precedent. That record, drawn from economic research and official government sources, is consistent: managed tr…

Investor climate initiatives are facing unprecedented scrutiny at a time when the policy landscape is shifting rapidly, and the effectiveness of current investor actions is being actively questioned. Against this backdrop, this project reexamines core assumptions about the role of investors in addressing climate change explores what credible, ev…

The global banking industry is facing a structural inflection point. The pressure to change has been building for almost two decades. The near meltdown of the global financial system in 2008 fundamentally exposed deep vulnerabilities in prevailing business models and shattered assumptions about stability and risk. Banks that survived the Great F…

This briefing and accompanying technical annex examines the independent effects of fuel price levels and volatility on world trade volume growth, using 314 monthly observations from the CPB World Trade Monitor spanning January 2000 to February 2026.

Why a report on Latin America and the Caribbean in 2026? In the geopolitical climate of 2026, companies building resilient, quality-focused models close to home are making a wise investment in their long-term prosperity. At the same time, Latin America is increasingly recognized as home to a significant, diverse, and influential group of “middle…

The Fourteenth Ministerial Conference of the WTO (MC14), held in Yaoundé in March 2026, was hardly a success.[1] No agreement was reached on a work program to reform the organization and reestablish a multilateral dispute settlement mechanism, let alone on specific reforms. The moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions was allowed…

Remarks to the Friends of Multilateralism Group. This presentation accompanied a slide with the five questions listed below. The goal of the presentation was to stimulate a strategic discussion on how best to proceed after MC14.

This report provides a comprehensive overview of global AI developments from October 2025 to March 2026, examining key trends across model sophistication, autonomous systems, physical AI, military applications, and the evolving regulatory landscape.