Michael D. Moberly January 29, 2015 ‘A blog where attention span really matters’!
World Economic Forum reports, out of necessity, are generally framed in neutral 30,000 foot altitude contexts. More specifically, the 2015 WEF Risk Report projects ten risk challenges which are likely to materialize in the coming decade. For me, I would be hesitant to catalog those projections as constituting ‘rocket science’. What is a form of ‘rocket science’ however, is designing and executing viable strategies to, at minimum, mitigate those risks to merge the chasm of pleasing stake/share holders and companies becoming stagnatingly risk averse.
Among the contributors to – framers of the 2015 Risk Report, I suspect consensus was rather easily achieved. There are some important distinctions however that warrant pointing out, which are, through my lens anyway, significant business risks can manifest much more rapidly today, often ‘overnight’, and there are few examples such risks dissipate, even remotely, with equal rapidity. Instead, they persist, fester, and frequently exacerbate in their complexity and volatility, resembling reputation risks.
Should this be a reasonably correct perspective, it leaves me with the notion that, for greater numbers of global business risks, prevention and/or resolution are rapidly becoming increasingly illogical options, instead, temporary (risk) mitigation is the best most can hope for and can viably achieve.
As a strategic aid to unravel this phenomena further, it certainly would have been useful had the WEF directly addressed their projected business risks in light of the economic fact that today, 80+% of most company’s value and primary sources of revenue globally speaking, lie in – evolve directly from intangible assets!
