From Blind Spots to Insights 2025

There are differences in how companies assess and internally communicate geopolitical insights. Translating information into the “so what?” for a company is critical in this process. There is a widely held view that external consultants can provide assessments of events as well as current and future decisions. But several interviewees noted that, unless furnished with the relevant information, external experts may not be in a position to draw out detailed implications of geopolitical factors for a company’s current operations and performance. Therefore, undertaking detailed assessments of the relevance of this rich information diet for a company is a critical task. Many interviewees stressed that it should not be outsourced. Internal assessments of the exposure of a company’s current operations to geopolitical factors are now standard fare. These are “as is” assessments, that is, considering the impact of an external geopolitical development on the performance of a business unit (or units) assuming no change in the modus operandi. The consistent application of methods for determining impact is regarded as crucial by those interviewees who put more store in exposure assessment.Exposure assessments are central to evaluating what is at stake as a geopolitical dynamic unfolds. These assessments involve financial estimates of likely impact as well as consequences for current operations in affected geographies and business units. Again, the purpose here is not exact prediction. What matters here is scaling the impact correctly. Does the fallout from a geopolitical event have a seven-digit, eight-digit or nine- digit consequence for a business if no mitigating measures are taken? Some interviewees noted the importance of bringing the relevant people from across the firm together to assess impacts. Approaches in this regard range from establishing dedicated teams or working groups to holding frequent risk committee meetings dedicated to geopolitics. This stresses the notion – already evident – that there is no one- size-fits-all solution in terms of how companies implement and operationalize their geopolitical radars. Companies tend to find different avenues in terms of structure to capture geopolitics, one not necessarily being more efficient than the other, but just more fitting to the organization’s culture and operational anatomy.2.3 Assessing informationintelligence community, both HUMINT (the collection of information from human sources) and OSINT (generally available open-source intelligence) should be deployed to corroborate, as best as possible, any findings or insights. From this information diet, a few interviewees have developed categories of geopolitical risks – although, as explained further above, there is a wide range of approaches to categorizing geopolitical issues based on geographical, functional or other factors. For companies, the focus of tracking geopolitical developments appears heavily influenced by prior experience of an international business. Within their own industries, compliance with certain sanctions and regulations – and coping with the episodic disruption of supply chains and operations in recent years – has revealed to executives the points of vulnerability or choke points of individual business units and regional organizations, as well as at the group level. As a result, there appears to be a risk that companies focus on a narrow set of immediate issues and eventually lose sight of longer-term trends in geopolitics. One interviewee from the logistics supply chain highlighted that “in geopolitics you need to think global but act local”, while on the other hand another executive emphasized the need to move towards greater horizon-scanning capabilities. A few interviewees noted that forward-looking considerations tend to be incorporated when there are lengthy planning and investment horizons. For example, one investment house noted that decades-long cross-border investments in certain economies require an assessment of how any given investment might be perceived in the future by governments in rival jurisdictions. Such longer-term information tends to be collected on an ad hoc basis. What matters here is scaling the impact correctly. Does the fallout from a geopolitical event have a seven-digit, eight- digit or nine-digit consequence for a business if no mitigating measures are taken? From Blind Spots to Insights: Enhancing Geopolitical Radar to Guide Global Business 12