Beyond legacy supply chains1 Orchestrating resilience, innovation and trust across supply chains is essential to thrive amid fractured global systems. Legacy supply chains were built for linear efficiency and abundance; they now face structural volatility driven by geopolitical tensions, proxy conflicts, policy interventions and rapid automation. The global operating environment is undergoing a profound realignment, where legacy supply chain models are no longer viable. What was once a stable web of trade and specialization has fractured into competing blocs, asymmetric growth and accelerating technological rivalry. Supply itself has become the constraint – across energy, minerals, labour, logistics and even institutional trust. In this new context, supply chains have moved from back-office enablers to the front lines of national strategy and corporate resilience. The goal is no longer to restore old equilibrium or absorb shocks, but to build systems designed to master the permanence of disruption. Success now depends on shifting from forecasting to orchestrating the future – aligning supply security, innovation and ecosystem trust into an integrated, adaptive model of advantage that can flex with the forces reshaping the global economy. At the end of the day, every dollar we spent on agility has probably got a 10x return on every dollar spent on forecasting or scenario planning. Marc Engel, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Unilever (2016-2022)9 Uncertainty in the global operating environment is no longer an iterative cycle to manage but rather a system condition to design for. The latest projections from the IMF, World Bank, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations (UN) all point to lower growth for longer, warning that geopolitics, economic divergence and technological asymmetry have made disruption a permanent feature of the world economy.10 Volatility is now the baseline. Geopolitical competition predominantly informs national strategy as countries pursue security and sovereignty, while industrial policy interventions have shifted from exception to norm. The Global Trade Alert has recorded more than 3,000 new trade and industrial- policy measures so far in 2025, roughly 3.5 times the annual total in 2016.11 Meanwhile, energy and resource nationalism are reshaping access to critical minerals and inputs. The policy environment itself has become an operating variable – dynamic, contested and deeply consequential for where companies build, source and invest. Five structural forces are redefining global supply chains: Subdued and uneven growth. Demand and supply are decoupling as slow growth, persistent inflation and tightening capital markets reshape profitability and investments. Growth stagnates in advanced economies while select emerging regions expand. Operations leaders are shifting their paradigm from supply chasing demand to demand shaped around constrained supply, redesigning networks around local growth, energy and infrastructure readiness.1.1 Orchestrating supply chains for optionality and growth 1 Global Value Chains Outlook 2026: Orchestrating Corporate and National Agility 6