These outlooks highlight that global value chains must confront multiple operating environments, often simultaneously, depending on geography, sector or industry. For instance, a semiconductor manufacturer navigating export controls, technology bifurcation and resource nationalism is likely operating in a “fragmented” outlook, while a consumer-goods company managing inflation, shifting consumer sentiment and global supply outages may be operating within a “volatile” demand environment. No company can plan for a single, predictable future. Resilience now depends on the ability to navigate multiple divergent futures simultaneously. Traditional, reactive supply chain models built for stability are obsolete. For the C-suite, the central question has shifted: how to fulfil demand reliably when access to energy, labour, data and other critical inputs can be redefined overnight by policy, technology or conflict? The answer lies in structural agility with systems designed to pivot across outlooks without losing coherence.60% more leaders see resilience and agility as core to competitive advantage and growth than they did five years ago.No company could have been fully prepared for the disruptions witnessed over the last 5-10 years. Now, with geopolitics, everything is even more unpredictable. The best a company can do is react with speed, without rushing to premature conclusions about any single disruption. Andrea Paolo Lai, President, Global Operations, Oerlikon For decades, operations followed a simple logic: business conceived products and placed demand, while supply chains executed. This separation assumed abundance, stable access to inputs and frictionless global trade. This paradigm no longer holds. This is the inflection point for a new model of leadership. Every growth decision is a supply decision. Boardrooms are realizing that supply chains are not the end of value creation but its very architecture. They are becoming strategic platforms for value creation, innovation and geopolitical resilience and no longer passive executors of demand. For many leaders, this shift requires re-examining fundamental strategic supply questions. For example: “Can our product be redesigned to use more readily available materials?” or “Should our market entry strategy prioritize regions with more stable supply ecosystems?” These are not theoretical questions; they are practical design choices. During the 2020-2022 semiconductor shortage, Ford Motor Company rewired its operating model around scarcity rather than scale. The company shifted from inventory- heavy dealership sales to a built-to-order model, allocating scarce chips to high margin and new launch vehicles and simplifying designs by removing non-essential features. By aligning production to constrained inputs rather than speculative forecasts, Ford expanded its US order bank to seven times its pre-pandemic levels and turned a major structural constraint into competitive advantage. This is an example of orchestrating resilience in action – integrating foresight, design and execution into a single adaptive system – and demonstrates that supply chains are no longer passive execution engines but dynamic platforms for value creation and resilience.1.2 The C-suite’s strategic shift: From supply chain execution to value orchestration A business strategy must be anchored to the supply chain strategy, not just growth projections. Without that anchor, we might default to low-cost options, leaving the enterprise cornered and exposed when the next disruption hits. US-based sustainability executive, apparel sectorThe number of supply chain leaders shaping early product and market strategy decisions is more than double from five years ago. Global Value Chains Outlook 2026: Orchestrating Corporate and National Agility 8