For decades, inflation was the biggest risk for companies, especially in emerging markets. It dictated investment cycles, imposed cost cuts and turned predictability into the most valuable asset. Today this situation has changed: the risk is no longer just economic and has become political.
We live in the era of polycrises. The term, coined by historian Adam Tooze, describes the convergence of feedback shocks: trade wars, institutional instability, fragmented supply chains, environmental pressures, and disinformation at scale. What was once the exception became the rule, and the future was no longer calculable.
Given this scenario, it becomes necessary to rethink the nature of global growth. Although it is not literally a zero-sum game, growth has behaved like an unequal contest between nations. The ability to transform raw materials such as minerals, food, energy, data or knowledge into added value has come to define who advances and who is left behind.
This logic directly affects companies. Chains that were previously optimized by cost are now being redesigned according to geopolitical criteria. Nearshoring and friendshoring are no longer technical jargon but have become survival strategies. Boards of directors that previously only monitored exchange rates or the price of raw materials now need to monitor elections, sanctions and conflicts in real time.
The answer, however, does not involve creating absolute barriers (which simply do not exist), but rather geopolitical resilience: the ability to react quickly, diversify risks and reinvent business models. PwC’s 28th Global CEO Survey shows that 42% of leaders believe that their companies will not be viable in ten years if they maintain the same course. Reinvention, therefore, is no longer an option but has become a precondition for survival.
However, resilience is not only based on governance. It depends, above all, on the culture. It is the culture that shapes daily behavior and defines whether the organization will be able to question assumptions, value transparency and open itself to new information. Without this foundation, even the best governance structure is reduced to an empty shell.
The case of Morgan Stanley before the 2008 crisis is illustrative. The bank, one of Wall Street’s giants, was accumulating internal disputes and high legal costs — clear signs of cultural wear and tear. At the same time, it allowed extreme risk operations in structured credit, which resulted in losses of billions of dollars and almost led the institution to ruin. There were rules, committees and controls. But there was a lack of a culture that encouraged contradiction, contained overconfidence and avoided automatic responses in a context of uncertainty. This absence transformed a localized problem into an existential threat.
The lesson is clear: governance structures, but it is culture that guides. It is what sustains resilience in times of accelerated change. In a world marked by fake news, generative artificial intelligence and
political polarization, only companies with an open, transparent ethos and focused on the quality of questions will be able to separate facts from noise and maintain strategic clarity.
Paradoxically, ruptures also open paths. Major economic transformations often emerge from political crises. Therefore, companies that combine governance prepared for different regulatory contexts with a culture capable of facing misinformation and the speed of change will not only resist, but also find new avenues of growth.
Growing today no longer depends solely on scale or margin. It requires reading the scenario, coherence of purpose and cultural strength. The true competitive advantage lies in adapting without losing clarity of destination.
If before the biggest risk was inflation, now it is systemic discontinuity. If before the challenge was to grow, today it is to resist and only then grow again.
Competition in the 21st century is not defined by price or product. It is defined by worldview.
The companies that will prosper will be those capable of reading the world, not just their balance sheets.