Embracing the opportunities that artificial intelligence (AI) and talent together can unlock, CEOs are looking beyond the current instability, and increasingly confident about the future prospects for their organizations and the wider economy. Two-thirds are highly positive about the global outlook over the next three to five years, a major increase from 2023. Given that global tensions have worsened over the last 12 months, with conflict in the Middle East, disruptions to Red Sea supply chains, and the continuing war in Ukraine, this optimism is dramatic and heartening.

As the world grapples with global mega-challenges, innovation[1] has never been more necessary. We need breakthrough innovation to solve pressing issues around energy, the environment, and social and health challenges. At the same time, and equally importantly, companies have to deal with a business world typified by increased complexity and accelerated time frames. Together these mean innovation must deliver more breakthroughs, rather than only incremental improvements, with more flexibility and responsiveness and at greater speed.

Generation Z (widely known as Gen Z), encompassing those born between 1997 and 2012, is anticipated to make up over one-quarter of the global workforce by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum. As the first digitally native and globally connected generation, Gen Z brings distinctive skills and capabilities to organizations, making their recruitment and retention essential for sustained business success in the era of digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI).

Patient centricity seems to be an obvious focus for pharmaceutical companies. After all, their core business is to develop drugs and treatments to meet specific patient needs. Yet, patient centricity is not evident across the end-to-end pharma value chain, from identifying unmet patient needs through drug discovery and development to product availability and treatment. For example, on average, 30% of patients leave clinical trials before their scheduled treatment completion date, often because of the high burden of the trials on their lives.

One of the front-row candidates for disruption by artificial intelligence (AI) is software product and service development. AI is already leading to a paradigm shift in aspects such as coding, architecture, security, service management and ticketing, and personalization, providing new opportunities and risks. But the implications go well beyond new products and services and improved development approaches, into how software enterprises need to transform themselves across the board, from strategy and organization through to capabilities, resources, and ways of working.

By now, business executives are well aware that using artificial intelligence (AI), especially generative AI (GenAI) such as ChatGPT, brings with it certain risks as well as benefits. Apart from the commonly cited existential risk of a future artificial general intelligence posing a threat to mankind, there are plenty of less severe but more likely risks. Those that most people have read about already are possible biases in GenAI’s outputs, as well as its propensity to “hallucinate” on occasion.

Operating out of Singapore, Ocean Network Express, branded as “ONE,” was formed in April 2018 by merging the three competing container shipping business units of Japanese parent companies NYK, MOL, and K-Line. At the time, many commentators highlighted the challenges of such a large, complex integration. Yet just five and a half years later, ONE has become one of the most profitable and successful companies in the industry, with net income of approximately US $50 billion over the past five years.