What happened at Davos this year was not simply a message for presidents and prime ministers. It was a warning for chief executives. The World Economic Forum has long served as a venue for diplomatic signaling, but this time the implications landed squarely in the boardroom.
At Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that the “post–Cold War rules-based international order” is no longer holding, and that countries must “take on the world as it is, not the world we wish to see.” That admonition applies even more forcefully to CEOs. Their corporate strategies built for yesterday’s order are now exposed to risks they no longer control.
