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04 September 2025 / Essay
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Copy LinkWhen the past can no longer be trusted to predict the future, decision-makers must prepare for many possible situations instead of relying on business as usual. They face a clear trade-off: either choose actions that achieve the best results in one specific scenario or accept decisions that deliver “good enough” results across a much wider range of scenarios.
If there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that uncertainty is now a defining feature of the global economy. Since the 2007–2008 global financial crisis, geopolitical and economic uncertainties abound.
The future, both distant and near, is increasingly hard to read. What this means is that as we strive to make decisions about the future, the past is increasingly an unreliable predictor. The future will simply be different to the past and, therefore, lessons learned will be less informative. One cannot drive forward looking at the rearview mirror.
This unpredictability can lead to poor planning—or worse, paralysis. If we cannot rely on the past to think about the future, then how do we prepare for what’s to come?
The unreliability of the past a
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