"It is no surprise that risks have increased worldwide over the last year, as the latest release of the Opacity Index shows." So write Joel Kurtzman, a member of the Monitor Talent network, and Glenn Yago, in their report for the Milken Institute, "Opacity Index 2009: Measuring Global Risks."

In these videos, thought leaders from the Monitor Talent Network tell us their thoughts about the future in business, communications, media and technology.

Why do organizations get blindsided by market transformations that could have been anticipated?  This article from Strategy & Leadership guides you through a systematic process for incorporating plausible but challenging future scenarios into your organization’s learning processes, to help mitigate risk and decrease the likelihood of being unprepared for discontinuities.

Facing a sharp economic downturn and fundamental shifts in the way buyers learn and make decisions, companies must adapt their mix of marketing expenditures and develop new models for customer engagement. These new models, informed by insight into how customers think and behave, welcome shoppers’ involvement in shaping when, where and how they receive information and how they interact with products and brands.

In this essay for The American Scholar Magazine, Monitor co-founder Joseph Fuller argues that Wall Street's use of computer-based models worsened the current financial crisis and recommends ways to make financial firms more responsible for managing the risk these models introduce.

Corporate leaders coping with the current recession have to deal with forces that their predecessors in past recessions did not confront, explains Eamonn Kelly a partner and global head of thought leadership and networking at Monitor Group. In this six-minute video excerpt from a recent executive briefing, Kelly cites four disruptive forces leaders must confront as they grapple with the recession and prepare for the long term: the rise of a global economy not centered in the West; the blurring of boundaries among the commercial, government and non-government sectors; the significance of sustainability as a business issue requiring action; and the transformative impact of new connective technologies.

“Paths to Prosperity; Promoting Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century,” a new Monitor Group study, interviewed entrepreneurs in 22 countries to determine attitudes and critical policies required for entrepreneurship to thrive in different regions around the world, including the importance of a society's fostering of entrepreneurial skills and tax policies that encourage R&D.

Monitor's research suggests that while the financial meltdown claimed a number of hedge funds, those funds with activist strategies are worth watching. This report, by Michael Armstrong and Jonathan Joffe from Monitor's Integrated Strategy and Finance practice, describes typical behaviors of shareholder activists and how CEOs and boards of directors can deal with them. 

The advent of computer-based, program trading is arguably the most important change in global investing. Like in so many Hollywood scripts, this gradual shift seemed benign and protagonists failed to pick up foreshadowing signals. Now regulators and legislators working to prevent a future financial calamity must account for the pervasive role that models now play in making global markets.

These are unprecedented times for corporate executives—incredible volatility in the markets, sinking consumer confidence, a new financial crisis every week.  As a result, executives need to act quickly to tackle short term problems while setting the stage for long term growth. While we’ve dealt with recession before, the level of volatility and structural change posed by this crisis calls for a radically different playbook of options for achieving growth. 

In our view, there are certain, key levers companies can pull to find real growth and address the uncertainty.  The topics covered here can help shape your leadership agenda.