A Cognitive Framework for Business Leaders. By Richard Baldwin, @IMD, Factful Friday, 5 July 2025 Introduction.

Three forces have always shaped globalisation – technology, policies, and geopolitics. What distinguishes the current moment is that all three are accelerating simultaneously but in different directions. This column introduces a new eBook showing how this divergent acceleration creates transformation rather than retreat from globalisation. But it also generates acute tension between rapidly changing economic flows and policies and slowly adapting institutions, creating fragmentation risks. Nevertheless, the multilateral system's embedded flexibility, economic value, and proven historical capacity for adaptation offer pathways towards cooperative solutions.

Instead of being the great leveler, as pandemics have been throughout history, the coronavirus pandemic has revealed and compounded pre-existing inequalities in wealth, race, gender, age, education an...

Efforts to relocalise supply chains may have negative effects on global trade, while doing little to benefit resilience, the OECD has warned.

The right way to build a new global economic order.