Managing the New Realities of Risk

Global Business Network, self-described as the “world’s foremost scenario consultancy,” based in San Francisco, published a report on “Managing the New Realities of Risk,” as part of their April 2006 Annual Forum: “The changing nature and dimensions of risk at the contextual, market, and organizational levels should be reperceived as opportunities in addition to threats. This requires new approaches to understanding and managing risk as both individuals and organizations.” 

“The success and growth of organizations depend today, as they always have, on navigating the landscape of risks and opportunities. But it is a defining characteristic of our times that the risks and opportunities we face—whether the spread of terrorism or globalization, avian flu or scientific and technological breakthroughs, economic and climatic volatility or demographic shifts—are both increasing and increasingly complex. Most current approaches to managing risk and capturing opportunity focus on the most immediate and knowable environments—the organization and the market—and give only limited consideration to uncertainties in the external environment. Yet the future’s winning businesses will be those best able to anticipate and manage risks both within and beyond the enterprise, while simultaneously exploiting the upside opportunities they create. Developing these capabilities requires more effective utilization of today’s techniques and models, along with new approaches and tools for understanding the changing global context.” “GBN’s 2005 Annual Forum offered an original and provocative look at these “New Realities of Risk:” from the emerging and accelerating sources of uncertainty and the risks they create in the market and organizational environments to different lenses on the psychology of risk to the importance of reperceiving risk, as an opportunity for real advantage as well as a downside to be managed.”