BCG in the News

Business Insider

Protecting Against IT Disruption

In Business Insider, BCG’s Charles Hosner discusses the CrowdStrike global IT outage, highlighting the risks that companies face when neglecting their IT and digital resilience. Often, these responsibilities are overshadowed by other business priorities. However, with the interconnectedness of today’s technology, companies must take proactive actions to safeguard against these outages. "This is not an IT issue, it is a broad business issue and it needs a business-led solution with IT supporting," Hosner says.

Financial Times

A New Approach to Assessing Macroeconomic Risk

The Financial Times highlights a new book from BCG’s Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak and Paul Swartz which outlines a new approach to understanding the global economy in uncertain times. The book, titled Shocks, Crises and False Alarms, notes that current cause-and-effect models inaccurately represent the dynamic nature of macroeconomic relationships. According to the Financial Times, the book “offers an invaluable framework to better understand growth, the financial sector and the key trends shaping the global economy.”

The Edge Singapore

Charging Ahead: Climate Adaptation and Resilience

In an interview with The Edge Singapore, BCG’s Varad Pande urges the private sector to increase investments in climate adaptation and resilience. “The benefit-cost ratio of such investments is in the range of two to 15 times,” says Pande. With $300 billion in economic losses from natural and climate-related disasters globally in 2023, he believes that public-private-philanthropic partnerships are essential to unlocking urgently needed climate financing.

Bloomberg

M&A Discussions “More Prominent” Among the C-Suite

In an exclusive interview with Bloomberg, BCG’s CEO Christoph Schweizer discusses M&A’s mixed recovery and business leaders’ appetite for dealmaking, based on BCG’s newly launched M&A Sentiment Index. With the growth of AI, Schweizer expects to see a decline in manual marketing and underwriting tasks, allowing for more automated M&A due diligence.

Forbes

How to Write an Email Subject Line That Prompts Clear Actions

In her column for Forbes, BCG’s Julia Dhar discusses how frustrated people are with the delay in email response times as the volume of messages continues to grow—and how effective communication plays a key role in triggering an email response. Dhar highlights a BCG study that shows how different subject lines can affect email open rates. “Competition for attention amid this online deluge is intense,” she says. “If you want yours read, focus on the subject line and make it personal.”

Expansion

Mercadona, Carrefour y Lidl aumentan su liderazgo en plena batalla de precios

En el último año, los tres líderes del sector por cuota de mercado han aumentado su peso. Expertos como Adriana de José, socia de distribución y consumo de Boston Consulting Group, apuntan a las aperturas y a la preferencia por la marca blanca. Además, la socia destaca entre los motivos que explican la ganancia de clientes "algunos players están empezando a usar los datos que tienen los clientes para moverse a la personalización, para crear ofertas más relevantes para ellos".

Forbes

Taylor Swift: What Brands Can Learn from a Tortured Poet’s Magic

In her Forbes column, BCG’s Julia Dhar examines what brands can learn from Taylor Swift’s marketing and revenue management playbook. She outlines three key takeaways for mapping out a go-to-market strategy for new products: treat partnerships as core assets to boost media attention, leverage both traditional and nontraditional sales methods to create demand, and give customers more than they expect to expand the power of each product launch.

City A.M.

Fintechs Set for a Spike in IPO Activity Following a Bumpy 2023

In City A.M., BCG’s Kunal Jhanji explains that the UK’s fintech sector is primed for a “substantial uptick” in IPO activity this year as investor sentiment around UK startups rebounds. According to a new report from BCG and QED Investors, the global fintech sector is expected to grow to $1.5 trillion in revenue by 2030, up from $320 billion today. The report reveals that investors are now embracing sustainable, profitable growth for fintechs over a “growth at all costs” mentality.

The Economic Times

AI at Work: Friend and Foe

In The Economic Times, BCG’s Sylvain Duranton and Jeff Walters reveal that employees’ confidence in AI and GenAI is growing, but many regular users also fear its impact on their future job security. According to BCG’s 2024 AI at Work survey, cautious optimism about AI and GenAI endures, with 42% of global respondents reporting confidence about the technologies’ impact on their work. However, anxiety about the technologies is also on the rise compared to last year’s survey. “Our survey exposes the double-edged nature of GenAI,” Duranton says.

Financial Times

$10 Trillion of Insurance Needed to Cover Net Zero Transition

In the Financial Times, BCG’s Raphael Troitzsch outlines how the insurance sector can derisk—and therefore accelerate—a just, resilient climate transition. According to a new report from BCG and Howden, a global insurance intermediary group, at least $10 trillion of additional insurance coverage will be needed for the energy, road transport, and building sectors by 2030. This is a wake-up call about the essential role of insurance in the net zero transition.

Fortune

CEOs Wake Up from Their “Geopolitical Nap”

In Fortune, BCG’s Nikolaus Lang says that between regional conflicts and the resurgence of trade wars, business leaders around the world are placing geopolitics at the top of their agendas. Lang, who is the chair of BCG’s newly launched Center for Geopolitics, explains that many of today’s C-suite executives have always operated in an environment where geopolitics did not play an outsized role. “But in the past five years, [they] experienced a series of exogenous shocks they were simply not prepared for,” he says. “It puts a lot of pressure on leaders.”

Business Insider

AI Takes Over Cannes Lions Festival

Ahead of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, BCG’s CMO Jessica Apotheker speaks to Business Insider about AI’s impact on marketing and advertising. Apotheker says that marketers must set stronger branding guidelines for AI. Earlier this year, she barred BCG’s AI assistants from being anthropomorphized, meaning that they must have robotic voices as well as nonhuman names and attributes.