Anant Bhalla became chief executive of American Equity Investment Life (AEL) in March 2020, a turbulent time as COVID-19 was spreading around the world. When he joined AEL, which was founded in the mid-1990s and based in West Des Moines, Iowa, the company was the last big independent seller of…
A year of strong funding coupled with sturdy underlying fundamentals and significant technological advances reflected strong momentum in quantum technology (QT). Updated McKinsey analysis for the third annual Quantum Technology Monitor reveals that four sectors—chemicals, life sciences, finance, and mobility—are likely to see the earliest impact from quantum computing and could…
The US film and television industry has an unmatched influence on popular culture and broader attitudes. The stories it tells and the trends it sparks reverberate in every corner of the country. By many outward measures, the influence of the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) community on the film and…
Global preconceptions about Japanese organizations have often resulted in their potential being overlooked. Yet, as discussed by Naoyuki Iwatani and Michele Raviscioni, McKinsey senior partners and co-authors of the Japanese-language book, Unlocking the Full Potential of Japanese Corporates, the strengths of Japanese corporations are numerous, ranging from focused customer orientation,…
By 2050, carbon dioxide removal could be a $1.2 trillion industry. On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey senior partner Mark Patel joins editorial director Roberta Fusaro to discuss McKinsey’s recent report about the business of carbon dioxide removal and how it could play a vital role in responding to hard-to-abate…
The speed of battery electric vehicle (BEV) uptake—while still not categorically breakneck—is enough to render it one of the fastest-growing segments in the automotive industry. Our projections show more than 200 new battery cell factories will be built by 2030 to keep up with rising demand. Overall, the market for…
In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, co-host Janet Bush talks with Ed Glaeser. Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics and the chairman of the Department of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1992. His latest book, coauthored with…
Peak disease burden for chronic physical health conditions typically occurs in an individual’s 50s and 60s, whereas the prevalence of mental and substance use disorders peaks much earlier—in an individual’s 20s or 30s. About half of all mental disorders appear by age 14, and three-quarters by age 24. When left untreated,…
In this episode of Talking Banking Matters, payments industry expert and McKinsey partner Roshan Varadarajan talks with Johnny Ayers, the founder and CEO of the digital identity verification and fraud prevention company Socure. As digital payments and commerce continue to expand throughout every facet of the economy, digital identity verification…
US healthcare leaders are actively pursuing innovative business models, including both vertical integration and pure-play specialization (Exhibit 1). However, the growth rates of these business models have diverged in the past few years. While no organization focuses on just one of them, business models that emphasize vertical integration have produced…
Canada’s financial-services industry seems to be a textbook case of an industry primed for disruption by fintech. First, its banking industry is large compared with other G-7 countries. Banking revenues of $180 billion accounted for 7.9 percent of GDP in 2023, compared with 5.8 percent in the United States and…
Many companies turn to transformation because their leaders seek to capture untapped potential or realize growth or efficiency gains. Yet transformations take work to get right. Our research shows less than a third of transformations reach their goals to improve organizational performance and sustain these improvements over time. In this…
In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Roberta Fusaro chats with Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. They discuss Sunstein’s book Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There (Atria/One Signal Publishers, February 2024), cowritten with neuroscientist and professor Tali Sharot.…
Every company understands how crucial return on investment is. But how many view return on talent the same way?Employees represent both an organization’s largest investment and its deepest source of value. In a world where businesses are navigating economic uncertainty, rapid technological change, and upheaval in the working model, it’s…
As healthcare organizations look to the future, they cannot overlook the need to place the consumer at the center of all they do. Only by improving care outcomes and consumer experience will they deliver financial returns and remain competitive while meeting consumers’ holistic health and wellness needs. Consumers are more…
Drop lets members receive targeted offers and earn rewards by shopping with their debit or credit cards. From the time CEO Derrick Fung cofounded Drop with his brother Darren Fung and Cameron Dearsley in 2015, he also recognized the enormous potential value in having large volumes of consumer transaction data.…
In a nearly four-decade career as an institutional investor, Christopher Ailman has experienced multiple economic cycles. As investors navigate one of the most difficult operating environments in history, Ailman, chief investment officer (CIO) of the California State Teachers’ Retirement Fund (CalSTRS), a US public pension fund with a portfolio valued…
McKinsey: Delivery Hero is a pioneer in the meal delivery space. What factors, capabilities, and strategic decisions have contributed to its success? What were the turning points, if any?Niklas Östberg: One of the key strengths of Delivery Hero was always our willingness to take risks and innovate. Many of our…
Shinpei Kato, CEO of TIER IV, envisions a future of transportation in which open source revolutionizes the autonomous-vehicle industry. Such a disruption would parallel Android’s rise to dominate the mobile software market, which is a testament to the power of open source. It has been a cornerstone not only in…
This year will be challenging. We expect the increase in costs to outgrow the increase in revenues.Lionel Souque, CEO, Rewe GroupMcKinsey: What was 2023 like for Rewe? What are the things that stand out? Lionel Souque: It was quite a good year, especially from a sales perspective, although that was…
For the European grocery industry, 2023 was a challenging year. Inflation led consumers to tighten their belts, leading to a drop in volume and significant downtrading. As a result, industry growth was significantly below food price inflation. Food price inflation in Europe was 12.8 percent in 2023, while grocery sales…
The US skilled labor market is facing record-high pressure, particularly for companies with manufacturing and construction operations. Increasing labor scarcity, amplified by the COVID-19 disruptions, has intensified competition for talent, raising the sectors’ average wages by more than 20 percent since the first quarter of 2020. Since money wages have…
Conventional approaches to strategy have had to adapt in recent years, with rapid technological change and buffeting from external forces. In this episode of Inside the Strategy Room, the authors of the new book, The Imperfectionists: Strategic Mindsets for Uncertain Times, talk about how companies can benefit from acting quickly…
Right now, we’re inside a computer program?—Neo (The Matrix, 1999) The 1999 science fiction film The Matrix blurred the lines between the real and the virtual. Less than a quarter of a century later, dramatic advances in AI and digital simulation are disrupting how technology itself is created and used.…
Operating behind the scenes, aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) is one of the airline industry’s most essential functions. Without it, airlines couldn’t achieve the remarkable feat of safely moving nearly ten million people some 13 billion air miles around the world each day.Today, this indispensable industry is facing unprecedented…
Now that we’ve concluded the first quarter of 2024, we thought it would be a good opportunity to take stock of the state of consumption in China. In this edition of “China Brief”, we’ll do a quick scan of key macroeconomic indicators and zoom in on some of the core…
In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey head of brand strategy Amanda Lee chats with Bonnie Wan, the head of brand strategy and a partner at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, about her new book, The Life Brief: A Playbook for No-Regrets Living (Simon Element/Simon & Schuster, January 2024). Wan discovered that…
The recent market turmoil and ongoing challenges of an accelerated energy transition are putting pressure on all sectors of society, from governments to utilities to consumers—industrials included. Industrials are highly exposed to energy costs and the recent price volatility caused by large disruptions such as the invasion of Ukraine, among…
Before the end of this decade, autonomous vehicles (AVs), electric vehicles (EVs), and shared forms of mobility are poised to transform the mobility landscape. How will the auto insurance landscape evolve to adapt to this wave of disruption? This is a large question with many, many answers. At ITC Vegas…
On the surface, the cloud journey for many European companies is an impressive story. A stunning 95 percent of European companies in our recent survey say they’re capturing value from cloud, and more than one in three say they intend to have more than half of their workloads on cloud.…
McKinsey’s Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vik Malhotra chat with McKinsey Global Publishing leader Raju Narisetti about the global impact of their best-selling book, CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest (Scribner/Simon & Schuster, March 2022), and reflect on why the book is as…
From baby boomers to Gen Zers, the question of how the four generations comprising today’s workforce can best work together gets a lot of attention. Personal and professional experiences, levels of training, employer expectations, and career outlook can vary across generations. In nursing, tenure is a particularly nuanced factor that…
At a glance Macroeconomic challenges continued If 2022 was a tale of two halves, with robust fundraising and deal activity in the first six months followed by a slowdown in the second half, then 2023 might be considered a tale of one whole. Macroeconomic headwinds persisted throughout the year, with…
While global trade has risen dramatically since the 1990s and has continued to improve the lives of millions of people, geopolitical concerns have lately been rising too. Terms such as “reshoring” and “friendshoring” have seen increased use in corporate presentations by more than 20-fold in the past few years. For…
A few years into his tenure in treasury at PepsiCo, Arun Nayar realized that to rise higher, he would need to supplement his financial expertise with operational know-how. To get that experience, he persuaded the company’s leaders to give him a lateral role overseeing finance in the global operations division,…
‘The OHI is like an MRI,’ says McKinsey partner Bryan Hancock on this episode of McKinsey Talks Talent. He joins partner Brooke Weddle and global editorial director Lucia Rahilly to discuss McKinsey’s recently updated Organizational Health Index: how it works, what has changed, and why it’s still among the best predictors of…
As generative AI (gen AI) applications such as ChatGPT and Sora take the world by storm, demand for computational power is skyrocketing. The semiconductor industry finds itself approaching a new S-curve—and the pressing question for executives is whether the industry will be able to keep up. Leaders are responding by…
Executives’ latest views on the global economy and their countries’ economies lean much more positive than they did at the end of 2023. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey on economic conditions, the outlook on domestic conditions in most regions has become more hopeful, despite ongoing shared concerns about geopolitical…
In this episode of McKinsey on Building Products, a podcast dedicated to the exploration of software product management and engineering, McKinsey senior partner Chandra Gnanasambandam and partner Rikki Singh sits down with Pali Bhat, chief product officer of Reddit. Bhat has been at the forefront of product innovation for several…
Connecting with others can feel like an art, but it’s also a science. In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Lucia Rahilly chats with Charles Duhigg, a New York Times best-selling author and writer for the New Yorker, about his new book, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret…