The Chinese heavy-duty-truck (HDT) market has faced a variety of challenges. Nearly a decade of rapid growth gave way in 2022, with sales plummeting 45 percent year over year. As the market finds its footing, several new trends are at play: the emergence and rise of new powertrains, partnerships exploring…
Since its founding in 1968, Special Olympics has grown into a global program that provides year-round athletic training and competition for millions of children and adults with intellectual disabilities. The program fosters and celebrates its athletes’ abilities and promotes equal access to healthcare for all, according to Dimitri Christakis, MD,…
While resilient, global economic growth is uneven, forward-looking indicators now show a divergence between manufacturing and services on a global basis. The manufacturing sector has contracted for the first time in 2024, registering 49.7 in July on the global Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), while services continue to grow steadily, clocking…
The conventional view of art may be that it is incompatible with technology. But in recent years, digital forms of art have complemented and perhaps enhanced traditional arts such as opera, film, and dance. In her ten years at the helm of the Kennedy Center, Deborah Rutter has led a…
For many travel and logistics providers, workforce challenges have become an increasing source of anxiety. Labor shortages are frequent and labor costs are rising. Workforce planning missteps can result in reduced margins and degraded customer service. These workforce challenges affect more than three million people employed at the 40 top-grossing…
As the healthcare industry continues to evolve, operations leaders face a complex set of challenges, including high administrative costs and employee attrition rates. Administrative accounts for about 25 percent of the more than $4 trillion spent on healthcare annually in the United States. Simultaneously, in response to rising expectations, organizations…
Most founder CEOs will tell you that it’s the people who matter most for a start-up’s success—that entrepreneurial band of software engineers, product developers, marketing managers, finance associates, and others who can help bring an idea to life and then to market. Founder CEOs know that talent is a key…
Aerospace OEMs are under pressure to ramp up production, improve operations, and increase sustainability, but multiple challenges persist. Supply chain issues are particularly acute, and a delay in shipping a single component often creates a domino effect that ripples through the production process. While tackling these problems can be challenging,…
Marketing is at a pivotal moment, with data and new technology propelling rapid changes and expanding opportunities for growth. The promise is enormous, with the economic value of generative AI (gen AI) potentially reaching $4.4 trillion, with a large percentage of that value set to come from marketing and sales. Amid…
Five smoke stakes line up against a backdrop of a blue sky. A thick cloud of white smoke pours out from one of the stakes.For centuries, philosophers have opined on the nature of control and the challenge of recognizing what’s in one’s power to change. Solving the problem of climate…
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Women in the Workplace report. Conducted in partnership with LeanIn.Org, this effort is the largest study of women in corporate America. Over the past decade, more than 1,000 companies have participated in the study, and we have surveyed more than 480,000 people…
The global metals and mining industry is entering a new era. Historically, the industry has been driven by economic growth and the development of the middle class, resulting in major demand growth for materials such as steel, aluminum, and coal. While 80 percent of the industry today primarily consists of…
There are only a handful of people who have taken a start-up from zero to $88 billion in revenue and continue to lead it today. Michael Dell is one of them. The founder, CEO, and chairman of Dell Technologies has steered his company through four decades of change and wave…
Today, more than 95 percent of trucks on the road around the world run on diesel or gasoline. The traditional truck ownership model of combining purchasing or leasing with selected add-on services is a proven model for both OEMs and customers. Large-fleet customers have a strong understanding of vehicle life…
Throughout his 19-year career at Boeing, Darren Hulst has seen the aerospace sector change in many ways. As the vice president of Boeing’s Commercial Marketing division, Hulst keeps his finger on the pulse of the industry to see how consumer demand, technology, and the global dynamics have evolved. Today, sustainability,…
Research conducted over two decades has continually affirmed that organizational health (how you run the place) is a valuable, competitive differentiator across industries. Organizational health has been linked to value creation, profitability, resilience, and safety metrics (see sidebar “How to assess organizational health”). Organizations in the care delivery sector are…
As major trucking companies decarbonize their fleets, they are currently prioritizing lower-carbon fuels such as natural gas and biofuels over zero-emission trucks. Adopting these fuels marks a positive step toward sustainable commercial mobility but represents only an intermediate step toward zero-emission mobility in the commercial sector. Meanwhile, true zero-emission mobility…
As generative AI (gen AI) grips the attention of business, corporate leadership can support their companies’ growth most by prioritizing the needs of their workers while simultaneously standardizing the use of cutting-edge tech. In this episode of the At the Edge podcast, economist and Stanford professor Erik Brynjolfsson speaks with…
Ventas, Inc. is a real estate investment trust (REIT) and S&P 500 company that occupies an essential role in the longevity economy. With roughly 1,400 properties in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, the company’s portfolio serves a large and growing aging population. Among its assets are senior…
After almost two years of infatuation with generative AI (gen AI), companies are moving past the honeymoon phase to embrace the work that matters most: creating value from this tantalizing technology. Expectations are high. A recent McKinsey Global Survey found that 65 percent of companies across sizes, geographies, and industries now…
Amid today’s economic uncertainty, the B2B landscape is undergoing significant transformation. Fueled by rapid integration of digital technologies, sellers continue to invest, innovate, and experiment with how they present their offerings. Their B2B customers are shifting toward consumer-like purchasing behavior. They’re also demanding a much more sophisticated buying experience and…
A new era of technological change is ushering the technology officer to the center stage, and expectations are high. Companies want their chief information officers (CIOs), chief technology officers (CTOs), and chief digital and information officers (CDIOs) to deliver on the often-elusive goal of turning the promise of tech into…
In 2023, global beauty market retail sales grew to $446 billion, up 10 percent from 2022. In the year since the release of our inaugural state of beauty report, published in collaboration with The Business of Fashion in May 2023, the industry—comprising fragrance, makeup, skin care, and hair care—beat expectations…
Enterprises are looking to Global capability centers (GCCs) as critical innovation hubs to stay ahead in the competitive landscape, but the difficulty lies in aligning strategic priorities with the capabilities of GCCs to maximize their impact. In this episode of McKinsey Talks Operations, host Daphne Luchtenberg is joined by McKinsey…
According to McKinsey analysis, between 2023 and 2030, ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) and high-net-worth (HNW) families in the Asia–Pacific region are set to experience an intergenerational wealth transfer estimated at $5.8 trillion. UHNW families are expected to account for about 60 percent of the total wealth transfer (Exhibit 1), and many are…
The HR function plays an important—if often unrecognized—role in M&A. When it comes to bringing together separate businesses, structures, and cultures, “people make all the difference,” says Lisa Blair Davis, the global head of HR for Johnson & Johnson (J&J) MedTech. Davis has seen and helped drive substantial growth in…
Lasting performance improvements that establish a competitive advantage: What organization doesn’t want that? For a company undergoing transformation, cultivating employee “will” to change the way it operates is critical for success. Organizations that focus on generating this will, along with building critical skills, executing with rigor, and setting a holistic…
Innovation and interest in the tech sector remain strong, despite market challenges and dips in investment. On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey technology experts Lareina Yee and Roger Roberts share findings from the McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2024 report. They talk with editorial director Roberta Fusaro about where innovation is…
Experiential retail is a growing way for retailers to draw in shoppers, increase omnichannel sales, and build their brands. Real estate owners and operators that can attract experiential retailers can benefit in multiple ways. Here’s what it takes. Katy McLaughlin: What is experiential retail? Colleen Baum: It’s a format designed…
The global supply chain is constantly changing, shaped by manufacturers around the world striving to limit risk, build resilience, manage costs, and explore new markets for production. As many manufacturers seek to reduce their dependence on a single supply source, Southeast Asia is emerging as a prominent manufacturing hub, reflected…
Sean Doyle has spent most of his career at British Airways (BA) and was appointed CEO in October 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, Doyle has been focused on rebuilding the company to create a better BA for the airline’s colleagues and customers. Earlier this year, he announced a…
When it comes to value creation, retailers have never had it easy. The challenges are well-known: consumer preferences and behaviors are fast changing and rarely predictable. Many retail businesses are highly dependent on supplier actions—a fact that’s become evident to consumers in recent years as supply chain disruptions resulted in…
The world remains deeply connected by virtue of global trade, but the geometry of economies’ connections has been shifting. Some major economies are moving toward trading more with geopolitically closer partners, while others continue to deepen their international trade networks both geographically and across the geopolitical spectrum. Asia is at…
The business world is still coming to grips with the seismic potential of generative AI (gen AI). According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the technology could contribute $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy. In addition, 50 percent of work activities could be automated from 2030 to…
If every company needs to be a software company, do you have a software organization that can deliver? The answer to that question could be decisive for the future of many companies.The ability to compete depends increasingly on how well organizations can build software products and services. Already, nearly 70 percent…
The UN Sustainable Development Goals were set to be achieved by 2030—yet only 17 percent of SDG targets are on track. In Asia, research has shown that the region will only achieve the SDGs by 2062 if it carries on its present trajectory. Can AI play a meaningful role in…
Cohere is carving a name for itself in the exploding AI market by focusing squarely on business clients and collaborating with major companies such as Google, Amazon, Oracle, and Microsoft, among others. Founded in 2019 by college friends Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst, and Ivan Zhang, the company maintains offices in…
Amid growing corporate and public sector cyber breaches and recent high-profile technology outages, significant changes are occurring in both the role of boards in cybersecurity and within the cybersecurity industry itself. In this interview, McKinsey’s Sean Brown speaks with Vinnie Liu, the cofounder and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Bishop…
Almost nine years after the landmark Paris Agreement and nearly halfway through what has been called a “decisive decade” for climate change, the world stands at a critical juncture in their transition away from fossil fuels. Translating into action the ambitious climate targets that have been put in place by…
To power the energy transition, mining companies will need to pivot toward producing critical minerals such as copper, lithium, and rare earth elements, which are essential components of electric vehicles, solar panels, and more. Meanwhile, industry leaders are contending with legacy issues on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics and…