Center for Future Readiness
The Center for Future Readiness helps organizations in every industry navigate a reality of constant change. We help companies overcome adversity, spur innovation and thrive amid uncertainty. Each year, the center produces the Future Readiness Indicator which measures the corporate world’s resilience and how prepared industry incumbents are for the future.
The Future Readiness Indicator
IMD unveiled its first Future Readiness Indicator in December 2020, and this now yearly report was made possible thanks to generous funding from a LEGO® chair endowment.
The Indicator relies on a rule-based system to compute an aggregate score for every business, identifying the key players in their respective industries before examining the behaviors and attitudes of particular companies more closely.
Key insight for 2023: how to become recession-proof
Future-ready companies demonstrate market resilience and are “recession-proof” in difficult economic times. This was the key takeaway from the 2022 Future Readiness Indicator 2022 report. The 2022 report examined 89 of the world’s largest companies in the pharmaceutical, technology, and retail industries. The focus on these industries aimed to explore who the winners and losers are in the tech sector and if fashion brands will continue to do well in a recession.
This year we added the pharmaceutical industry to the top ranking in technology and consumer brands. The mRNA vaccine has rekindled enormous public interest in this industry, but more importantly, it is also characterized by risky investments and rapid knowledge transfer, and requires companies to satisfy numerous stakeholders beyond just delivering profits.
Nike, Google, and Roche ranked at the top of the global rankings in their respective industries. However, Burberry, Alibaba, and Meta performed much worse than expected. Amazon lost its top spot to Microsoft while Netflix dropped 22 spots.
“To be future-ready, you need to have strong cash flow and a robust innovation pipeline. At the same time, you need to have a diversified set of businesses.” Howard Yu, LEGO® Professor of Management and Innovation and Director of the Center.
Read more about the latest report and its key findings here.
Global media attention
During the year, the Center published more than 60 media articles with the Indicator attracting increased attention in news reports around the world. Within a month of its publication the report increased its media reach to 672 million compared to 516 million for the 2021 edition.