Jason Schenker on how geopolitics is redrawing the global business outlook
As President of Prestige Economics and Chairman of The Futurist Institute, Jason Schenker is a leading economic forecaster and strategic advisor. In an exclusive interview with the SpeakOut Speakers Agency, he explains how disciplined scenario-based thinking, rigorous data analysis and futurist frameworks can help consultancies and business leaders cut through uncertainty, anticipate disruption, manage risk and seize opportunities in a rapidly evolving global economy.
What are some of the economic trends and risks that leaders should pay attention to?
The most important economic trends and risks that business leaders need to be paying attention to right now include tariffs, inflation, trade, and geopolitical risks. These uncertainties are impacting businesses across the world. And what I’ve seen in talking to executives, corporate boards, and industry groups is that focusing on the potential impacts of these and thinking about scenarios and what levers could drive different outcomes is really important.
Additionally, something like the Cold War II scenarios that I’ve worked on have been tremendously helpful for my clients to stay ahead of some of the biggest geopolitical and related impacts that we’re seeing now.
How do you see geopolitics impacting economic outlooks and risks?
Geopolitical risks are adding a lot of additional economic uncertainty. While tariffs are inflationary, tariff risks are often recessionary and deflationary, and that mix of factors is significant. Plus, the geopolitical impacts could become more severe. One of the things I talk about in my presentations are futurist frameworks. And these are very different from sort of the consulting or finance forecast, where there’s a low case, mid-case, high-case.
Futurist frameworks focus on four different potential scenarios that you could see in the future, where the trends we’ve been experiencing could hit a stasis. They could reverse, they could continue, or they could accelerate. Thinking about those frameworks, applying them to the geopolitical situation, has been very helpful for sharing with clients a way to conceive of the potential risks and opportunities that lie ahead.
How should businesses think about recession risks and growth opportunities?
In a high-risk environment, downside risks have increased significantly. But the most important thing to know when we’re thinking about recession risks is that there are always recessions out there somewhere. Maybe it’s in a company or in industry and not just in a country. But there are also always opportunities for growth.
There might be a city or a product or some other industry where there can be a pivot and you can find those opportunities. This is something I focus on when talking to different industry groups. I try to always make sure to tailor my talks to very specific industry priorities, concerns, and dynamics. But for any industry right now, focusing on ROI and fiscal discipline are critical because we’re still in a relatively high interest rate environment. We also have a high cost environment. We have high inflation, and especially because we have these high geopolitical and economic uncertainties looming over the forecasts.
How do your talks help business leaders make good decisions?
My talks help leaders see through the noise. There is a lot of economic data constantly coming at them, and we see we’re in right now a rapidly changing environment for the economy, technology, and geopolitics. This is why being able to cut through that noise and being able to differentiate what matters from what doesn’t is really critical for making good business decisions and helping leaders be informed strategically.
