Fortune Global Forum 2023

The business world has entered one of the most exciting and yet challenging periods in recent memory. While the long era of globalization created economic benefit for both industrialized nations and emerging markets, a slow unraveling has been taking shape. The world’s two largest economies–the United States and China–continue to decouple, with the potential for massive consequences. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted global supply chains, strained energy markets worldwide, and altered the power balance across the European Union.

As the world moves toward multipolarity, economic systems–including cross-border trade, foreign investments, and global markets–are being reimagined, with profound implications for CEOs, investors, and consumers.Science and A.I. technologies are now solving problems great and small–from climate risk to existential health crises–but they also pose new threats. And, as inflation drives up costs, it has become critical for companies to show consumers they are doing more than maximizing shareholder returns. Such seismic shifts in the marketplace have left companies with no choice but to accelerate transformation or risk total disruption.

Enter a “New Era for Business,” where CEOs and their companies have come to realize not only their pivotal role in driving lasting and positive societal change, but also the great responsibility that accompanies such power. With the role of multinational business and economic policy at a crossroads, the best companies are reinventing both mission and manner and turning challenges into opportunities for renewal and growth.