What's Your Next Brilliant Move?

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McKinsey & Company wants to help and they are not a sponsor to the Global Small Business Blog.

Millennials and Gen Zers Glow-Up a $2 Trillion Global Wellness Market

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To millennials and Gen Zers, wellness has become a daily, personalized practice rather than a set of occasional activities or purchases.

As this shift takes hold, it’s influencing the direction of the $2 trillion global wellness industry, which is expanding beyond its core categories. 

McKinsey & Company, in its fourth year fielding their Future of Wellness research, which focuses on six dimensions of wellness—health, sleep, nutrition, fitness, appearance, and mindfulness—they surveyed more than 9,000 consumers across China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Their findings reveal the ways in which younger consumers are redefining the landscape, the five consumer segments that make up today’s wellness customer base, and six subcategories poised to grow.  

Check it out.

Accelerate Sustainable and Inclusive Growth Globally

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"Our aspiration is to help accelerate sustainable and inclusive growth globally, and it’s a key metric by which we measure ourselves." – Bob Sternfels, Global managing partner, McKinsey & Company – download report.

Globalization's Next Phase is a Rewiring

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According to a new report from consulting firm McKinsey, globalization is changing course — that much is clear.  But don’t call it a retreat, it’s just “reconfiguring," or "rewiring."

Today, international businesses are confronting the “complexities of an increasingly contested global order” where war, national security, supply-chain disruptions and technological change are all driving a shift in global trade flows.  The result of this shift, according to McKinsey, is that some supply chains could “shorten and become more regional” in the coming years.

Read more about globalization's next phase of rewiring.  Read the full McKinsey report, "Global flows:  The ties that bind in an interconnected world."

What It Takes to Generate Value-Creating Growth in 2022

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To buck these trends – slowing global economy, rising inflation, and geopolitical uncertainty – business leaders need to follow a holistic growth blueprint consisting of three core elements: 

1. A bold aspiration and accompanying mindset 
2. The right enablers embedded in the organization
3. And clear pathways in the form of a coherent set of growth initiatives

To understand how organizations can try to overcome obstacles, McKinsey & Company studied the growth patterns and performance of the world’s 5,000 largest public companies over the past 15 years through various lenses. 

Their findings suggest ten imperatives that should guide organizations seeking to outgrow and outearn their peers.  And No. 8 is:  Go global if you can beat local.  Expand internationally if you have a transferable advantage.

Find out what it takes to generate value-creating growth for a business.

Which Global Small Businesses Are Most Vulnerable Right Now Due to COVID-19?

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According to McKinsey & Company, before the crisis, small businesses accounted for nearly half of all private-sector jobs. Widespread business exits wreak longer-lasting unemployment and economic damage than temporary shutdowns do, so it’s important to understand which small businesses may remain shuttered permanently.

McKinsey & Company goes on to say that that knowledge can help business leaders and policy makers develop interventions to protect small businesses in the short term, ensure that they can participate in the recovery, and put more of them on a more resilient footing in the years to come.

Discover which sectors are most at risk, and which global small businesses might close permanently.

COVID-19's Effect on Jobs at Global Small Businesses

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Here's the deal.  Thirty million small-business jobs are vulnerable, and firms with fewer than 100 employees are the hardest hit during the COVID-19 crisis.  One of the challenges for policy makers and executives is figuring out how to get these employees back to work.

Discover McKinsey & Company's findings as of May, 2020.

Create Something New Everyday and Watch it Go Global

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Here's the sweet, creative story.

36 Days of Type, a global design challenge that now partners with Adobe, started as a personal project that went global after Nina Sans and Rafa Goicoechea, both graphic designers from Barcelona, first decided to challenge themselves to create something new everyday, as a way to experiment with new stuff outside their comfort zone by setting personal daily design challenges.

This year [2019], the project asked designers everywhere to come up with visual interpretations of the letters A through Z, and the numbers 0 through 9, and share them on social media between April 2 and May 8.

McKinsey Design got involved.  Almost 50 designers and graphic artists from across the firm, including client and non-client facing colleagues alike, volunteered to submit artwork. You can see all of their pieces right now, along with captions explaining their process or inspiration, at McKinsey Design’s Instagram account.

Look closer at where a creative journey can lead you and it's probably where you least expect it.

Today in Global Small Business: Didi Chuxing Ascends to the Global Stage

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

1. Should you protect your trademarks?  Attend trade shows? Go direct or indirect on global sales?  Find out by attending an upcoming N/C webinar on 3/8 and hosted by nonprofit WEGG.
2. If we view technology as an enabler of business growth, how do we make the most of it?  Say hello to NextTECHnow.
3. According to McKinsey, digital trade is taking over; see how you can get involved (access report here).
4. What's of concern on global e-commerce these days besides cybersecurity?
5. How to go from a global star to a normal life?
6. See how Chinese ride hailer Didi Chuxing is taking steps to ascend to the global stage.

Unemployed People: A Costly Wasted Potential for the Global Economy?

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In the new McKinsey Global Institute report, "A labor market that works: Connecting talent with opportunity in the digital age," they examine the current state of employment and the impact digital talent platforms could have -- potentially boosting global GDP by $2.7 trillion by 2025.

Labor markets around the world haven’t kept pace with rapid shifts in the global economy, and their inefficiencies have taken a heavy toll. Millions of people cannot find work, even as sectors from technology to healthcare struggle to fill open positions. Many who do work feel overqualified or underutilized. These issues translate into costly wasted potential for the global economy. 

Bottom line:  Online talent platforms can ease a number of labor-market dysfunctions by more effectively connecting individuals with work opportunities.

Read more here.

For more on this topic, see James Manyika’s LinkedIn essay “The digital revolution is making the job market work for you” (June 2015).

Globalization Reconsidered: What Global Flows Mean in a Digital Age

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According to McKinsey & Company, global flows are creating new degrees of connectedness among economies—and playing an ever-larger role in determining the fate of nations, companies, and individuals; to be unconnected is to fall behind.

A new McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report, Global flows in a digital age: How trade, finance, people, and data connect the world economy, examines the inflows and outflows of goods, services, finance, and people, as well as the data and communication flows that underlie them all, for 195 countries around the world.

Learn more:  Global flows in a digital age | McKinsey & Company