Resilience for Sustainable Inclusive Growth

The World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company are pleased to announce Resilience for sustainable inclusive growth, a white paper advanced by Borge Brende, president of the Forum, and Bob Sternfels, McKinsey’s global managing partner.

This paper provides the context and objectives of the Resilience Consortium, a new public-private leadership effort launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022. The Consortium brings together government ministers, chief executives, and heads of international organizations to accelerate collective action and investment in building global resilience.

In a world of continuous, overlapping disruptions, organizations need to build and manage resilience to secure a sustainable, inclusive future for all. The stakes in developing resilience as an essential capability are high. The United Nations, World Economic Forum, McKinsey Global Institute, International Monetary Fund and other organizations all estimate that a significant share of annual GDP growth will depend on the degree to which organizations and societies develop resilience. Success depends on how leaders respond to the many challenges, including climate change, the energy transition, supply chain disruptions, healthcare availability, and income, gender and racial inequalities.

These interrelated questions cannot be addressed in isolation. Ample investment and new capabilities are needed, to build a “resilience muscle.” The focus must be on flexibility and prevention, enabling faster adaptation to disruptions and changes in the environment. The resilience muscle will support growth-oriented strategies, with buffers as a residual power, to protect against immediate impact.

The white paper clarifies the meaning of resilience, discusses the component parts of the resilience muscle, and explores seven themes that have fundamental cross-cutting business, economic, and societal implications. It furthermore points the way toward a common resilience framework that will allow organizations to build their resilience agenda and measure progress against it.