ET: “The era of rapid-fire executive poaching is cooling, as corporate India enters a period of deep caution. For senior and middle management, the path to a new corner office in 2026 will be defined by gruelling vetting processes, artificial intelligence litmus tests, and a “last-in, first-out” anxiety that is keeping potential candidates from jumping ship. The shift marks a departure from the aggressive expansion seen in previous years. Executive search firms said that the timeline to close a senior mandate now frequently exceeds six months, as boards prioritize operational resilience over headcount growth. In a bid to de-risk high-stakes appointments, hiring panels are increasingly looking outside their own industries. The goal is to find “disruptors”—leaders who have navigated market volatility or digital transformation in other sectors and can apply those lessons to new environments.”
FT: “Dealing with uncertainty is arguably as much about developing an outlook or mentality as it is about market research or the unending quest for better data. General (later US President) Eisenhower summed up this tension well. “In preparing for battle,” he said, “I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Why are plans useless? Clearly situations change. Competitors innovate or pitch their products at aggressive new price points. Wars break out causing commodity prices to rise. Governments introduce new legislation that changes the game. Formerly free and open markets get hit with tariffs. So why is planning indispensable? The discipline of trying to anticipate what could happen is valuable in itself. This helps develop the much-prized “agility” that so many corporate leaders want their organisations to display. An extreme version of this planning approach is to carry out a “pre-mortem” ahead of the launch of any new project or initiative. This involves imagining a time in the future when the project has failed. What is it that will have gone wrong? Which misguided assumptions did you make? Which bit of bad data led you astray?”
Bloomberg: “Step aside, artificial intelligence. Another transformative technology with the potential to reshape industries and reorder geopolitical power is finally moving out of the lab: quantum. The United Nations dubbed 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. It’s been marked by a flurry of announcements — and a mountain of hype — around a mind-boggling field of science long dismissed as perpetually a decade away from usefulness. But that’s how people talked about AI, too, before ChatGPT spurred the current global arms race and investor euphoria.”
Mint: “The most significant technological shift will be in the biological realm, as synthetic biology starts being used to replace the chemical processes we currently rely on. This means that we will soon be able to ‘brew’ what we need by using precision fermentation and cell-free enzymatic systems, allowing us to ‘manufacture’ on demand whatever chemicals, fabrics, fuels and food we need. This will disrupt the current industrialized production system as we shift to distributed bio-manufacturing ecosystems in which neighbourhood ‘brewers’ produce our pharmaceuticals, fabrics and food. When this happens, our economic growth could finally be decoupled from resource extraction, marking the end of the ‘Age of Oil.’”
