In keeping with our annual tradition at the BCG Henderson Institute, we are excited to kick off the vacation season by unveiling our 2025 Summer Reading List.

Waiting can be a dysfunctional choice — or a wise approach to navigating complexity. Leaders facing today’s uncertainty must know when and how to wait.

Geopolitical disruptions and tech advances are shaking up manufacturing strategies, pushing leaders to rethink their approaches. Companies need to rethink the way they traditionally decide where to locate plants, and instead utilize scenario planning and the possibility of automation to create a manufacturing footprint that makes sense as tariffs rise.

From trade wars and geopolitical shifts to regional wars and climate change, business leaders must manage through unprecedented complexity in the global landscape.

"We need to think more in terms of understanding time. On the firm side, productivity improvements [usually mean] speeding up processes. […] For consumers, […] our budget is 24 hours, which we use on leisure, paid and unpaid work, consumption, services. Time could [be] the basis of a new accounting framework for economic value."

"A bomb works quite well to blow things up, but it doesn’t always get you what you want politically. And I think the same applies to sanctions: […] the US government does have the power to impose significant economic harm on any country in the world. What we’re much less good at is translating that economic pain into the political objectives that we seek."