Forward-looking companies embrace the chaos

Our world is governed by chaos, not reason. Disorder, obscurity and unpredictability are becoming the new normal. As climate change and the recent pandemic have shown, this creates significant uncertainty. We had just managed to cope with the turbulence of the era dubbed VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous). Now analysts are pointing toward more daunting challenges ahead under the new label of BANI (brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible).

Both acronyms seek to capture trends and circumstances that have a massive impact on how events unfold and yet are largely beyond our control. The difference is that VUCA describes volatility as the default state of our world while BANI dissolves the boundaries of what we can anticipate, comprehend and manage.