Geopolitical Analysis

• Geopolitical Analysis

Geopolitical Analysis Elective Courses

Overview

As a Financial Times article recently argued, the past four years have offered us with a refresher course on risk and its multiple dimensions. The subprime crisis reminded us about the relevance of credit risk. The fall of Lehman Brothers demonstrated once more the significance of liquidity and counterparty risk. Rising public debt in several Western countries such as Greece and even the United States suggest that sovereign risk remains highly relevant.

Recent events in the Middle East and the fiscal crisis in the United States and in Europe have re-introduced the world to a final dimension of risk: politics and geopolitics. What seemed to be solid assumptions about how the world worked and how stable it was are now continuously challenged by – predictable and unpredictable – events that can unfold very quickly. Perhaps even more crucially, geopolitics is not only a dimension of risk but also a channel of contagion that can transform a sovereign or a liquidity crisis for instance into a worldwide, systemic failure of the international system.

The real challenge lies in drawing operational implications from geopolitical analysis for businesses and decision-makers. Business executives can become easily obsessed with their inboxes, and be tempted to micromanage, isolate issues and be excessively backward-looking in their analyses as a result. This course is meant to explore how geopolitics can help them broaden horizons and enrich their strategies by locating their current choices in a time stream, and/or in relation to other issues. These strategies should provide organizations with enough flexibility to deal with international uncertainty and make them sufficiently resilient to survive a major and unpredictable event

Learning outcomes

Knowledge of How to . . .

• Understand the strategic landscape in which decision are taken
• Assess the business risks and opportunities entailed by geopolitical dynamics
• Monitor changes in the international landscape, including the likelihood of low-probability and high-impact events (black swans)
• Integrate geopolitical analysis in the firm’s broader international and risk-mitigation strategies
• Develop a long-term, consistent strategy and vision, beyond mere day-to-day tactics