ABSTRACT

Forecasting changes in the international business environment is critical for the policy, corporate, and academic communities. As the importance and impact of international business overall has increased, there is a commensurate need to identify, as early as possible, emerging issues, and assess their potential effect on policy makers, practitioners, and researchers (McKinsey & Co. 2006). While there are many individual broad visions as to the future business environment (Marcovitch 1997), a more specific way to engage in forecasting is to get the business, policy and research communities to interact in the process of outlining possible scenarios and resulting actions. Since no one region or location will be the only origin of change, a diversity of opinion across geographies secures a more balanced portfolio of comments.