Strategic communications and consulting network, The Weber Shandwick Collective, has released the “UN/PREDICTIONS” report for 2024. The study unveiled how global multinational corporations (MNC) are aligning their business priorities with the headline topics from the World Economic Forum in Davos. Issues explored include including generative AI, mis- and disinformation, ESG and geopolitics.

The survey was conducted throughout January 2024 amongst 104 global business leaders, ranging from CEOs to Vice Presidents of private sector MNCs across the APAC, EMEA, North America and LATAM regions.

A selection of key findings includes:

• About half of companies (51 per cent) put generative AI as their top priority in terms of greatest impact on business operations and performance for the upcoming years.
• 70 per cent of respondents plan to explore new methods for delivering insight and business intelligence to navigate social and technological change.
• Business leaders plan to take multi-pronged approaches to combat mis- and disinformation, including making adjustments to their organisation structures (47 per cent), gathering business intel (42 per cent), identifying and tracking sources of misinformation (42 per cent), and using AI to detect or respond to misleading information (41 per cent).
• Navigating geopolitical conflict fell low on the business priority list (18 per cent for CEOs and 21 per cent for C-Suite leaders); which the report attributed to the leaders not feeling equipped to deal with the issue.