These are the competencies for geostrategic advantage. Does your team have what it takes?

Although these competencies were highlighted by executives of firms operating in Spain, they are certainly not unique to Spain. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 similarly highlighted resilience, flexibility, agility, leadership and social influence, among others, as increasingly in demand owing to geoeconomic fragmentation and geopolitical tensions.

Megatrends like digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI) are also putting a premium on specific technical skills. With the race for AI supremacy akin to the Cold War era space race or nuclear arms race, many companies are currently vying for software engineers, data scientists and developers who can create and use new AI models and tools. In the Spanish survey, 86% of respondents said they expected AI to transform their businesses within the next five years — yet they also reported significant difficulties in finding adequate profiles up to the task.

This was echoed in another report by Joan Jané on the U.S. drive to reshore manufacturing. As with AI, the current U.S. attempt to rebuild its manufacturing base faces the same basic hurdle: a shortage of skilled labor.

Whether racing ahead with AI or reshoring manufacturing, “success depends on talent,” says Jané, “a workforce that spans roles from machinists and technicians to engineers, coders and data specialists.”

But he adds: “Equally important — and often overlooked — is the need for executives and general managers who understand how to leverage these roles as sources of competitive advantage.”

For technical workforce development, education is key: integration of STEM subjects in primary and secondary education; more apprenticeships and vocational training programs; and university degrees tailored to future market needs, with MBA programs incorporating manufacturing strategy, digital supply chains and Industry 4.0 into their core curricula.

The latter relates to a point Jané makes in his report: “Over the past two decades, U.S. business schools have deprioritized manufacturing-related education, placing greater emphasis on finance, marketing and corporate strategy. As a result, many leaders have lost operational fluency, weakening their ability to drive informed decisions about sourcing, automation and global production strategy.”

Spotting the opportunities for value creation and innovation inherent in the new geopolitical realm requires renewed “strategic fluency at the C-suite level,” says Jané. “Without upskilling at the leadership layer, you can have the most advanced AI systems in the world, but they will be of no use if you don’t also have executives who understand how to align them with global trade dynamics and harness them as sources of long-term advantage.”

Despite speculation that AI may replace talent, IESE research finds that AI is increasing the demand for AI-savvy managers with problem-solving skills and ethical judgment to interpret and implement data insights effectively.

Expanding the managerial mindset

The concern that the current generation of talent may be ill-prepared for geopolitics was raised by Mike Rosenberg in his book Strategy and Geopolitics. It’s worth revisiting his advice for managers, which is even more relevant in 2025 than when he tried to disabuse managers of their perception in 2017 that nuclear attack, Middle East conflict and deteriorating U.S.-China relations were remote, low-probability events.

First, he concurs with Jané on the need for more expansive executive education. Many leaders have backgrounds in engineering, accounting and business administration, which breeds a certain kind of thinking. “Engineers and finance people are taught that problems can be solved, and if you just do the math right, you will get the correct result. People with this type of mindset tend to insist on clarity when there may not be any,” says Rosenberg.

To improve geopolitical awareness, recruiting talent with backgrounds in history, political science and liberal arts could help to enrich the mix. This was mentioned during the Strategy Science Conference hosted by IESE in June 2025. In a panel discussing the ways that strategy scientists could factor geopolitics into their thinking, it was felt that more cross-disciplinary collaboration would be helpful — seeking insights from political science, law and international relations to gain a broader understanding of the geopolitical context and its implications for business strategy, away from traditional knowledge silos.

So, how would established executives do this in practice? Rosenberg suggests the following:

• Do a postgraduate program. The U.S. military, for example, sends officers back to school to receive advanced degrees in political science, history or other disciplines.
• Invite experts to run crash courses on geopolitics for managers in your company, offering in-depth knowledge of strategic regions affecting your business.
• Attend colloquiums and conferences on geopolitical subjects by experts in their fields.
• Reassess your performance metrics. Would learning an additional language or doing one of the previously mentioned activities be as valid a performance target as hitting the bottom line?
• Rotate. Rotating managers through job assignments in different countries, functions and business units is an indispensable means of acquiring firsthand knowledge of the potential impact of geopolitical developments on company operations and supply chains. Yet such assignments must be factored into performance metrics, so that executives are recognized, and their career progression not penalized, for deviating from the usual path.

For every barrier, an opportunity in the war for talent

Thankfully, some features of today’s labor battleground provide opportunities to leverage: namely, remote work. “Remote work has many advantages,” said Axon’s Labarta. Citing data on Europe having a significant talent shortage in areas like data science, cybersecurity and AI, she said that, thanks to ICT, companies like hers were able to recruit from anywhere. “I don’t care where they are: Swedish, Romanian, Irish or Nigerian. With remote work, we can manage it all.”

Another opportunity stems from the tighter restrictions on immigration, particularly in the United States. Boston Consulting Group cited a program to lure 10,000 highly skilled IT workers from the U.S. to Canada, which was oversubscribed within days — and that was before Trump was in power. Since then, his administration’s targeting of academics and scientists has seen record numbers of Americans applying to work in the U.K. or in France, which launched a Safe Place for Science Program. The upside of a brain drain is that one country’s loss is another’s gain. Global companies should be making the most of this trend, using tactics such as: offering funds to lure diaspora talent back home, as China is doing; targeting highly skilled talent from an ally, as in the Canadian example; and easing visa processes so that foreign graduates with desired skills can stay in or move to your country, with legal pathways for easier labor mobility.

Speaking on the same panel as Labarta at IESE’s Geopolitics Summit, Christoph Steck, director of public policy at Amazon Spain & Portugal, identified untapped opportunities in Europe. Although Europe gets a lot of flak for overregulation — especially in key areas like AI, putting the EU at a competitive disadvantage for talent attraction, recruitment and retention — Steck thought Europe needed to play to its strengths: its talent, its people and especially its single market. Having a single market the size of the EU’s is an incredible advantage, though Steck lamented it was not as integrated as it could be. By removing internal barriers to talent — from using AI to overcome language-related frictions and leveraging Europe’s multilingualism, to automatically recognizing and co-validating qualifications and credentials — Steck saw plenty of scope to unleash the competitive potential of the world’s largest trading bloc.

This is your moment to act. Find the opportunities and invest in people — strategically and across multiple disciplines. Build the workforce you need, not only to weather the current storms, but to emerge stronger and smarter in the era ahead.

MORE INFO:

“3 keys to shockproof your global supply chain,” based on the book Strategy and Geopolitics by Mike Rosenberg.

“Estrategia de la empresa ante cambios geopolíticos disruptivos” by Jordi Canals.

“The manufacturing renaissance: reshoring, innovation and industrial strategy for U.S. competitiveness” by Joan Jané and Holly Anne Hill.

The Future of Work, a report by IESE’s Maria Luisa Blazquez, Mireia Las Heras and Jordi Canals, with contributions from Francesc Arribas and Jose Perez del Valle. It is published as part of IESE’s Education for Jobs Initiative.

“The geopolitics of AI” with Sampsa Samila is available for Members of the IESE Alumni Association to watch on demand here.

This article is included in IESE Business School Insight online magazine No. 170 (Sept.-Dec. 2025).