Photo Gallery Preparing for the Unpredictable
A BMW presentation at the Geneva Motor Show in 2011: Companies like BMW are seeking to make production and working hours far more flexible in order to be able to quickly adapt to uncertain times.
Wolfgang Reitzle, the CEO of industrial gas specialist Linde, is also preparing his company for the future. For nearly a decade preceding the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, economic development was characterized by high growth and minimal fluctuations. "Now it's the other way around," says Reitzle, who notes that there is currently only minimal growth, but this is accompanied by extreme turmoil in the markets.
"I don't know what will happen in 2013," says BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer. At a time of extremes, he says, predictions have become impossible. Reithofer has recommended that his fellow board members read the book "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The book describes seemingly impossible events that nevertheless occur: black swan events that have an enormous impact because no one expects them -- like the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank in 2008, which sparked the global financial crisis.
Confidence has been growing in recent weeks that the economy will recover in 2013, but major setbacks are possible at any moment. For instance, Silvio Berlusconi (pictured here) could return to power in Italy. The question is no longer how much uncertainty there is, but rather how companies deal with this uncertainty.
