Value in Motion: Turning global insight into Thai business opportunity

Jirayuth Unnaha
Welcome to the PwC Thailand Spotlight podcast: Special episode – Value in Motion with global insights, where we explore how global forces are reshaping the future of business, and what leaders can do today to stay ahead. I’m your host, Jirayuth Unnaha, speaking to you from PwC Thailand.

In this episode, we’re diving into PwC’s global research on Value in Motion, which examines how megatrends—such as artificial intelligence, climate change, and shifting geopolitics—are transforming industries and creating new domains of growth.

Joining me today is Allen Webb, Insights Leader and Managing Director in Global Thought Leadership at PwC US. Allen has been at the forefront of this research and is here to help us unpack what ‘Value in Motion’ means, why it matters, and how business leaders, especially in emerging markets, can respond with confidence.

Thanks for joining us, Allen.

Allen Webb
Thank you very much for having me, Jirayuth.

Jirayuth
To start us off, could you explain what PwC’s Value in Motion research is all about?

Allen
The Value in Motion research is a way of looking at the future. And, in the Value in Motion effort we looked up to 2035; we looked at the big forces at work that are transforming the global economy. These are things like AI and advanced technologies, climate change, geopolitical fracturing, social inequality, demographic change—big tectonic forces that are sweeping through the global economy.

And the research looked at the role those forces are playing in creating what we call ‘new domains of growth’. You can think of these as places where industries are coming together and transforming in ways that meet fundamental human needs in new ways—needs for how people are going to eat, how we feed ourselves, how we fuel and power society, how we connect and compute, how we move around, and how we build things. Nine of these domains in all, which will be fundamentally transformed. And, the research assessed both the opportunity that creates for companies of all kinds—and also the uncertainty around it.

Because, the pace and extent of that change is somewhat uncertain… and there are risks as well as opportunities associated with some of those megatrends—particularly things like climate risk, which can be a catalyst for innovation, but also create economic costs. So, we tried to put all this together into an integrated view of the economic transformation possible in the years ahead and did things like quantifying different growth scenarios and ways the future could play out. We did that across each of domain of growth.

We also looked at the amount of value at stake, even as early as today, as business model reinvention takes place in the global economy. One figure from the work is that about USD7tn in 2025 alone will shift across those domains of growth, due to business model reinvention as companies transform in response to the forces at work.

Jirayuth
Thanks for breaking that down, Allen. It’s clear that these forces are moving fast. Let’s take a closer look at how these trends are interacting. The research highlights major forces like AI and climate change. How do these megatrends interact to reshape global value creation, and what should business leaders be paying attention to most urgently?

Allen
Great question. So, we did look closely at AI and climate change, in particular. These are places that are creating both big opportunities and, in some cases, constraints. Innovation often thrives when new opportunities and constraints appear on horizon.

So, with respect to AI and other advanced technologies that may be enabled by AI, the story here really is one of massive productivity growth opportunity. We tried to assess what the productivity benefits of AI could be under different scenarios. The starting point was viewing AI as having the potential to be a general-purpose technology that lifts productivity across the board in just about every sector of the economy. One scenario we looked at included the idea that we can get as much productivity benefit out of AI as general-purpose technologies like electricity, which were applied across the economy a hundred years ago. And when you do that, you can see that even over the next decade, global GDP could be about 15% bigger—ten years from now—than it would be if we just continue on our current trajectories. So, significant opportunities are there.

On the climate change front, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. There is absolutely climate risk, and we’re seeing this play out in a variety of ways. Thailand, back in 2011 during the flooding, was in some ways an unfortunate leader in experiencing not just the effects of climate risks, but also how they can roll through an economy—when you think about the disruption in the automotive sector, the hard disk drive sector that was affected by that flood. And the work that we did, try to assess what the potential impact of climate risk could be, across the global economy, using a combination of PwC climate risk modelling and also some of the best external research to develop some assessment.

When you add it all up, you get a picture of the economy where there’s some big growth possibilities, and there are some risks—probably more than most leaders take into account when they do their growth forecasts. We may well be underestimating what climate risk can do over the next decade or so. But at the same time, there is an innovation opportunity as the global economic and energy systems transform.

In fact, we did some research trying to model out whether those forces might balance out. And it looks like you could get about 10% energy efficiency improvements across the board—that would more than compensate for the emissions associated with the additional AI usage required for all that productivity.

Jirayuth
These forces are also leading to the nine domains of growth that reflect how value is shifting. Could you walk us through a few of these domains and share how they illustrate the changing nature of business across industries?

Allen
As a starting point I would say that the domains of growth are just a way of talking about economic activity that encompasses the activity that’s already going on in a lot of industries, and the collaboration that’s already growing across industry borders. For example, if you look up PwC’s Global CEO Survey, you will see that about 35% of companies say they have started generating revenue from sectors other than their core business in the last five years—and that’s 20% or more of their revenue being generated from those new sectors. So, this is already happening.

But the domains of growth are a way of thinking about innovation taking place as those technologies, sustainability, and other forces come together. I’ll give a few examples, some of which may be close to heart in Thailand. So, how we move around in the mobility ecosystem; this is a place where I think Thailand in the vanguard—when you think about its role in the supply ecosystem of automotive OEMs across Asia; the energy players and charging networks that are emerging in Thailand; even banks rolling out tailored EV financing. There’s a whole lot of activity going on, and it’s a different way of thinking about what it means to buy, sell and use automotive services than the one that we’ve had over the last hundred years.

I would say, taking a step back, one of the premises of this work is that it is possible for the industrial system to change pretty rapidly. And it seems kind of difficult to imagine until you look back at what happened 125 years ago when our current industrial system emerged. Again, it happened really fast; it happened in response to things like widespread oil production and distribution, and pipelines coming into play over a period of about 20 years. Suddenly the entire transportation network was able to be fuelled differently.

It came about because of the mass revolution in distribution and production of things like food. Suddenly, you went from having widely distributed agriculture to mass mechanised planting and other forms of food that could get uniform goods to market rapidly.

So, we’ve seen this movie before, and the domains of growth story takes it as a way of thinking about what it would look like if that happened at scale today, in things like how we move around, and where there’s a big decarbonisation and technology imperative and opportunity. Or how we build things—the global construction and real estate sector is a massive opportunity for energy efficiency and decarbonisation. Or how we care for ourselves—where technology and remote telehealth combine with things like the economics of healthcare tourism, which is a place where Thailand has been a leader in bringing innovative services into healthcare for people coming from all over.

These transformations can happen rapidly in a number of sectors. And critically, there are enabling domains that help make it happen, like how we connect and compute the world, how we fund and insure things in this world—where capital formation is so important and where climate risk is creating new risk profiles. So, all of that works simultaneously. It’s uncertain exactly how fast and where it plays out fastest, but the opportunities created by these domains are available for companies just about everywhere.

And there are outbound opportunities for companies to play across sectors and to be involved in these transitions. There are also, though, probably inbound threats, because if you’re looking out thinking about where you can bring your capabilities to bear in the transformation—for example, in healthcare, or mobility, or how we build things—you’d better believe there are other companies looking in and thinking about you and your sector, and where they might be able to play.

Jirayuth
And those examples really show the scale of change. Wondering about the practical side for leaders, especially in emerging markets. Trust, AI, and sustainability are highlighted as key levers for future success. From a global perspective, how can business leaders in emerging markets begin to build a competitive advantage in these areas?

Allen
I think there are big opportunities for emerging market players to lead and leapfrog in these areas and, actually, I think some of it is about the interrelationship between trust, technology, and sustainability—and the opportunities that will emerge as a result.

You think about examples like electrified mobility and energy services that we were just talking about, or low-carbon materials and export resilience—areas where emerging markets will have the opportunity to lead. Or bio-circular green agriculture, which is a place where just about any agriculturally intensive economy in an emerging market, because of its southern hemisphere location, has a head start in dealing with some of the effects of physical climate risk.

These are all places for leadership opportunities for emerging markets, and they’re places where trust, technology, and sustainability come together.

Trust is foundational. Leaders need to be transparent. You need to be ethical. You need to be inclusive. If there’s one thing we’ve learnt over the last few years—sadly in my country—it’s that assumptions about ethics, leadership, and the role of traditional players in setting the standard for that around the world can change. I think frankly the void left by the United States is creating opportunities for emerging markets to lead with trust.

I also think that sustainability which is, again, an opportunity and a risk together. This is a place where trust—in the form of disclosure, standards, clarity, and transparency—is going to be important for everyone. I think, given the role of many emerging markets as key export-led players in many markets, there are probably experience curves where emerging market leaders are already up, which should help them be leaders in trust-based sustainability strategies.

Technology is part of why we’re going to have economic and sustainable futures, as these industry transformations across domains take place. And Western economies do not have a monopoly of any kind on technology leadership. In fact, if there’s one thing we’ve seen in the last ten years or so, it’s the democratisation of technology. I think that will only grow with AI. This combination, potentially plays to the strengths of emerging markets—which should be good for the whole world.

Jirayuth
That gives us a clear sense of what leaders can do today. Shifting gears, you mentioned earlier of three possible future scenarios: trust-based transformation, tense transition, and turbulent times. Could you explain what these three tomorrows represent and how they can help leaders navigate uncertainty?

Allen
Sure. So, the scenarios are necessary oversimplifications, the world as we know it is more complicated, and probably none of these are trying to be exactly right. But we wanted to try to capture the interaction of this risk and opportunity landscape, and the fact that it would create differences in the growth environment that companies will face.

The idea behind trust-based transformation was to capture the upside opportunities that would transpire if things really went right, with respect to technology, and in particular with respect to AI. Trust is important because, unlike electricity where you can kind of flip the switch on and off—and if it works and the productivity benefits come, everyone is happy—there are a lot of twists and turns in getting the full productivity benefits out of the AI that we’re all investing in.

We’ve got to trust it, it’s got to work, and we need to embed it deeply into the functions and tasks of our organisations in order to generate the kind of productivity benefits that would get us to that 15% growth premium I was mentioning earlier. And that is most likely to transpire if we are in a responsible, trust-based AI environment where there are global standards, where companies can operate effectively, where data environments work well—frankly, where we have bigger data platforms and greater sharing so the AI can do more.

So there’s a big trust foundation there. And in a world like that, it is actually a lot easier to imagine us also making progress on the climate transition strategies required to more rapidly decarbonise. So that trust-based transition scenario took a lot of the upside of the productivity benefits from a full-out AI transformation and combined it with some of the investment requirements associated with deeper energy transition and carbon transition. And the good news is that, the economics and transformational benefits of technology in AI could more than pay for the energy transition required to more rapidly decarbonise the global economy. So that is a very positive view of the world.

And then you kind of tick down to the less positive scenarios called tense transition and turbulent times.

Turbulent times is the opposite: it’s a case where there isn’t a set of standards for how technology is deployed—you know, every man or woman for themselves. Corporate ambitions take over from any sense of societal need to have AI serve a broader economic purpose. There would also be less concern about reinvestment of the productivity gains to make employment possibilities for people. It’s a case where everyone has to optimise for themselves, and the overall pie is small. There’s less surplus in that kind of world for energy transition, and the future climate risks the world faces grow in that scenario.

Tense transition is kind of in between. We think that sort of view of the world is useful for a couple of reasons. One, as I was saying, there is uncertainty about the pace and extent of the industry reconfiguration that’ll take place. And watching what’s happening with AI, watching what’s happening with the technology environment—that actually can be a leading indicator as well about how fast and how real productivity benefits are going to be, and what your return on investment may be.

The other thing is, we hope it is an inspirational reminder to global leaders that we’re all in this together, and that both the opportunities and challenges the world faces are better met through a collaborative, trust-based mindset—one where we’re trying to grow the pie together as opposed to grab our own little slice.

Jirayuth
Collaboration seems to be a big theme here, and these scenarios help leaders make sense of a complex landscape. To wrap things up, let’s talk about action. what practical steps can business leaders take today to activate the insights from Value in Motion and prepare for the future?

Allen
We talked about this in the work as the reinvention imperative; there are three dimensions on which leaders need to think about reinventing their organisations and, to some extent, themselves.

One is stimulating innovation—a real emphasis on innovating business models, innovating operating models, and innovating energy models. Most of those domains of growth, transition stories and industrial transformation stories that we’re talking about in this work will involve leaders, companies in the lead, changing their business models, changing the way they operate, and changing the way they use and produce energy.

And that innovation imperative is only going to grow. All the management research out there says that companies are often better at talking about innovation than they are at doing innovation. Innovation is hard, and we think this is the moment to try to double or triple down on your innovation muscles.

The second set of priorities is related to thinking about new sources of competitive advantage. You can think about competing on technology, and figuring out what your source of competitive advantage is in the AI productivity revolution that’s coming, as well as exploiting other advanced technologies that will be enabled by AI.

You can think about how you’re going to compete on trust, and compete on partnerships and collaboration—we’ve been talking about ecosystems, and that is certainly easier to do when you as an organisation are trusted, when you have a business model that enables fair ‘gives and gets’ with your partners, and have transparency built around it.

And then there’s also competing on scarce supply, and regardless of how quickly the world transitions energy and resources, there are supply bottlenecks that we all face. There also are scarce supplies related to other materials, whether it’s critical minerals or materials associated with the production of semiconductors. This scarce supply management is going to become an increasing source of competitive advantage.

The third dimension is really about the organisation and the leaders—thinking about how to overcome the barriers that might hold you back from making the progress you need to. And these include resource and leadership inertia. These include capability gaps and misalignment between business goals and regulations. The world that we’re describing will probably involve some regulatory change—getting ahead of that and turning it into opportunities as opposed to obstacles is a third critical opportunity.

I would say, on capabilities in particular, there’s the question about whether companies will want to build their own or acquire capabilities, either through deals or through partnerships—again, ecosystemic partnerships. And all of this, for corporate leaders, is something that needs to both enter into your own sense of what you’re trying to drive as leaders: your C-suite conversations, and empowering the leaders of your teams and other business units in order to drive innovation, and to search for that new source of competitive advantage. And getting incentives right so that your people are not just along for the ride but are helping to lead.

I’ll mention one data point from a recent PwC Global Hopes and Fears Survey, which was about AI usage. Only about 15% of global workers say they’re using AI every day—that changes by different sectors. 15% on average, which is already far too low to generate the kind of widespread productivity benefits that we are looking at in these models.

One of the reasons is, we think based on the data, workers feel threatened by the technology and by its impact on their jobs and roles. And that too represents a leadership opportunity—for leaders to paint a vision for the future that involves both exploiting technology and getting productivity, but also creating a future for the organisation and for the workers.

Jirayuth
It’s a challenging world, but there are opportunities for business leaders who can prepare themselves.

That brings us to the end of today’s episode. A big thank you to Allen Webb for sharing insights on PwC’s Value in Motion research and helping us understand how global forces are reshaping the future of business.

Allen
Thank you very much for having me, and have a wonderful night.

Jirayuth
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We’ll continue exploring how businesses in Thailand and beyond can respond to change with confidence, purpose, and impact.

Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for our next podcast, where we’ll give you the insights you need to capture value in motion.

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