We argue that tomorrow’s company will be operating in an era and a new business environment in which value creation depends on environmental and social issues as much as on economic ones – what we call the ‘triple context’. More than ever, companies will need to think in terms of their own sustainability and that of the ecosystems and communities in which they operate. We believe this means that companies should think afresh about what they mean by ‘talent’. At present most companies reserve the word ‘talent’ for high fliers who are destined to become top executives or high-level specialists. This is too narrow a view for a world with multiple challenges, needing people with a wide range of capabilities.

Talent, we argue, is all around us waiting to be unleashed. Contrary to popular belief and practice we argue that ‘talent’ should not be seen as a rare quality, but a diverse, multifaceted one that exists in everyone; it is abundant. It is a nice quirk of the English language that talent is an anagram of latent; underlining our view that much talent remains hidden and undiscovered.

Tomorrow’s Global Talent brings together leading thinking and practice, drawing on the insights and knowledge of those responsible for talent in leading organisations in both, the private and public sectors from across the world. The report provides our conclusions from the first phase of our programme – sharing the conclusions we have reached so far, as a basis for further discussion on the one hand, and deeper research on the other.