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C-Suite Outlook 2026: Where CEOs Plan to Invest This Year · C-Suite Perspectives

• 0:00
  Welcome to C-Suite Perspectives, a signature series by The Conference Board.
• 0:04
  I'm Steve Odland from The Conference Board of the host of this podcast series.
• 0:08
  And in today's conversation, we're going to talk about The Conference
• 0:11
  Board's latest C-Suite Outlook survey, which proceeds 2026, and I'm
• 0:17
  going to talk about specifically the implications for business and finance.
• 0:21
  This survey was carried out toward the latter part of last year, and it included
• 0:26
  more than 1,700 C-Suite executives from around the world, including over 770 CEOs.
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  And this is the 27th year that we have conducted this annual survey.
• 0:38
  So we've been doing this a long time, and it's a great survey.
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  And joining me today to talk about it is Dana Peterson, chief
• 0:44
  economist of The Conference Board.
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  Dana, welcome.
• 0:47
  Hi, Steve.
• 0:47
  It's great to be here, as always.
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  So Dana, we do this every year, but this year, I think you could
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  sum up the results in one word.
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  And what would it be?
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  Uncertainty.
• 0:59
  Yeah, talk about that.
• 1:02
  Sure, absolutely.
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  Uncertainty is the word of the year.
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  It was certainly a big word for last year, and I think it's just going to continue.
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  And for CEOs, most of them are worried about a fragile economy,
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  both domestically and also globally.
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  There are concerns about recessions and tariffs and inflation.
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  And there's also a lot of unease about geopolitical and security instability.
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  This is not only regionally, but also on a broader macro level.
• 1:35
  Yeah.
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  And it's not that CEOs are unused to dealing with uncertainty.
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  I mean, nobody knows the future, but this just seems to be a time when
• 1:45
  outside world, the exogenous factors like government policy and geopolitics,
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  are playing an outsized role than they usually play, don't you think?
• 1:55
  Yes, absolutely.
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  Over the last year, it definitely has been dialed up.
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  Certainly with the new administration in the US and how that administration
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  is impacting global norms and even domestic norms and changing things up,
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  such that CEOs must remain on their toes and be able to pivot on a dime.
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  Yeah.
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  And so many of these decisions that are being made by governments, not just the
• 2:21
  US but clearly is the US as one of them.
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  But to implement tariffs or trade restrictions and so forth, that
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  impacts costs and input costs.
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  And also they're having to still rejigger supply chains.
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  We thought we were finished with that in COVID.
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  But because of all the policy changes, that's up in the air.
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  So, they don't know their margins and their costs, and that's another
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  whole level of uncertainty, isn't it?
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  Yes, absolutely.
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  Just looking at industry dynamics in general.
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  Regulation, protectionism, divergent government and trade policies where
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  they're operating in—all these things are impacting how CEOs are having to govern.
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  And they're also bracing for heavier compliance burdens, be it compliance
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  burdens regarding sustainability or trade or even just doing business in
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  the markets that they're engaged in.
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  And certainly there are conflicting standards from one region to the
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  next, from one country to the next, even within countries from
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  one jurisdiction to another.
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  And there's also a big tightening in foreign investment
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  rules, especially in Asia.
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  And just going back to the environmental and sustainability
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  rules, that's a big issue in Europe.
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  Yeah, I think, if there was any advice that we would have for policymakers,
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  it would be to get to one set of rules.
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  I mean, CEOs can adapt and have forever and will, but they need to
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  know the rules of the game so that they can plan and execute consistently.
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  And I think that that level of certainty is the wishlist of all the CEOs I talk to.
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  Oh yes, absolutely.
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  But I think it's probably going to go in the opposite direction, where you're going
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  to see more fragmentation and hence you're going to need a bigger risk franchise,
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  risk and governance team to really be able to sort through all these things such
• 4:12
  that businesses can navigate smoothly.
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  Another area, Dana, that I'm not sure that we've had to really deal with in
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  the past is the geopolitical situation.
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  And there are real tensions, and beyond tensions, they're real
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  impacts on business around the world.
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  And as our global economy becomes more and more integrated, supply
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  chains are integrated and spread around the globe, and commerce is
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  global, it really plays a role that maybe historically it hasn't played.
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  Talk about the geopolitical situation.
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  Sure, absolutely.
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  And geopolitical risk is certainly near the top of the list for CEOs globally,
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  but more interestingly, cyberattacks was the number one geopolitical concern.
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  Yes, you could have cyberattacks that are internal to your company or even your
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  region, but a lot of these attacks are coming from abroad or from rogue actors
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  that are not necessarily easily tracked or even caught in the markets that you're in.
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  And so cyberattacks are also layering onto a lot of the concerns that CEOs have.
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  But there's also civil unrest.
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  That also rose to the top, in terms of the geopolitical threat matrix.
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  That's especially acute for business leaders in Europe, particularly those
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  who are alarmed by the armed conflict, and also in North America, those who
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  are very concerned about social and civil unrest driven by polarization
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  and also cost-of-living pressures.
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  And I would be remiss to exclude other things that are going on in
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  the world in various regions that are also impacting businesses.
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  Yeah.
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  It's interesting what you said about cyber because it truly is becoming geopolitical
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  rather than internal to a country.
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  When you have rogue players essentially carrying out almost a cold war,
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  certainly a cyber war, against other states, but also, businesses
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  are getting tied up in that.
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  Absolutely.
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  And how many businesses do we know that have been held
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  hostage by these cyberattackers.
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  And it's even more difficult when they're not necessarily
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  associated with a particular state.
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  Yeah.
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  And I guess, if you're a government-directed economy or
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  state-directed economy, as players like Russia and China are, then the aspects
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  of commerce and using cyber as a weapon against commerce or towards, the theft
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  of IP, and those kinds of things.
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  That is on the table for them because of the integration.
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  We don't think of it that way in the US.
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  But anyway, cyber, it's a big deal, and it's all tied up
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  with geopolitical risk now.
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  So the geopolitical situation is literally changing week to week.
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  I mean, we just recently had events in the Caribbean that affect commerce, as well.
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  Yes, absolutely.
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  And certainly, when we asked CEOs around the world about key societal
• 7:12
  and technological headwinds for this year that will negatively
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  impact their businesses, they listed AI-driven disruption as number one.
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  So while lots of companies are keen to understand how they can use AI to
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  increase productivity or increase revenues and surpluses, there's still a lot of
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  concern about deepfakes and also how AI is going to disrupt their operations.
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  There are entire industries that are sitting on the edges of their chairs
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  to figure out, will AI displace all of our workers or even the things that
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  we're doing, and we become obsolete?
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  After that there's political polarization, and also shifting consumer behaviors.
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  Certainly, we hear, just all over the world, concerns about affordability
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  of this and the affordability of that.
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  And I think all these headwinds together: AI disruption, political
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  polarization, geopolitics, even the way consumers are shifting what
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  they're buying, how they're buying it.
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  These are all challenges for companies around the world.
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  And indeed, Japan stands out for its acute demographic concerns.
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  And I would say, also, Europe and the US should also be focused on
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  demographics, as that feeds into talent and labor shortages, and also the
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  desire for companies to figure out how to use AI and not see AI as a threat.
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  And I would say that also, for Europe and the US, especially,
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  there's this growing distrust in government and also institutions.
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  So those are things that are challenging for businesses, cause
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  usually they like to have a good relationship with the governments in
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  the countries that they're operating in.
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  And so that dynamic has just become that much more challenging.
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  As you look at it, what do CEOs view as the greatest challenges
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  for their supply chain?
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  You talked about that previously.
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  Yes, absolutely.
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  Global trade and operations still remain quite vulnerable.
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  Yes, we know that the US last year spent a great amount of time
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  negotiating supply chain and tariffs and all those kinds of things.
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  But nonetheless, other countries also have tools.
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  And so there's still that concern about there being shortages of inputs because
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  there are export bans or you have various conflicts disrupting supply lines.
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  And certainly, when it comes to supply chain disruptions, CEOs are definitely
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  looking at tariffs and the increases in prices that many of them are passing along
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  down the line, ultimately to the consumer.
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  And there are also a lot of concerns about energy shortages.
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  I would say less so in the US, but certainly among other big
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  players that don't necessarily produce their own energy.
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  For example, China being very concerned about making sure they have energy to
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  produce what they need to produce in their countries and also to serve their
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  consumers who need energy, as well.
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  Yet most companies, most CEOs don't seem to have any appetite, given all the
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  geopolitical concerns and certainly the interactions between the US and China over
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  who's going to dominate which areas of the global economy and regions themselves.
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  But not many people looking to either exit from the US or China.
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  And few are actually looking to, certainly from the North American perspective,
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  to nearshore or onshore manufacturing.
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  So it's still a case that most CEOs see that China's an important market,
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  not only for manufacturing, but also as they're growing their middle classes.
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  And the US is also a significant market that they need to stay in,
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  in terms of exporting and also importing services from the US.
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  So looking internally, then, what do you see as the greatest governance issues?
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  Yes, the greatest governance worries among CEOs really
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  center on political uncertainty.
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  And with that, rapid public policy shifts and also evolving AI regulation.
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  With US CEOs in particular, they are very focused on their
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  erosion of the rule of law.
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  And governance and sustainability leaders are really elevating
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  AI rules as their top concern.
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  So it's all about politics and AI and the interactions between the two of them.
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  Yeah.
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  A lot going on internally.
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  Obviously, workers, employees are key to any business.
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  Lots of human capital concerns came out of the survey.
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  Yes.
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  Unsurprisingly, talent and skills mismatches rose to the top.
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  That's a critical internal constraint that's been mentioned almost every
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  year for the last four or five years.
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  And mainly, CEOs are struggling to find qualified workers.
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  So even if they can find bodies, they need those bodies to be qualified
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  to do the work that's necessary.
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  And they're also challenged in securing in-demand skills.
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  And I think that's very important as companies are trying to understand
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  how to integrate different forms of AI and automation into their operations.
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  Again, there's still this concern about rising pay expectations, compensation
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  expectations, and how do you manage that?
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  And that's, I think, especially acute for advanced economies that are experiencing
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  aging demographics, lots of retirements, lots of younger people who don't have
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  the experience that the retirees had.
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  And also even among some of the larger emerging markets like
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  China, South Korea, Russia, Mexico, who are also aging rapidly.
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  And with that, many companies are also trying to figure out, how do
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  we support our workers as we shift technologically and we adopt AI?
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  So you know, chief human resources officers, our CHROs, echo these
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  same concerns about worker shortages and how to automate as CEOs do.
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  We're talking about The Conference Board's latest C-Suite Outlook survey.
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  We're going to take a short break.
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  Be right back.
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  Welcome back to C-Suite Perspectives.
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  I'm your host, Steve Odland, from The Conference Board.
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  And I'm joined today by Dana Peterson, who's our chief
• 13:38
  economist at The Conference Board.
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  Dana, before the break, we were talking about lots of worries and uncertainty
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  CEOs are telling us in this survey.
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  Any good news?
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  Actually, there's quite a bit of good news.
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  There's more good news than bad, I would say, in the survey.
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  The case is that CEOs are still laser-focused on investments,
• 13:59
  expansion, development, growth, and most importantly, profitability.
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  Yeah.
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  They're trying to meet the demands of their multiple constituents: their
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  customers, employees, the owners, the environment, community, all of that.
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  And they're trying to do that in balance.
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  It's a tough thing.
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  But growth is one of the key areas that CEOs now have to get back to.
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  I think the economy was shut down during COVID.
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  We had a lot of tailwinds as the economy's opened back up, and there's
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  a lot of growth and a lot of inflation, ability to price, that's now gone away.
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  So you're back to fundamental growth.
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  And so you see the CEOs telling us that they've got to really deal with their
• 14:39
  business models and deal with marketing.
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  And so, back to fundamentals, I guess, right?
• 14:45
  Yes, absolutely.
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  They're still saying that, in order to drive growth and profitability,
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  they want to lean hard into business model changes and upgrades.
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  As you mentioned, pricing power, regaining it or intensifying it, and also marketing.
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  You can have a great product or service, but if you don't market it properly,
• 15:03
  there's not going to be any growth.
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  What does CEOs tell us about their interest in expanding
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  their business regionally?
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  Yes.
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  It's interesting.
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  There's still a prioritization on domestic expansion, so whatever country
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  your business operations are mainly in, that's where you're looking to expand.
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  And as I mentioned earlier, few are looking to exit the US as a key market
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  for exports and also importing services.
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  And followed by that would be Western Europe, still hot.
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  South Asia, which is becoming more and more important over the last decade,
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  certainly as ASEAN economies have begun to take some market share away from
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  China, but also position themselves, especially those with lower tariffs, as
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  a place to operate and also dominate or be a thoroughfare for trans exports.
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  And also the Middle East.
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  Certainly, we've seen the Middle East, while for decades it's been
• 16:02
  quite wealthy, but the Middle East itself is modernizing and also
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  shifting away from oil dependence.
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  And so you see lots of companies and businesses looking at the Middle East
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  as a new place to expand and create new playgrounds and places where the
• 16:20
  wealthy and large companies can invest.
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  Hot playgrounds in the Middle East, depending on the
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  time of the year, for sure.
• 16:27
  Exactly.
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  110 degrees.
• 16:30
  Yeah.
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  In the shade.
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  CEOs are also talking about customers in this survey.
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  What segments are they going to focus on?
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  Number one are consumer segments.
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  So there's still a big focus on households and what people are consuming.
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  Certainly, many economies are still developing, and even within the advanced
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  economies, there's still strong demand for goods, especially higher-tech goods.
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  And there's tremendous demand for services.
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  And so companies really want to tap into the consumer.
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  Followed by that, they are still very focused on product categories, because
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  you can't focus on the consumer without knowing what products they want.
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  And also distribution channels, like how are you getting the word out?
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  How are you moving your products, and how are you advertising your services?
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  And then after that, which is kind of the last thing, is value chains.
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  Yeah.
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  Where are CEOs telling us that they are going to invest in '26?
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  Yes.
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  For lots of CEOs, winning in 2026 is framed around, here we go again.
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  AI is the number one thing.
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  And within that, there's also innovation.
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  And in order to innovate with AI, you also need to have very disciplined
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  governance and finance, right?
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  So finance, to make sure that you have the assets and the cash
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  to invest in things like AI and automation and upskilling your talent.
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  But also having very disciplined governance.
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  Again, because a big concern in terms of geopolitics is regulation in the
• 18:02
  markets that companies are operating in.
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  And if you have different sets of rules, it's very difficult to know,
• 18:07
  well, how can we make sure that we adopt the right type of AI or that
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  we're invested in the right areas, such that we don't run into challenges
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  in terms of ease of doing business.
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  CEOs are also elevating strategic planning and revenue growth in governance.
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  I don't know if that's new.
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  You probably know better than I do, but certainly, just over the last 20 years,
• 18:30
  since the Great Financial Crisis and then the pandemic and then the geopolitical
• 18:35
  issues that have cropped up over the last few years, companies need to plan.
• 18:39
  And they need to have not only plan A, but B, C, and D, and then
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  the worst-case scenario, and then what's the gray swan scenario, and
• 18:47
  I think that's going to be very key.
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  And I think companies are really absorbing that and understanding that, if we're
• 18:53
  going to continue to grow revenue, we need to have this strong governance framework.
• 18:58
  And also in light of the fact that cybersecurity is important.
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  We need to have strong risk management protocols so that we can catch when
• 19:08
  there's someone hacking into our systems or, for the financial sector,
• 19:13
  pretending to be someone they're not.
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  Cause all these things affect your brand.
• 19:18
  I think, certainly, also prioritizing financial planning so that you can make
• 19:22
  sure that you have this robust system, but also liquidity and again, risk management.
• 19:29
  Yeah.
• 19:30
  Back to AI again, lots of plans to deploy AI in their businesses,
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  and they're looking for return on investment this year.
• 19:37
  Absolutely.
• 19:38
  We've asked about AI for the last three years in our C-Suite Outlook survey.
• 19:43
  At first, it was, are CEOs and companies in general interested in AI?
• 19:48
  And many of them said yes, absolutely.
• 19:50
  And we asked them, well, do you think it's going to be a good thing or a bad thing?
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  They're like, oh, it's going to be great.
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  It's even going to grow revenues.
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  And when we asked about challenges, most of the challenges not so
• 20:01
  much centered around investment.
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  They knew that they would have to invest.
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  But we saw last year that many of the challenges around AI were more about,
• 20:12
  are our people skilled to use it?
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  That was the CEO's focus, and the rest of the C-Suite was worried
• 20:17
  about, well, what are the outputs?
• 20:19
  Can we trust this AI?
• 20:21
  So I think this year, companies are further along.
• 20:27
  They understand that you can't trust everything that's outputted from AI,
• 20:31
  but it is a masterful and incredibly useful tool for enhancing productivity.
• 20:38
  And so I think that's important, that they're looking to technology over
• 20:42
  large-scale product production relocation.
• 20:46
  I think it's probably less expensive for a lot of companies to adopt AI in
• 20:51
  some formats than to pick up factories and move them from one country or region
• 20:58
  to another, or even their own people.
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  And again, this just speaks to the fact that most CEOs are not
• 21:05
  looking to exit major markets.
• 21:07
  They're looking to expand into different markets.
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  And AI is going to be a huge aspect of facilitating that.
• 21:16
  So, as CEOs look to increase their growth, we talked about this
• 21:20
  earlier, what specifically are they talking about doing differently?
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  Yes.
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  It's all about, how do you operate?
• 21:28
  In the new year, CEOs are really emphasizing productivity.
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  And yes, technology is going to play a big role in that.
• 21:36
  But they're also very much focused on their people, especially their leadership.
• 21:40
  Making sure that they have the right leaders in the right place
• 21:43
  and that they're skilled to handle whatever's thrown at them.
• 21:47
  And that skills development also filters down into the rest of the company.
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  So at every level.
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  CEOs, as well as CHROs, are focused on making sure that people have the
• 21:59
  skills to move to the next level in the business or to the next area for
• 22:04
  expansion or even the big technological changes that are happening right now.
• 22:09
  I think what's interesting is that there is a divergence around the
• 22:12
  world in terms of the focus on sustainability and social commitments.
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  This was particularly strong in Asia, especially because many Asian economies
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  are impacted by climate events.
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  And we have entire countries that are sinking, or they're experiencing more
• 22:34
  violent storms that disrupt business.
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  And so for those economies, especially in Asia, they're very much focused upon that.
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  I would say for Europe and North America, but North America especially, they're
• 22:47
  more, more focused on social commitments, less so the sustainability elements.
• 22:52
  And indeed in North America, and this would be for US and Canada, there was not
• 22:57
  a real priority on environmental issues.
• 23:01
  Now, I'm not saying sustainability is no longer important, because
• 23:04
  many companies are global.
• 23:06
  They have international operations and they have to be concerned about what are
• 23:12
  the rules in Europe and also in various parts of Asia around sustainability
• 23:18
  and environmental priorities.
• 23:20
  But in the US, there's less focus on that.
• 23:22
  But CEOs are more focused on mental health, and that's
• 23:27
  not just in North America.
• 23:29
  It's all over the place.
• 23:31
  And what we found interesting is that we also asked about employee
• 23:34
  well-being in a different question.
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  And it fell to the bottom.
• 23:38
  And I think that's because employee well-being is a big umbrella,
• 23:41
  and there's a lot beneath it.
• 23:43
  And it's well known.
• 23:44
  I think CEOs and executives know that you need well employees in order for them
• 23:50
  to be productive and for the business to be successful, but they're looking
• 23:53
  for something much more specific.
• 23:55
  And mental health was what was zoned in on, in particular in this survey,
• 24:00
  which I thought was fascinating.
• 24:02
  But it is something that is tangible and that CEOs and executives can
• 24:08
  invest in for their employees.
• 24:10
  Certainly with making sure that they have access to therapy or health programs,
• 24:17
  those kinds of things that are critical for mental health, such that workers
• 24:22
  should be as productive as they can be.
• 24:25
  Yeah.
• 24:25
  And then finally, we heard a fair amount from CEOs on the role of
• 24:29
  marketing and communications.
• 24:32
  Yes, absolutely.
• 24:33
  Even last year, we asked about marketing and communications, and
• 24:38
  marketing rose to the top of the list or near the top of the list of
• 24:42
  how businesses were going to expand and also grow their various markets.
• 24:50
  With regard to marketing in particular, CEOs are very focused on revenue.
• 24:54
  So whatever marketing you're doing needs to produce revenue.
• 24:57
  We need to see an immediate, or at least a very visible and
• 25:01
  tangible, return on investment.
• 25:03
  Also they're very focused on their brands because certainly, in hyper-political
• 25:10
  and geopolitical environments, how you respond as a company to what's
• 25:14
  going on in society can affect how your customers view your brand.
• 25:19
  And then again, just thinking about the customer experience is very important.
• 25:26
  So it's kind of like revenue, brand, customer experience.
• 25:30
  But also doing all these things using AI for marketing.
• 25:35
  So it's starting off with AI for marketing, which they are intending
• 25:41
  to improve customer experience, which will also heighten or highlight the
• 25:48
  brand and also generate more revenue.
• 25:50
  So I think all those things really do flow together.
• 25:53
  And when it comes to communications, it's interesting.
• 25:57
  CEOs are focused on using communications to deliver their corporate strategies.
• 26:04
  So that's something that you have to do both internally and externally.
• 26:09
  And attached to that, especially on the internal side, is engaging the workers
• 26:14
  and bringing them into the process, bringing them into ideation to help
• 26:19
  them move along with the big business model changes that are being activated.
• 26:25
  And there's also this kind of cautious adoption of AI in messaging.
• 26:29
  So they're still not all in on simply using AI, creating some kind of
• 26:35
  AI marketing thing, billboard with AI-generated people and things like that.
• 26:40
  But they still want to use AI as a way to help out with messaging, be it giving
• 26:46
  them ideas or cleaning up ideas or even using some elements of AI—and there
• 26:52
  are different types of AI, generative, large language modeling, machine
• 26:56
  learning, all different things—in terms of getting the message of the company
• 27:01
  and its brand out to their customers.
• 27:05
  All right, Dana.
• 27:05
  Lots to chew on here.
• 27:07
  And our listeners can see and read this great study and the results of our survey
• 27:14
  at tcb.org, and you just click on the US Economy, Strategy & Finance Center, and
• 27:21
  you should be able to find the report.
• 27:22
  So, thank you to our listeners, and congratulations, Dana, on a great report.
• 27:28
  Thank you, Steve.
• 27:29
  Thanks to all of you also for listening to C-Suite Perspectives.
• 27:32
  I'm Steve Odland, and this series has been brought to you by The Conference Board.