In this piece, Lewis Sage-Passant reviews “Geostrategy by Design” by Courtney Rickert McCaffrey, Witold J. Henisz, and Oliver Jones. This book, from Disruption Books, offers a template for geopolitical risk management for corporations. While not necessarily written with the geopolitical risk intelligence practitioners of Encyclopedia Geopolitica’s core audience in mind, is a worthwhile read for those both in the field, and looking to join it.
Further book recommendations can be found in our 2024 Geopolitical Reading List.
As Colin Reed argued in his essay for Encyclopedia Geopolitica in 2022, corporations are now directly exposed to geopolitics, and in many cases, are major actors of influence on the global stage. While geopolitical risk as a corporate practice has deep roots, the scale of the risk has shifted towards existential for many companies. “Geostrategy by Design” is a timely work in the growing field recognising this shift, acting as something of a spiritual successor to Amy Zegart and Condoleezza Rice’s “Political Risk“. Where Rice and Zegart identified political risk as a problem for corporations, the team behind “Geostrategy by Design” offer a proactive framework for approaching the challenge. This complements existing works, such as Justin Crump’s “Corporate Security Intelligence and Strategic Decision Making“. Where Crump focuses on the security intelligence approach to geopolitical risk, however, the authors of this work appear to be drawing more from experiences in the Professional Services Consulting field. This fresh approach is useful, as it provides an outside perspective that intelligence practitioners will likely benefit from.
The fresh perspective underlines a fascinating aspect of the modern geopolitical risk field; while it has been around for decades (and centuries in some fringe cases), it is dramatically disaggregated. It is common to find entire industry associations, literature pools, and methodology schools that seem almost entirely unaware of the others’ existence. As such, geopolitical risk intelligence practitioners may find the book somewhat surprising, as while it does reference the frequent neighbour of intelligence – government affairs – it seems broadly unaware of strategic intelligence as a field. This is understandable, however, given the disaggregated (and often discreet) nature of the field. Most valuably, the book serves as an important reminder of the necessity of intelligence teams working across silos within the corporate landscape, and ensuring that the widest array of stakeholders are actually aware that the company has geopolitical risk capabilities.
To this end, “Geostrategy by Design” offers a compelling and useful framework for formalising geopolitical risk across a large corporation; something that even mature and established intelligence teams will find benchmarking value in. The book’s “Scan, Focus, Manage, Strategize, Govern” approach is at times curiously duplicative of existing intelligence cycle-type methods, and at others a valuable reminder that large parts of the corporate landscape remain unaware of geopolitical risk or the broader work of the intelligence field. By presenting itself in unintimidating and business-centric language, this work is a helpful bridge between executive audiences, peer teams in the geopolitical risk landscape, and intelligence practitioners.
I would recommend this book for a wide variety of audiences. Firstly, for intelligence practitioners looking for frameworks for establishing more formalised geopolitical risk and strategy structures, this book offers a potential template. Secondly, for young geopolitics enthusiasts considering career options, this book adds further depth to a recent trend of literature indicating the various possibilities in the private sector. Finally, for corporate leaders looking to better understand the changes that geopolitics now demands of executives, this book is ideal.
“Geostrategy by Design” is available from Disruption Books, who generously provided Encyclopedia Geopolitica with a copy for this review.
Additional geopolitical reading suggestions can be found in our 2024 Geopolitical Reading List.
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Lewis Sage-Passant is a researcher in the field of intelligence and espionage, and a former British Military Intelligence Officer. Lewis holds a PhD in intelligence studies, and is an adjunct professor in intelligence at Sciences Po Paris, focusing on how private sector corporations use intelligence to navigate geopolitics. He has extensive experience working and living in the Middle East and Asia Pacific regions in a variety of geopolitical analysis and intelligence roles, supporting the energy industry, the financial sector, leading technology firms, and the pharmaceuticals sector. He has appeared in numerous media outlets, including the BBC, France24, CNBC, Harvard Business Review, The New Arab, El Mundo, GQ, and others, discussing intelligence, geopolitics, and security topics.
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