The 60 second interview: Ipsos Mori boss on Brexit and the myth around millennials

Ipsos MORI chief executive officer Ben Page talks to The Lawyer ahead of this year’s Business Leadership Summit in association with Propero Partners, which focuses on the law firm of 2025.

What are the recent trends affecting the global economy?  

The big trends are the ongoing “crisis of the elites” as western consumers react to falling real wages and frustration at the loss of past certainties about their children’s future. Combined with political uncertainty in many countries, we have “uncertainty as the new normal” – which is unsettling, and combined with rapidly changing technology, is creating demands for more simplicity and control among consumers who feel overwhelmed, as well as a search for the certainties of the past we call “the rise and rise of tradition”.

At the same time globally there is a clear optimism divide between emerging markets like India, China and Indonesia and western countries like France, the USA and Britain with people in the developed world pessimistic about globalisation and the future, and those in Asia much more positive.

Brexit – what will this mean for business?

Brexit poses a huge range of challenges – including many that are not even well known yet. Some of the more obvious are from currency effects, problems for importers and exporters, and in manufacturing and services of course, real issues where large numbers of EU nationals are core workers – as in Ipsos MORI – and where their future is very uncertain.

Labour shortages look to prompt more automation and moving away from products/crops that are viable only with large volumes of lower paid workers.

How are millennials reacting to the new world way face and what does this mean in the world of work? 

Half the things written about Millenials are complete rubbish – our Millennial Myths report tries to address the balance.

Tell us two truths and one lie about yourself (in any order).

• I have been to the Falklands to see if they would renounce their sovereignty for £1m a head for the Argentinian government.
• I was in the Magic Circle.
• I have been to the North Pole.

With agile working becoming the norm, which spot in the world would you most like to work from? 

Venice – no contest