A little while ago, during the WEF 2018 event we were curious. We wanted to know what the WEF Global Risk Report would look like if it was displayed on the VirtueSpark GRC Platform. Since what they call risk interrelation is a fundamental design aspect of our platform, we had expected it to look similar. So we set up a blank instance, tweaked some style aspects, adjusted the impact and likelihood dimensions and filled it with the data of the 2018, 2017 and 2014 reports.
Next to that I am pleased with the results (you can find the link to the details at the end of this article), we discovered three aspects about the WEF report that we weren’t actually aware of and I thought are worth sharing.
1. It is a matter of scale
When I see a risk heat map, I certainly have a tendency to look at the upper right corner first. Since it is always about ‘these are the top five risks…’, I am sure I am not the only one. But have you noticed the little grey box below the Global Risk Landscape view? It actually shows that the displayed map is only a subset of the actual risk heat map. Somewhere in the upper right center. Bringing this back into scale, it shows that all the risks are positioned pretty close to each other.
2. Risk changes over time
I am a big fan of the WEF Global Risk Report. It is great to see how the many respondents perceive the current risk situation. It gives clues in so many ways and makes me wonder what biases our perception. Also the contextual information is a great read.
Nevertheless, what I am always interested in is how the risk situation has changed over time. We get the clue with the evolving risk landscape, a list of top impact and top likelihood risks. But that is only against one dimension each and risks will drop off the list as soon as they are not considered a top impact or top likelihood risk any more. There is no way to track how risk ratings have evolved over time.
To see where risks from 2017 have ended up in 2018, have a look at our detailed results as referenced below. Whilst the perceived risk situation between 2017 and 2018 seems to have gradually improved, compared to 2014 the risks in 2018 have generally increased with some significance.
3. Risk interrelations
What I like the most about the WEF Global Risk Report is that they acknowledge and therefore promote the fact that risks are interconnected. In complex systems such as our companies, in micro- as in macroeconomics, there is rarely a risk that does not affect other risks. Still, they are mostly treated as individual elements as if they would float in their very own universe.
The PDF report gives a good hint about the interconnectedness but displays it rather like a snowball that fell into a bowl of skittles. So you might not have known that there is an interactive version on the WEF website that allows to select individual risks and with that get a much better view of their relations. If you want to see how risks interrelate across multiple edges, you might want to see our results.
Again, we did this just to satisfy our curiosity. So we did not dig for any detailed data and only took the information at hand. But what we discovered during this little exercise was quite interesting for me. It gives lots of room for further analysis.
You can find a more detailed description of our results here.
I am definitely looking forward to next year’s report!
This was originally posted on LinkedIn.
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