“Productivity has to come with growth at individual, national, and global levels.”
The year 2026 is already shaping up to be a crucial one across key research topics for MGI, from AI and productivity to geopolitics and trade. We’re also excited to welcome new leadership with Shubham Singhal as MGI’s chair. We caught up in early February with Shubham to discuss his background and McKinsey career and how he views MGI’s role in analyzing some of the important economic trends ahead.
Tell us about your journey so far at McKinsey.
When I joined, I remember thinking, I’m going to be here for two years, do a random walk of things, treat it as a nice finishing school, and then do something else. Then, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I did a bunch of work in financial services. It was interesting because there was innovation from technology, along with some deregulation.
A few years later, there was an opportunity in health care. That attracted me because it had all the excitement of financial services in terms of being analytical and complex. But it also directly impacted people’s lives.
How did growing up in India affect your worldview?
I saw the challenges that different economic systems could create. At the time, India was a low-growth economy with a nationalized set of businesses. I entered college around when the balance of payment crisis happened, which essentially forced India to liberalize the economy.
If you looked at the jobs and starting salaries by the time I finished college, it was a night and day difference because economic opportunity absolutely exploded. What it meant for people’s potential to be able to be successful, was just enormous to see unfold. It didn’t change the whole world, but that was very relevant to me.
What areas of research excite you?
At MGI, we have five themes: global connections, resources of the world, human potential, productivity and prosperity, and technology and markets of the future. What people are asking about now, given the disruption that’s occurring, is the transversal perspective. It’s not just “Tell me whether productivity is moving with AI or what happens to jobs.” But if you say this is a new industrial era, how does the entirety of the economic system look when you think about global balance sheets, energy, jobs, and productivity? We can actually knit that all together.
Also, if you look at the changing world order, it’s less about just what’s happening to trade or FDI [foreign direct investment]. The question folks are asking is, okay, we created this global economy, this post–World War II, post–Cold War alignment. If we’re going to unwind that, what does the next thing look like? There’s geopolitical competition in technology, geoeconomic competition in trade and FDI flows, changes to people flows, shifts in the financial balance sheet, questions about the dollar’s reserve currency status, and so on.
The question is really about the integrated view of the new order.
These are intertwined. Our ability as MGI to have, not an opinion-based, but a fact and rigorous research-informed perspective is really important.
What are three things to watch in 2026?
An obvious one is AI. Everyone is focused on productivity as a cost-saving measure, and that’s important. What I’m looking at is whether shoots of growth emerge to make it sustainable. The analogy is what Henry Ford did with the assembly line, which made industrial production dramatically more productive. He gave people two days off a week and paid them more. That sparked industries that didn’t exist like motels and theme parks.
There’s growth that comes from people having more money and time. We also know that if new jobs don’t come as people are displaced, productivity won’t continue because you won’t have strong consumers, you won’t have growth, and you won’t therefore have capital to invest. It’s also worth remembering that the human brain is approximately 200 million times more efficient than AI. So, AI has enormous potential but also a long journey ahead.
Two is getting beyond the rhetoric of geopolitics and understanding where businesses and countries will move toward new frameworks that allow economic activity to continue. What does that mean? Even early in this year, we have had the EU–Mercosur and EU–India trade deals, which people have talked about getting done for 20 years.
We’re moving to a new order that says we’re going to have free trade between individual places even as the global order frays. More important is what happens among regions. Take Latin America. The trade that happens among those countries is small. Does that begin to grow? Do we move from a world where everyone’s trying to sell into the US or European market to one where a new web of trade is created?
And third is how the financial system does or doesn’t rewire. There’s a lot of discussion around the global balance sheet, what the reserve assets are, et cetera. There are significant movements that some might argue are outside central banks’ control. If you’re going to put money into digital currencies and stablecoins, how does that actually begin to reshape the financial system in ways that feel less stable or more stable? And importantly, how do those flows shift?
From an MGI perspective, or for any think tank, how do you avoid having the answer to everything just being more productivity?
It’s funny you say that. During COVID, I coauthored a report called “And Now Win the Peace.” At the time, we didn’t know how bad COVID would be. Our idea was, can we look back to post–World War II and understand the positive things that came out of something so bad? There was productivity growth, no question. There was commercial use of technologies developed during the war, and that was a big thing. There was postwar rebuilding taking place.
But what was really huge was that all this human potential that became available found education, money, and investment. Governments spent appropriately on infrastructure. Business investment boomed to drive growth. And when you add all of that up, it was simultaneous movement on productivity and growth. Debt levels came down. Inequality came down. People got better off. It wasn’t just productivity. It has to come with growth at the individual, national, and global levels. Otherwise, people look at productivity and say, “oh, workers are going to lose their jobs.” That’s not a sustainable system.
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