This year saw a general cooling of sentiment across Design and Make industries, with the majority of business leaders feeling both more uncertain about the future and less prepared to handle unforeseen changes.

Sixty-five percent of leaders surveyed for this year’s report agree that the global landscape is now more uncertain, a 10-point jump that represents a 19% increase year-over-year. Leaders are also less confident in their organization’s ability to weather unforeseen obstacles, with just 61% saying they are well prepared, down from 73% in 2024.

This conflation of uncertainty and unpreparedness is having far-reaching impact across Design and Make industries. From a general reduction in spending to a decreased enthusiasm for new technologies, leaders are experiencing a lack of organizational confidence.

Leaders feel more uncertain about the future and less prepared to face it

Percentage of respondents who agree to statements: 1. My company is well prepared to handle unforseen future macroeconomic and geopolitical changes. 2. The future global landscape feels more uncertain now than 3 years ago. 5-point scale. Top two = agree.

But amid uncertainty, some organizations are faring better than others. Leaders at digitally mature organizations, for example, feel better prepared to handle unforeseen changes—76% of leaders at these companies feel prepared, compared to only 47% at less digitally mature organizations. And data-effective organizations are most confident, with 84% of leaders at those organizations feeling prepared to handle unforeseen changes. This points to yet another advantage of digitalization across Design and Make industries: increased resilience.

“You can also look at declining global sentiment in a different way, and we took a very optimistic approach and said that there were opportunities out of the devastation that were caused by the pandemic. All of these things came together and enabled us to be agile enough to switch from 700 people or more in offices to everybody at home in two weeks, with minimal loss of production because of that connectedness.”

– Brad Sonter, Practice Design Technology Lead, Cox Architecture, a design-focused architectural practice headquartered in Australia
“We’re obviously concerned about the state of the world we’re in today, with multiple wars, geopolitical stresses, environmental issues, and how all this affects our region. There’s a lot of tension in the world right now, and as humans, of course, we do worry about this—this will affect us today as society and individuals—but also how this can potentially affect business and, more importantly, how this may affect the future of our children and future generations and so on.”

– Ammar Al Assam, CEO, Dewan Architects, an architecture firm headquartered in the UAE
“You can also look at declining global sentiment in a different way, and we took a very optimistic approach and said that there were opportunities out of the devastation that were caused by the pandemic. All of these things came together and enabled us to be agile enough to switch from 700 people or more in offices to everybody at home in two weeks, with minimal loss of production because of that connectedness.”

– Brad Sonter, Practice Design Technology Lead, Cox Architecture, a design-focused architectural practice headquartered in Australia
“We’re obviously concerned about the state of the world we’re in today, with multiple wars, geopolitical stresses, environmental issues, and how all this affects our region. There’s a lot of tension in the world right now, and as humans, of course, we do worry about this—this will affect us today as society and individuals—but also how this can potentially affect business and, more importantly, how this may affect the future of our children and future generations and so on.”

– Ammar Al Assam, CEO, Dewan Architects, an architecture firm headquartered in the UAE
“You can also look at declining global sentiment in a different way, and we took a very optimistic approach and said that there were opportunities out of the devastation that were caused by the pandemic. All of these things came together and enabled us to be agile enough to switch from 700 people or more in offices to everybody at home in two weeks, with minimal loss of production because of that connectedness.”

– Brad Sonter, Practice Design Technology Lead, Cox Architecture, a design-focused architectural practice headquartered in Australia
“We’re obviously concerned about the state of the world we’re in today, with multiple wars, geopolitical stresses, environmental issues, and how all this affects our region. There’s a lot of tension in the world right now, and as humans, of course, we do worry about this—this will affect us today as society and individuals—but also how this can potentially affect business and, more importantly, how this may affect the future of our children and future generations and so on.”

– Ammar Al Assam, CEO, Dewan Architects, an architecture firm headquartered in the UAE