How do you scale with confidence in a world that refuses to stand still?

Today’s business leaders find themselves in an environment shaped by volatility, constraint and rapid change. Political uncertainty, regulatory intensity, technological disruption and tightening access to critical resources are converging to challenge established growth models.

Opportunity still exists - but it’s harder to find, tougher to capture and easier to lose.

Success demands sharper judgement, stronger capabilities and leadership teams built for speed, resilience and decisive action.

As organisations seek clarity and direction, Baker Tilly has looked ahead to 2035, combining advanced scenario modelling with insights from mid-market executives across the globe. The result is a forward-looking view of how growth may unfold, and what it will take to lead through it.

Where growth will come from - and where it won’t

The picture that emerges is a future where significant risks can be converted into promising opportunities with the right direction and leadership.

Executives believe that in a technology-saturated world, mid-market businesses that can demonstrate their human value are the ones that will win, and that ethical, purpose-driven leadership will become a critical differentiator in the next decade.

But are leaders capable of leveraging these potential advantages in the hyper-regulated, supply-constrained world of 2035 that they predict?

The leadership test ahead

Our research shows that the leaders who excel will be those who adapt with purpose and drive their organisations forward boldly.

To thrive, executives will need the confidence to act early, embrace uncertainty and build organisations capable of scaling now to secure advantage tomorrow.

Four worlds of 2035

The critical uncertainties facing the mid-market

Over the last 10 years, the global business landscape has been reshaped by a pandemic, shaken by political shifts and transformed by generative artificial intelligence (AI).

The broad brushstrokes of geopolitical volatility and technological evolution may have been anticipated, but the exact twists and turns were far more difficult to foresee.

Given the turbulence of the past decade, predicting what the years to 2035 could look like is a formidable challenge.

We’ve identified two critical uncertainties that we believe will define the landscape for mid-market organisations over the next decade: regulation and resource availability.

These key unpredictable forces have the potential to significantly impact the future, creating four distinct, yet plausible, future worlds - each with its own rules for survival.

No single future exists

These scenarios are not predictions. In reality, the future will blend elements of more than one world or shift rapidly between them. Their value lies in helping leaders challenge default assumptions, explore risk and opportunity from multiple angles, and stress-test strategy against different conditions.

To understand how the next decade may unfold, we mapped the views of 1,500 mid‑market executives against these four worlds.

We found that business leaders expect regulation to become more onerous and to change more rapidly by 2035, while access to capital, talent and raw materials is expected to become more restricted.

When these expectations are mapped against our four worlds of 2035, they point most clearly to a compliance crunch environment - one defined by fast-changing rules, constrained supply and sustained pressure on costs and decision‑making.

This anticipated environment has important implications.

In a compliance‑heavy world with limited slack, growth becomes harder to generate through expansion alone. Decisions carry higher stakes, mistakes are more costly, and the ability to anticipate change becomes a source of competitive advantage.

Driving growth in an uncertain decade

Thriving amid uncertainty

While the future may take different forms, the possible scenarios share a common thread: volatility is becoming structural and the margin for error is shrinking.

For mid-market organisations, the question is no longer how to return to stability, but how to perform in its absence.

The big AI bet

Mid-market leaders are all-in on technology, but few are ready for what comes next.

60% of business leaders say technology and digital transformation (including AI) is currently a key investment priority.

Our study shows that almost 7 in 10 business leaders (70%) believe technology and digital transformation (including AI) will contribute considerably to accelerating their organisations’ growth over the next five years, making it the number one predicted accelerator, above factors like innovation, capital sourcing and talent.

And most organisations (60%) are putting financial firepower behind this prediction.

However, with just over half of executives (51%) saying that cybersecurity is a key priority for their organisation, our research suggests that some organisations are moving faster on innovation than on the protections required to keep that innovation secure.

In a world where technology underpins every part of an organisation and is fundamental to growth and survival - and where geopolitical threats are increasingly acute - cybersecurity must also be a key priority.

The talent trap

With technology disruption reshaping the labour market, a scarcity of the right talent could stall organisations’ progress on innovation.

By 2035, competition for top talent will be the single greatest constraint to mid-market business growth, according to 6 in 10 business leaders (60%).

One of the knottiest technology-talent issues currently playing on the minds of business leaders is the impact of AI on talent development.

As AI replaces or reshapes many entry-level roles, how do people entering the workforce gain the foundational skills they need to become the executives of tomorrow?

Leaders need to balance technology and talent, ensuring that in their race for technology-enabled growth, they do not neglect their human workforce. Not only does achieving the right balance help organisations prepare for tomorrow’s talent constraints, it also serves as a potential growth lever today.

In a technology-saturated world, 7 in 10 leaders believe that the mid-market organisations that can demonstrate their human value are the ones that will win.

Yet firms list leadership pipeline and development among their least prioritised investment areas.

Regulatory oversight

While policy changes driven by political oscillation are already posing a challenge, 60% predict an increasing pace of regulatory change over the next decade, with just 18% anticipating a slowdown.

Yet our opinion research indicates that while leaders are concerned about a hyper-regulated future, they are still not giving compliance the precedence it needs.

Regulatory compliance and governance are at the bottom of the list of organisations’ current investment priorities, along with sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives.

In the scramble for innovation and growth, there is a risk that businesses put themselves in the path of fines and reputational damage by neglecting these fundamentals.

Strong governance is not just about risk mitigation: it can create the foundation for organisations to innovate with confidence.

Top 5 advantages mid-market businesses have over large organisations

• Easier access to senior decision-makers
• Greater agility
• Less bureaucracy
• Faster decision-making
• Personalisation / customer-centric approach

Leading in an uncertain future

As mid-market organisations anticipate an increasingly volatile 2035 business landscape - potentially shaped by constrained resources, more stringent, fast-changing regulation, rapid technological disruption and talent shortages - a picture emerges of the leadership qualities required to navigate what lies ahead.

However, our opinion research findings highlight some mismatches between the skills and behaviours leaders need to demonstrate and where they believe they excel.

The strategic imperative

Leaders largely agree that the top three qualities needed to succeed are effective communication, the ability to lead through uncertainty and problem solving.

Yet only 22% see the ability to lead through uncertainty as one of their top three strengths, and just 24% put effective communication in their top three, despite seeing these traits as pivotal to success.

All our 2035 scenarios require leaders to hone skills that may not be needed in more stable environments. In an uncertain world, where regulation could change or critical inputs become unavailable, resilience and the ability to lead without a clearly defined pathway will become essential.

The ethical executive

Whether the future regulatory landscape is defined by hyper-regulation or self-governance, the pressure will be on leaders to make high-stakes decisions that are defensible from a commercial, legal and ethical standpoint. Executives must use sound, ethical judgement to bridge the gap and ensure their organisations are not left exposed.

Almost three-quarters (73%) of business leaders say that ethical leadership will become a critical differentiator in the next decade. But despite this near-universal awareness of the increasing importance of ethical behaviour, only 5% of leaders identify ethical decision-making as one of their top three personal strengths, putting it near the bottom of the list of leadership attributes.

While the data does not mean that leaders believe they are behaving unethically, it does suggest a critical vulnerability at a time when they are operating across volatile geopolitical landscapes, adapting to disruptive technologies, and complying with intricate regulatory regimes.

The risk is that without strong ethical decision-making capabilities, leaders may default to expediency over long-term integrity.

Views on ethical leadership, by country