The Pilot
Breakwater Books: 11 Books that Made us Think in 2020
By: Breakwater Staff Stay-at-home orders and quarantines provided us all a lot of time to fill in 2020. Between hours of Zoom calls, client projects and binge-watching TV, the Breakwater team found time to explore a broad array of excellent books this year. Here’s a list of 11 that made us think: The Decadent Society: […]
Prof. Steven Weber Joins Breakwater Strategy as Managing Director
Weber brings decades of experience in consulting, research and academia as the firm continues to grow and expand its client offering November 5, 2020 (Washington, D.C. and Berkeley, CA) Leading strategic communications and insights consultancy Breakwater Strategy announced today that Prof. Steven Weber has joined the firm as Managing Director. Weber brings over three decades […]
Scenario Thinking Redux: Revisiting Our Scenarios for the COVID-19 Future
By Steve Weber and Arik Ben-Zvi In late April and early May 2020, a little more than a month into the acute phase of the U.S. pandemic, we sketched out four simple scenarios designed to capture critical uncertainties about how the pandemic would impact American society and politics over the following year. Nearly a year […]
Corporate Resiliency in 2021
By Steve Weber and Arik Ben-Zvi America’s historic 2020 election is (mostly) over and the contours of the 2020s are taking shape. To help navigate this critical time, BWS has developed numerous scenarios that test different combinations of these critical uncertainties. From that process, we identified 5 core scenarios for the first half of the 2020s that […]
Implications for Corporate Activism in a Potential Biden Administration. Will Brands Step Up?
By Ben Williams, Associate Director With Election Day almost here, Americans across the country are anxious about the outcome and how it will influence our collective futures. Considering the impact leadership in Washington has on the regulatory and policy landscape, it is critical that businesses are prepared for any result. This cycle in particular, that preparation should […]
Early Signs of an Employee Power Flip and How Corporations Should Start Preparing
By: Lydie Neill and Jim Wyderko Throughout modern corporate history, society has benefited when corporations are strongly encouraged to act ethically and responsibly. This accountability requires corporations to recognize the responsibility they have to their consumers and stakeholders in order to uphold their reputations and continue business as usual. This is not a new concept, […]
Onboarding Online: Our Experiences Beginning a New Job Remotely & How COVID-19 is Impacting the Future of Internal Communication
By Nick Rosenberg and Ben Williams T-shirt or dress shirt? How do I get on Zoom if I don’t know my computer password yet? Do all Zoom calls require video? Does that mean I was wrong when I picked “t-shirt”? How can I add value? What is expected of me on day one? You may […]
Imagine a Tech Covenant
By Arik Ben-Zvi, CEO and President The events of the past months have opened a window of opportunity – and demonstrated the acute need – to establish a new covenant between the technology sector and the society that it is meant to serve. The events of the past months have opened a window of opportunity […]
Thoughts on Scenarios for the COVID-19 Future
By Arik Ben-Zvi, CEO and President Two weeks ago, my colleague and mentor Steve Weber of UC Berkeley and I published this paper, in which we used Scenario Thinking techniques to imagine how the coming months might play out for the country. In it, we imagined four very distinct futures for America: 1) The Invisible Enemy […]