Marketing2030 is a three-phase study. The Institute for Real Growth leads it with the Future of Marketing Initiative at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. Phase One asked what the world is now demanding of businesses and brands. It reviewed more than 250 business studies and reports to find the themes that recur and the forces that pull against each other.
The findings do not resolve into a strategy. They resolve into six tensions, presented here as “The Growth Paradoxes”. Each pairs two legitimate demands that leaders must satisfy at once. The paradoxes are not new. The urgency behind them is, and so is the cost of ignoring them.
Key findings
- More than 80% of citizens across 50 global markets say the world is moving too fast. That figure comes from the Ipsos Global Trends Report 2024.
- 87% of respondents told a 2025 Salsify consumer research report they would pay more for products from brands they trust. Instability has turned trust into a price.
- Nearly half of consumers in a recent McKinsey study say locally owned companies drive their purchase decisions. The shift accelerated between Q1 and Q2 2025 in Canada and the US.
- The study’s stated destination is Humanized Growth: value created for customers, colleagues, communities, and capital markets, not for shareholders alone.
Short-term performance against long-term growth
The first paradox asks how a leader maximizes short-term performance while building sustainable long-term growth. Private-equity-owned companies feel this most sharply. They will not be there to collect on long-term investments. As ESG’s influence wanes in many markets, efficiency gains are again going to the bottom line instead of being reinvested.
The report rejects the easy framing. Casting this as shareholders against stakeholders is too simplistic. Shareholders such as Warren Buffett champion longer horizons. Stakeholders often want an immediate pay rise or lower prices.
Global scale against local identity
The second paradox concerns global scale efficiencies against local preferences. Geopolitical fragmentation is pushing the two further apart. Seamless global connection has not produced a more global mindset. Where a product is made now carries a positive or negative connotation, depending entirely on who is asked.
The suggested resolution borrows from how creators already work. The report describes creators as cultural translators who invent alongside their communities and understand how local norms boost authenticity. Technology companies show the same pattern: centralized hardware production, heavily localized software.
Agility against stability
The third paradox asks how organizations transform rapidly while offering the trust, stability, and safety their teams need to experiment at all. The report ties this to loss of control. Consumers can now drive messaging that hits a company’s reputation or earnings within hours.
Its prescription is participatory rather than procedural. As AI takes hold, employees need a role in the change process itself. That means co-designing new workflows. It also means the chance to learn new skills and explore alternative career paths.
Human against machine
The fourth paradox has the sharpest edge. It asks how to embrace the differences between humans and machines while bridging the gap. The report does not soften the employment question. Companies such as Amazon are already cutting jobs, acknowledging that machines do the work quicker, better, and most importantly, cheaper.
Beyond jobs, the report identifies a subtler cost. Human craft and originality erode, particularly in creative domains. AI built on historical data carries that history’s bias forward, perpetuating inequalities and hindering genuine innovation.
Personalization against privacy
The fifth paradox asks how to serve individual preferences while respecting a growing demand for control over personal information. The direction of travel has changed. Algorithmic feeds and generative AI now anticipate need rather than respond to it. Content can be delivered before an intention is consciously formed.
Two consequences follow. Regulation is diverging, not converging: Europe rolled out GDPR over a decade ago, while other regions have no consumer protections to speak of. The identity of the customer is also in question. Marketers could soon be selling to AI agents rather than to consumers.
Digital convenience against human connection
The sixth paradox weighs digital engagement and commerce against real-life experience. The report’s observation here is uncomfortable. The shift to digital has created a literal epidemic of social isolation and loneliness, even though it was intended to do the opposite.
The report frames the leader’s task as two-sided risk, not a choice. Lean too far into digital and the damage lands on business and society. Fail to use the ability to reach inside a consumer’s pocket and the business may not survive.
What the paradoxes are for
The report is explicit that this is not a strategy document. It offers the six paradoxes as framing ideas to contextualize the pressures a business faces. They are strategic planning assumptions meant to guide strategy development, not replace it.
Its closing argument is about who can hold contradictions of this kind. The report calls for whole-brain, Da Vinci-like leaders able to balance human and machine, art and science, process and innovation. That balancing act is the competitive advantage on offer. No single answer is.
Scope and limitations
This is Phase One of three, and it is desk research. The trends, shifts, and expectations come from reviewing existing studies and from AI analysis, not from new fieldwork. Phase Two, due March 2026, adds insights from over 200 vision interviews with business and Marketing leaders globally. Phase Three validates them through an online survey of Marketing leaders and identifies the CMO leadership characteristics required to succeed.
The statistics above come from third-party research reviewed by the study, not generated by it. The sources are Ipsos, McKinsey, and Salsify. The report does not state sample sizes or methodology for those underlying studies.
Source
This page summarises Winning in a Polarized World: The Growth Paradoxes, Phase One, by Institute for Real Growth, Future of Marketing Initiative, Saïd Business School, November 2025.