Next financial crisis: Preparing better by approaching the 21st-century economy through the major laws of complex systems
The simultaneous transformations of the global economy — unprecedented public debt, geopolitical tensions, climate change, the acceleration of artificial intelligence, the energy transition and the weakening of international cooperation — suggest that the next crisis could be more systemic than previous ones.
Rather than focusing solely on analysing its risks, this series of 4 in-depth articles proposes exploring how to build a more robust and resilient economy: understanding the laws of complex systems, designing bio-inspired economic architectures, imagining currencies capable of encouraging regulatory behaviours, and developing mission-driven businesses whose growth directly contributes to addressing the major challenges of the 21st century.
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By Thomas EGLI, Founder of the Geneva Forum, August 2026
- Article 1/4: Next financial crisis: Preparing better by approaching the 21st-century economy through the major laws of complex systems
- Article 2/4: In the face of crises, building an economy that lasts: Impact business models, smart currencies and bio-inspired financial architectures.
- Article 3/4: In the face of systemic crises, can economic resilience be programmed? Smart currencies and bio-inspired models.
- Article 4/4: Why mission-driven businesses can become the most robust companies in the face of systemic risks.
Next financial crisis: Preparing better by approaching the 21st-century economy through the major laws of complex systems
Economic crises are often presented as anomalies that should be avoided. Each recession is analysed as an accident, and each financial crisis as the consequence of regulatory errors, a speculative bubble or a specific geopolitical shock. This interpretation remains useful, but it is incomplete.
Economies are not machines that can be permanently fine-tuned. They belong to a very particular category: complex systems. As such, they obey rules that can also be found in natural ecosystems, living organisms, human societies and large digital networks.
Understanding these rules does not make it possible to eliminate crises. However, it does make it possible to design economies capable of limiting their consequences, absorbing their effects and sometimes even turning them into opportunities for evolution.
This distinction between prevention and resilience is likely to be one of the major economic challenges of the coming decade.
View the Call for Contributions What kind of smart currency for sustainable development? and the programme of the annual international conferences Ethical Currencies and Economic Models and Impact Finance - Philanthropy, Investment and Blended Finance.
I. Why crises are normal in every complex system
A complex system is characterised by a large number of interconnected actors that interact continuously. No single actor controls the whole system, yet collective behaviour gradually emerges.
The global economy perfectly illustrates this reality. Billions of individual decisions, made every day by consumers, companies, banks, governments and investors, produce an overall dynamic that no one truly directs.
These systems share several common properties.
They are constantly evolving. They adapt. They create new organisations. They sometimes accumulate invisible imbalances before undergoing rapid changes when certain thresholds are crossed.
Crises are therefore not exceptions. They are part of the normal functioning of these systems as they reorganise their balances.
In nature, fires regenerate certain forests. Floods redistribute sediment. Ecological successions allow new balances to emerge.
In economies, crises reveal excessive debt, overcapacity, excessive dependencies or models that have become obsolete.
The fundamental question is therefore not whether another crisis will occur. It is whether the system has sufficient adaptive capacity to move through this phase without losing its essential functions.
II. The inalienable laws of complex systems
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