Switch on the TV news, follow Twitter or read a paper and it can
feel like we are living in an era of high, perhaps unprecedented,
uncertainty.
We certainly seem, over time, to have become more aware of
uncertainty. Since the 1940s references in English language books
to uncertainty, volatility, complexity and ambiguity have soared.
The term Chief Risk Officer did not exist before the mid-1990s. Now
CROs are an established part of many large companies. In the 1990s
the US army War College coined the term VUCA in to describe an
apparently new world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and
ambiguity.
But has the world really become more uncertain?
Unlike economic activity or human life span, there is no
definitive way to measure uncertainty. Moreover, uncertainty is
heterogeneous. How can you add together the risk of a catastrophic
meteor strike on the earth, with the risk of falling off your bike
or of war breaking out in the Middle East? And while some
