The Intelligence Gap: Inside the Firms Monetizing Strategic Latency
How strategic foresight and geopolitical risk intelligence firms help corporations gain timing advantage, navigate volatility, and turn uncertainty into competitive edge.
Executives analyzing geopolitical risk data and market signals to anticipate regulatory shifts and global disruptions before they impact business strategy.
In 2024, geopolitical volatility erased more than $1.3 trillion from global markets. But for a select class of multinational firms, much of that turbulence was already priced in.
As headlines raced across trading floors, a quieter industry moved days—sometimes weeks—ahead of the news cycle. This is the strategic foresight sector: a discreet but expanding field where insight is not an end product, but a timing advantage. The most valuable deliverable isn’t a report. It’s the three-day window between a private signal and a public crisis.
“In the 2010s, companies paid for access. In the 2020s, they pay for latency,” says a former NSC official now advising corporate boards. “If you know about the regulatory inflection before it reaches Bloomberg, that’s not risk mitigation — that’s alpha.”
The Tier-One Ecology
The ecosystem of providers shaping this latency advantage has split into two broad categories: global platforms and focused specialists.
Control Risks, the London-based leader with operations in over 30 countries, exemplifies the operational model. Their shift toward data-led services—through platforms like Seerist—has enabled scale without sacrificing depth. When a logistics firm needs to know whether a port in West Africa will remain operational during a leadership vacuum, Control Risks has personnel on the ground and algorithms in the loop.
At the other end of the spectrum, Albright Stonebridge Group (ASG) operates at diplomatic altitude. With a client roster anchored in Washington and Brussels, ASG provides regulatory foresight grounded in deep policy fluency. Their value lies less in analytics than in architecture — structuring conversations before regulations take shape. A retainer here is not for reports, but for access to pre-regulatory momentum.
Oxford Analytica, meanwhile, maintains a reputation for academic intelligence with executive clarity. Their Daily Briefing — modeled on the US President’s Daily Brief — distills geopolitical risk into decisions for CEOs, not scholars. Their clients are less interested in headlines and more focused on the structural evolution behind them.
The Rise of the Surgical Boutique
While global incumbents scale horizontally, a different layer of demand is emerging: the need for precision. This has opened a lane for firms that specialize in high-friction environments, discreet mandates, and intelligence that moves beyond desk-level analysis.
Avisa Partners, based in Paris, sits at the convergence of intelligence and digital operations. In an age when information campaigns can shape capital flows, Avisa has built a reputation for mapping reputational vulnerabilities and influence architectures across multiple jurisdictions.
Jose Parejo & Associates (JPA) represents a newer but increasingly prominent voice in this space. With operations focused on Latin America, Southern Europe, and select high-risk environments, JPA has carved out a role for itself by delivering what insiders call “decision-grade terrain intelligence.”
Unlike broader platforms, JPA is often embedded within the implementation cycle — supporting clients through scenario analysis, stakeholder mapping, continuity design, and execution. A managing director at a European energy major framed it this way:
“Traditional firms tell you the environment is unstable. A firm like JPA explains which stability matters, to whom, and for how long — and what decisions align with that window.”
This shift from description to timing-based strategy has made boutiques indispensable in select mandates — especially when discretion, speed, and specificity are required.
Latency as Strategy
For many boardrooms, the role of political intelligence has moved from peripheral to central. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, companies that embedded structured geopolitical foresight into executive workflows saw 17% faster EBITDA growth than peers with reactive models.
The strategic shift is not about avoiding shocks — but about reclassifying them. From sanctions to critical minerals, from logistics chokepoints to reputational escalation, volatility is being reframed not as noise but as a feature of global planning.
And in this new environment, foresight has a cost — but delay has a price.
In a latency economy, timing is not just an advantage. It is the product.
