The Economic Imperative: Finding Opportunity in Crisis

By Dinethi Manatunge, Humanists Victoria World Bank + IMF 2025 Fellow

On a chilly Monday morning, prior to my first attendance at the IMF annual meetings, I stood facing the esteemed Lincoln Memorial inscriptions of the Gettysburg address, reading over each word with intent. Carved into marble, a meagre 271 words and 10 sentences long speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln is still rendered as one of the most influential in American history. He spoke of a government of the people, by the people, for the people that must not perish so as to complete the noble tasks left unfinished by the generations before. They must not have died in vain to create this new nation of liberty, where all men are created equal. It was moving to me, not just in its eloquence but rather in the timelessness and applicability to the very purpose of my presence in Washington DC. The universality within his call for renewal reverberated through to the global mission of the 2025 annual meetings; to rebuild, reform, and reinvent in pursuit of shared progress. 

Before the delegation, the operations of the  IMF or the World Bank seemed elusive, yet important enough to call upon 191 member countries to gather every year. In my rudimentary understanding, they spoke of a world without poverty, income or wealth inequalities which all sounded straightforward. But in the state of current affairs, they seemed aspirational at best without proper mechanisms to hold nations accountable to their economic contributions. At a time when uncertainty and turbulence are the norm rather than the exception, the world economy and all of its participants must constantly adapt to ensure economic prosperity and abundance remain proportionate and civil. In short, stability itself demands change and reaching a higher equilibrium requires innovation often coined creative destruction. It echoed in the meeting halls of Washington which discussed themes of geopolitical tensions, climate change, the rise of AI and building resilience.  After all, stability without growth is simply complacency. Therefore in addition to preservation, what steps should we take to ensure that we unlock long-term prosperity? 

This perception was reinforced upon reading the official inquiry report, which discussed the causative factors behind the Global Financial Crisis that drove the world’s largest financial system to the brink of collapse. As quoted in the report, “The collateral damage of this crisis has been real people and real communities.” As a commerce graduate of Economics and Finance, those words unsettled me. They shifted my understanding of markets from abstract systems of optimisation to deeply human constructs; systems capable of immense creation but equally of destruction when left untempered by foresight and empathy. The equations I had once studied in classrooms seemed, in hindsight, too neat to capture the chaos of reality. Behind every percentage point of GDP lay stories of livelihoods lost and futures redefined.

Reading that report in Washington, after days of listening to policymakers debate how to future-proof economies, I realised that stability cannot simply mean preventing crisis, it must mean building societies capable of evolving through it. The conversation at the IMF Knowledge Café, “Jobs After Shock: Can Crisis Unleash New Growth?” converged on this idea. It reframed the concept of failure not as regression, but as an essential stage in renewal. Much like Lincoln’s call to complete the unfinished work of those before us, economic resilience demands that we do not merely recover from shocks, but learn to rebuild stronger because of them.

Schumpeter called this creative destruction, the perpetual process by which innovation dismantles established structures to make way for progress. What struck me in Washington was that the world’s leading institutions were no longer speaking only of growth, but of transformation: how economies can pivot, industries re-skill, and nations reimagine their foundations to ensure that prosperity does not come at the cost of equality or sustainability.

Nowhere is this balance more evident than in the stories of nations that have rebuilt themselves through crisis. South Korea, for instance, emerged from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis deeply scarred yet fundamentally reshaped. The IMF-led reforms dismantled inefficient conglomerates, strengthened regulatory oversight, and encouraged innovation across emerging sectors like technology and green energy. Within a decade, Korea had evolved from a debt-ridden economy into one of the most dynamic innovation hubs in the world. Its recovery was not without pain, but it embodied the principle that renewal often requires dismantling comfort. What Korea demonstrated was that creative destruction, when guided by purpose and sound governance, becomes a mechanism for empowerment rather than despair.

Similarly, Singapore’s evolution offers a study in institutionalised reinvention. Unlike Korea, Singapore did not wait for a crisis to manifest to embed creative destruction into its very governance model. Each decade, the city-state restructured its economy to align with global shifts: from manufacturing to finance, from finance to biotechnology and digital innovation. It invested heavily in human capital, education, and long-term planning, recognising that resilience lies in foresight, not reaction. Singapore’s story reveals that adaptation can be deliberate, and that governments can choose to evolve before necessity forces them to.

A mindset that acknowledges impermanence as a precondition for progress. 

The conversations at the IMF and World Bank made it clear that the global community stands at a similar inflection point today. From climate transitions to digital disruptions, we are confronted by crises that demand not preservation of the status quo but radical transformation. Yet, unlike in past decades, our challenge is to ensure that this transformation remains inclusive; that in tearing down the old, we do not leave the vulnerable behind.

Perhaps that is the paradox of every civilisation: we immortalise ideas that remind us to keep changing. For me, the experience reaffirmed that the essence of leadership, whether in policy or in life, lies not in maintaining order but in managing transformation. Creative destruction, then, is not merely an economic principle, it is a philosophy of hope. It insists that what collapses can also create space for something better, if only we are willing to build again with wisdom and courage.

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The views and opinions expressed by Global Voices Fellows do not necessarily reflect those of the organisation or its staff.