Jul 28th 2010
Not yet rated
Loading ...The World Economic Forum
Why on earth would 2500 of the world’s most important people trek up a Swiss valley in the middle of winter, all at the same time? Adrian Monck, Head of Communications and Media at the World Economic Forum told an audience of Sydney’s business leaders why, at a recent Business21C conversation.
Davos is a town of 13,000, the highest city in Europe. Each year in the last week of January, it hosts the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. The town itself is nothing special, ‘slightly cheesy’, says Monck, not cuckoo clock pretty or particularly charming. It’s functional, with boxy architecture from the 1980s and no great surfeit of five star hotels. But over the 40 years that the Forum has taken place, it has become a company town, one whose year round activities revolve around the events in late January. But what events they are.
It is an operation unlike any other, the kind that provides unique insight into the real nature of Swiss efficiency. The logistics are akin to that of a war zone, with some 7500 support staff: security – including the Swiss army, local police, and a private security firm – media, bar room entertainers, and assorted hangers on, descending upon a sleepy alpine village. They are here to assist, feed, move, organise, massage, clean up after, question, poke and prod the 1500 industrialists, 50 or so world leaders, hundreds of politicians, policy makers, social entrepreneurs, scientists, theorists, academics, senior media commentators, and NGOs who come to Davos.
Why do they come? To meet with the other 2499 who are here. Each CEO, Prime Minister and academic knows that every January, there’s a good chance that they’ll be able to corner a good number of other VIPs right here, in this inaccessible, kitsch little dorf. In the words of one CEO: ‘I get more done in the 3 days I’m in Davos than the rest of the year,’ simply because all the decision makers are here, at the same time. It’s the Forum’s job to convince them every year that it’ll be worth their while. That’s more than PR, it’s a detailed exercise in linear programming, undertaken by some 400 staffers, who have the details of each attendee’s schedule down to the last 15 minutes, and mix and match times and coordinate appointments between them so that each attendee gets what they want out of the time spent, and the not insignificant fees the Forum charges for membership of to the exclusive club – the world’s top 1000 businesses.
Monck explains that the Forum ‘takes the world as it is, not as it should be or how you might wish it to be.’ As a result, the number of female Forum attendees is low. If you only invite top leadership, and top leadership is majority male, then you have a majority male gathering. But the Forum does its bit to nudge the world in positive directions. Its motto is ‘Committed to improving the state of the world’. It was founded on the principle of stakeholder capitalism. It now insists that, of the five attendees its strategic partners are permitted to invite to Davos, one must be a board-level female. It has convened a Global Redesign Initiative designed to envision the shape of future global governance, and is committed to pursuing those objectives. It has countless Global Initiatives in health, education, agriculture, and other enormously ambitious fields of endeavour. It is nothing if not far reaching in its goals.
Sydney’s business leaders asked a broad range of questions on everything from sustainability through equity.
It was a great evening, another classic Business21C conversation.
Comments