BEFORE I attended my first World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos, I was sceptical about just how useful it was going to be. Running any business is a full-time job, and a few days in the company of the world’s foremost movers and shakers struck me as potentially interesting, but not necessarily much help when it came to sorting out real issues.
Yet this year will be my fourth visit, and I’m really looking forward to it. Only at Davos is it possible to see influential world leaders, for once bereft of their teams of advisers, shuffling about with that gait of the terminally lost.
Only at Davos is an entire city so thoroughly taken over that every shop, bar and restaurant is caught up in the atmosphere. Only at Davos can you talk to people from every walk of life about arts, politics, business and culture on a completely equal footing.
And that is the key to the WEF. Everyone who attends is equal, from a world leader to a humble businessman. It gives us access to an environment in which we can discuss global challenges in an informal, open and honest way, and no single opinion is counted as more important than any other, and no subject is off-limits.
I know there are critics who say the annual get-together is nothing more than a talking shop, designed to make those who attend to feel important but makes little difference to those outside of its privileged boundaries. Yet these critics propose no serious alternative solutions and are guilty of carping from the sidelines, rather than joining in the most serious game of all: making the inevitable onset of globalisation a force for good rather than evil.
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As leaders in their respective fields, the participants of the WEF need to be clear about what success for the global economy will look like. The established models of one nation’s success at the expense of a neighbour will be less relevant in the future than it has been in the past. The opportunities of global wealth creation must not be sacrificed to narrow and short-term national interests.
This is why the WEF matters. It provides an important bridge across the physical, cultural and intellectual barriers that have kept people apart in the past. It offers the potential for leaders to confront change, creating the prospect of a prosperous future for those who follow. And that is worth a few days of anyone’s time.
Ben Verwaayen is the chief executive of BT Group