Like every year, Klaus Schwab has just closed his glorious week. At 85 years old, he has been able to see how his creature, the World Economic Forum in Davos, has once again managed to bring together almost 3,000 global and business leaders from around the world in a Swiss village lost in the mountains. Few imagined that this German professor, with studies in economics, engineering and specialization at Harvard, would be able to build what is today considered the event that brings together the elite of the powerful and that moves almost 400 million euros every year. In 1971, under the title of European Symposium Management, he attracted 400 businessmen (and had the star intervention of the economist John Galbraith). Now, there are many who fight to get an invitation or are willing to pay thousands of euros to be able to say that they were there.
The model works because Genevans dream that one day the forum can be held in their city. “He has managed to bring together influential people in a mountain town. It seems like little, but it is a lot,” they say in Geneva. “Everyone close to power here clearly worships Klaus Schwab.”
On a personal level, “he comes from a culture in which he stays silent and works,” says a veteran Geneva journalist who knows him closely. Austere, methodical, he doesn't touch a drop of alcohol (the forum participants touch a few on the other hand) and gets up every day at six in the morning. He once considered that his work on competitiveness would be worthy of a Nobel Prize. In any case, he is one of the few individuals who can directly call the presidents of the states to discuss the issues that will be discussed at a congress in a tiny town in the Alps.
To Schwab's credit, he has a sense of smell. He smells the social and economic climate, and does not hesitate to jump on the bandwagon of the moment and invite uncomfortable characters, from Lula da Silva to Greta Thunberg, to name a few. During the outbreak of anti-globalization movements at the beginning of the century, Schwab was quick to put issues related to the environment, young people, inequality or health on the agenda. It doesn't matter whether the majority of participants travel by private plane or SUV. He even joined the trend of going without a tie (him, the first).
Schwab always tries to be equidistant. Although he does not hide his preferences. Like in this edition, when he said that the ultra-liberal Argentine president Javier Milei was a person who “deserved to be listened to” or when years ago he let the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro go on stage escorted by a uniformed military man.
In Davos all the interventions are planned to the minute and no one goes overboard, especially when it is he, the supreme founder, who accompanies the guest on duty on the platform. But many remember when French President Emmanuel Macron made his debut at the meeting, speaking non-stop for an hour and a half. No one dared to interrupt him. Schwab also has firefighting reflexes. Like that of the historian Rutger Bregman, who in 2019 started talking about the tax evasion of the rich: he did not invite him again.
Conspiracy theories have even accused Schwab of having set up an opaque organization that seeks to control the destinies of the planet. The reality is that nothing is decided in Davos. The seminars with a more social message are open to everyone (some malicious people would talk about greenwashing), but many meetings are behind closed doors. To access them you need to get a piece of cardboard of a certain color, so de facto the attendees are organized by caste. A checkbook-based selection that guarantees that business owners can do business with the utmost discretion. “I go to Davos every year because here I find all the people I have to see in the same place,” explained an American executive. Schwab invented something that didn't exist. In the forum there is only one taboo topic: its succession.
