What just happened in Davos, and how is the world different now?

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Borge Brende, President and CEO, World Economic Forum: The longstanding international order that existed for the last three decades has receded. We are now between orders and the next order has not yet taken shape.

Robin Pomeroy, host, Radio Davos: Welcome to Radio Davos, the podcast from the World Economic Forum that looks at the biggest challenges and how we might solve them. This week - what just happened in Davos at an Annual Meeting that coincided with the return to power of US President Donald Trump?

Donald Trump, President, United States: Well, thank you very much, Klaus, and hello to everyone in beautiful Davos.

Robin Pomeroy: Davos was beautiful - but unlike a desperately cold Washington DC, it was snow-free and eerily mild as leaders from around the world met - as they do every January - to discuss the world’s biggest challenges - such as economic wellbeing, a technology revolution, and climate change.

Gim Huay Neo, head of the Centre for Nature and Climate, World Economic Forum: Last year was the hottest year on record. Extreme weather events are on the rise, increasing in frequency and intensity. But at the same time, the analysis of companies showed that only 10% were making tangible and meaningful progress on climate and nature.

Robin Pomeroy: President Trump announced the US was withdrawing from the Paris climate deal, as well as the World Health Organisation, and vowed to use trade tariffs to re-shore jobs. It was a busy week in Washington and in Davos.

Mirek Dušek, head of the Centre for Regions, Trade and Geopolitics, World Economic Forum: Trade was front and centre. Economic relations are changing. The geography of our economy is changing. 2025 will give us a sense of where we are landing with these changes.

Robin Pomeroy: Follow Radio Davos wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum, and with this look back at what just happened in Davos...

Kiva Allgood, head of the Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains, World Economic Forum: This is a tipping point.

Robin Pomeroy: This is Radio Davos.

On Monday, the 20th of January, 2025, the World Economic Forum’s 55th Annual Meeting opened with a spectacular concert - that’s what your hearing now.

And on the same day, Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second term, promising to shake up global trade and geopolitics. Three days later he addressed the Meeting down the line from Washington.

“It's all new, it's all new” sang Ane Brune at that concert - available to watch on line - but how new is the world in 2025, and how will humanity confront its biggest challenges?

In this podcast, we hear from the people who lead the various Centres at the World Economic Forum that all year round work on those big issues such as climate and nature, cybersecurity and global health - to get their reflections on the week and to look ahead to the rest of 2025.

We’ll also hear sound bites from some of the speeches and sessions from the Meeting - which you can catch up on at wef.ch/wef25.

To start, here’s Forum President and CEO Borge Brende, opening the Annual Meeting, attended by more than 3,000 leaders from the public and private sector around the world.

Borge Brende, President and CEO, World Economic Forum: We are meeting at one of the most uncertain geopolitical and geoeconomic moments in generations.

Today we are at an inflection point. 2025 will be a year of consequences. It will affect the course ahead, maybe even at the level we have seen in history, like 1918, 1945, 1989.

Because we are facing rapid advancements in technologies that are reshaping the economies, changing power dynamics that are remaking global relations, and new trade policies that are redesigning commerce.

The longstanding international order that existed for the last three decades has receded. We are now between orders and the next order has not yet taken shape.

At this critical moment we must ensure that the jungle of geopolitics do not grow back. Force cannot replace discourse. Non-cooperation cannot become the new normal.

Robin Pomeroy: Borge Brende at the start of the Davos week. We had to wait until towards the end of the week to hear from Donald Trump. Here's a flavour of what he had to say, introduced by the Forum's Founder and Chairman of its Board of Trustees, Klaus Schwab.

Klaus Schwab, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, World Economic Forum: Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Donald Trump: Well, thank you very much Klaus and hello to everyone in beautiful Davos.

This has been a truly historic week in the United States. Three days ago, I took the oath of office and we began the Golden Age of America.

Robin Pomeroy: You can watch the whole speech and question and answer session with business leaders on our website, but let's hear another bit of it where President Trump talks about climate change and energy policies.

Donald Trump: I terminated the ridiculous and incredibly wasteful Green New Deal – I call it the Green New Scam; withdrew from the one-sided Paris climate accord; and ended the insane and costly electric vehicle mandate. We're going to let people buy the car they want to buy.

I declared a national energy emergency – and that's so important – a national energy emergency to unlock the liquid gold under our feet and pave the way for rapid approvals of new energy infrastructure.

The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we're going to use it. Not only will this reduce the cost of virtually all goods and services, it will make the United States a manufacturing superpower and the world capital of artificial intelligence and crypto.

Robin Pomeroy: Many other world leaders gave special addresses to the Annual Meeting - you can find them all on our website.

So with Donald Trump putting trade front and centre, I spoke to Mirek Dušek who heads the Forum's Centre for Regions, Trade and Geopolitics and also is in charge of putting together the whole programme at Davos.

Mirek Dušek, head of the Centre for Regions, Trade and Geopolitics, World Economic Forum: I'm Mirek Dušek, managing director of the World Economic Forum, and I'm responsible for the Global Programming Group and also for how we work with different governments around the world.

Robin Pomeroy: Let's just start with kind of an overview of this week, an unusual week in that, on day one, Donald Trump returned to the White House. That was his inauguration day. On day four, he was addressing the World Economic Forum. Obviously, there was lots of other things going on at the Forum. There's no denying that was a very important element to this whole week. What 's your reflection on that?

Mirek Dušek: It was a busy week for the new president. So as you say, the fact that in the inauguration week, we were able to have a conversation with the new president of the United States was very informative. And what I liked was that there was an exchange with in this case, it was with CEOs that were able to exchange with him views on the world economy, where we are.

And I think in that conversation we saw a lot what really was on the agenda overall here throughout the week, these two big forces that are changing the world economy and also economies around the world.

On one hand, we are living through quite a unique period of technological advancement and innovation, and we are calling it the intelligent age.

And on the other, we are warning, together with the likes of the IMF and the WTO, that we are seeing, of course, forces of fragmentation, geo-economically and geopolitically. And if we have protracted fragmentation in the global economy, it could cost us up to 7% of global GDP.

But the whole point is there is, of course, this threat. But on the other hand, there is this spirit of, okay, there are changes and shifts in the world economy, but how do we get things done in this environment? How do we manage to get agreement on technology? How do we make sure we have more resilience vis-a-vis future pandemics? How do we make sure that we are working together on development in what is arguably a more competitive geopolitical and economic environment?

Robin Pomeroy: I know you oversee the whole Davos event, but particularly geopolitics and trade. Anything you'd pick out from what happened during the week as that was a real achievement?

Mirek Dušek: What I really liked, or a highlight for me, was that we had a number of leaders that are at the beginning of their mandate coming from emerging markets and being very ambitious about their economy, their country and what we can do in the world overall, which goes back to that spirit of, okay, the world economy is changing, but we have agency around how to shape our future together.

So we heard, for example from the president of South Africa, Mr. Ramaphosa, who recently got reelected. So it's a new cabinet and they are chairing the G20. We also had Anwar Ibrahim from Malaysia, also relatively still new. And they are chairing Asean, a very dynamic grouping of countries.

So those are just two examples. But what I liked about it is that, yes, we have geopolitical challenges, but we also have big markets moving with determination and being innovative around economic relations.

Robin Pomeroy: Have there been any buzz words or phrases or concepts that you found everyone keeps coming back to?

Mirek Dušek: I think one was from Professor Schwab. I think the fact that he at the beginning mentioned the concept of constructive optimism, I think it was on the minds of people. It goes back to the importance of being able to have agency around some of these forces that I mentioned. I think the other one was dialogue. How do we reinvent the muscle of dialogue and cooperation? I think that was on the minds of people as well.

Robin Pomeroy: We're just at the start of 2025. What are going to be the milestones for you in particular when it comes to trade and geopolitics? What are going to be the big things that we should all be looking out for?

Mirek Dušek: I think trade was front and centre of the proceedings that we had here.

Overall, economic relations are changing. The geography of our economy is changing. The tools that governmental leaders are using are changing. And so I think 2025 will give us a sense of where we are landing with these changes.

We had the head of the WTO here, Dr Ngozi. She was quite clear about the opportunities, about the risks. But again, even with her, you had that sense that we need to just keep working at it. She would tell you that still a great majority, for example, of all the trade agreements around the world are done based on WTO rules. And, of course, herself, her organization and also all the different stakeholders are trying to figure out how do we then also do better in terms of digital trade, green trade. So there are all kinds of new developments in addition to some of the big shifts that we we need to wrap our heads around.

But overall, the World Economic Forum, where we come in, we work with the likes of Dr Ngozi and others, but we bring the private sector. So there is an ongoing dialogue that we do with a lot of CEOs, Dr Ngozi and other governmental leaders to really take a strategic view on how to make sure that trade not only continues to be a source of growth, but we bring trade back to where it used to be in terms of a huge, huge engine of growth for the global economy.

Robin Pomeroy: What's the one thing, in your opinion, that leaders should prioritize this year?

Mirek Dušek: Listening, I think is a big invitation or an opportunity. I think it's an opportunity. Listening is an opportunity so that as we are implementing or as we see them implementing some of the policies that there is that learning. And I think learning starts with listening. And we had, I think, quite encouraging signs of that here.

Listening doesn't mean always agreeing, but just to be able really to listen and to respect the opinion of others and try to understand where they're coming from. I think if we do more of that, I am quite optimistic about the future.

Robin Pomeroy: Mirek Dusek.

Related to trade, the Forum's Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains works with businesses and governments to develop better ways of making the things we all use. I spoke to its centre head.

Kiva Allgood, head of the Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chain, World Economic Forum: Kiva Allgood and I lead the Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chain at the World Economic Forum.

Robin Pomeroy: How has it been at the Annual Meeting 2025 for advanced manufacturing?

Kiva Allgood: I think resilience is the top of top of mind of everyone. And so if you think about supply chains and advanced manufacturing, key ingredient.

So I'd say this year with recent elections, again, I think half the population of the world got to vote in 2024. So top of mind is, you know, supply chain reconfiguration, the impact of the elections, tariffs. What are the scenarios that I need to think through?

So the beautiful part about the work that we do at the World Economic Forum is we get to work in that beautiful intersection of industry policy and academia. And I'd say this week really played out perfectly because we had all those body parts in place and people really integrating around some critical topics.

Robin Pomeroy: And there's been any, what you might call big wins for your Centre during the week.

Kiva Allgood: We had our awards dinner for the Global Lighthouse Network, which is an annual event where we recognize the best of the best in digital transformation in manufacturing. So this year we had some of the top CEOs really giving handing out the awards. So that was the first time we were able to get them engaged. We have 17 new winners and we now have 189 and 289 Lighthouses all together and 25 now sustainability lighthouses.

Robin Pomeroy: So what is a Lighthouse?

Kiva Allgood: Yeah, a Lighthouse is the best of the best. So if you think about what does a factory or site look like, if it's fully digitally, digitally transformed or it's improved a process? So these are factories that have really leaned into digital transformation. And it's again, it's those sites that everybody aspires to. I think more importantly, though, it is it's a really it's a mind shift. So if you think about manufacturing, you typically get incremental improvement over time to improve productivity, to increase margins. You move in a linear direction. A lot of the lighthouses actually go through full digital transformation.

I'll quote a CEO who said, hey, for us it was a mental revolution. They changed the type of people they were hiring to be more digital. They really had to think through what do we need to do? And the impact that it had, the improvements that it had was much bigger than they had anticipated. And now they're planning on trying to aspire to get to five lighthouses in total. It's a little like akin to a Michelin star if you're a really good chef or restaurant.

Robin Pomeroy: This Davos was happening at a time when, on the first day, Donald Trump returns to the White House and mentions supply chains and tariffs. There's a lot of uncertainty among those companies about what will happen in terms of global trade this year. What the people are saying about that to you?

Kiva Allgood: With the Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chain, we have a community of chief operating officers, procurement officers and supply chain officers. And that community. I think they, through COVID, have gotten really good at doing scenario planning, right?

Covid has really taught them to understand that muscle. How do I come up with scenario A, B, C, D?

I'd say some of the things now is like, I need to think of even more scenarios. I also we heard a lot of people say, I'm going to pause. I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do until I have more clarity. Which is also not good for the industry. So that hinders M&A, that hinders innovation.

So I think people are still really trying to figure out that path. I think they're trying to figure out what does that new ecosystem look like? I think that the conversation transition from, you know, COVID, really, tried to empower the ecosystem beyond two global powers. You know, it was really U.S. and China, and Europe to an extent. And then you now start to see Malaysia and other regions.

We launched a report called the Global Readiness Index, this Davos. And that gives you seven areas to focus on. If you're looking at countries, what makes a country ready for manufacturing? What would attract someone to a country? And we walked through those seven different indices, and that was really a good body of work to help our partners figure out where do they go next and how do they think about where they might be expanding both from a logistics perspective and a manufacturing perspective?

Robin Pomeroy: Are there any important milestones you're looking forward to during the year?

Kiva Allgood: Davos is interesting because you've got the big sessions and the and the private dialogues and then you have an opportunity to really bring together people in a multilateral.

So I had a discussion with a small group of folks, but it included a governor from the U.S., the head of a trade union, the head of a another trade union, an industry leader, two startups around, and US specifically, labour. So we're building all these new factories, right? But we don't necessarily have a career path for high school students to go into those types of trades. And how do we make those more aspiring and good career paths for younger people.

And that was a milestone. We've got a pretty solid action plan to pull together some programming and some thought leadership there for our next event and meeting in April when we get together again.

Robin Pomeroy: What is that event?

Kiva Allgood: We get together our governors group, our chief operating officer group, and our strategy folks in Boston in April.

Robin Pomeroy: You mentioned resilience is a word everyone's using. Did you pick up on any other kind of buzzwords or concepts that really defined what was going on here?

Kiva Allgood: AI was a theme, right? And, you know, I come from an industry where we've been using machine learning and automation for decades and we've been putting it into practice. So I'd say our community was more focused on the talent and the people implications. of the transformation of the jobs.

I think another key theme that came through was really the fact that we're now starting to see and understand, especially in the manufacturing and supply chain world, that resilience, productivity and profitability actually drive and deliver sustainability. So if you use less water, less materials and you're making your process more productive, you're often also driving sustainability.

And so we're really trying to change the narrative there on really talking about those two things in a symbiotic way - that profit and productivity does equal sustainable - and really trying to change the narrative around that.

Robin Pomeroy: What should leaders prioritize in 2025?

Kiva Allgood: Two reflections there. I think that there's part of it of stay calm. You know, let's see what happens.

And then I'd say be courageous. I think we're at a very, especially in the industries that I, you know, I'm a 30-year veteran in industry, and this is a tipping point.

If you rewind the clock and you think about what happened when the internet was launched, you had companies that went out of business. Right? Think about Blockbuster because they didn't transform the way that they met the market.

I think AI will do that transformation in a lot of different back office processes. I think businesses need to really embrace and change the way they do things quickly and then enhance the way they deliver their products and services to customers where the customers want to be met. And so that that to me is the most critical point.

Robin Pomeroy: But stay calm at the same time.

Kiva Allgood: Yes. You know, I think when the internet rise happened, it was exciting for some and scary for others. And I think it's those leaders that can really persevere and invest in that future with maybe not all the data, is important.

Robin Pomeroy: That was Kiva Allgood of the Forum's Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains advising us to stay calm.

Before we hear the next Forum Centre head, let's hear a bit from the head of the global trade body, the WTO. This is Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala advising us - when it comes to speculation about trade tariffs - to 'chill'.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General, WTO: Please let us not hyperventilate. I know we are here to discuss tariffs. I've been saying to everybody, could we chill, also because 80% of world trade right now, world goods straight is taking place on WTO terms.

And while trade is at a peak, $30.4 trillion, which is higher than the pre-pandemic peak. So there is resilience, though, something I'm not concerned? No, I'm not trying to say that. But I just sense a lot of hyperventilation. And I need we need to take a deep breath. So now coming to the issue about what do I think about tariffs...

Robin Pomeroy: Well, if you want to hear what Dr Ngozi thinks about tariffs, the head of the World Trade Organization, you can listen back and watch that on our website. The session was called Debating Tariffs. Link in the show notes.

Moving on - what just happened in Davos on energy?

Roberto Bocca, head of the Centre for Energy and Materials, World Economic Forum: Roberto Bocca. And I'm the head of the Centre for Energy and Materials.

Robin Pomeroy: Would you say it's been a big week for energy and materials, this Davos?

Roberto Bocca: A very, very big week. Yes, indeed. A lot of conversation, a lot of pro-activeness in trying to solve some of the key issues.

Robin Pomeroy: What would you say were the main achievements of the Centre for Energy and Materials this week?

Roberto Bocca: We had a fantastic interaction with government and business on some of the most critical issues that help in creating prosperity, economic growth, but also addressing the issue of the energy transition that, as we know, should be more sustainable, but also bring more energy security and bring more energy equity.

Robin Pomeroy: Has in any way the conversation started here set the scene for the rest of the year? What kinds of things should we be looking out for, in the world of what you deal with, but also at the World Economic Forum's Centre for Energy and Materials?

Roberto Bocca: Absolutely. It was very interesting because I think we had a very mature conversation and set of meetings in this Annual Meeting, a lot of more understanding of the complexity of the energy transition, and with that complexity, the willingness to address the different part.

I give an example. Often in the past, the mineral, the mineral discussion was isolated. Now more and more people understand the importance of having a mineral discussion in the context of energy transition. Because for the new energy system you need a lot of minerals and so you can't dissociate the two. So the supply chain of minerals is very much linked to the energy transition. So this is one of those topics that really came out as a stronger input for the conversation going forward in the activities.

Robin Pomeroy: This is a unique Davos in that the president of the United States was inaugurated on day one. He had certain things to say about energy. Prioritizing very much U.S. production. He talked about in his address here about trying to get the oil price down. There might be fears among people wanting to see a fast energy transition, because he also pulled out of the Paris climate deal, that that's going to slow the energy transition down. Do you think that will happen?

Roberto Bocca: Well, first of all, if you if you think of the energy transition as a three dimension of sustainability, security and equity. no, actually, no. If the oil price goes down, equity goes up to some extent. And and the question is then how much the sustainable part is going to be slowed down. That, I think, is the implicit question in yours.

My view is that that there is, you know, business and economic case for the energy transition to happen more and more. If you look at the cost of solar power, wind and even batteries in electric vehicle are going down. And so choices will be made on the basis of economics.

When it comes to the U.S., I think, you know, the key message was about more oil, but also more infrastructure. And more infrastructure is a very good news. If you have more transmission lines that allow any sort of energy to be transmitted.

So I can see a lot of good news. By the way, you know that U.S. is the biggest oil producer today already on the planet with more than 13 million barrels per day out of 100 million barrels a day. They're even bigger than Saudi Arabia. So I'm not so sure how much more they can really produce.

Robin Pomeroy: What's 2025 got in store for you, Roberto?

Roberto Bocca: Well, it's going to be an exciting year because, you know, there are all these geopolitical but also economic shifts in the world. There is more fragmentation. But as we have seen here in Davos, there is more and more willingness to collaborate.

So it is interesting, is also a dichotomy here. But I think there is a new structure in the work put in place. And I think business and makers are trying to find a way to operate and keep the economic growth and the energy transition going forward in this year.

So very exciting and I see a lot of opportunities.

Robin Pomeroy: Has there been a buzz word or a phrase that has popped up that everyone's talking about.

Roberto Bocca: One thing that I picked up in in my space is about AI and what is the is the right conversation about what energy has to do for AI or what AI can do for energy.

So we all talk about the increased demand for energy because of AI and data centres. But there is also the other question or the other opportunities what AI, artificial intelligence, can do to make the energy system more efficient and performant. So reducing the energy consumption on the other side. So what they can do for energy or what energy can do for it, I think is an interesting issue to look at for this year.

Robin Pomeroy: What should leaders prioritize in 2025?

Roberto Bocca: Of course I'm looking from the perspective of of the energy side, and, as I mentioned earlier, to some extent, it's really looking at at the opportunities. You know, always there are challenges, but there are a lot of opportunities.

And I think that the technology will be one of those big opportunity, both technology in energy and the technology combining the digitalization and the AI, the combination of the two can really give us the next level of opportunity when it comes to energy use and development.

Robin Pomeroy: Roberto Bocca is head of the Centre for Energy and Materials at the Forum.

Let's hear from the head of the International Energy Agency. This is Fatih Birol.

Fatih Birol, Executive Director, International Energy Agency: What is more important? Energy security or energy transition? Which one we should do the priority?

I deny to answer this question. It is an annoying question. Because we can do both of them.

With well-designed energy transition policies we can have the best energy security and with well-designed energy transition policies, we can bring the prices down. We can bring prosperity to the people and we can create jobs. And this has been done. This will be done.

So therefore, to antagonise these two important objectives for the human being today is, in my view, misleading. We can do both. We have been doing many, many things like that before in the world and this is critical.

Robin Pomeroy: Staying with climate change, and the wider spectrum of environmental challenges, the Forum's head of climate and nature spoke in Davos to my colleague Gayle Markovitz.

Gim Huay Neo, head of the Centre for Nature and Climate, World Economic Forum: Gim Huay Neo, managing director at the World Economic forum, and I oversee the climate and nature agenda.

Gayle Markovitz: What would you say are the key achievements of the Centre for Climate Nature at AM25.

Gim Huay Neo: We walked into AM25 with a few stark realities. One was around climate changes. Last year was the hottest year on record. Extreme weather events are on the rise, increasing in frequency and intensity.

But at the same time, the analysis of companies showed that only 10% were making tangible and meaningful progress on climate and nature.

So the focus of the AM was really to look at the reasons why and to explore the solutions, the partnerships that could actually help support companies in addressing the climate emergency.

So the key outcomes from the meeting obviously was for companies and governments to meet to talk about the new capabilities that are enabled by AI, data, satellite technologies. They also looked at the existing partnerships that are in place, not just stocktaking progress, we've made very good progress on several of these initiatives, but more importantly to look at the new, additional measures that have to be taken to enable more speed at scale.

If I could give you an example. In the First Movers Coalition, which is about using the power of green procurement for companies to invest into green technologies. The community met and took a stocktake on where they are today and also looked at what are the policy arrangements that they could actually work with governments to support the transition, including permitting processes, how to shorten the permit process for companies were investing to green technologies to be able to move faster in this journey.

Gayle Markovitz: Is there a buzz word or phrase that you kept hearing this week?

Gim Huay Neo: I would say it's about hope and possibility. The current environment, operating environment, is complex, is uncertain. It's not easy for companies to navigate the various uncertainties while dealing with the pre-determined that climate change is happening. How do they continue to invest into solutions that can build business resiliency and support growth jobs while continue to navigate towards an outcome that is a lot more in line with sustainable development?

Gayle Markovitz: Are there any particular projects and initiatives that we can expect? In 2025.

Gim Huay Neo: One was the president of Congo launched the initiative to protect and restore 50 million hectares of land from East Kivu to the west in Kinshasa, the entire belt in the Congo basin. That was a very significant announcement that he made, an ambition that he laid out, drawing on the success of a pilot that he did in the Virunga National Park, which is on the east side of Kiva. And that announcement is part of the Trillion Trees initiative that is supported within the Forum. With that announcement, Congo joins China, India, US, Mexico, Canada, Sahel region, Amazon in looking at how to better restore and protect landscapes.

Another very significant announcement we made was the achievement of the 25 by 25 objective under the Global Plastic Action Partnership. So at a new meeting, we announced 25 partnerships that have been signed with 25 countries around the world. And with this announcement, the Global Plastic Action Partnership that is supported by the Forum has become the largest multi-stakeholder anti-plastic pollution initiative globally. And we hope to work this platform to better address and combat the problem of plastic pollution.

Gayle Markovitz: And what do you think are the priorities for leaders in 2025, if we could name 2 or 3?

Gim Huay Neo: I think the priorities can be captured by two words, resilience and agility. How do they build business resiliency to address the current, very complex and uncertain environment while staying very nimble in the pathways that can actually help invest into an economy that can support jobs, growth, business profits, as well as environmental-people outcomes?

Robin Pomeroy: Gim Huay Neo. By the way, the acronym AM stands for Annual Meeting - so AM25 is the Davos meeting that just happened, in January 2025.

We were hearing there about the environment, but what about the urban environment? What were people in Davos saying about our cities?

Jeff Merritt, head of the Centre for Urban Transformation, World Economic Forum: Jeff Merritt, head of Urban Transformation at the World Economic Forum.

Robin Pomeroy: Annual Meeting 2025. How's it been for the world of urban transformation?

Jeff Merritt: Amazing. We're really entering a new era for cities. If you look at what's happening in the news, whether we're talking about what's happening in Los Angeles, humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Ukraine, cities are on the front line and cities are having to reimagine themselves for the future.

Robin Pomeroy: Are there specific wins you could point to from your Centre this year, and what can we expect from you in 2025?

Jeff Merritt: One of the big announcements this week was the launch of something called Yes/Cities . It's taking an effort that began in San Francisco, is now scaling globally, starting with a challenge in India this year. This is about really aligning our economic development goals with a more sustainable future anchored in startups and innovators.

We're going to be rolling out new challenges to attract world leading startups to work directly in locations starting in India this year, to really build robust coalitions, to accelerate investment, decrease the time of deployment so we can see our cities become greener, faster and grow our economies at the same time.

Robin Pomeroy: What should leaders prioritize in 2025?

Jeff Merritt: What we're seeing right now is extreme risk as a result of climate. Adaptation is really our number one goal right now. We need to move from being reactive to being more proactive.

Robin Pomeroy: Is there a buzz word or phrase that you just kept hearing in the corridors and in the meeting rooms here?

Jeff Merritt: What we're hearing this week is a real commitment to stay the course. Really double down. Build on our momentum and get things done.

Robin Pomeroy: Jeff Merritt.

If you were listening to Radio Davos in the week before Davos 2025, you will have heard two episodes about landmark reports published by the Forum's Centre for the New Economy and Society - the Chief Economists Outlook and the Global Risks Report. I urge you to check those out.

My colleague Gayle Markovitz caught up with the Centre's Sriram Gutta, who reeled off a list of other publications that were food for thought on the mountain.

Sriram Gutta, Head, Engagement and Operations, Centre for the New Economy and Society, World Economic Forum: My name is Sriram Gutta. I'm the head of Engagement and Operations at the Centre for the New Economy and Society within the World Economic Forum.

Gayle Markovitz: What were the key achievements of your centre in AM25?

Sriram Gutta: We started the week with the launch of the Chief Economists Outlook, and within the Future of Growth Initiative that we work on, we also launched the Economic Futures that looks at how human capital and technology are going to shape productivity over the next five years.

At the same time, we launched one of the accelerators on future of growth in Egypt and an action plan on how to unlock markets for tomorrow in Saudi Arabia.

On Reskilling Revolution, we have a target to educate and skill about a billion people by 2035. We have reached about 714 million as of now. So we are very proud of that as well. And we continue to work with more partners and more countries. With Bahrain being the latest partnership that we announced at this Annual Neeting.

Earlier this week, we also launched the Future of Jobs Report, and you would have seen it was widely quoted in different sessions, a lot of bilaterals, ministers and business leaders spoke about how AI and technology broadly would change the landscape of the jobs, the skills people would need in the mid to long term.

We are also very proud and especially so in the current context of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lighthouses paper that we launched which looks around the world. What are some of the best practices that that we can all learn from and what are companies around the world specifically doing to foster diversity, equity and inclusion?

I think another important milestone, and one that was widely spoken about, was the Global Risks Report. As you are aware, we are in an increasingly fractured world, right, with economic, social and technological transformations that affect all of us. So I think it was an important thought leadership piece that spurred a lot of conversation at this annual meeting and and a product or an insight report that still continues to generate a lot of interest among our constituents.

We also did a lot of work on the Equitable Transition Alliance, where we launched five policy guidelines, essentially urging governments that as they look at climate mitigation strategies, it's critical that they also consider economic equity.

These are the ones that that that immediately come to mind, but there's a lot more.

Gayle Markovitz: Was there a buzzword or a phrase that you kept hearing?

Sriram Gutta: When you look at the Risks and the Economic Outlook report, I think divergence was a common theme. Fragmentation kept coming up. I think AI and its impact on jobs and skills was also a buzzword.

Gayle Markovitz: And is there a key message on the economic outlook that you think came across all the sessions?

Sriram Gutta: There was a lot of optimism about the US economy, a lot of optimism in general about the Asian and Middle Eastern markets. They have a very young population, still growing at a reasonable rate. And I have to say a not so optimistic outlook on Europe. And I think there was still a lot of talk about the Draghi report, which came late last year. And how candid it was in identifying the issues as Europe faces, the decline in productivity, the lack of innovation.

Gayle Markovitz: What do you think leaders should prioritise in 2025?

Sriram Gutta: I mean, I hope leaders can prioritise leadership to start with, and I think the world can be a better place for that.

I think it's time we look beyond our nose and look into the horizon and then start thinking and acting in ways that are more focussed on the long term than policies or business actions that are too focused on on the current and the near future.

Robin Pomeroy: Sriram Gutta. And sticking with matters of the economy...

Matthew Blake, head of the Centre for Financial and Monetary Systems, World Economic Forum: My name is Matthew Blake. I head the Centre for Financial and Monetary Systems at the World Economic Forum.

It's been an exceptional Annual Meeting. We've had record participation among the financial services actors that we work with. These are big banks, insurers, asset managers, both in the traditional space and also alternatives, so hedge funds, private equity, private credit, and all of the financial infrastructure, payments, fintech.

So, you know, we're in such a privileged position there because we're able to get that entire ecosystem here to the Annual Meeting. And so many of these groups work with us throughout the year. So there's great continuity. And then, of course, you add on the public sector engagement that we have, central bankers, ministers of finance and academics. You know, as we're multi-stakeholder organization, we're multi-stakeholder Centre, too. And it's just an exceptional opportunity to discuss some of the core topics affecting the system.

Robin Pomeroy: Are there any particular wins for your Centre during the week?

Matthew Blake: So this week we were extremely active on one of our core topic areas and that is an aspect of work that looks at geopolitical tensions globally and how that manifests itself in the context of financial systems.

So in terms of a topic to bring to a forum like this, at this juncture in time, we could not have been more poignantly positioned.

Couple that with our work on technology, in particular AI, we also published an excellent report in conjunction with our AIGA Initiative - AI Governance Alliance. A really powerful piece on financial services. And then we're looking at other trends like longevity, people, demographic change. People are living longer. So how does that mean for the financial system? What does that mean for individuals' personal financial well-being?

So the compilation of these systemic issues and also issues that are specific to individuals that touch all of us have been front and centre and we've had tremendous engagement.

Robin Pomeroy: What do you envisage being important milestones in 2025?

Matthew Blake: On the 26th of March, we will host roughly 150 very senior executives for our first ever symposium, Centre for Financial and Monetary Systems Symposium on Financial Services for the Intelligent Age. And we have the great privilege and honour of being hosted by one of our strategic partners. That's the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. HKEX. And so we're going to do this convening with HKEX in Hong Kong.

And we will essentially bring all of the core thematics that the Centre covers across three domain areas, very quickly, sustainable finance and investing, tech and innovation and resilience. And then under that, there are a number of discrete activities that we're driving that tie up to those more macro themes.

And we're going to bring that full portfolio to Hong Kong and get some of our core communities and constituents together.

It's a critical time as it relates to the global economy. It's a critical time as it relates to the financial system. So we're really looking forward to that.

And then we will, as always, be active during the spring and fall meetings of the IMF and World Bank Group in Washington, D.C. We traditionally do work there. So the spring meetings, I believe, are in April, and October for the for the fall meetings. So we'll have a full on integrated agenda in those environments.

And then if this year's anything like last year, we did an aggregation of how many how many meetings we hosted. And Robin, we had like 100 sessions that our team of varying sizes put together over the course of 2024. So I anticipate a very busy 2025.

Robin Pomeroy: What is the one thing that leaders should prioritize in 2025?

Matthew Blake: You know, I think it's engagement. We we serve obviously, as an institution, as a tremendous platform to bring leaders together around the world. And I would argue that there are few, few but similar organizations these days that do it at the scale that we do it.

And I think in turbulent times and uncertain times, we really play a critical role there. And I think proactive engagement is going to be fundamental in this new environment.

You know, we reflect on what diplomacy looked like in the past, we may be entering into more of a dealmaker mindset there, right, in terms of how diplomacy is deployed, which will be interesting to monitor. It's also raising some fundamental questions.

And here we're sitting in Europe. But if you look at the core, Germany and France, their economies have been strained. And some really deep reflections on Draghi's report as of late last year, which laid out some reforms that the eurozone could take on, including the deepening of capital markets and banking integration in addressing things like securitization, these these sound like technical terms, but in reality, these are all elements that push toward greater integration, where, in a regional context, for instance, there's capital that's required. It's really necessary, at least the leaders here believe, to get those pieces to gel.

Robin Pomeroy: Matthew Blake.

Time to listen in on one of the hundreds of fascinating discussions in Davos this year. You can listen back to them, watch back, on our website. This particular one was called The Dawn of Artificial General Intelligence? With a question mark at the end

When will the machines become better at humans at all tasks? This is a clip featuring AI luminaries Andrew Ng and Yoshua Bengio in a session moderated by Nicholas Thompson of The Atlantic.

Nicholas Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, The Atlantic: So, Andrew, I'm going to start with you.

We've seen AI improve, improve, improve. Is there a limit? Is there a point at which it will stop improving? Some people say, well, it won't become as intelligent. It's been trained on human data, can't become more intelligent than human. Is there a fundamental limit to how smart this can get at solving problems?

Andrew Ng, Executive Chairman, LandingAI: I hope that we will reach AGI and ASI - superintelligence - someday, maybe within our lifetimes, maybe within the next few decades or hundreds of years. We'll see how long it takes.

Even AI has to obey the laws of physics. I think physics will place limitations, but I think the ceiling for how intelligent systems can get, and therefore what we can direct them to do for us, will be extremely high.

Nicholas Thompson: Joshua, you seem to have disagreement number one. Joshua.

Yoshua Bengio, Full Professor, University of Montreal: Yeah, we'll keep disagreeing. That's okay. Actually, a lot of people think it could be a lot shorter than centuries, as you're saying. Or even decades.

Nicholas Thompson: Twitter said it was today, but go on.

Yoshua Bengio: And in terms of ceiling, we don't know what the ceiling is. You know, your brain is a machine. It's a biological machine. And clearly, if you look at individual tasks, humans are far from the best. And we already have machines that are better than us in specific tasks.

The other thing is, even if we only have machines that have the same general kind of cognitive abilities, the thing is, machines are not, you know, working on soft biology, wetware, but on digital machines. That means, for example, that they can learn from a lot more data.

That is why, in spite of spite of being like collectively inferior to us, knows 200 languages and more knowledge than any single human. That is why you can have machines that can talk to each other. Orders of magnitude faster than we can to each other.

So the potential to, for example, in real time control machines and so on that we don't have is something that you would get even if we only achieved human level just because of all these digital capabilities.

Robin Pomeroy: Check out that session - and others on AI - on our website - link in the show notes. Talking of AI...

Cathy Li, Head, AI, Data and Metaverse, World Economic Forum: Cathy Li, head of AI, Data and Metaverse.

Robin Pomeroy: Give us some highlights of the week from your point of view.

Cathy Li: Last year we saw already was the start of, you know, using AI in the intelligent age. This year, we're seeing some real gains beyond, you know, incremental productivity and efficiency gains.

What I mean by that is with the AI Governance Alliance, which is a Forum initiative that we launched in June 2023, today we have over 460 organizations being part of this governance alliance community. That makes it one of the largest and most diverse AI stakeholder networks globally.

So we've been working with this community on, you know, many different thematic areas in AI. And one thing we find is the companies that are leading AI adoption reported 50% revenue growth from 2023 through 2026, and that number may even double in the coming years. So altogether, the revenue growth, the expected revenue growth, is translating into between 7.6 trillion to $17.9 trillion value to the global economy by 2032. So that's quite a staggering number.

And the overall AI investment also has been growing significantly. The earlier number we cited, from the IDC report is the AI related spending across industries is going to reach 630 billion by the end of the decade. But after the Trump administration's latest announcement announcement, I think we may have to revise that number.

So I think that real adoption in the industries is one of the most important trends we saw.

But at the same time, we're also seeing trends across, you know, the technology domain. Many, you know, people in the community have been talking about AI agents, what constitutes as agents, how do multi agents interact with each other, How do we design the protocol, How do we make sure it's safe and secure? How do we make sure it actually does the job that we want them to do?

So those work will continue. And it really comes through the discussions we had this week in Davos.

Governance has always been on top of mind for all the key stakeholders. And here the key is to promote regulatory interoperability.

And last but not least, one of the other key topics around AI this week in Davos is AI sovereignty. Many countries and governments have been talking about and promoting sovereignty. But the question we wanted to ask in today's environment is, is sovereignty feasible? Even if it is, is it desirable? And the answers really differ. Depends on who you ask. But we do believe that the sovereignty cannot really be achieved unless you are collaborating, collaborating across sectors, collaborating across countries and governments.

So in in in the context of AI sovereignty, the most feasible form of that will be achieved through regional collaboration, because, given the significant investment in AI upfront, we don't believe that many of the countries or regions will be able to own an entire value chain. And plus, you know, there are so many different enablers that supports a competitiveness, be around data availability and quality access to compute, infrastructure, talent, innovation.

It's a whole ecosystem that the countries and nations need to develop. And we think the only way to achieve that is through collaboration. And again, that's why we launched the AI Competitiveness through Regional Collaboration initiative on the back of AIGA this week.

Robin Pomeroy: And looking ahead to 2025, what are you expecting will be important for the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and for AI?

Cathy Li: We will continue to do the work we do, and particularly with the launch of the AI Competitiveness through Regional Collaboration. We we will start working with three priority regions, Africa, which will kick off with the Rwanda AI Summit in early April, really aiming to bring all the key stakeholders from the continent to talk about competitiveness in Africa in and really in the African context.

And for that conversation now to take place elsewhere. And then in the Middle East region, where we see particularly the importance of the infrastructure and how do we promote collaboration. And last but not least, in Asean also has a longstanding history of collaboration among countries, particularly when it comes to cross-border data free flow, e-commerce. We're hoping to do that in the AI context as well.

And I know that we talk about AI a lot, but I do want to emphasize the work that we also for the work that we just kicked off on digital public infrastructure, where AI might play a very important role in addition to the traditional deep AI, which has been defined by data exchange identity and the financial element of, the payments element of that.

And last but not least, we continue to do our very important work around digital safety. In this day and age we believe it's even more important that we stick to our value. We make sure that we tackle harmful content across, you know, the digital domain. And also, we need to double down on some of the applications of technology in, such as climate, science discovery and other important domains to make sure that we truly promote not just technology adoption, it needs to be done responsibly, sustainably and equitably.

Robin Pomeroy: Have you noticed any particular buzzwords or concepts that people keep telling each other during this meeting?

Cathy Li: In the scientific community, there's still quite a diversion in terms of AGI or ASI - artificial superintelligence. When is that going to happen? Is it ever going to happen? I think that's going to be very interesting to observe, coupled with the significant investment, we're talking about unprecedented investment into the technology. And that cost only make sense if there's a real breakthrough. And a lot of times it might mean that, you know, the companies and businesses, organizations that eventually will benefit the most will be the the kind of AI-first organization.

So that's going to be very interesting to observe. And the other one is AI sovereignty.

Robin Pomeroy: Is there one thing leaders should prioritize in 2025?

Cathy Li: Leaders should always prepare to stay ahead of what's going to come. I know that's very easy to say. Very difficult to to to achieve. What I mean by that is AI is a revolutionary technology in order to stay ahead it cannot be something that, you know, leaders let their teams experiment and and report back.

It is something that I've heard over and over again during the meeting this week that the CEOs and heads of organizations may even need to take a prompt engineering course to really understand how to impact the technologies throughout their processes, their strategy. And this is no longer an IT Strategy. I do think that is something that leaders should take seriously.

Robin Pomeroy: Cathy Li, head of AI at the Forum's Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Staying with tech, another Radio Davos episode in the runup to the Annual Meeting was about the Forum's Cybersecurity Outlook - a snapshot of the growing risk of cyber attacks and how we all need to defend ourselves. The subject was certainly on the agenda in Davos.

Akshay Joshi: My name is Akshay Joshi, and I'm the head of the Centre for Cybersecurity at the World Economic Forum.

Robin Pomeroy: Hi Akshay, and we met just a few days before the Annual Neeting, 2025. And we did a whole episode about the Cybersecurity Outlook, which was launched here. How was it received in Davos?

Akshay Joshi: You know, the cyber security outlook has really become a much anticipated report for leaders at the start of the year. And in Davos, there was really good reception for it.

I had lots of conversations with leaders who said that this report really helps set the tone for conversations at a senior leadership level within their organization. Also, certain folks from the public sector reported that this report has been shared with the highest levels of government in terms of, you know, what's the landscape on cybersecurity. So all in all, very, very positive reception. We also saw that a lot of leaders were actively referencing the report and the statistics in sessions during the course of the week. So extremely encouraging them.

Robin Pomeroy: What else stands out to you as a highlight for your Centre for Cybersecurity here in Davos?

Akshay Joshi: So something that we've been working on over the past year was conversations with the Global Cybersecurity Forum in Saudi Arabia for the launch of the Riyadh Centre for Cyber Economics. We concluded the agreement with the Saudi officials at Davos. And the Centre is quite unique.

If we look at cybersecurity, there is a clear economic dimension to cybersecurity, which you can explore in three lenses.

So the first is if there are disruptions to critical infrastructure and services in an economy where there is an impact on the economy as a whole.That's one point.

The second is cyber criminals starting to launch attacks and causing a lot of erosion of value. And lots of citizens are losing a lot of money. So there is a clear economic dimension there.

And finally, if we look at the positive economic impact, cybersecurity, as per the Future of Jobs Report, is the second fastest growing job after AI. So if are able to grow more cyber professionals and economies, it can really have very positive benefits.

So I think there's a clear case for the economics of cybersecurity, and we are hoping that the centre is really going to come out with some cutting edge insights that can help shape the narrative.

Robin Pomeroy: Have there been any catch phrases or notions that have come up and everyone's talking about you've noticed here.

Akshay Joshi: You know, last year through the Global Cybersecurity Outlook, we put the notion of cyber inequity at the fore. And really it's the gap between the haves and the have nots, right?

So you can look at it in three lenses, the first being the large organizations versus the small organizations, the developed markets that are more cyber mature versus the developing markets that are struggling. And finally, even within industries, there are certain sectors that are more mature versus others that do not have the resources to invest.

So cyber and equity was actually something that was widely discussed.

In addition to that, which is somewhat linked. But the resilience of the ecosystem as a whole and by extension the supply chain related risks were also top of mind for a lot of executives.

Robin Pomeroy: What should leaders prioritize in 2025?

Akshay Joshi: The Global Cybersecurity Outlook put a spotlight on growing complexity in cyberspace. It really highlights what are the various areas in which we are seeing growing complexity rather than focusing on the complexity as a whole in order to drive action, there needs to be a way by means of which you absorb the complexity, but yet move towards simplicity.

What are the concrete actions that you can take? We know for a fact that there is a paradox, why 66% of leaders say in the Global Cybersecurity Outlook expressed that AI can have the most positive impact on cyber security, just about 37% of them reported having proper processes in place.

So for starters, as we are trying to harness the potential of AI, we could possibly give more attention to how we are having right processes in place so that we also mitigate the risks from it.

There is a deficit of cybersecurity talent. What are some of the efforts we can take towards bridging that gap?

Supply chain, as I mentioned previously, is a top of mind concern. How do we ensure that we are working with all entities in our ecosystem to make sure that the resilience of the ecosystem as a whole is raised as opposed to just focusing on resilience alone?

So lots of work to be done, but very encouraging. And we look forward to working with the communities within the Centre for Cybersecurity.

Robin Pomeroy: That brings us to the tenth and last Forum Centre, and it's health.

Shyam Bishen: My name is Shyam Bishen. I'm head of the Centre for Health and Healthcare.

Robin Pomeroy: So how has this week, Annual Meeting 2025 been for health and healthcare.

Shyam Bishen: It's been very eventful. No sooner than we started on Monday, the new administration in the US, the Trump administration, announced withdrawal from WHO and froze most of the funding to global health. So that has impacted conversations here in Davos. That has impacted some of our sessions.

So definitely it's been a pretty eventful week so far and a lot of discussion in terms of how the global health community response to this new challenge that's coming out from the new administration and the US.

Robin Pomeroy: And what kind of responses were you hearing?

Shyam Bishen: How do we adjust? How do we make sure that, you know, other governments, other funders, philanthropies, private sector can fill that gap? How do we make sure that, you know, we go back to the US with the right request and with the right approach in terms of funding at least some of the programmes, continuing to fund at least some of the programmes, as they make their final decision.

Robin Pomeroy: So beyond that, the work of your Centre, what would you say the highlights of this been?

Shyam Bishen: We launched a new initiative on AMR - antimicrobial resistance - which is very much needed right now, that there's a lot of interest from both public and private sector. We are working with the governments. We are working with G20 countries. This was launched in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Italy. Many private sector organizations, Novo Nordisk, Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust and companies like Merck, MSD, they are all part of it. So we are very happy to see that finally this initiative was launched here in Davos.

We have also accomplished a few things in terms of signing new agreements. We have signed an agreement with the University in Singapore, National University of Singapore, where we will be looking at Singapore as a lighthouse for healthcare. And there are a lot of learnings in terms of how well Singapore has established health equity, how well they are making use of digital health technologies, how well they are using AI in healthcare, and then bring some of those learnings, some of those best practices to the rest of the world. So this is a new agreement that we accomplished this this week with the National University of Singapore School of Medicine.

Another agreement that we have executed here is with the minister of health from Nigeria, Dr. Muhammad Pate. This is on maternal health. We signed a letter of intent, LOI, with Dr Pate who is again the minister of Health in Nigeria to look at maternal health situation in Nigeria and how we can help through our Global Alliance for Women's Health initiative to improve the overall situation on the maternal health and child mortality side.

One last one is on the digital health side that we executed the agreement that we executed with UAE, where we would be establishing a digital health transformation network activator in UAE. What that means is that we will help establish an ecosystem in UAE with public and private collaboration that will look at scaling up digital technology, scaling up use of AI in healthcare, in the diagnostics area, in the delivery area . I think that it is much needed and we are starting out with such activators in UAE.

Robin Pomeroy: Are there things we should be looking out for in the next 12 months?

Shyam Bishen: Yes, absolutely.

We have some of these flagship initiatives that are ongoing. Whether it's Global Alliance for Women's Health, Digital Healthcare Transformation, it's Climate and Health initiative, in addition to other work, you know, whether it's on the pandemic preparedness, it's on the healthy workforce, it's on the nutrition side. All of this work will continue.

We are adding work, our initiative on AMR which will be new. And we will be building a coalition of partners and coalition of stakeholders on the AMR side as we move ahead.

Robin Pomeroy: Despite what has happened with the US and the World Health Organization, is there still optimism for collaboration?

Shyam Bishen: Absolutely. I think in spite of the news coming out of the US, we see that many of our stakeholders, whether it's from other governments, from public sector, from international organizations, from private sector, they all realize that we need to come together. We need to create these coalitions to tackle some of the big issues.

AMR is a huge issue. It's it kills close to 5 million people every year. If you look at direct and indirect impact of AMR. Directly, it kills over a million people every year. Indirectly, it's 5 million. That's a huge number and it will only grow to become 10 million if we don't do anything about this, by 2050. In terms of economic impact, it's trillions of dollars, tens of trillions of dollars, economic impact.

So these are huge issues.

We can say the same thing about climate and health. Big impact on human toll. Big impact on global economy. Everybody realizes here in Davos, through our sessions, through our private strategy, dialogues, multilateral discussions, that we cannot just stop. We must continue to move forward and find a way to also work with the US to try to come up with a counter response on these things.

Robin Pomeroy: What should leaders prioritize in 2025?

Shyam Bishen: Leaders need to prioritize public private partnership. I think most leaders realize that that this is a time to come and collaborate and partner with each other. It's not a time to pull back.

Robin Pomeroy: For a final reflection on the Annual Meeting 2025, my colleague Gayle Markovitz spoke to one more Forum managing director, Jeremy Jurgens.

Jeremy Jurgens: Jeremy Jurgens, managing director at the World Economic Forum.

Gayle Markovitz: Can you tell me what you think are the key achievements at AM25 this week?

Jeremy Jurgens: We had a number of key achievements.

I think first, we brought our community together at a critical time in the world. There's a number of economic tensions, geopolitical tensions, rapid pace of technological change, and a broader environmental crisis that's taking place.

So during this time, it's really important that we could bring people together, have them exchange, interact, disagree, but move towards finding concrete solutions to some of our shared challenges.

Some areas that stood out for me strictly was work that we made around decarbonisation. We have the industrial clusters programme here. We were able to expand the size of that and see more regions and cities coming in to contribute in that domain.

We also expanded our health activators network. We made an agreement with Nigeria where we actually looked to see how we can share and exchange best practices on improving women's health in various regions in countries.

And the third area is quite exciting is everything we're doing around AI. We saw, you know, strong interest in this area and we've had a number of commitments to actually promote AI for prosperity, growth and inclusion. And we'll be following this up with a summit for Africa in April and a number of other activities throughout the year. So these are just a few examples, but overall, it was just a super exciting week.

Gayle Markovitz: Is there a buzz word or phrase that you kept hearing?

Jeremy Jurgens: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the phrases that I heard coined by Professor Klaus Schwab, that I heard a lot of people repeating, was constructive optimism.

So we need to keep a positive view on the future, but it won't happen on its own. We actually need to work towards it and actually mobilise effort. And so I think the willingness of our participants to actually pick that up and say, okay, what can we do to actually work together to address some of these critical issues with a optimistic perspective, even recognising some of the risks and challenges - that was, you know, a kind of recurring theme throughout the meeting.

Gayle Markovitz: And are there any bright spots or areas of hope for 2025 that were coming through?

Jeremy Jurgens: I think there's a number of areas. I mean, we saw that there is quite some criticism at a superficial level around Europe. There's questions, there's challenges. But then when you look at the fundamentals, they're actually, you know, pretty significant, low debt relative to much of the world, inflation has been slowing down, strong skills and capabilities, and, you know, a lot of people appreciate European values. And so I think this is, you know, a bright spot here.

Again, these advances in technology and the ability to apply them in very concrete areas, making manufacturing systems more efficient. So using less energy, more optimisation, ability to improve agricultural yields through, again, digital services, reducing pesticide usage, chemical usage, water utilisation and actually then driving increased profits and revenues for farmers, particularly smallholder farmers around the world. I think this is quite significant there as well.

Gayle Markovitz: What are you hoping that leaders are going to prioritise in 2025?

Jeremy Jurgens: I think prioritising stability and, again, this kind of optimistic but constructive perspective. I hope that will stay at the forefront.

You know how each leader interprets that within their respective organisation will be quite different because there's such a diversity of leaders among our participants.

But, you know, I think keeping that positive attitude is probably most important in this willingness to exchange and cooperate and then act.

Robin Pomeroy: Jeremy Jurgens, ending our dash around the World Economic Forum for an overview of what just happened in Davos.

I spent my week in Davos in our podcast recording studio getting great interviews for upcoming episodes, as did my colleague Linda Lacina who hosts our sister podcast Meet the Leader. In fact. she’s already put out the first of those, an interview with the economist Gita Gopinath of the IMF - please check that out and follow all our podcasts, Radio Davos, Meet the Leader and Agenda Dialogues, wherever you get your podcasts and at wef.ch/podcasts.

And catch up on all the action from the Annual Meeting 2025 at wef.ch/wef25 and across social media using the hashtag #WEF25.

This episode of Radio Davos was written, presented and edited by me, Robin Pomeroy, with additional reporting by Gayle Markovitz. Studio production was by Taz Kelleher.

We will be back next week, but for now thanks to you for listening and goodbye.