The following sections provide an overview of key areas of the organization and significant highlights from 2023-2024.

The centre’s work covered a number of valuable areas during the reporting period, including several initiative launches, the work of the Global Lighthouse Network and progress on Scope 3 decarbonization activities.

This breadth of work is reflected in the centre’s vision of a world where manufacturing and supply chains are the engine for societal, economic and environmental prosperity.

To support this vision, the centre aims to accelerate responsible industry transformation in manufacturing and supply chains by bringing together a global multistakeholder community to exchange best practices, develop new insights and scale up cross-industry collaborations.

The centre has four priorities, namely:

The centre supported the launch of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Viet Nam as part of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network. The new centre is engaging the national manufacturing ecosystem to accelerate the transition towards advanced manufacturing through a series of local, national and international projects and activities. It contributes to strengthening the competitiveness of the country’s manufacturing sector while supporting the global discussion on the future of production.

Another key project for the centre was its support for the launch and scaling up of the International Centre for Industrial Transformation. This not-for-profit provides global benchmarking tools, such as the Smart Industry Readiness Index and Consumer Sustainability Industry Readiness Index, to assess the technology, sustainability and resiliency maturity of industrial operations and helps inform investment and policy decisions.

The centre’s independent expert panel of more than 25 industry and academic experts selected the next cohort of the Global Lighthouse Network, expanding it to 153 sites around the globe. These 21 additions demonstrate the transformative power of manufacturing and supply chain innovations, such as AI, deployed at scale for operational and sustainability gains. They are committed to sharing their findings and best practices, helping the whole ecosystem excel in the industrial transformation journey.

Finally, the centre’s Industry Net Zero Accelerator Initiative supported action on Scope 3 decarbonization for manufacturing and supply chains by releasing a new framework: The “No-Excuse” Opportunities to Tackle Scope 3 Emissions in Manufacturing and Value Chains. It unveiled 12 opportunities and best practices for business and government to accelerate their Scope 3 decarbonization journey, supported by case studies.

The centre’s vision is to protect, restore and regenerate the global commons – the Earth’s shared natural resources. Its mission is to build knowledge and share insights, engage diverse stakeholders in co-creating solutions and catalyse bold, action-oriented partnerships for climate and nature.

The centre’s three main thrusts are:

In the past year, the centre brought the latest thinking on decarbonization, nature-positive and resource stewardship to promote thought leadership through the curation of more than 100 event sessions.

It continued to host the Chief Sustainability Leaders Community – 155 leaders from global companies encompassing 24 industries and 38 countries who connect, learn, lead and collaborate to expedite corporate transformation towards sustainable organizations.

To strengthen the nexus between science, business and policy, the centre launched the Earth Decides community, a group of almost 40 global experts and influencers seeking to innovate their communication and collaboration about nature and climate thematic tracks.

The philanthropy initiative, Giving to Amplify Earth Action (GAEA), grew to more than 100 endorsers, including philanthropies, academic institutions, companies and public-sector organizations. GAEA’s co-chairs for the period were H.M. Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Ray Dalio, Founder and Chief Investment Officer Mentor of Bridgewater, and Klaus Schwab.

The centre led the Forum’s partnership with the United Arab Emirates Presidency at COP28. This included hosting 17 sessions with more than 700 participants (270 of whom were chief executive officer-level).

As part of COP28 engagement efforts, the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders published an open letter to world leaders, highlighting the actions and interventions critical for a net-zero future. The alliance also launched a Scope 3 action plan as a framework for businesses to tackle upstream Scope 3 emissions.

At COP28, the Forum also launched the First Movers Coalition for Food, seeking to create aggregated market demand for sustainably produced and low-emission agricultural commodities. Support from the United Arab Emirates and 20 leading food companies was secured.

During the reporting period, the First Movers Coalition for Industry launched a First Suppliers Hub – a global repository of innovative and emerging products needed to decarbonize the world by 2050. In tandem, the Airports of Tomorrow initiative was launched to convene aviation stakeholders towards the industry’s 2050 net-zero goal.

1t.org reached the milestone of having more than 100 companies committing pledges. This equates to over 12 billion trees pledged in more than 100 countries to support livelihoods and terrestrial and coastal ecosystem conservation and restoration.

On plastics, the Global Plastic Action Partnership continued to scale up its efforts to translate plastic pollution commitments into action, with more than 15 national and local partnerships scaling efforts. The centre also supported the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in developing an international, legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.

Anticipating and addressing tomorrow’s cybersecurity challenges is a constant endeavour. The centre used its annual Global Cybersecurity Outlook to reiterate leaders’ concerns about a lack of skilled cybersecurity personnel and widening cyber inequity amid a rapidly evolving geopolitical and technological landscape.

This underscores the centre’s vision to support every individual and organization so that they can securely benefit from continuing digital and technological progress. It also requires the centre to pursue programming that supports greater cyber resilience.

Reflecting this, its mission is to provide an independent and impartial platform to reinforce the importance of cybersecurity as a strategic imperative and drive global public-private action to address systemic cybersecurity challenges.

Through its work, the centre reinforces the importance of cybersecurity as a strategic priority for all organizations, focusing on three areas:

Highlights during the reporting period included the centre’s Annual Meeting on Cybersecurity. Under the theme, “Securing Cyberspace for a World in Transition”, the meeting convened more than 150 cybersecurity leaders at the Forum’s headquarters in Geneva. With sessions on cyber resilience, cybercrime, cybersecurity talent and the impact of emerging technologies on the cybersecurity landscape, the meeting was instrumental in strengthening support for the centre’s ongoing initiatives.

More than 250 senior leaders were surveyed for the Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2024, produced in collaboration with Accenture. The report examined the cybersecurity trends expected to affect economies and societies in the coming year, illuminated major findings, and highlighted widening cyber inequity and the profound impact of emerging technologies.

As part of its work to address the growing demand for a skilled cybersecurity workforce, the centre developed the Bridging the Cyber Skills Gap initiative. Bringing together more than 50 public and private organizations, the initiative developed a Strategic Cybersecurity Talent Framework featuring actionable approaches to help organizations build sustainable talent pipelines.

Alongside this, the centre focused on strengthening cyber resilience in manufacturing, which is the sector most targeted by cybercriminals globally. This involved working with more than 30 cybersecurity leaders, and in May 2024, the Building a Culture of Cyber Resilience in Manufacturing playbook was published. It outlines three guiding principles to support manufacturing and supply chain leaders in establishing a cyber resilience culture throughout their organizations.

The centre collaborated with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on the issue of quantum security. Seeking a collaborative and globally harmonized approach to the issue, the centre brought together a community comprising global regulators from the financial sector and the foremost quantum leaders to inform regulatory approaches and guidance in anticipation of the quantum era.

Finally, in what proved to be a busy reporting period, the centre convened leaders for the launch of the inaugural Global Conference on Cyber Capacity Building in Accra, Ghana. This initiative was pursued in collaboration with the CyberPeace Institute, the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise and the World Bank.

Accelerating a sustainable, equitable and secure energy transition remains a priority on the global agenda and drives the centre’s vision. The centre serves as the multistakeholder and cross-industry platform that enables the development of new leadership coalitions and the delivery of cutting-edge insights required for a balanced energy future, locally and globally.

The centre’s priorities for the reporting period were five-fold and included:

The centre addressed these priority areas through its action-oriented initiatives during the reporting period. It worked to mobilize investment for clean energy in emerging economies by convening public- and private-sector stakeholders, who were tasked with identifying challenges and solutions to unlock clean energy finance for these markets. The centre’s initiative on transitioning industrial clusters worked to improve cooperation among co-located companies and governments to drive economic growth, employment and the energy transition. It also supported the rapid and responsible deployment of clean power by enabling the swift expansion of renewable capacity and grid infrastructure while embedding better community engagement and nature-positive practices.

This work has involved multiple stakeholders. Key collaborators included about 250 partner companies, the energy and mining ministries of the governments of Brazil, Colombia, the European Commission, Indonesia, Morocco and the United States Department of Energy.

The centre launched the Network to Mobilize Investment for Clean Energy in the Global South. Comprising more than 45 government ministers and chief executive officers, the network offers a platform for developing economies to raise awareness about their clean energy finance needs, share best practices and sustainably accelerate their energy transitions. This will help unlock the estimated $2.2-2.8 trillion needed for the energy transition.

During the reporting period, four new clusters – from China, France, Thailand and the US – joined the centre’s Transitioning Industrial Clusters initiative. This has engaged 21 clusters in 11 countries on four continents. The aim is to drive economic growth, job creation and the energy transition, representing $370 billion in GDP contribution and both protecting and creating 3.8 million jobs.

The centre’s Fostering Effective Energy Transition 2024 report, which has benchmarked 120 countries for 14 years on their current energy system performance and the readiness of their enabling environment through the Energy Transition Index (ETI), revealed growing uncertainties are impeding energy transition momentum, despite record ETI scores.

In collaboration with the International Business Council, the centre published the Transforming Energy Demand report, which detailed practical steps that can be taken in buildings, industry and transport to reduce energy use by 31%. This would create a potential annual savings of at least $2 trillion for the global economy.

Meanwhile, the Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition report outlined 10 key risk management strategies designed to secure critical minerals crucial for the ongoing energy transition. Priority actions included accelerating public-private collaboration, supporting investment mobilization and accelerating innovation.

Introducing a “people-positive” approach to clean power deployment, the Better Community Engagement for a Just Energy Transition: A C-Suite Guide was designed to spark conversation on community engagement at the executive level.

Incubated at the Forum, the chief executive officer-led effort to decarbonize the chemical industry by pooling efforts and expertise across the sector relaunched as the Global Impact Coalition.

Finally, the Building Trust through an Equitable and Inclusive Energy Transition report provided a framework and 10 questions designed to build trust, encourage collaboration and guide policy-makers and business leaders in the energy sector towards advancing a just, equitable and inclusive energy transition.

Today’s global financial system faces significant uncertainty as central banks remain vigilant in their fight against inflation. Geopolitical tensions and climate stress continue to exert pressure on system actors while new technologies reshape the competitive landscape.

The centre’s vision is to design and develop a financial system that effectively allocates capital and investment to support the planet, people and communities. It provides an independent and impartial platform to design a more sustainable, resilient, trusted and accessible financial system, reinforcing long-term value creation and economic growth.

Its priorities are three-fold and include:

With forecasts that the global population over the age of 65 will more than double between 2020 and 2050, the centre’s Longevity Economy initiative developed a set of Longevity Economy Principles to help address the financial and social challenges of this demographic transition. These principles offer practical solutions for companies and policy-makers to implement as they contend with these changes and showcase opportunities for public-private collaboration.

To date, more than 20 organizations have committed to taking tangible action in alignment with these principles. Actions include innovation in investment vehicle design to meet evolving needs driven by longer lifespans, broadening access to financial education, enhancing skill-building for a multigenerational workforce and intentionally addressing longevity disparities based on socioeconomic factors.

As the fintech sector emerged from pandemic growth tailwinds, The Future of Global Fintech: Towards Resilient and Inclusive Growth report provided cutting-edge data on the sector’s current health and the latest trends throughout the sector. Engaging more than 200 fintech companies, this research showed continued growth for fintechs with customer growth rates above 50%. This publication also provided detailed analyses of fintech trends in five retail-facing industry verticals and six regions.

The centre continued to develop its C-suite communities of peers. The Women in Finance Community, consisting of more than 70 global chief executive officers and other business leaders from banking, insurance, investing and real estate, addressed shifting industry priorities and responsible business leadership. The centre’s cross-cutting Chief Financial Officer Community also expanded to more than 80 chief financial officers, with members from multiple industries including energy, technology and banking. The group addressed topics ranging from macroeconomic trends to investing in AI and sustainability reporting.

Achieving a net-zero economy will require $100 trillion dollars in new investment. The centre’s sustainable finance initiatives worked with more than 80 financial institutions and more than 10 governments to tackle climate and nature financing and accelerate capital mobilization towards breakthrough global clean energy technologies. The Financing the Transition to a Net-Zero Future and FMC Finance Pillar initiatives analysed how public policy, finance and market demand signals can help close financing gaps for climate initiatives in developed and emerging economies.

As the trend of market democratization and the rise of retail investors continues, the Future of Capital Markets initiative furthered last year’s Retail Investing Survey in the Broadening Access to Private Markets white paper, which explored ways individuals can gain improved investment access in private markets. The initiative consists of more than 50 representatives of financial services, members of the regulatory community and members of civil society. The latest white paper addressed opportunities for returns and diversification, risks and unintended consequences, as well as the market architecture changes required to enable broadened access responsibly.

Analysis suggests geopolitical fragmentation could reduce global economic output by as much as 7% over time, suggesting that finance leaders must now grapple with the impacts this may have on the financial system. The Navigating Global Financial System Fragmentation initiative engaged more than 50 chief executives, chairpersons and public-sector finance leaders to define a set of norms, rules and principles required to safeguard the integrity of the global financial system and prevent its weaponization during a period of rising geopolitical complexity.

Uniting more than 242 partners and 102 innovators, alongside stakeholders from government, civil society and academia, the centre and its global network of independent national and thematic affiliate centres have a mission to understand exponential technologies and advance their responsible adoption and application.

In a rapidly evolving technological landscape, exemplified by AI’s fast growth, forecasting technological trends and empowering organizations to maximize benefits while minimizing risks is crucial for the public and private sectors.

The centre is dedicated to creating communities, facilitating interactions and spearheading solution-oriented initiatives. Its priorities include:

The reporting period saw the establishment and growth of the AI Governance Alliance (AIGA). Uniting more than 340 members and recognizing the need for robust AI frameworks, AIGA promotes transparency and inclusivity through collaboration between government, industry, academia and civil society. At the Annual Meeting 2024, AIGA’s three working groups published briefing papers addressing AI development, transformation and governance.

AI’s exponential growth underlines the importance of digital inclusion. The EDISON Alliance, a coalition of more than 160 leaders aiming to bridge the digital divide for one billion people by 2025, announced in January 2024 that its 320 initiatives in 127 countries had reached nearly 800 million people. This was partly through a growing network of 10 Lighthouse countries and extensive online content.

AI development prioritizing human needs and societal good relies on digital trust and safety. This year, the Digital Trust Initiative introduced the concept of individual-agency-by-design for technological transparency, privacy and redressability in the report Digital Trust: Supporting Individual Agency. The initiative expanded its influence by collaborating with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to integrate digital trust into global technical standards.

The Global Coalition for Digital Safety, comprising 50 members, released several reports: Global Principles on Digital Safety, Digital Safety Risk Assessment in Action and Toolkit for Digital Safety Design Interventions and Innovations: Typology of Online Harms. It also tackled disinformation through a new media literacy workstream, convening a community to address the issue. The Defining and Building the Metaverse Initiative expanded its vision for a body of work addressing the future of the internet through a series of white papers on Privacy and Safety, Interoperability, Social Implications, Metaverse Identity, as well as the Industrial Metaverse and the Consumer Metaverse.

Tackling global challenges with technology remained a priority. A global community of more than 40 industry, climate and technology leaders was launched to assess Earth observation (EO) technology’s transformative potential. Its report, Amplifying the Global Value of Earth Observation, underscores EO’s capacity to contribute $3.8 trillion to the global economy by 2030 while reducing two gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually.

Additionally, a global climate-tech task force led by the centre identified six key data-driven technologies for climate adaptation. The report Innovation and Adaptation in the Climate Crisis: Technology for the New Normal and an action toolkit offer guidance on using these technologies effectively to better prepare for and react to the effects of climate change.

AI for Agricultural Innovation (AI4AI), an initiative involving more than 80 collaborators, including the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Saudi Arabia, is using Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies and partnerships to transform agriculture. Focusing on value chain transformation, digital infrastructure and agritech (agricultural technology) sandboxes, a pilot in Telangana used toolkits, frameworks and data exchanges to boost profits by $800/acre, expanding AI4AI to benefit 500,000 farmers. Telangana also launched India’s first Agriculture Data Exchange, which operates in three states.

The centre continued delving deeper into frontier technologies like extended reality (the metaverse), autonomous systems, the bioeconomy, and the quantum and space economies.

Launched in 2023, the Bioeconomy Initiative produced its first report in 2024, titled Accelerating the Tech-Driven Bioeconomy, which focused on overcoming barriers to responsibly mainstreaming biotechnologies. The Quantum Economy Network launched the Quantum Economy Blueprint, guiding countries on their journey towards becoming a quantum economy, and the Saudi Arabia centre became the first in the network to initiate the Quantum Economy Project.

The Quantum Economy Network also launched the Quantum Security for the Financial Sector: Informing Global Regulatory Approaches report to ensure a collaborative and globally harmonized approach to quantum security.

The Future of Space Economy community published the Space: The $1.8 Trillion Opportunity for Global Economic Growth report, projecting the space economy to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2035 and highlighting that space’s impact is expanding rapidly beyond space itself. The community also initiated national dialogues in India and Japan.

The automotive data and software market volume in 2035 is expected to be valued at up to $1 trillion. The Automotive in the Software-Driven Era community, part of the DRIVE-A: Vehicle Autonomy initiative, addressed this transformation in the Unlocking Safety and Innovation in Vehicle Software briefing paper.

The centre’s global reach expanded in the reporting period. In Germany and Ukraine, centres launched to focus on government technologies, while in Qatar and Viet Nam, new centres will focus on advanced manufacturing and digital trade. In Saudi Arabia, the first thematic centre on space – the Centre for Space Futures – was announced.

Meanwhile, the existing network published its first impact report, showcasing more than 100 initiatives and 40 pilot projects involving more than 400 collaborators. The network’s focus on responsible technology is driving positive change from food agriculture in Colombia to health data protection in Serbia, smart manufacturing in Saudi Arabia and Rwanda’s AI policy.

Persisting inequities, growing barriers to innovation in healthcare and looming global health risks such as climate change pose existential threats to global society. Reflecting this, the centre has focused on areas such as digital healthcare transformation, women’s health, nutrition, healthy workforces, health equity, antimicrobial resistance, climate and health, and pandemic response systems during the reporting period.

This approach underscores the centre’s overall vision of a world where every person has equal access to the highest standards of health and healthcare. To achieve this, it seeks to identify and scale up solutions for more resilient, efficient and equitable healthcare systems. It also encourages collaboration to allow government and business to use Fourth Industrial Revolution developments to improve the state of health and healthcare globally.

The centre’s work focuses on three priorities:

As part of these priorities, the centre focused on strengthening its collaboration with the world’s biggest employers to encourage a more productive, resilient, healthy global workforce by prioritizing physical and mental health in the workplace. Resilience was at the core of its work on nutrition, bringing together partners and disruptors to shape solutions that elevate nutrition’s importance and thus launching the report Transforming the Global Food System for Human Health and Resilience.

This thematically aligns with its work on global health equity and the network dedicated to mobilizing executive leadership commitment and accelerating cross-industry partnerships and investment in this vital issue. To date, the Zero Health Gaps Pledge has been signed by over 100 global business and public sector leaders and is now venturing into the activation phase, including areas such as oral health and community-based partnerships.

It continued to collaborate with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US National Academy of Medicine, among others.

The centre also pursued collaboration with the governments of Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, the US and Zambia and entered into talks with the governments of Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the UK and the United Arab Emirates.

Among the centre’s most high-profile work during the period was its launch of the Global Alliance for Women’s Health at the Annual Meeting 2024. The alliance strives to close the women’s health gap by unlocking investment and encouraging innovation in women’s health.

At the same meeting, the centre launched the Digital Healthcare Transformation Initiative – a vehicle towards global value-driven health system transformation. This initiative is a global effort to shape holistic AI and data-enabled solutions to improve outcomes, access and efficiency in healthcare.

The centre participated in the first Health Day of COP28, convening the Preparing for the Health Impacts of Climate Change session. Addressing the impact of climate change on health and advancing adaptation and preparedness strategies is one of the highest priorities for the global community as well as for the centre.

Through its collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, the centre secured leadership and resources to scale up impact for its climate and health, healthy workforces and women’s health initiatives. The centre also deepened its collaboration with leading healthcare organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, Bayer, Mayo Clinic, Philips, Moderna, Apollo Hospital, Medtronic and others, strengthening the collaboration between the public and the private sectors.

Similarly, it worked to strengthen its collaboration with the G20 presidency through its participation in G20 Health Ministers’ meetings and by co-hosting sessions with the G20 health working group for both the India (2023) and Brazil (2024) presidencies. The centre’s Regionalized Vaccine Manufacturing Collaborative was highlighted in Japan’s 2023 G7 health task report, which highlights the centre’s efforts to harness public-private collaboration to help rebalance global vaccine manufacturing capacity and support cross-sectoral networks to enhance outbreak monitoring.

The growth models of the last three decades have raised living standards and lifted more than one billion people out of poverty. Yet there are new headwinds as well as new opportunities to restore economic growth and mobilize opportunity for all. This can be achieved through investments in human capital development and good jobs, deploying technology in the service of equity and social mobility, and monitoring and better managing risks. The centre’s vision is to support leaders in building prosperous, resilient and inclusive economies and societies that create opportunities for all.

The centre enables leaders across business, government and civil society to understand, shape and navigate a new social and economic context through insights, action and dialogues across three overarching priorities:

Over 2023-2024, the centre worked with almost 200 business partners, more than 40 governments, 13 international organizations, and more than 60 academic, civil society and philanthropic organizations.

The centre also hosts the institutional team responsible for embedding experts, universities, think tanks and the Network of Global Future Councils, which in 2023-2024 includes 30 thematic councils engaged across the Forum’s 10 centres.

In the centre’s work around economic growth, The Future of Growth Report 2024, launched at the Annual Meeting 2024, introduced a new, multidimensional framework to assess the quality of economic growth in 107 countries based on four key dimensions: innovativeness, inclusiveness, sustainability and resilience. More broadly, the Future of Growth Initiative expanded its multi-year work, led by the Future of Growth Consortium, through the development of a new accelerator model with preparations under way to work with selected pilot economies.

The centre offered short-term economic analysis through the publication of three editions of the Chief Economists Outlook. It also initiated a collaboration to produce regular scenario outlooks on the global economy in the coming year.

In the centre’s work around risks identification and preparedness amid rapidly accelerating technological change and economic uncertainty, the Global Risks Report 2024 highlighted the top economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological short- and long-term risks, and identified opportunities for action to address them in a fragmented world. The Chief Risk Officers Community and the Risks Consortium considered frameworks for preparedness at the enterprise, national and global level.

In the centre’s work around talent and human capital, through its champions’ continued action and engagement and their growing number of commitments, the Reskilling Revolution initiative reached nearly 700 million people four years into a decade-long initiative. A new set of Skills-First Lighthouses was launched, and the centre also published Shaping the Future of Learning: The Role of AI in Education 4.0, exploring the potential for AI to benefit educators, students and teachers. Latvia, Qatar and Viet Nam joined the centre’s Accelerators Network engaging countries to accelerate skills development for the jobs of tomorrow and education innovation. The Education Industry community was also launched in 2023. It brings together organizations from education technology, learning-focused consumer companies and publishing to advance industry thought leadership.

As part of the Jobs Initiative, Jobs Consortium members endorsed the development of Lighthouses of generative AI-driven job transitions in 2024. The initiative also published a white paper, Jobs of Tomorrow: Large Language Models and Jobs, on large language models and a framework, Realizing the Potential of Global Digital Jobs, for governments and employers to expand global digital workforce jobs. The Good Work Alliance continued to coalesce industry leaders to improve the working conditions of more than 2.5 million workers. Jobs Accelerators were launched in Guatemala, Morocco and the Philippines to support job transitions into the jobs of tomorrow and job-creating investments, while the Refugee Employment Alliance member entities have hired more than 54,000 refugees worldwide.

In the centre’s work around equity and inclusion, in its annual benchmark of gender parity gaps in economic participation, education, health and political empowerment, the Global Gender Gap Report 2024 examined longstanding and new metrics on gendered workforce outcomes. The Gender Parity Sprint was launched, aiming to provide 100 million women with access to better economic opportunities by 2030, complemented by the localized work of 15 national gender parity accelerators. The centre also made the case for multistakeholder collaboration and investment in The Future of the Care Economy white paper.

The Equitable Transition Initiative aims to address equity challenges throughout sectoral and geographical green transitions. It provided an initial set of tools to help governments and businesses maximize economic equity opportunities and minimize economic equity risks of the green transition.

The centre identifies and operationalizes mechanisms for greater regional and global cooperation within today’s challenging geopolitical context. It achieves this by partnering with governments, business, civil society groups and international organizations to prepare global dialogues, deliver insights and convene communities that develop and deliver cooperative solutions to issues of global concern.

The centre’s work primarily focuses on three areas:

The centre also acts as the point of contact for governments, international organizations and civil society, and works to collaborate with and engage public figures throughout the Forum’s initiatives and summits year-round.

In January 2024, the centre launched the inaugural edition of The Global Cooperation Barometer to help stakeholders better understand the state of global cooperation. The barometer measures cooperation in five areas: trade and capital flows, climate and nature, innovation and technology, health and wellness, and peace and security.

At the Special Meeting on Global Collaboration, Growth and Energy for Development 2024 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, global leaders and experts worked to chart a course towards a more stable, sustainable and inclusive future.

As part of the Forum’s work to harness the power of the private sector to develop routes towards a more secure future, the centre brought together more than 70 global chief executive officers as “CEOs for Ukraine”, a group seeking to define an effective role for global private- and public-sector leaders to support the country’s economy. The discussion included President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Vice-Chancellor of Germany Robert Habeck and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. This followed the National Security Advisors (NSA) meeting for Ukraine, facilitated by the Forum and hosted by the Swiss government, which brought together 80 national security advisers at the Annual Meeting in Davos to discuss Zelenskyy’s peace proposals.

The centre also continued its work advancing reconciliation efforts in Europe through its Western Balkans Diplomacy Dialogue, which convened leaders from the region and included von der Leyen.

The centre convened special meetings in support of the Partnership for Central America – an initiative led by US Vice-President Kamala Harris to address the causes of migration by advancing economic opportunities and environmental resilience in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The Humanitarian and Resilience Investing Initiative launched a call to action with 60 organizations to steer $10 billion in capital to 1,000 businesses in frontier markets by 2030. By January 2024, partners had submitted financial commitments totalling $5.6 billion.

On climate action, the centre convened three regional communities to encourage greater public-private collaboration at the regional level. Ahead of COP28, Leaders for a Sustainable Middle East and North Africa published three reports delivering roadmaps for industry decarbonization efforts. The Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders India launched three insight reports about decarbonizing supply chains, the green hydrogen economy and afforestation. Meanwhile, the CEO Action Group for the European Green Deal continued to support the continent’s transition efforts.

On technology, the Forum, with support from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Korea Cooperation Fund (the AKCF), launched its ASEAN Digital Economy Agreement Leadership (DEAL) project to support ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) negotiations in collaboration with the ASEAN secretariat and ASEAN member states.

On trade, the Forum Friends of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which brings together leaders in support of the implementation of Africa’s landmark trade agreement, launched AfCFTA’s first private-sector action plan, which included commitments from 25 partner companies.

The centre’s International Trade and Investment workstream, comprising more than 10 initiatives, continued its work in geopolitics, governance and resilience, easing trade and investment, and global sustainability and inclusion. It held the inaugural TradeTech Summit alongside the World Trade Organization’s 13th Ministerial Conference. This initiative, in partnership with the United Arab Emirates, aims to revolutionize global trade by leveraging cutting-edge technologies.

Amid rising geopolitical tensions, cities and local communities have become a vital testing ground for public-private collaboration and an essential means for scaling up impact. The centre’s mission is to catalyse and accelerate global progress and build a more prosperous future through collective action in cities and local communities. To this end, the centre mobilizes public- and private-sector leaders to commit expertise and resources to invigorate local economies, improve quality of life and make communities more resilient.

Cities are home to a growing majority of the world’s population and generate more than 80% of global GDP. As such, they serve as essential incubators and testbeds for new solutions and the businesses of tomorrow.

Through coalition-building, cross-sector coordination and year-round activities in more than 130 cities worldwide, the centre provides an essential platform for our partners to translate global ambitions into specific action and progress.

The centre’s work focuses on three priorities:

The centre launched a series of global efforts to accelerate progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals with an emphasis on four areas: supporting the growth of local economies and innovation ecosystems; promoting nature-positive models for urban development; reducing carbon emissions in transport and the built environment; and advancing a holistic approach to community planning and reconstruction.

The centre convened leaders from 26 innovation districts throughout the globe, together with business executives, government officials and experts representing more than 25 countries to launch the Alliance for Urban Innovation, as part of the Urban Transformation Summit 2023.

San Francisco is providing the first test case for how the centre can drive investment into local innovation ecosystems. The Yes San Francisco (Yes SF) Urban Sustainability Challenge announced its first cohort of Top Innovators in December 2023.

The centre also established the Global Commission on Nature-Positive Cities in late 2023 and published guidelines on Biodiversity Day 2024 to support cities in rehabilitating and reintroducing nature. In honour of Earth Day, the centre released a report, model policy, city playbook and practitioners guide aimed at reducing carbon emissions in construction and the built environment. This work was complemented by in-person workshops with city leaders and private-sector experts in Los Angeles, San Diego and Toronto.

At the Annual Meeting 2024, retail, e-commerce and logistics companies joined forces with the Global New Mobility Coalition and Alliance for Clean Air to kick off a global effort to reduce the physical footprint and environmental impact of urban deliveries. In conjunction with this effort, the centre released a new toolkit to accelerate the development of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.

The Davos Baukultur Alliance underwent a period of rapid expansion in 2023-2024, adding new member organizations, businesses and governments from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Alliance members pledged to support the Government of Ukraine in ensuring a holistic approach to reconstruction, announcing new commitments to construct sustainable and high-quality homes for orphans of the ongoing conflict.

Members of the Global Future Council on Cities also called for action to address the urban affordability crisis, releasing a collection of insights and tangible actions that business, the public sector and civil society leaders can pursue to help create more inclusive and liveable cities.

The centres convene diverse groups intending to share knowledge, accelerate action and spark innovation and ideas to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges. The following list describes our multistakeholder initiatives, insights and communities that are currently operating to effect change.

Future-Proofing Global Value Chains: Explores trends, opportunities and best practices to inform global value chain reconfiguration, next-generation industrial strategies and policies, and drivers of country-level competitiveness and readiness.

Global Lighthouse Network: Recognizes the world’s top-performing production ecosystems. The largest global network of cross-industry digital transformation best practices delivering notable improvements and impact in productivity, sustainability and workforce engagement. The network hosts a year-round shared learning journey, offering more than 700 scalable use cases and exclusive site visits.

Frontier Tech for Operations: AI and Beyond: Explores the transformative potential and interplay of frontier technologies, deriving a vision for the technology landscape in 2030 with implications for end-to-end operations and innovative business models.

Frontline Talent of the Future: Advances societal and economic outcomes by leveraging solutions for attraction, skilling, and retention, and informing decision-making on how to deploy technology in an effective and human-centric way. Unlocks a new narrative for the industries of making and moving products through collaboration with the entire value chain.

Industry Net-Zero Accelerator: Demystifies industrial net-zero transformations and informs decision-making for the private and public sectors using community-driven new frameworks on industry net zero to reduce Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. Pursues knowledge sharing through more than 70 use cases and scale-up of innovative initiatives to support learning, reapplication and collaboration on the most complex challenges of net zero for companies of all sizes.

Circular Transformation of Industries: Enables a growing, resilient and sustainable economy through the adoption of circularity at scale. Provides a repository of innovative cross-industry use cases of circular operating and business models and incubates new partnerships to drive circular production (in collaboration with the Centre for Nature and Climate).

US Center for Advanced Manufacturing: A public-private partnering platform committed to accelerating manufacturing growth in the US. Scaling projects, communities and impact designed to fortify US manufacturing and make it more innovative, sustainable and inclusive (in collaboration with the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution).

Chief Operating, Supply Chain and Procurement Officers: Officers from across over 15 industries collaborate to anticipate the latest trends, advance the transformation of manufacturing and supply chain systems, and support suppliers, including SMEs, in the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies to realize global goals of growth, sustainability and resilience.

Global Future Council on Advanced Manufacturing and Value Chains: A brain trust of leaders offering insights on the most critical industrial issues and trends to shape and advance the centre’s agenda, vision and mission, as well as map potential future scenarios for global value chain reconfigurations in 2030, 2040 and 2050.

Cyber Resilience in Industries: Develops collaborative approaches to enhance cyber resilience by creating a cross-industry Cyber Resilience Blueprint and industry deep-dives in the electricity, manufacturing, transport, and oil and gas ecosystems.

Partnership Against Cybercrime: Amplifies public-private cooperation to combat cybercrime and kick-start tangible actions such as the Cybercrime Atlas. This is a collaborative effort to map and create shared knowledge on the cybercrime landscape.

Bridging the Cyber Skills Gap: Creates a strategic Cybersecurity Talent Framework and devises action to help individuals enter and thrive in the cybersecurity workforce.

Global Cybersecurity Outlook: Elevates the issue of cybersecurity from a technical topic to a strategic imperative based on in-depth research with the Forum’s Chief Information Security Officer Community and business leaders.

AI & Cyber: Balancing Risks and Reward: Develops best practices to help organizations understand and mitigate the security risks of adopting AI systems.

Chief Information Security Officer Community: Collaborates on key issues identified by cybersecurity leaders from partner organizations
to advance the state of cybersecurity globally.

Global Future Council on Cybersecurity: Offers foresight on the most salient cybersecurity trends identified by global experts.

Responsible Renewables Infrastructure: Enables the rapid expansion of renewable capacity and grid infrastructure while embedding better community engagement and nature-positive deployment practices.

Grid Expansion and Optimization: Addresses regional bottlenecks in the timely development of new grid capacity and modernization of existing grids as enablers for the entire value chain.

Modernizing Energy Consumption: Identifies pathways to modernize energy consumption through new energy procurement methods, electrification, enhanced efficiency and process transparency.

Advanced Energy Ecosystems: Focuses on an ecosystem approach to catalyse both supply and demand for new nuclear and other advanced clean energy solutions.

Transitioning Industrial Clusters: Supports industrial clusters worldwide in their paths to net zero and contributes to GDP growth and job creation.

Accelerating Clean Hydrogen: Creates an environment that supports the critical role of hydrogen in the energy transition.

Mobilizing Investment for Clean Energy in Emerging Economies: Convenes public and private stakeholders to identify key challenges and solutions to unlock clean energy finance in emerging and developing markets.

Coal to Renewables: Addresses challenges of phasing down global coal use in the power sector and accelerates international partnerships.

Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition: Examines the risks of a future gap between expected demand and supply for critical minerals required for the energy transition and proposes strategies to spur innovation and investments.

Energy Transition Index: Benchmarks 120 countries on their current energy system performance and the readiness of their enabling environment.

Net-Zero Industry Tracker: Promotes transparency on decarbonizing eight hard-to-abate sectors that account for 40% of global greenhouse emissions and provides opportunities for cross-sectoral collaboration.

ASEAN Leaders for Just Energy Transitions: Strengthens the intra-regional and international cooperation required to accelerate South-East Asia’s energy transition and decarbonization.

Global Future Council on the Future of Energy Transition: Provides strategic insights, scientific evidence and guidance on prominent energy transition topics.

Financing the Transition to a Net-Zero Future: Mobilizes capital and enables demand signals in support of the critical decarbonization technologies required to transition the global economy to net-zero emissions.

Financing the Nature-Positive Transition: Seeks to direct and increase financial flows towards the preservation of ecosystems and ecosystem services, as well as promoting new business practices and the inclusion of nature-positive solutions (in collaboration with the Centre for Nature and Climate).

Financing the Food Systems Transformation: Focuses on investor education, access to quality financial advice and private-market investments available to investors to reinforce trust in the system.

Future of Capital Markets: Focuses on investor education, access to quality financial advice and private-market investments available to investors to reinforce trust in the system.

Longevity Economy: Designs tools, frameworks and policies that build financial resilience in support of a more equitable and sustainable longer life.

Global Financial System Fragmentation: Defines a common set of norms, rules and principles required to safeguard the integrity of the financial system and reinforces the role of financial institutions as a countervailing force against geopolitical fragmentation.

Future of Debt: Assesses key risks, opportunities and innovations in private credit and debt markets, as well as the impact that the accelerated growth of this asset class will have on the broader financial system.

Future of Global Fintech: Collaborates with a global group of fintechs to produce research that highlights global market trends, generates regional fintech insights and assesses how fintech activities are affecting consumers, SMEs and financial inclusion.

Future of Venture Capital: Engages venture capital firms (VCs) and other relevant actors in several workstreams, such as closing fintech funding gaps, expanding climate technology investments and unlocking new liquidity opportunities, with the aim of driving healthy entrepreneurship ecosystems.

The Future of Blockchain and Digital Assets: Aims to ensure equity, interoperability, transparency and trust in distributed ledger technology (DLT) governance through several focus areas, including central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and digital assets regulation, and to accelerate the necessary changes for this technology to reach its potential.

Technology, Innovation and Systemic Risk: Examines the role of evolving technologies, such as AI, cloud and quantum, in financial services and works with key stakeholders to highlight opportunity areas while developing mitigation approaches to emerging technology-driven risks.

Women in Finance: Convenes senior female financial services executives to explore shifting industry priorities and identify action-oriented solutions.

Chief Financial Officers Community: Convenes chief financial officers throughout sectors to accelerate corporate action and address pressing strategic issues.

Venture Capital Community: Supports healthy entrepreneurship ecosystems by addressing shared challenges and opportunities facing the global venture capital industry.

Centre Advisory Council: Convenes a global community of chief executives, chairpersons, policy-makers and experts from throughout the financial system to provide guidance, feedback and support to the centre.

First Movers Coalition – Finance Pillar: Supports the decarbonization of industrial sectors by engaging financial institutions in efforts to improve the bankability of offtake agreements and develop financing strategies for decarbonization efforts in emerging markets.

The Future of Financial Services in China: Brings together large Chinese and international financial institutions to strategically address important issues such as capital market maturation and liberalization, the financial system’s role
in enabling domestic growth, and emerging regulatory trends, among others.

Global Future Councils: Offer foresight into the most important trends in finance, investing, asset stewardship and the resilience of the financial system as identified by global experts.

AI for Agricultural Innovation: Advances inclusive transformation of agriculture through pilot-testing and scaling up digital technologies throughout the value chain.

AI Governance Alliance: Focuses on ensuring AI system security and reliability, transforming industrial ecosystems to boost innovation and growth, and developing strong governance frameworks for effective AI oversight.

AVIATE: Advanced Air Mobility: Promotes the safe, sustainable and equitable adoption of advanced air mobility technologies throughout industries and sectors.

Building the Bioeconomy: Generates strategic insights into the technology-driven bioeconomy and promotes responsible adoption and commercial transformation.

Chief Digital Officers: Involves chief digital and technology officers in 100 companies from 20 industries in supporting digital transformation advancements.

Defining and Building the Metaverse: Defines an economically viable, interoperable, safe and inclusive metaverse focusing on governance and value creation.

Digital Trust Initiative: A multistakeholder community to build global consensus on the definition of digital trust and how to improve it.

DRIVE-A: Vehicle Autonomy: Leaders from the automotive and technology sectors partner to shape the responsible development and deployment of automated vehicles.

Earth Observation: Creates frameworks, strategies and partnerships to harness geospatial data for shared and sustainable prosperity.

EDISON Alliance: Mobilizes commitments and partnerships to improve access to digital solutions in education, health and finance.

Global Coalition for Digital Safety: Advances online safety through sharing best practices and coordinated media literacy initiatives.

GovTech Network: Engages business and government to identify opportunities and fast-track the digital transformation of public services.

Innovator Communities: Involves 400 leading start-ups and scale-ups who are at the forefront of technological and business model innovation.

Medicine from the Sky: Uses drone-based technologies for the effective delivery of medical supplies in remote regions.

Quantum Economy Blueprint: Provides a roadmap to enable policy-makers to accelerate the equitable development of quantum ecosystems globally.

Operationalizing Data Free Flow with Trust: Aligns business and government leaders on cross-border data flow principles for businesses.

Quantum Applications Hub: Showcases worldwide success stories of quantum technologies across industrial and societal use cases, aiming to shape a scalable and inclusive quantum ecosystem.

Responsible Space: Promotes best practices and financial mechanisms for improving orbital safety and sustainability.

Shaping the Space Economy: Generates strategic insights to unlock the economic and societal opportunities of space while mitigating potential risks.

Technology For Climate Adaptation: Generates strategic insights about the responsible use of data and digital technologies for climate adaptation.

Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report: Helps professionals anticipate exponential technologies, interpret their implications and champion society-serving applications.

Global Future Councils: Produces strategic insights on AI, autonomous mobility, data equity, the metaverse, quantum technology, space, synthetic biology and technology policy.

Global Alliance for Women’s Health: Shapes the future of women’s health by advancing global progress, unlocking more investments and advancing research and innovation.

Global Health Equity Network: Shapes a healthier and more inclusive world by mobilizing executive leadership and commitment throughout sectors and geographies to prioritize health equity action in organizational strategy and purpose.

New Frontiers of Nutrition: Convenes leading-edge disruptors and partners from the private and public sectors who shape transformative solutions to elevate nutrition as a key enabler of societal resilience.

Healthy Workforces Initiative: Empowers organizations and communities to prioritize and advance physical and mental health in the workplace, encouraging a more productive, resilient and healthy global workforce.

Digital Healthcare Transformation: Promotes collaboration throughout geographies, sectors and industries to shape holistic AI and data-enabled solutions that improve outcomes, expand access and increase efficiency in healthcare.

Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience: Builds more resilient and sustainable health systems for the future by providing tools and resources for research, a focal point for collaboration and knowledge exchange within and between countries, and a platform to disseminate and catalyse the adoption of breakthrough insights.

Climate and Health: Facilitates engagement with and among partners to address the impact of climate change on human health by enhancing advocacy and visibility and developing adaptation and preparedness strategies.

Regionalized Vaccine Manufacturing Collaborative: Increases vaccine access for low- and middle-income countries through a versatile global vaccine manufacturing network for pandemic and non-pandemic times (as of 2024, integrated into the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations).

BRIDGE (Biosecurity Readiness through Intelligence, Data and Global Engagement): Catalyses cross-sectoral networks that integrate diverse data to enhance predictive outbreak monitoring and public health interventions.

Chief Health Officers Community: Advances workforce well-being globally through cross-industry collaboration among senior executives overseeing workforce health in partner organizations.

Global Future Council on Antimicrobial Resistance: Multistakeholder insight network that accelerates effective action on antimicrobial resistance.

Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders: Shapes data-driven corporate climate leadership and engagements with policy-makers to deliver the transition to a net-zero economy on a Paris-aligned pathway. It is the world’s largest chief executive officer-led community dedicated to net-zero emissions.

Champions for Nature: Leads the transition to a nature-positive global economy by 2030.

CEO Alliance on Food, Water and Health: Addresses the nexus of food-water-health, focusing on healthy soils, transition finance for regenerative practices and the local production of sustainable and nutritious foods through the First Movers Coalition for Food and the 100 Million Farmers initiative.

Chief Sustainability Leaders Community: Brings together more than 155 chief sustainability leaders from more than 24 industries and 38 countries to gain strategic foresight, exchange ideas with leaders and experts, nurture interaction with peers in different sectors and regions.

Climate Governance Initiative: Mobilizes and engages board members on climate action, reaching more than 200,000 non-executive directors, and includes a Climate Governance community of experts to guide thought leadership and insights.

Giving to Amplify Earth Action: Seeks to increase climate and nature philanthropy and make use of public-private-philanthropic partnerships to accelerate and scale up corporate and government transitions at the system level.

Earth Decides Community: Works with scientists, thought leaders and storytellers to translate scientific knowledge and lived experience into credible and appropriate action at scale.

First Movers Coalition: Harnesses the collective purchasing power of companies to send a clear demand signal to promote the expansion of critical technologies essential for the net-zero transition, focusing on the heavy-emitting industrial sectors, as well as carbon removal technologies. It also seeks to accelerate the adoption of sustainable production methods and technologies for agricultural commodities through aggregated demand.

Alliance for Clean Air: A catalyst for private-sector efforts to improve air quality in their value chains, embed action on air pollution into climate change mitigation strategies and move towards a tipping point where health is at the heart of climate action.

Airports of Tomorrow: Convenes global leaders from the airport ecosystem to accelerate the transition to sustainable and resilient airports. This shared vision examines the elements that will likely shape the Airports of Tomorrow – anticipating their energy, infrastructure and financing needs.

1t.org – Trillion Trees Platform: Supports forest conservation and land restoration by conserving, restoring and growing a trillion trees by 2030. It has secured pledges from 86 companies and commitments of 9.4 billion trees in 143 countries.

Tropical Forest Alliance: Works with the world’s largest agricultural commodity traders and leading consumer goods companies to stop tropical deforestation linked to agricultural production, with a focus on Brazil, China and Indonesia.

Ocean 20: Promotes action by leading global companies, G20 countries and civil society voices to make and realize commitments to blue food, blue carbon and a sustainable blue economy.

Food Partnership Hubs: Supports Food Innovation Hubs and builds Food Action Alliances to make food systems more nutritious, resilient and environmentally sustainable.

2030 Water Resources Group: Provides water stewardship through a public-private partnership co-hosted with the World Bank, including accelerator programmes with more than 1,000 partners, catalysing $1 billion in financing.

Global Plastic Action Partnership: Translates plastic pollution commitments into tangible action and runs 16 national and sub-national chapters in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Blue Carbon Action Partnership: Aims to catalyse high-level conversations, unlock finance and drive meaningful change to conserve and restore blue carbon ecosystems, such as mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes.

Friends of Ocean Action: Fast-tracks ambitious, scalable and equitable solutions to support ocean health and the sustainable blue economy.

1000 Ocean Startups: Brings together the global ecosystem of incubators, accelerators, competitions, matching platforms, and venture capital and corporate venture capital firms supporting start-ups for ocean impact.

Business Agenda on Climate Adaptation: Works to close the investment gap in climate adaptation by including more businesses in the topic. Focuses on helping businesses understand and manage climate risk, create opportunities from a changing climate and strategically partner with governments to ensure the continuous functioning of key social and natural systems in the face of climate change.

Circularity Lighthouses in the Built Environment: Shines light on leading solutions for a circular transformation of the built environment.

Consumers Beyond Waste initiative: Brings together a vibrant community of leading consumer companies and public sector actors who are collectively accelerating a systems transition towards reusable packaging models to achieve a world free of plastic pollution.

Carbon Markets Innovation Initiative: Encourages dialogue among business leaders, governments and experts to better understand the challenges and opportunities of carbon markets.

Road Freight Zero: Accelerates the deployment of zero-emission fleets and supporting infrastructure through a pioneering coalition of over 70 first movers across the road freight value chain.

Global Future Councils: Apply innovative thinking, data-driven approaches and a systems lens to nature and climate issues related to clean air, philanthropy for nature and climate, food and water security, responsible resource use, nature and security, net-zero living and sustainable tourism.

Future of Growth Initiative: Works to promote new fundamentals of good economic growth that emphasize innovation, inclusion, sustainability and resilience as key pillars of a future growth model.

Future of Growth Report: Provides a new framework for developing economic policies that embed innovation, inclusion, sustainability and resilience as key pillars.

Chief Economists Community: Explores the near-term economic landscape and provides inputs into the Chief Economists Outlook periodic reports.

Global Risks Initiative: Works to identify global risks and enable dialogue on preparedness and resilience to rebound faster from global crises.

Global Risks Report: Annually explores and ranks the most severe risks faced during the next decade, using short-, medium and long-term horizons.

Chief Risk Officers Community: Examines risk assessment and preparedness topics and informs the annual Chief Risk Officers Outlook publication.

Jobs Initiative: Identifies the emerging contours of global labour markets and supports job creation and good work.

Future of Jobs Report: Explores how jobs and skills of the future will evolve over the next five years, focusing on the impact of AI on jobs and industrial policy and geopolitical divisions on labour markets.

Good Work Alliance: Leverages the collective power of forward-looking companies across industries to build a more resilient, productive, equitable, inclusive and human-centric future of work.

Chief Human Resources Officers Community: Amplifies insights into the emerging trends related to the future of work and mobilizes action on initiatives that promote high-quality jobs.

Reskilling Revolution Initiative: Aims to provide one billion people with better education, skills and economic opportunities by 2030.

Future Skills Alliance: Enables individuals to enter and remain in the labour market with the help of skills and learning providers underpinned by a global skills taxonomy.

Education 4.0 Alliance: Transforms learning in the age of AI, underpinned by the Education 4.0 framework, learning taxonomy, school Lighthouses and national Education Accelerators.

Chief Learning Officers: Exchanges and drives action on skills and learning in the community workplace through the participation of organization leaders responsible for learning content and delivery.

Education Industry Community: Supports long-term, sustainable industry growth, focusing on industry impact and working together to solve common challenges.

Global Gender Parity Sprint: Aims to set a new level of ambition for accelerating gender parity.

Global Gender Gap Report: Annually benchmarks countries on their progress towards gender parity.

Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officers Community: Exchanges and drives strategic progress on diversity, equity and inclusion stemming from the expertise of chief diversity and inclusion officers in multiple industries and geographies.

Equitable Transition Initiative: Defines the challenges and opportunities of an equitable and just green transition and provides a plan to proactively address equity challenges in sectoral and geographical transitions.

Global Accelerators Network: Shapes more prosperous and inclusive economies and societies in five impact areas – education, gender parity, jobs, markets of tomorrow and skills – through a network of more than 35 national public-private collaboration platforms.

Global Future Councils: Deliver insights on growth, job creation, the care economy, the economics of equitable transition and complex risks.

Forum Friends of the AfCFTA Coalition: Brings together more than 60 leaders from the public and private sectors in a formal collaboration with the AfCFTA secretariat to support the implementation of the AfCFTA agreement.

Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders India: Convenes Indian business leaders throughout key industries to accelerate India’s climate action and green transition efforts.

ASEAN DEAL Project: Supports ASEAN’s transformation towards an inclusive and sustainable digital economy.

Informal Gathering of World Economic Leaders: Advances progress on global challenges through private dialogues at the highest level.

Diplomacy Dialogues: Supports official diplomatic processes and fosters discussions about addressing regional and global fault lines in meetings of decision-makers and stakeholders.

Country Strategy Dialogues: Gathers heads of state/senior ministers and business executives to advance discussions on avenues for growth.

Regional Roundtable Dialogues: Advances discussions on critical issues such as energy transition and growth agendas in key economies.

Humanitarian and Resilience Investing Initiative: Helps direct capital to financially sustainable opportunities in frontier markets.

Geopolitical Advisory Group: Convenes chief geopolitical officers (or the equivalent corporate position) for discussions with public officials.

Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge and Leadership Network: Integrates Indigenous knowledge and leadership into global discussions, promoting sustainable development, cultural preservation and inclusive growth.

Faith in Action Community: Leverages faith-based perspectives to promote peace, inclusivity and social justice, driving initiatives that address poverty, inequality and environmental sustainability while fostering interfaith dialogue and cooperation.

Resilience Consortium: Delivers a global pro-growth, holistic resilience agenda by showcasing key best practices using Lighthouse case studies.

European Green Deal CEO Action Group: Helps advance Europe’s green and digital transitions.

Japan Energy Transition Initiative: Supports Japan’s energy transition and facilitates regional collaboration to accelerate the net-zero transformation.

Leaders for a Sustainable Middle East and North Africa: Champions pathways for climate-resilient growth in the MENA region by accelerating corporate climate ambition and scaling up the roll-out of low-carbon technologies.

Champions for ASEAN’s Economic Future: Works to deepen collaboration between leaders from the public and private sectors and help further regional integration.

Trade and Geopolitics: Explores scenarios for how geopolitics will affect trade and investment and how businesses and nations should position themselves for success.

Digital Trade: Contributes to the growth of inclusive digital economies through a level playing field. It also convenes a DEAL group and advances digital payments through the Payments to Advance Growth for All (PAGA) group.

Trade and Investment Leadership Group: Sets the mandate for the trade and investment community to help navigate commercial geopolitics, increases the quantity and quality of foreign investment, eases global commerce through simplification, applies new trade technologies, builds sustainable value chains and ensures inclusive outcomes from trade.

Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation: Supports governments in developing and least-developed countries in implementing the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement.

Investment Policy and Practice: Supports digital FDI, climate FDI and investment facilitation for development.

Streamlining Services Initiative: Supports countries in strengthening their service sector competitiveness and developing services trade through improved regulatory frameworks.

TradeTech Global: Provides a global forum to share best practices, produces an annual TradeTech trend report, offers a regulatory testing sandbox and is an incubator for start-ups in the trade technology sector.

Green Trade and Investment: Develops strategies for climate competitiveness, explores emerging compliance challenges, guides climate foreign direct investment and facilitates circular trade.

Inclusive Trade: Works to ensure trade benefits all sections of society and seeks to mitigate trade harms to workers and underserved groups.

Trade, Investment and Development Agency CEO Group: Convenes regularly with investors to share thinking on how to link regional priorities and action to international trade and investment developments.

Global Future Councils: Deliver insight into how leaders can revitalize or rebuild mechanisms of geopolitical cooperation and advance shared trade and investment priorities.

Alliance for Urban Innovation: Connects innovators and entrepreneurs to new markets and opportunities to stimulate urban regeneration, drive innovation and bolster the resiliency of local economies.

Davos Baukultur Alliance: Advances shared global principles on design, planning and construction to improve the quality of living environments and accommodate the 2.5 billion new urban residents expected in coming decades.

G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance: Unites business leaders, innovators and experts with city networks representing more than 200,000 local governments to ease adoption of beneficial technologies.

Global New Mobility Coalition: Brings together the public and private sectors to accelerate the transition to shared, electric, connected and autonomous mobility to reduce emissions, improve health and mobility, and generate new business opportunities.

Global Partnership for Local Investment: Mobilizes public-private collaboration and investment in local communities to increase prosperity for 100 million people in 100 cities by 2030.

Global Commission on Nature Positive Cities: Initiates and facilitates coordinated and tangible actions at the city scale, acting as a catalyst for a profound shift in urban development that fosters harmony between cities and nature.

Council on the Connected World: Works with cross-sector and cross-industry leaders worldwide to strengthen the governance and continued innovation of connected technologies.

Global Future Council on Cities: Advances promising solutions from leading mayors, business leaders and civil society representatives to address the global urban affordability crisis.

During the reporting period, the Forum experienced good partnership growth of over 4% despite geopolitical challenges. The partnership base rose to a record high of 884, an increase of 39 over the previous fiscal year, reflecting strong retention and the addition of more than 130 new partners.

Of these, more than 80 companies signed Associate Partnerships, several of which were Unicorns expanding their engagement, while the Strategic Partner community maintained its membership level of 121 partners as of 30 June 2024.

Strong partnership levels translated into robust attendance at the Annual Meeting 2024, in which more than 1,500 business leaders, including more than 1,000 chief executive officers and chairs, participated.

In addition to the Annual Meeting, the Forum convened stakeholders at several key events, bringing together business leaders to advance its initiatives and provide a platform for dialogue on critical trends affecting businesses.

There was double-digit partnership growth in the energy sector, while partnership levels in materials and infrastructure also showed meaningful rises.

Regionally, the Forum registered strong growth from China, with renewed interest from partners following the end of pandemic-related measures in early 2023. Europe and North America also performed strongly in terms of new partners.

As the partnership base continued to grow, engagement also deepened, and in response, the Forum strengthened partner service capabilities to ensure that it could collaborate with companies more effectively.

A critical component of this new approach was the opportunity to engage more deeply with the Forum’s 22 Global Industry Communities. Similarly, with partnerships expanding throughout sectors, this had the added benefit of helping to broaden the issues with which the Forum engages. These developments will provide for richer, more fruitful discussions about those industry issues that are of greatest relevance to partners, particularly for chief executive officers and strategy officers.

Whereas the partnership base engages the world’s largest companies, the Forum’s Innovator Community engages approximately 400 leading start-ups. Their chief executive officers engage in the Forum’s thematic centres and initiatives, offering their insights and potential contributions to global issues. The community includes 200 early-stage Technology Pioneers, approximately 100 growth-stage Global Innovators and approximately 100 late-stage Unicorns. During the reporting period, there was a focus on generative AI, with nearly all start-ups in this sector participating in Forum events and initiatives.

The Forum’s 22 Global Industry Communities aim to advance responsible industry transformation through peer-to-peer exchanges and collaboration. Chief executive officers and strategy officers engaged in the Forum’s communities throughout the reporting period, discussing and seeking to anticipate the opportunities and challenges created by geopolitics, generative AI and the energy transition on operating and business models.

The International Business Council (IBC) is a prominent cross-industry and cross-regional community comprising approximately 120 leading global chief executive officers. The IBC is dedicated to supporting deep peer exchanges and spearheading collective actions on global issues, aligning with the multistakeholder approach central to the Forum’s mission.

The IBC has concentrated its efforts on expediting the global energy transition, aiming to achieve a balance between sustainability, energy security, and equitable and affordable energy access, with a specific focus on working with energy users – also referred to as the “demand side”. In 2024, the IBC published the Transforming Energy Demand report highlighting the potential to decrease energy demand by over 30% while continuing to generate similar levels of output and while using existing technologies at commercial rates of return. The community has contributed to more than 50 practical good practices to inspire replication and scale-up of these actions.

The initiative received a boost in November 2023 at the COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, when more than 120 governments pledged to work together to collectively double the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements from approximately 2% to more than 4% every year until 2030. Additionally, they put the principle of energy efficiency as the “first fuel” at the core of policy-making, planning and major investment decisions.

In the first half of 2024, the initiative focused on public policy advocacy and value chain partnerships to support the achievement of the global energy efficiency goal while continuing to make the case for energy demand management and its role in accelerating energy transition.

Additionally, the IBC continued to support the Stakeholder Metrics Initiative, a multi-year effort to align the private sector in advocating for a global baseline of sustainability reporting. Since 2019, many Forum partners have engaged in this work by supporting peer exchange and knowledge sharing to enhance sustainability reporting through the global community of practitioners.

The Forum also facilitated dialogues between companies, market regulators and policy-makers to continuously advocate for global alignment. It also continued to work with the International Sustainability Standards Board to help establish global standards for sustainability reporting.

The Global Programming Group (GPG) is central to the Forum’s institutional events, overseeing their architecture, design, programmes and execution. Collaborating throughout the organization, the GPG magnifies the work of the Forum’s 10 centres, integrating their insights into in-person meetings.

With in-person events regaining prominence during the reporting period, the GPG delivered several large gatherings, including the Annual Meeting, the 15th Annual Meeting of the New Champions and the Sustainable Development Impact Meetings.

The team also supported the planning, programming and execution of other high-level gatherings, including the Special Meeting on Global Collaboration, Growth and Energy for Development 2024, the Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils, the Global Technology Retreat and the AI Governance Summit.

Additionally, the team provided strategic support for the Industry Strategy Meeting and the Forum’s live programming at COP28.

The Global Communications Group (GCG) is at the forefront of engagement with the public, media, stakeholders and staff. Through its multiple channels, the group is responsible for communicating the mission and work of the Forum and its constituents.

Across its owned channels, the group develops written, audio, video and live content to communicate the work of the Forum’s centres and share developments from Forum events, highlighting findings from the Forum’s knowledge products and mainstreaming business and policy solutions emerging from its initiatives. The Forum’s two primary owned channels – its social media and public website – reached and engaged global audiences. The Forum’s 10 main brand social media accounts now have 28 million followers (with 2 million new followers), and its website saw 29 million visitors. Forum publications attracted 4.6 million readers, and articles attracted 20 million readers on its public website. Sessions from the Annual Meeting 2024 were streamed across the Forum’s website and social media channels, gathering a total of 7.4 million views, with a total of 13 million views across all meetings.

The Forum also engages across a broad spectrum of media outlets – reaching an estimated audience of 1.3 billion people in 2023-2024 – amplifying the Forum’s mission and curating the active participation of media leaders in Forum activities as voices crucial to an inclusive multistakeholder approach. The Forum engages with diverse media representing a broad range of orientations and opinions, and its work is covered extensively by global, regional and sectoral media outlets. Geographically, the Forum saw considerable increases in coverage throughout China, Europe, India, Japan, the Middle East and North Africa, and the US. The group also co-designed sessions with international media outlets throughout the Forum’s programme of events, including the Annual Meeting, the Special Meeting on Global Collaboration, Growth and Energy for Development, and the Annual Meeting of New Champions.

As part of its multistakeholder approach, the Forum engaged with a wide range of expert communities, including academics, universities, think tanks, research institutes and the Network of the Global Future Councils. During the reporting period, the latter comprised 30 thematic councils linked to the ongoing work of the Forum centres’ activities. This work sits within the Centre for the New Economy and Society.

As part of the Forum’s multistakeholder approach, it engages a diverse community of civil society leaders to find solutions, drive impact and advance cooperation with government and business leaders. In the reporting period, the Forum’s Civil Society Communities included the engagement of the most influential organizations representing the interests of citizens, consumers, marginalized populations, workers, grassroots movements and social causes, including over 150 global and regional non-governmental organizations, non-profits and charities, over 50 representatives from global and national trade unions, over 100 faith leaders and groups, over 70 indigenous representatives and leaders, and a number of globally recognized activists and social movements providing diverse and challenging perspectives. This work sits within the Centre for Regions, Trade and Geopolitics.

In the reporting period, the Forum placed an emphasis on integrating generative AI into its core digital services, enhancing user experiences throughout its digital ecosystem. This strategic focus aligns with its commitment to using advanced technologies to promote inclusive dialogue, generate insights and facilitate collective action among its diverse global communities.

A highlight of the year’s technology advancements was the introduction of Forum GPT – a tool designed to boost staff productivity and streamline operations by creating a variety of automated workflows. Forum GPT uses commercially available and open-source large language models, enabling customized workflows that incorporate organizational data and insights from all its reports, including content from the Strategic Intelligence platform.

To ensure responsible deployment of generative AI and adherence to its best practices, the Forum also established a Responsible AI Governance Committee to oversee the implementation of AI technologies and ensure they align with the Forum’s ethical standards.

Further advancements in the organization’s technology roadmap included significant enhancements to its suite of digital tools, making them more robust, intuitive and integrated. The newly developed mobile app, Forum Live, improved participants’ event experience by offering new features, such as virtual business cards and digital wayfinding, facilitating greater interactivity.

The expansion of Forum Spaces broadened the Forum’s outreach and engagement capabilities, supporting the Forum’s initiatives. These spaces feature a modular community-interaction toolset, making them more adaptive and responsive. This allows for content and interactions tailored to various stakeholders’ specific needs, thereby strengthening existing partnerships and attracting new members and collaborators.

Now serving more than 1 million registered users, the Strategic Intelligence platform remained a vital resource for understanding and navigating complex global trends. With the integration of generative AI, the platform offers features like summaries of emerging trends and scenarios, providing more timely and actionable insights.

At the Annual Meeting 2024, the Global Collaboration Village (GCV) – the organization’s virtual reality initiative – became open and operational. The Forum hosted over 100 collaborative sessions during five events, including bringing more than 400 on-site and remote guests to the GCV experience. In a significant step for the third-party content model, the first five village partners designed their own custom virtual pavilions and hosted individual sessions
and stakeholders alongside the main meeting programme.

These initiatives were part of the Forum’s broader effort to develop a fully virtual community of digital members, providing broader access to its insights and resources and facilitating ongoing engagement throughout the year. This approach underscored the organization’s commitment to enhancing global cooperation and driving impactful change through innovative digital solutions.

UpLink, the Forum’s community that identifies and empowers breakthrough technologies to solve urgent sustainability challenges, expanded its reach during the reporting period. It became more ambitious and accelerated its activities as part of its moves to drive positive systemic change for people and the planet.

Since its launch, UpLink has emerged as a catalyst for change, transforming from a digital platform sourcing impact-driven entrepreneurs into a dynamic ecosystem of 432 Top Innovators, 46 Top Investors, nine funding partners and more than 300 supporting partners. This diverse group, alongside several Forum centres and initiatives, is united to deliver UpLink’s three objectives: accelerating the impact of early-stage entrepreneurs and investors, enabling ecosystems of diverse stakeholders, and shifting perceptions about the role of innovation in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The reporting period saw UpLink broaden its participation at Forum and partner events around the world, with 159 Top Innovators involved in events throughout the year, including the Annual Meeting.

In April 2024, the Forum appointed its new chief financial officer, responsible for all financial aspects of the Forum’s global activities.

During this reporting period, despite a challenging economic and geopolitical environment, partnership and membership revenue remained high at CHF 271 million, representing a 2.6% year-on-year increase. This reflects the high retention level of partners and the growth associated with new partners joining the Forum’s communities.

Grants, predominantly from public institutions and foundations, continued to accelerate the impact of the Forum’s initiatives during the reporting period. Direct funding decreased by CHF 2.153 million over the period and amounted to approximately 11% of total revenue. The Forum is currently investing in a dedicated grant management tool, which will become operational in the 2024-2025 fiscal year to further support direct funding activities.

Similarly, a new procurement tool is currently being designed and implemented and will become operational in the 2024-2025 fiscal year. It includes a “purchase-to-pay” function and serves as a supplier management and contracting solution. It optimizes procurement operations and expense control and also creates a consolidated database for suppliers and contracts, providing enhanced visibility and efficient control in these areas.

During the fiscal year 2023-2024, the organization enhanced portfolio and treasury management functions by implementing robust reporting and risk management frameworks. In response to the high interest rate environment during the period, the Forum strategically realigned treasury policies
to optimize portfolio allocation.

Given economic and geopolitical uncertainties and implications for investment strategies, the Forum diligently managed risks through strategic diversification in different asset classes and custodians. This ensured that the portfolio remained robust, capable of withstanding various economic pressures and safeguarded the organization’s assets. Additionally, the Forum continued to prioritize investments in private, environmental, social and governance (ESG)-focused assets, demonstrating its commitment to sustainable investing.

In the reporting period, the People Agenda of the World Economic Forum focused on consolidating and expanding the efforts made in previous years to strengthen people management and leadership capabilities while delivering a broader set of initiatives to increase opportunities for professional development, optimize talent acquisition processes and improve workforce resilience.

The period saw the retention of established learning and development opportunities, while a Global Learning Award allowance enabled staff to invest based on their individual plans. This offered stability for employees planning their professional development journey within the organization. It included a core learning curriculum, on-site workshops and seminars, and self-paced virtual courses offered in partnership with leading educational institutions.

Demand for coaching and mentoring programmes also increased, with employees keen to receive feedback and guidance on their careers from more experienced peers.

The Forum recognizes the important role people managers play in their employees’ day-to-day experience. In 2024, it focused on critical skills building for these staff through a mandatory management development course. This included e-learning, externally facilitated programmes, 360-degree feedback and a new executive coaching programme, all of which were targeted towards supporting managers in deepening their skills.

Following several months of development, a new leadership model was launched in May. This offered a framework with four dimensions and 18 associated capabilities, providing a common language for employees to develop their skills and behaviours, cultivating leadership throughout the organization.

As the Forum continues to grow, experiencing an 9% increase in headcount over the past fiscal year, it is paramount to refine its hiring practices. This entails applying fair and consistent selection processes for all candidates and identifying the right talent to contribute to the Forum in the long term. To that end, the Forum introduced a Recruitment Academy, requiring all hiring managers to complete certified training focused on interviewing best practices, removing bias, improving the quality of hiring decisions and setting up new hires for success.

The Forum’s Early Careers Programme continued to thrive, providing a robust talent pipeline for entry-level roles. Throughout the year, 47 participants joined the programme in Beijing, Geneva, Mumbai, New York and San Francisco, working for six months on various initiatives. The conversion rate of programme participants to longer-term employment within the Forum grew, with 71% of the October 2023 cohort securing roles – up from 50% in the previous reporting period.

Mindful of its employees’ pursuit of excellence and the high demands on teams to deliver world-leading programmes, initiatives and events, the Forum is invested in building workforce well-being. In the reporting period, a baseline headcount exercise was completed to ensure that teams were adequately resourced to deliver their objectives. As standard, the balance of time off is monitored quarterly, and reminders are issued to employees and managers emphasizing the need to plan for downtime.

Promoting social well-being to strengthen workplace culture, the Forum organized monthly Coffee and Learn events, where teams shared the stories behind impactful initiatives, sparking ideas for future collaboration. The biannual Global Onboarding Event, convening over 100 newcomers from Forum office locations annually, was also warmly received.

This year, the Forum joined the International Dual Career Network (IDCN) as a corporate member, giving professional integration support to the spouses and partners of employees who relocate to the Lake Geneva region.

The World Economic Forum is headquartered in Cologny, near the Swiss city of Geneva, in a purpose-built complex completed in 1998. It is from here that 780 of its employees operate, including the organization’s executive chairman, president and the managing board. It is also from these offices that all core functions and several of its centres are based.

It uses the space not just as an office but also to host multiple dialogues and events, including the Annual Meeting on Cybersecurity in November during the reporting period. Additionally, it has dedicated meeting facilities in Villa Mundi, a former house located next door to the main site, which, following renovation and adaptation to make it fit for purpose, was inaugurated in August 2023.

Established in 2006, the Forum’s China office plays a key role as an impartial platform for public-private cooperation and innovation for positive change in China and the world.

The Forum maintains strong relationships with China’s central government and several large municipal governments, many of which were established as far back as 1979.

During the reporting period, the Forum engaged with four Chinese state leaders, 49 ministers and vice-ministers and 29 municipal government leaders on topics ranging from AI to the energy transition, advanced manufacturing and sustainable development.

In June, the 15th Annual Meeting of New Champions in Dalian brought together over 1,600 leaders, including more than 100 public figures and 800 business leaders.

The Forum brought on 17 Chinese companies as new partners. These companies support Chinese enterprises’ engagement with the international community and have joined more than 100 Chinese experts from universities, research institutions, and think tanks, civil society members, young leaders, and innovators who engage with the Forum’s events, initiatives and communities.

With its partners, the Forum’s China office launched or further developed more than 20 high-impact initiatives and projects and published 11 reports and briefing papers.

The Forum’s Japan office continues to strengthen engagement with key Japanese stakeholders through insights and dialogues that fit the Forum’s regional priorities.

The reporting period saw the inaugural meeting of the Chief Sustainability Leaders Community, during which participants identified several key issues and discussed how they could empower chief executive officers to embrace sustainability as a driver of prosperity.

The meeting took place as part of the Japan Nature and Climate: Leading for Sustainability initiative, which involves stakeholders from business, the public sector and academia, as well as global businesses and international organizations with a strong Japanese footprint.

The event included insights from collaboration with the Government of Japan. Together with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), the Forum convened a First Movers Coalition (FMC) introduction and overview webinar in September. A month later, also with the METI, the Forum introduced the FMC initiative and outlined its progress to date at the global green transformation summit, GGX x TCFD, which the ministry hosted.

This work continued when, at COP28, the Forum collaborated with the Ministry of the Environment (MOEJ) for a session on the Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency Principles (CEREP). These efforts are essential for the Forum’s Centre for Nature and Climate to understand how Japan can elevate its leadership efforts, particularly in the areas of climate adaptation, the circular economy and advancing emerging climate technologies.

Separately, during the reporting period, Japan-led initiatives on urban transformation, data and AI, and the space economy were developed. The Forum’s global team and leadership support each initiative with an ambition to eventually extend to the Asia-Pacific and beyond through
the Forum’s global platform.

Established in 2006, the New York office plays a key role in involving US stakeholders in the Forum’s work. It concentrates on advancing global, regional and industry cooperation through dialogue and collaboration across different sectors.

During the reporting period, the office was involved in a number of initiatives and meetings. Among these were the Sustainable Development Impact Meetings, during which the office helped develop discussions.

Further, in September, the Procurement Innovation Dialogues brought together more than 70 senior participants, including chief procurement officers and other C-suite executives, to explore the evolution of procurement and its critical role in the decarbonization journey of corporates. The Metaverse Initiative brought together 70 participants to focus on the Defining and Building the Metaverse Initiative.

In November 2023, the office hosted the second annual Innovator Community Meeting. Over two days, 68 chief executive officers from 22 countries convened to discuss the evolving funding landscape, geopolitics and the societal role of innovators. Other activities included hosting 30 participants for the Digital Trust Community Meeting in February 2023, resulting in the development of three publications on digital trust.

Two months later, the office hosted more than 40 participants from Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States for the New Champions Community. During discussions, they tackled global challenges, explored ideas and engaged in debates on topics like regenerative businesses and the humanization of brands.

Located in the vibrant ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay Area, the office serves as a hub for connecting companies, innovator communities and policy-makers from around the globe. The highlights for the reporting period included convening the AI Governance Summit in November 2023. This brought together more than 200 AI Governance Alliance members from over 30 countries to discuss bridging the AI divide and creating interoperable regulatory frameworks to advance international collaboration. In addition, the US Center for Advanced Manufacturing held its Strategy Series in February 2024, focusing on partnerships between industry and policy-makers on issues ranging from AI to automation and workforce development. Similarly, the Global Technology Retreat saw more than 300 business leaders and policy-makers gather to exchange insights about frontier technologies.

The Forum is home to three foundations: the Global Shapers Community, the Forum of Young Global Leaders, and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

Collectively, they serve a community of more than 15,000 changemakers, leaders and innovators, driving positive change in more than 150 countries.

At the heart of the Forum’s mission lies a commitment to harness human ingenuity, innovation and cooperation to enhance the state of the world. Recognizing the pivotal role of young people in this endeavour, the Global Shapers Community’s objective is to make positive change. It comprises 18,000 young leaders who shape initiatives in 500 major cities, remote islands and refugee camps in 154 countries and territories.

With a focus on developing youth leaders, accelerating youth action and amplifying youth voices, the Global Shapers Community secured a number of achievements during the reporting period.

Among these was to equip more than 1,800 changemakers with essential leadership skills. Notably, 1,000 young people participated in six regional SHAPE events designed to promote global collaboration and drive multi-city movements for change.

The Global Shapers Annual Summit convened 500 young innovators at the Forum’s headquarters and attracted its largest virtual audience to date, with more than 9,600 young people participating online. They discovered how the Forum is working with next-generation leaders to address critical global issues, and partnerships were established between the community and 10 Forum centres and initiatives.

In line with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Global Shapers are committed to accelerating youth action and improving outcomes for people and the planet. The reporting period marked a milestone in the community’s seven-year partnership with The Climate Reality Project – to date, 1,000 Global Shapers have become certified climate change leaders.

Global Shapers spearheaded more than 360 local projects in six areas, namely driving long-term action to protect the planet, strengthening democracy, accelerating reskilling, promoting social justice, improving well-being and safeguarding the most vulnerable. The latter saw 500 Global Shapers join forces to provide urgent humanitarian relief for those living in Gaza.

Since its creation in 2011, the Global Shapers Community has implemented more than 3,000 local initiatives, touching the lives of more than 2.5 million people and engaging approximately 15 million stakeholders. Reflecting the desire to continue to equip young people with access to funding, mentorship and storytelling support to help scale up their efforts, the community launched an Innovation Prize in partnership with Accenture and the Global Alliance for YOUth.

The Forum’s wider work to magnify youth voices resulted in the participation of Global Shapers in several events. At the Annual Meeting 2024, 50 of them advanced intergenerational solutions; 60 innovators and entrepreneurs shaped the agenda at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, while 30 Global Shapers engaged in regional solution-building processes at the Special Meeting on Global Collaboration, Growth and Energy for Development in Saudi Arabia. Outside the Forum’s events, Global Shapers helped scale up youth-led solutions at COP28 and the United Nations General Assembly.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2024, the Forum of Young Global Leaders has sought to cultivate a community of leaders dedicated to tackling the world’s most pressing problems, whether this is through pioneering initiatives in public health and economic development or driving innovation in technology and sustainability.

This year, the Forum of Young Global Leaders welcomed 2024’s most promising Young Global Leaders (YGLs), a group of nearly 90 changemakers from politics, business, civil society, the arts and academia. They are making a significant impact through their groundbreaking work and are united in their drive to leave a lasting impact on their communities, organizations and beyond.

The YGL community remains steadfast in its commitment to nurturing the next generation of leaders who are passionate about creating positive change. YGLs participate in Forum activities and initiatives, as well as with other communities. Among these are the Annual Meeting, regional events, alliances, consortia, Chief Experience Officer communities and Global Future Councils.

As part of their three-year learning journey, YGLs have access to a range of learning modules as well as opportunities to collaborate, with the intention of magnifying their impact. During the reporting period, 65 YGLs benefited from a customized executive education course at the Harvard Kennedy School focused on global leadership and public policy in the 21st century. In addition, 40 YGLs participated in a new learning module created in partnership with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, which focused on the transformative effects of AI.

The YGL Annual Summit, hosted by the government of the United Arab Emirates, brought together more than 500 YGLs and alumni to discuss the theme “Redefine Tomorrow’s Leadership”. The summit saw discussions of, and learning about, topics like climate change, AI’s opportunities and risks and rising geopolitical tensions. The culmination of the event saw 120 commitments from YGLs towards the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

For more than 25 years, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship has brought together a global community of pioneering social innovators driving systemic change.

In 2024, 16 new organizations were honoured with the Schwab Foundation Social Innovation Awards, joining a worldwide network of 475 changemakers who have collectively improved the lives of 891 million people since 1998.

During the Annual Meeting 2024, the Schwab Foundation released its impact report, Trusting in Humanity, which highlighted the achievements of its community of social innovators and showcased the work of its 2024 Social Innovation Awardees.

Continuing its commitment to driving change through thought leadership and highlighting the work of social innovators, the Schwab Foundation and its Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship released several publications outlining the roles and contributions of social innovators towards global priorities.

Importantly, its State of Social Enterprise report showcased the under-recognized size, scope and economic contribution of the entrepreneurial sector. It highlighted not just the global presence of 10 million social enterprises but also the fact that they generate $2 trillion annually and create 200 million jobs. Notably, women lead 50% of these organizations.

The Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship continued its efforts to mobilize private-sector support for social entrepreneurs. It launched the Rise Ahead Pledge, a corporate commitment to social innovation, and expanded its membership to 110 members from sectors including business, the public sector, academia and civil society.