Prime Highlights
- Klaus Schwab, the creator of the World Economic Forum (WEF), will be retiring as Chair and Board Trustee after more than 50 years.
- WEF Vice Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe has been confirmed as acting Chair during a search for Klaus Schwab’s successor.
Key Facts
- WEF was founded by Klaus Schwab in 1971 with the intention of bridging the divide between the private and public sectors on global issues.
- Across Schwab, WEF’s Davos meeting was the epitome of cooperation and globalizing the world.
Key Background
Klaus Schwab’s retirement from the World Economic Forum is the end of an era of revolutionary transformation in international debate and cooperation. In 1971, Schwab established the WEF as a non-partisan platform on which business, political, and civil society leaders could meet to discuss the most critical issues in the world. A small European management conference in its early years, the WEF grew to become the mythical Davos summit each year—mythical in its extent and worldwide nature.
During the last half-century, Schwab molded the WEF as an institution promoting stakeholder capitalism and inter-sector cooperation. Presidents and prime ministers, CEOs and stars, activists and pop musicians came to the Davos conferences to be among those discussing anything from climate to inequality. The vision of Schwab did not stop in economic sense; he wanted to humanize capitalism and drive world development in a sustainable way.
WEF, however, has not been without its critics. It has been charged by them chiefly on grounds of elitism and aloofness from the sort of issues close to the common man’s heart. Complaints regarding its own internal organizational culture, too, including harassment and discrimination, have likewise been lodged by the media—charges against which the WEF protested vociferously. Last but not least, the rise of populism and nationalism all over the world has called the forum’s agenda of globalization into question.
Because of the changing world, the WEF created a new structure in 2015 from founder-led to more institutionalized. This entailed the hiring of a President, presently Børge Brende, and institutionalizing the governance board. Schwab’s resignation is an extension of this transition, organizing the institution to decentralized leadership.
As Peter Brabeck-Letmathe takes over as interim Chair, the WEF continues to look for a new leader who will be able to continue Schwab’s legacy and adapt to today’s multipolar, digitally networked, and more divided world. The WEF’s “mission to improve the state of the world” remains unchanged, but how it goes about doing so does change in a post-Schwab world.
