The World Economic Forum is sometimes labelled “a talking shop” by sceptics who doubt that anything practical is achieved at its regular global gatherings, and especially the three-day extravaganza, its annual meeting, that opens today in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos.
Robert Greenhill is not among those sceptics. Since 2008, he has been the managing director and chief business officer of the WEF, helping to run the complex administration of an international organisation.
“I’m an optimist at heart and I never lose sight of the core goal we set ourselves as we go into every meeting in Davos – that we can provide the intellectual space for leaders to gain a better understanding of the chronic, complex challenges they collectively face and the knowledge and resolution to solve them together,” he says.
Mr Greenhill, a Canadian, knows the value of “intellectual space”. With a clutch of business qualifications from some of the best academic institutions in the world – the London School of Economics, Insead in Paris – he worked first with McKinsey, the international consulting group renowned for the rigour of its intellectual input.
Then he went off to the sharp end of business as president and chief operating officer of Bombardier International, the global engineering group, for the best part of a decade. That mixture of practical experience and theoretical expertise gives him a solid take on the issues facing the world today.
Those issues fall broadly under the categories of geopolitical, economic and demographic, with a fourth – technology – apparently destined to play a big role at Davos this year in the ongoing controversy over government’s access to privately held information.
On the political front, Mr Greenhill harbours doubts about the quality of global governance systems. “When we talk about the political forces changing the world today, we consider everything affecting how countries or the world are governed. Geopolitical dynamics now coexist alongside other forces – long-term trends such as climate change and financial instability, for example, which are deeply impacting leaders’ ability to govern.
“These are too large and interconnected for any one government or business to address alone, which is why we need to come up with solutions that work on a global scale, and build the broad base of support to push them through. This is what the annual meeting in Davos is all about.”
He sees an even bigger challenge on the economic front. “Income disparity and ongoing fiscal weakness are certainly powerful forces, but we believe the inter-generational crisis – fed by large-scale and structural youth unemployment – is the biggest challenge facing the world today.
“Some 300 million people are currently unemployed or underemployed and 120 million more are entering the workforce each year. This problem is particularly keenly felt in the Middle East and North African region, and we urgently need a global solution to end this crisis before we cut off our young generations completely,” says Mr Greenhill.
Demographic change is another big factor in the WEF’s global outlook. “Youth bulges in emerging economies are placing a huge strain on economies as young people enter the workforce. But they also hold the prospect for great economic transformation as these new consumers become engines of growth. At the other end of the scale, ageing populations are forcing us to think creatively about how we view and use a maturing workforce.”
Technological innovation affects everything, he believes. “It certainly changes the way we interact, and what we expect, from our leaders. It also accelerates the pace of transformation. What we are most interested in here at Davos is gaining a better understanding of how all these forces interconnect, and working together to design ideas and actions to address them in a positive and constructive a way as possible.”
The Middle East is always high up the Davos agenda, and looks set to be even more high-profile this year with the fighting in Syria and the presence of a senior delegation from Iran attending the WEF for the first time in 10 years.
Powerful forces for change are all at work in the region, Mr Greenhill says, “from the civil war in Syria and rising societal tension and unemployment across parts of the region, to some of the more promising developments.
“The UAE, for example, is demonstrating leadership in the region when it comes to integrating women into the workforce and playing an important role in helping shift attitudes towards an environmental sustainability mindset.
“Leaders from the UAE have a long history of playing a full and energetic role in our annual meetings and I am delighted that many important Emirati leaders will be joining us this year.”
What will make this annual meeting different from any of the previous 43? “This year, more than other years, we have an excellent opportunity to help our leaders exit the crisis mode they have been in since the financial crisis began and really focus in on a long-term mindset,” says Mr Greenhill.
fkane@thenational