A Forum for greater collaboration and community
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How do we create communities and build collaboration? It is a problem all organizations grapple with, but for the World Economic Forum it occurs at scale. The Forum’s communities span global enterprises. Its collaborators are global leaders.
We’re also asking this question after a decade of unprecedented change. The world has faced a global financial crisis, geopolitical uncertainty, resurgent nationalism, and a revolution in industrial technology that threatens to upset the shibboleths of economic policy.
The World Economic Forum has undergone a transformation in those same years. It is no longer a convener of important annual conversations, but an institution seeking to map transformations, enable ongoing dialogue, and support the search for solutions to global challenges.
It holds not a handful of global meetings but many. It provides digital spaces for discussion. It goes deeper into the agendas shaping regions, industries and the world. It brings members together with leaders from academia, civil society, and government across five continents.
The Forum is now a global organization, with people drawn from 55 nationalities. They work not from one place, but from four locations across Asia, North America and Europe.
Its work is carried out by experts and professionals: three times the number of 10 years ago. Today, two thirds of World Economic Forum staff have postgraduate degrees – a tenth of those doctorates. Its projects have greater impact. It sets global benchmarks.
More than ever, it is called upon by the global community to help bridge gaps between stakeholders, to open dialogue where none was possible, and to identify new means to address pressing problems.
Those problems range from financial regulation to climate change and the internet, where the Forum is trying to stimulate more cross-industry and cross-ministry strategic dialogue on ways to strengthen multistakeholder Internet governance and cooperation.
The world has changed, and the Forum has risen to meet new challenges. But one thing that has remained unchanged these past ten years is the cost of rising to those challenges, through the support of its partners – global businesses.
So how does the Forum structure its membership to best reward partners who most commit their time and human capital to help fulfil its mission? How does it strengthen the collaboration and community that makes it effective?
By proposing to make participation in its global events free and – in the business arena – limited only to members. This fulfills two goals. It provides an incentive for meaningful engagement, and prevents meetings becoming merely transactional.
No one can buy their way in to a World Economic Forum meeting, free of the commitments and responsibilities asked of partners. The Forum wants interactions that support a global network, not a global networking opportunity.
What does that mean?
For those leaders who recognize that despite fierce commercial rivalries, business must work with all its stakeholders, globally, including competitors, to drive improvements that will benefit all, it is an opportunity to strengthen their support for the Forum.
For those who associate the Forum only with Davos, it is perhaps a moment for re-evaluation. The Forum’s mission and priorities – like improving global competitiveness, bench-marking gender equality, moving the dial on global infrastructure – can only progress further with the commitment of its members.
Making meetings free and delivering on a mission comes at a cost. The most precious resource leaders grant is their time. Today the World Economic Forum has the people and the purpose to make the return on that investment greater than ever.
IMAGE: Young Global Leader Alumnus Sheryl Sandberg (L), COO, Facebook, talks to Global Shaper Reem Mouazzen (R), Founder, Filfil Smart Phone App, during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 22, 2014.
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