2006 Annual Meeting in Davos of the World Economic Forum
2006 Annual Meeting in Davos of the World Economic Forum
Two Perspectives
SHARE hosted for the 3rd year in a row a maximum-capacity evening devoted to the recently concluded Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Two views were presented:
Professor David Gergen of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University devoted his hour-long discussion to US political and geopolitical matters, as well as leadership questions in general. He began by giving a sweeping assessment of the evolution of consensus thinking in Davos dating back to the early 1990s, when the United States emerged as a sole superpower, all the way to 2006 when the rising status of China and India dominated talks. His underlying message was that political leaders around the world today faced questions that were so important, and so serious (global warming, security and terrorism, health care) that politicians needed to “step up to the plate” and find solutions to these matters. The wide-ranging question and answer format was appreciated for the unique opportunity it presented to interact with such a prominent figure of the US political and media scene.
Professor Eric von Hippel of the MIT Sloan School of Management focused his comments on the topic of creativity and innovation. This year’s Davos Meeting had a major component dedicated to innovation (in fact the theme was “The Creative Imperative”) and Dr. von Hippel took part in several seminars related to that topic. He thus was able to relay in a first instance how he feels CEOs ought to be integrating innovation into their strategic priorities, namely by embracing distributed and open innovation. He showed how product development can benefit by this process. His engaging and lively presentation, followed by Q+A, revealed that chief executives in Davos are anxious to better understand and integrate this thinking into their work, but have yet to fully understand how to accomplish that.
