My G.R.E.W. reflection from WEF 2022, Davos

No snow, No heavy overcoats, No putting on-off shoe-spikes, No frosting of eye-glasses, No slipping & sliding – WEF 2022 at Davos was a breeze compared to the normal January schedule. There is mixed reaction as to which time of the year is better for WEF, January or May - perhaps WEF can run a poll across participants on what they would prefer. Despite the snow-clad Alps & crispness of January air, I found May to be lot more convenient & accessible.

Regardless of the timing, WEF 2022 delivered to its promise of thought-provoking conversations and broad-based engagement. I’d like to share my reflections under 4 themes of Growth, Resilience, Energy transition and Web3. Needless to say, the forum was over-casted by the painful human tragedy in war-hit Ukraine.

Growth: There was broad consensus on high likelihood of a recession in Europe given that Ukraine-Russia crisis will probably head towards an elongated stalemate exacerbating the energy & food supply situation on one side and ECB’s rate hikes on the other side. A lot of debate over Central Bank’s general approach of rate hikes as a tool to manage current inflation, which seems to be result of supply-side shocks rather than over-heated demand. It was interesting to hear to views of Dan Schulman, Kristalina Georgieva, David Rubenstein, Jason Furman , Mariana Mazzucato on the US economy – The fact that there is ~$2.5 tr. of cash sitting with consumers (from the past Covid fiscal stimulus) that seems to be less sensitive to the current inflation and as it burns out over next 8-9 months, the real impact of the rate hikes & inflation will be felt in the US by end of this year/early next year – The short term signals may be hiding what lies ahead in the mid-term.

Resilience: Regardless of the uncertain economic situation ahead, I found the industry leaders to be not excessively worried. Perhaps the experience of dealing with Covid has made us more resilient & confident to respond to crisis in general. Building resilience was discussed in multiple contexts and I appreciated views expressed by Jane Fraser, Hans Vestberg and Bob Sternfels - looking at resilience holistically from the lens of Organization, Value Chain & Individual.

A key aspect of resilience is the ability to sense, predict and respond with speed to reallocate resources. Digitally connected supply chains unlocking the power of Edge, 5G, AI & Robotics to sense & respond, helping match uncertain demand to the constrained supply in real time.

Covid taught us that the role of individuals and teams across organization in building resilience can’t be overstated. Several leaders emphasized the importance of connecting, empathizing, de-stressing the environment and creating a caring culture. During this Davos I felt lot more empathy across leaders (or perhaps I was seeing the world with different eyes post-Covid).

Through the human evolution different forms of social groups have provided mass-leadership & upliftment for the people – Tribes, Religion, State to name a few. In an increasingly divided world, I believe that businesses are perhaps the most unifying social network and there is a unique opportunity for businesses & their leaders to look at individual & organizational engagement in a holistic way, catering to the ‘whole human’.

Energy Transition: It was encouraging to see that regardless of the macro environment, everyone’s commitment to investing in decarbonatization & circularity was rock solid. In certain ways, the rising fuel prices has reminded us of our dependency & the need to diversify our energy mix. Many leaders like Jim Snabe, Mads Nipper, Ignacio Galan, Anne Richards expressed the imperatives as we move forward – Investment in multiple technology innovations rather than being hung-up on one or the other while having a multi-use architecture, global collaboration, coordinated effort for minimum viable scale and accelerated government clearances.

Web3: While web3 has been used largely in blockchain & decentralization/tokenization context, I am using it here in a broader sense of the next iteration of the Web representing host of technologies including a more immersive web. It was great to see the excitement reflected by Klaus Schwab on building WEF in the Metaverse and wonderful experiencing an initial WEF meeting in the Metaverse with some fellow participants. I was stuck by how simple things like 3D image/avatar, waving of the hands, shaking of the heads, our avatars walking to come close to each other, can generate a compelling human emotion. Ofcouse the technology needs to evolve – both the headset hardware and the software. BTW, in case you are wondering why avatars only have upper-body, that’s because the cameras & sensors in the current headsets can only model our upper body movement and therefore a half-bodied avatar to avoid the risk of uncoordinated lower & upper body ??.

So that’s my G.R.E.W. reflection from WEF 2022 at Davos. Overall, it reinforced my belief in the role of technology and human capability to keep moving us forward towards a better world. I returned more aware of what lies ahead, carried back some awesome new relationships and even if the outlook seems tough, meeting several colleagues and leaders gives me the confidence that we have the resilience to deal with whatever future holds for us.