Reflections from WEF Davos 2024 - hope, greater trust, and collaborative action.

Last week, Davos #WEF54 became a melting pot of over 60 heads of states, 300 top political leaders, CxOs from 200 global companies, hundreds of industry thought leaders, and trail blazers that resulted in a very high-octane and long week. It was especially significant amidst the turbulence in our geo-political situation, economic uncertainties, rapidly evolving technologies (such as AI), worsening climate crisis, and undeniable polarization across the world. This aspect was aptly conveyed by Ursula von der Leyer urging all the leaders to collaborate and rebuild.

“The world is not at a single inflection point. It is at multi inflection points” – Ursula Von Der Leyen, President of the European Commission.

True to the incredible Davos pulse, the simultaneity of various discussions across geo-political, economic, technology, social, and behavioral dimensions opened up everyone’s aperture to the world and what may unfold through the rest of the year and beyond. From among several threads, I summarize my thoughts and takeaways on these four topics.

1.?????? Climate crisis and health outcomes are inextricably linked

At the end of 2023, health was formally included on the climate agenda at the COP28. The WEF in collaboration with Oliver Wyman released a report that provides in-depth analysis of how climate change will impact health outcomes. By 2050, it is estimated that climate change will cause an additional 14.5m deaths and $12.5 trillion in economic losses. In addition, healthcare systems are expected to suffer an additional $11 trillion in economic burden from climate-induced impacts. Investments and partnerships aimed at tackling the climate crisis will also need to have a health dimension to the respective geographies. Up until now, climate action has not been financially rewarding enough to become a top priority while being that expensive to be not continuing to be ignored. With the close relationship between climate crisis and health outcomes, tackling the climate crisis will eventually have a positive influence on population health at a global level.

==> Climate and sustainability need to be one of the top 3 imperatives for all governments and corporations. The level of morbidity and mortality as a result of diseases such as cardiovascular to mental health to chronic conditions triggered by climate change can be effectively managed through a coordinated approach.

2.?????? AI will change how the world operates in the next 5 years – it is just the beginning

We are just skimming the surface in exploring the true potential of AI for the world. Every single industry is seeing unprecedented changes in how AI is reshaping the way services ?are delivered and value is being generated. In life sciences and healthcare, AI has already been proven to be an effective technology in accelerating drugs for intractable disease conditions and discovering new care pathways for treatment. Two main streams of thought that were active at Davos; 1) Regulated and managed risk approach for AI: the rapid pace of AI development is outpacing our ability to establish the right structural governance – both technical and industry – and realign people – process – adoption mechanisms that support transparency, equity, and ethics. Notwithstanding the hyper-growth rate – control dynamics, the prevailing geopolitical considerations and depletion of our bandwidth to deal with this growth curve may make the theory of Technological Singularity a close reality. The time is “now” to accelerate regulations, industry guidelines, and public-partnerships that will continue to move the needle to conscientious AI development and adoption that offset the risks. This is a critical factor in enhancing our trust in AI, and 2) Cautious optimism, multi-stakeholder review, and continuing investments in responsible AI: as with any new emerging technology and more so in the case of AI, we are still in the nascent stages of its development and there is a need for multi-stakeholder engagement and in-depth analysis of each progressive development in technology so that the risks are well balanced and weighed against the benefits to the society.

==> Multi-faceted developments will continue to accelerate the development and adoption of AI platforms and tools. Foundational AI layers such as a large language models (LLMs) will continue to get enriched with more sophistication, data precision, and adherence to regulations and guidelines. Adoption and practical applications will be driven through AI agents with increasing levels of intelligence and sophistication starting with simple reflex, model-based, goal-based, utility-based to learning ones with asynchronous and autonomous capabilities. Ultimately, every range of human action and service could be (re)built in the form of business applications that interface with these underlying AI agents and operating systems. This would require exponentially more computing power to drive this full ecosystem and advancements in quantum computing could help to fill in that gap.

3.?????? Investments in women’s health and bridging the health gap is critical

While we have made advancements in longer life expectancies, QALY, and DALY for the human population in general, there are still challenges that women despite living longer spend 25% of their life in poorer health (as compared to men). This burden has cascading set of effects for societies and has significant level of financial burden that needs to be alleviated. These disparities in women’s health arise from four primary areas related to science, data, care delivery, and investments. In the backdrop of challenging geopolitical situation in many parts of the world and unpredictable economic realities, the danger in not addressing this huge financial burden may push back the progress made in the field of life sciences and healthcare. Our plan to tackle this key theme should include investments in women-centric research across the R&D continuum, care delivery, and population health. We need to strengthen systematic data collection mechanisms to gather more insights into possible interventions that could be introduced to address women’s health burden. Our investments in areas of women’s health and innovation should be incentivized and made a priority. Lastly, women’s health should be made a priority starting with medical school curricula, portfolio investments, and employer workforce regulations.

==> Closing women’s health gap is not only the right structural adjustment that needs to take place within our societies, but it is estimated that such a move will represent a positive financial impact of $1 trillion by 2040. This essentially would allow 3.9 billion women to live healthier, higher-quality lives leading to fewer early deaths, reduced morbidity, and extended societal and economic capacity to contribute. Some notable initiatives were launched at Davos, including the multi-sector global platform – Global Alliance for Women’s Health. The success of these initiatives will depend on how well all stakeholders join and push this forward in the coming years.

4.?????? India’s potential is unparalleled and a key driver for uplifting the entire world

Undoubtedly, India was one of the top 3 themes coming out of Davos. In the backdrop of a challenging global scenario, India has emerged as a significant economic and geopolitical power. 2023 was a landmark year when India assumed the presidency of the G20 and driving notable accomplishments. As a founding member of BRICS bloc for developing nations, India expanded and welcomed six new nations - Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates. In the wake of widespread volatility, India delivered an impressive 7.2% growth rate? for fiscal 2022-2023, making it the second highest in the G20 cohort and constituting 16% of the growth of the world – this is indeed an uplifting performance! This financial performance has been coupled with India’s ability to maintain stability and enact structural reforms contributing to its economic resilience and ongoing investments in a number of areas, including digital infrastructure, national connectivity programs such as the Bharatmala highway program, and Smart Cities mission through port-led development. Notwithstanding all of the above, the Indian delegation to Davos 2024 were active in attracting investments and forging global partnerships in a number of sectors including technology, AI, consumer, healthcare and life sciences, and manufacturing. India also launched the alliance for Global Good – Gender Equity and Equality in Davos.

==> India is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the global economy and addressing key issues in the areas of bridging the health equity gap, gender equality, digital outreach, and climate action. With abundant talent potential and growing infrastructure in a number of key sectors, India can uplift the global economy in the coming years. Of course, this will be dependent on the continuing stability of democratic institutions within the country and ongoing broad-based policy with multilateral forums to address key domestic and global challenges. Based on the keen engagement of the Indian delegation and participation of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Davos, I’m heartened and excited of the potential India holds for the world in 2024 and beyond.

All the excitement at Davos 2024 (#WEF54) and its tremendous potential for world impact have to be tempered with some of the justified criticism for the event. Rather than the event quietly slipping into a state of passivity with just hyped up talk without any real practical impact, we have an opportunity to translate the discussions and opportunities into positive impact for the world. This is especially relevant at this critical juncture where we are facing uncertainty in global geopolitics, economic growth, and protection of basic human rights across the world. It would require all of the participating Davos (#WEF54) nations, corporations, partners, and individuals to commit to translating the plausibility of real potential into value for our people and communities. For our concerted set of actions to drive positive change in a turbulent world, let us draw inspiration from this quote at #WEF54.

“Projections are not our destiny…” – Ajay Banga, President, The World Bank

[Disclaimer: the views expressed in this article are my own. It does not represent any organization or entity.]