Global leaders catalyzing change

Question: What is the significance of Davos?

Jean-Pierre Rosso: Davos is one meeting of—that the World Economic Forum conducts out of maybe 20 meetings during the year around the world. But Davos is so called here Annual Meetings. So it is the largest of our meetings and it is the meeting, which is attended by the highest level of participants: CEOs, heads of state, academia, civil society, international organizations, and so every component of society is represented there. And the purpose is to talk about the major issues confronting us on a global basis.

Question: What is the impact of the World Economic Forum?

Jean-Pierre Rosso: I think the effects have been very, very positive because the forum promotes dialogue between various stakeholders. The forum is just a platform that brings together people from all the components of society [to] sit down around the table and talk about the issues. And that is pretty unique, because in today’s world, it is hard to hard to achieve any thing with out gathering all the stakeholders together. It will achieve first understanding of the issues, awareness of some of the issues and the forum positions itself as a catalyst to reaction, so we are not ourselves involved directly into doing something, but we are [a] catalyst throughout those dialogue, those discussions, those meetings, things come out of there and being put in place, either directly by some of the participants or by a group of participants. We have meetings in Asia, we have meeting in Latin America, in Africa, in the Middle East, in Europe, in the States. So and we have annual meetings which major one being there was the other one being in China every year and really the whole world is represented as well as whole, because, I said compelling society from every where.

Date Recorded: 03/19/2008