SCHWAB: What is striking, looking 30 years back, is how the environment in which we are living and working–the political, the geopolitical, the economic, the social environment–has changed. It has been fascinating to be part of this change process–and in certain fields, even an agent, a catalyst of change.
It is a consequence of consistency in pursuing certain values–such as independence, being committed to social-change entrepreneurship, being committed to a global outlook, but not to any specific national or vested interests. [This] has given us a lot of credibility and confidence. This hasn’t been a PR exercise.
I’m not a politician and I don’t want to be a politician depending on popularity. I’m an academic, pursuing a mission, and I have to put the mission at the forefront.
A bad conscience or a feeling of guilt offers one explanation. During my many travels, I frequently see the downside of life. Despite all the gains of globalization, there’s a widening gap between the haves and have-nots. This simply is not sustainable. So it’s in the self-interest of the privileged to make sure that the gap is closed. All this may sound idealistic, but it’s not idealistic, it’s pragmatic. In our interdependent world, you can’t afford to let people lose out in pursuit of a decent life. Everyone must be a winner.
I foresee the problem of ever-increasing time compression and complexity. This leads to what I call the death of sequentiality–that you go so fast through different phases involving different, and complex, decision-making processes. This leads to an increased collective vulnerability, especially in that zone where governments and business interface. So you can’t rely only on a meeting once a year in, say, Davos. The international system needs to give greater thought to dealing with this new situation. For the forum, this means facilitating more electronic communications among the players–continuous, real-time interaction and knowledge sharing–and becoming a kind of hub for highly flexible global public-policy networks integrating international organizations, governments, business, science and civil society.
I am a deep believer in the concept of entrepreneurship. To me, genuine entrepreneurship means not just pursuing economic goals but also social development in the global public interest. Our prize will honor individuals, or governments or civil-society activists who could serve as role models for entrepreneurship with a very positive social effect. I’m thinking of fields such as social development, education, civics development, sustainable development and possibly cultural development. The prize would consist of $1 million for each of those areas annually. We will use the Web for collecting proposals and ideas.
What encourages me is that business leaders increasingly seem to be developing an enormous thirst to deal with what I would call soft issues, social and environmental issues. Perhaps the Davos process has helped bring home the promise as well as the inherent dangers of our interdependent world. We can manage the interdependence of the world only if we all share certain basic moral and ethical values. What disturbs me is that many of us still tolerate ugly compromises with basic values, that the global community hasn’t been able to fully apply sophistication and wisdom to ending wars and diseases. How do you make sure that human rights are observed, and that violations of those values are penalized, wherever they take place? How do you avoid wars in the future? I think that will be one of the big challenges as we start a new century. We have to guard against the tendency to demonize globalization as the source of all evil on earth and then to formulate simplistic responses to the challenges of 6 billion–and soon more –people who all aspire for a better life and who all have virtually become neighbors on the same planet.
