How a Geneva business professor's management seminar became the Davos summit
In 1971 Klaus Schwab invited 450 European executives to a Swiss ski resort to learn American management methods. Within two decades the gathering had become a place where rival leaders met quietly, and the relaxed conference once joked about as a holiday on expenses turned into an annual global stage.
Schwab, who taught business at the University of Geneva, founded the organisation on 24 January 1971 as a nonprofit called the European Management Forum. That February he brought Western European executives to the Davos Congress Centre, hoping to introduce them to management practice from across the Atlantic. The name changed to the World Economic Forum in 1987, when it widened its ambitions to include a platform for easing international conflicts.
Politics crept in early. In 1972 Luxembourg's prime minister Pierre Werner became the first head of government to speak. The turmoil of 1973, with the collapse of fixed exchange rates under Bretton Woods and the Yom Kippur War, pushed the agenda from management toward economic and social questions, and political leaders were first invited in January 1974. For its first decade the mood stayed light, with plenty of skiing and evening entertainment.
Leaders soon used the setting for diplomacy. Greece and Turkey signed the Davos Declaration in 1988, helping them step back from the brink of war. In 1992 F. W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela and Mangosuthu Buthelezi made their first joint appearance outside South Africa there. In 2017 Xi Jinping became the first head of state from the People's Republic of China to attend, using the platform to defend globalisation.
The forum, based in Cologny near Geneva and funded mostly by about 1,000 member companies, has drawn persistent criticism over corporate influence, tax-exempt status, security costs, opaque membership rules and the environmental footprint of flying the elite to the Alps. Schwab stepped down as chair in April 2025, citing his entry into his 88th year.
Source: World Economic Forum
