On this week's edition of What's at Stake, Andy Whitehouse, host and senior partner of Penta's NYC office is joined by President of Penta Matt McDonald, D.C.-based Partner Stacy Kerr, and Brussels-based Partner Conall McDevitt to discuss Penta's presence in Davos in January. Andy, Matt, Stacy, and Conall took to the mountains for the 2024 World Economic Forum. During the episode, the group shared their reflections on the week’s events, and unpacked the implications of global gatherings like Davos for companies and their stakeholders.
To answer the question of "Does Davos work?", the group delves into what it takes to participate in international gatherings like Davos, examining the factors that contribute to success. Their conversation includes a discussion on the impact of engagements such as Davos on a company's overall strategy and positioning and how these events influence the global narrative.
The group also reflects on Penta's event from the week: How AI will disrupt the roles of the C-suite executives, which was dubbed the most relevant discussion at the conference by POLITICO Playbook.
To conclude, the group reflects on key themes from the week, like AI, examining their potential impact on future trends. This episode reveals the essential considerations for businesses to monitor in 2024 and strategies to stay ahead in an ever-evolving landscape.
On this week's edition of What's at Stake, Andy Whitehouse, host and senior partner of Penta's NYC office is joined by President of Penta Matt McDonald, D.C.-based Partner Stacy Kerr, and Brussels-based Partner Conall McDevitt to discuss Penta's presence in Davos in January. Andy, Matt, Stacy, and Conall took to the mountains for the 2024 World Economic Forum. During the episode, the group shared their reflections on the week’s events, and unpacked the implications of global gatherings like Davos for companies and their stakeholders.
To answer the question of "Does Davos work?", the group delves into what it takes to participate in international gatherings like Davos, examining the factors that contribute to success. Their conversation includes a discussion on the impact of engagements such as Davos on a company's overall strategy and positioning and how these events influence the global narrative.
The group also reflects on Penta's event from the week: How AI will disrupt the roles of the C-suite executives, which was dubbed the most relevant discussion at the conference by POLITICO Playbook.
To conclude, the group reflects on key themes from the week, like AI, examining their potential impact on future trends. This episode reveals the essential considerations for businesses to monitor in 2024 and strategies to stay ahead in an ever-evolving landscape.
Hello everyone and welcome to what's At Stake, a PENTA podcast with Matt McDonald, stacy, kerr, Conor McDevitt and me, your host, andy Whitehouse. The four of us represent PENTA at Davos earlier this month for the World Economic Forum, and so we thought we'd share some of our reflections on the week's events and the impact of global gatherings like this for companies and for their stakeholders, and we'll talk a little bit about whether Davos works for the world of 2024. So thank you to Matt, to Stacy and Conor for joining me today. Hi, andy, hello, so to start us off, I'd love to hear each of your impressions on Davos 2024 as an event. I've been lucky to go to the meeting a couple of times in the past. Very interesting to hear your takes, as some of you came to much fresher eyes. What surprised you about the event? What was most memorable? What did you see on the inside that perhaps the media commentary didn't pick up?
Speaker 2:Andy, I have to correct you. First, though by a couple of times, Andy was making his 16th trip to Davos, right, Andy?
Speaker 1:Something like that.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, I lost count, you're new listeners to Andy and the Penta team. Andy, you spent time when you were at both KPMG and IBM in Davos, is that right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, McKinsey at IBM and at Willis. So yeah, I definitely put the vet into Davos veteran. But so you tell me, Stacy, what were your impressions of Davos in 2024?
Speaker 2:Well, for people that have never been, and I think for probably those listening who have been would agree there is just no replacement for the scale of people in one place having interesting, thoughtful conversations really from all parts of the globe, and that that piece is. I think I'm not sure there is another forum where you get that caliber and collection of people together in one place and really pretty singularly focused on engaging with each other in that space. So I think it is said about Davos. I think that is one thing that struck me is just how true that was. I mean, whether we were walking down the street running into people that we knew or just meeting really really interesting new people, it is a huge, huge valuable use of time given the scale and the quantity and caliber of people.
Speaker 1:Thanks, stacy Matt. What was most memorable for you from there?
Speaker 3:I mean I've been once before. I would say that there was, you know, as a convening of conventional wisdom. It was all AI all the time it had a. There was a little. I mean AI will be profound. We did our event on AI, so I mean a bit of a glasshouse on that one.
Speaker 3:But I would say that the thoroughness of the AI, what it's, if software is eating the world, ai8wef this year, and it might be it might be it might have been a little overwrought just in terms of there are a lot of other topics out there. I think. I do think that within the topics of the Congress center itself there was probably a little more diversity in the panels than the kind of ensuing like the surround sound of the rest of the town. So I mean that was that was kind of first, second and third priorities and discussion. I'm not sure that's wrong, but but it definitely had. It had a certainly an echo chamber effect this year.
Speaker 3:I think I'm, you know, broadly from the last time I went kind of pre pandemic would. I would say that the progression of the weft takeover of Davos itself in the town precedes a pace. You know, I'm not sure. At some point it just feels like there will be no stores or restaurants left, is that everything will be taken over by corporate store funds. But it's always, as Stacy said, it's always a great convening to meet with people and you know, here's some provocative ideas and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Matt and we'll. We'll definitely want to come back to the PENSA panel on AI, where you played a starring role, tonal. You lead off. You lead off outside of, outside of North America, from your vantage point based in Europe, but thinking about clients and other parts of the world as well. What was your take on on Davos 2024?
Speaker 4:I suppose it's the uniqueness of the gathering. You know, walking into a, into a repurposed golf club bar on a Wednesday evening and seeing Tony Blair, john Kerry and Sting sitting at a table enjoying a pint, only then to turn the other way and, you know, meet the leaders of some of the largest banks in the world and other you know others very significant public and private figures globally. That doesn't happen every day of the week and I would venture to say it doesn't happen in any of the town at any of the point of the year except in Davos. And that makes it special and it creates its own atmosphere which I think is very interesting. There's nearly a democracy about the level at which people engage. There's an openness, there's a willingness to talk which would not be there if you met these people privately or individually in their native environments. And those things should not be, you know, should not be taken lightly. They're unique opportunities for people in great positions of power and authority globally to find space and time to speak frankly.
Speaker 4:And you know I've loads of other anecdotes from the week. You know, bumping into Gordon Brown on the street and popping into a pretty intimate conversation with Sam Altman talking about the. You know, the threats to democracy of his own invention, and from Penta's point of view, I think it's very, it's very, it's very exciting that we kind of are able, first of all, to participate and that we are accepted into this global community because you have to have achieved a certain amount of success to be accepted but also that we are very much in the zeitgeist of that community, living as we do at the intersection of traditional politics and business, but also enjoying the disruption that you know a huge amount of data and insights has brought to our business and the potential that AI is going to bring to our business and our industry in the months and years ahead. So for me it was like it was a combination of being frozen, you know, never thinking that such a you know, a bunch of apparently important people could find fighting over food such an important daily obsession, and then also blown away both intellectually and kind of from a, from a, you know, like an opportunity to meet people point of view was really quite the thing and for me as the first timer yeah, not something I'll forget lightly Very interesting.
Speaker 2:Andy, can I, can I flip it back on you and maybe with your, your, your veteran status? I am curious what, what struck you this year that was maybe different than last year's, or what were your takeaways on on this year's convening?
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, thanks, of course. So, as you said earlier, I've been going for a bit now. The first year I went was in 2006, and each of you made points that I think are really spot on as I think about how the event has changed over the last 20 years or so. So the first thing that's just incredibly striking is how many people now are showing up for the event and how big the fringe festival that takes place in town outside of the Congress Center has begun, I would guess. More than a thousand events organized by companies and countries and nonprofit organizations, and so there's just such a rich conversation all over town.
Speaker 1:Matt, you're right, it felt like maybe the AI had decided it would take over.
Speaker 1:So it did feel like that the AI had taken over the agenda, at least for the fringe festival running around the town outside of the Congress Center, but just an enormous number of events organized by companies and by countries, nonprofit organizations, foundations and the like over the course of the week, I think.
Speaker 1:One other thing that's striking, matt you just said how basically every piece of infrastructure in the town seems to have been taken over by a company or a country to sort of present its brand to the world. One thing very striking to me, compared to the past, was how many countries had decided to go down that route. So, from all over the world, that felt like this was an opportunity for them to present their national brand and to have a physical location in which political leaders, business leaders from that part of the world were able to tell their story to the people participating in Davos. So it has gone from being a sort of, I guess, a traditional conference to almost a platform in which organizations of all kinds and countries are showing up and telling their story to the world. So to the point you made at the start, stacey it's a super important place, I think, for us to be.
Speaker 2:Andy, one thing I would say, just picking up on everybody's also and Connell brought us a little bit of the celebrity of Davos, which back here in the States that's oftentimes what people hear about from Davos is the celebrities that come to sort of press their cause or to come and jump on.
Speaker 2:But I think, if you've never been, and I think it's a huge takeaway from Davos is people come to Davos to do business, whether it's businesses, countries, people like us that they are coming to do business.
Speaker 2:And I was especially struck by you know, we had a pretty large number of clients that were there. You referenced the event that we did. That we'll get into. So you know our reason for going was the clients we had, the connections of people who we've been talking to around the globe and having people in one place to really share conversations with all parts of our business. But I do think people are really in Davos looking for the right mix of teams to solve these big, huge problems that they're facing from a business perspective. And whether that's cross country cooperation, diplomatically for businesses, whether it's the groups of outside consulting teams that they're putting together, everybody is very, very focused on utilizing the intellectual and business capacity that is happening over those five days to really knit together the right group of teams to solve these really really big, big, you know, dynamic forces that businesses are facing globally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's right, Stacey, and I was at least on Connell's point earlier I sort of imagined Connell's life was all about being in bars with Tony Blair and Stacey and John Kerry, so I was a little surprised by that. But to that point, what do you perhaps, connell, if you want to go for this one, what do you, if you were helping, next year, a client, think about how they should prepare for that environment that Stacey was just describing? What do you think sort of? What should the strategy be for going to an event like this? You know, what are the tactics that are going to make you, make you and your organization, effective during what is a really packed and kind of exhausting week.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think. I think the big, the big message would be that you need a very clear strategy for Davos. So, whether you're a large multinational or you're an NGO or you're a state, there will be a, an official theme to the conference this year it was AI but there will be business that you will want to do and I think you need to have a really clear view in your own mind as to why you're going there, who you want to connect with and what and for what purpose. And I think today, as we're recording this on, you know, at the end of, at the end of January, I think there's evidence of one group having had a pretty clear mission actually when they went to Davos, and it's in the British papers this morning and, ironically, it's the British Labour Party.
Speaker 4:So the British Labour Party chose to go to Davos and they put the the shadow Chancellor, rachel Reeves, front and centre, and it is clear now from the news reporting today that their mission was to engage with global banks and they clearly wanted to talk to the global banks about what they call their financial services plan, which they published this morning. And at the heart of that is a decision and not to reverse the Conservative government's decision to lift the bonus cap on bankers in the city of London. I won't bore the listeners with all the details around that, but if you're, if you're running a global bank and you have a big team of successful investment bankers sitting in London, this matters in terms of your talent retention, in terms of London remaining a global financial centre, and it is pretty clear, with the benefit of hindsight, that that's what Labour were about at Davos. They were not about talking about AI. They were about getting in the room with the leaders of the world's biggest banks to reassure them that they were going to back the city of London all the way and that they did not intend to in any way undermine the future of the city of London.
Speaker 4:You know, in the years ahead under Labour government and I think that's a really interesting example of just one organisation clearly having a purpose and going for it and I think for any organisation that has a global footprint, the same opportunity exists. There is no other, as I said, place in the world where you will gather everyone you could possibly want to speak to in the one place, and you need to make choices. You need to decide who you're going to meet what you're going to meet them about, but the good news is they'll?
Speaker 4:be there. The other thing that I would take away and this was a piece of advice you offered up and was offered up in some meetings with friends of yours, andy, who are veterans of this you need to start planning Davos nearly now. So you know, it is the spring of the year before Davos that you are going to be thinking about like what you're going to get out of it, what your objectives are going to be, who you're going to be targeting, what the shape of your programme is going to be. But my takeaway is if you're a serious global business or global organisation, you have something you need to communicate to the world's most important stakeholders. You could do a lot worse than invest time and energy in doing so in Davos.
Speaker 1:Thanks, connell, and that story about labour is definitely one that's only just surface. That was a little more under the radar, I'd say, during the course of the week, so it's super interesting.
Speaker 2:I will say Rachel Reeves was a hot topic at many of the events that I went to, especially some of the events that were focused on corporate women. It was everybody was like is Rachel Reeves here Is?
Speaker 5:Rachel Reeves here.
Speaker 2:Yeah so there was a. The stings of the world are not the only stars in Davos.
Speaker 4:And I think they put the work in stakes right. They had done their work. The Labour Party preparing for positioning Rachel Reeves front and centre, and, you know, xi'ao Qian, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, by the way, in the British press the week of Davos is getting criticised for only turning up on Thursday morning. I bumped into him in the corridor shuttling between meetings, but like he was playing catch up and there goes. You know, I think it's a fantastic case to just show how this gathering can be used to really promote a cause or a particular agenda.
Speaker 1:So before we go to a quick break, let me ask each of you maybe Matt, if you want to go first. Setting aside AI, which was obviously a really big theme and we'll come back to in part two what else would you say was your key kind of theme or trend that you think clients should be watching out for this year, based on the conversation that you heard, the conversations you were in while you were in Switzerland?
Speaker 3:I mean, I would say that the number two topic was probably kind of year of elections in general and that surfaced in a number of different ways.
Speaker 3:But I would say that, you know, everybody knows that it's an election year coming up and at the same time I'm not sure that a ton of people have focused on that fact until the clock kind of turned over to 2024. And all of a sudden there's a bit more thinking about what that entails, that it obviously entwined with the AI conversation a little bit, but also kind of corporate brand and corporate reputation and how you prepare for some of that. There's obviously a lot of you know, geopolitical, you know tension, risk, war, all these sorts of things. And I think that that was, you know, if you had the ying and the yang of the kind of AI opportunity, the flip side was kind of this, I don't know, it had a quality of people waiting on the year of elections to play out and see what the world looks like after the fact. And it does. You know, I was reflecting on this a little bit.
Speaker 3:one of the pieces that kind of came up, or the topics, as in some of my conversations, is the fact that you know here in the States the one thing that we know for certain is that we will have a lame duck president elected in at the end of the year, and it does have a bit of a quality of that that feels emblematic for the year of elections. That's happening despite all of the people around the world that are going to vote, and it is in the billions. It also feels like we're in the I don't know still the tail end of one era and having quite turned the page on a lot of change to come. So I think it's still kind of a bit of a restive period where there's like there's just all. There's going to be a lot of tension over the coming year and I think, at least on the corporate side, there was plenty of conversation about how you anticipate that and plan for that and think around the corner on some of the tensions that will inevitably play out over the coming months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, matt. Just one point on that is and I think, yeah, I think this is the largest quantity of elections in human history, right this year, and I think, again from a US perspective, what often gets reported out is a predictive element of oh, who did business think will win elections? Well, on the ground, there is maybe 1% predictive and it's 99% resignation and planning. As you say, matt, like people are very much in the mode of you, resigned even from a US perspective, to the fact that, as you point out, matt, we will have a lame duck, a president in either case, whether it's Biden or Trump, who will be in his final term, and much more of the business conversation was far less about any panic about who that will be and much more resignation to what that will mean for business and how they move forward.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you have to pick something other than elections, because there-.
Speaker 4:No, I think climate is still the elephant in the room. Honestly, I think there was a lot of noise in the margins about how climate was not on the agenda anymore, and I think it. You know you had all told me like Davos' topic of the year, you know, topic de jour, whatever the world's talking about in June, davos convenes on in November and so I guess you come to the AI debate. But, like, underneath it all was a huge climate debate. And when you looked at the high street in Davos, you saw some of the world's most interesting, exciting emerging economies or emerged economies whose entire proposition at Davos was about their ability to pivot in from being patrochemical states to being post-patrochemical states.
Speaker 4:So the Saudis were there in huge force, platforming their NEOM project, which is, you know, this great project to build the world's first net zero city, as I think someone reminded us. Nearly every major Indian region as well as the Indian government were there. And again, front and center for them is that they're a huge technology sort of powerhouse globally, but they're also, you know, at the at the fulcrum of climate debate and transition, and I think it will be very interesting in the years ahead to see how the World Economic Forum and Davos is able to straddle that really critically important debate alongside, whatever the topical issue of the year might be. But that for me was was a bit of the elephant in the room.
Speaker 1:Great Thanks, Connell. Well, let's take a quick break so I can grab a bit of extra cheese fondue and we'll be back with your best of fondue. In a second.
Speaker 5:Penta is the world's first comprehensive stakeholder solutions firm. We are a one-stop shop for the intelligence and strategy leaders need to assess a company's reputation and make decisions that improve their positioning as executives in the C-suite must account for a growing set of engaged stakeholders, all with distinct, fast-changing demands. Penta provides real-time intelligence and strategy solutions. We work with clients solving complex global challenges across a variety of industries. Our clients span technology, financial services, energy, health care and more. To learn more about how Penta can support your company, check out our website at pentagroupco, our Twitter at PentaGRP or find us on LinkedIn at Penta Group.
Speaker 1:Hello everyone and welcome back to what's at State. As we mentioned earlier in part one at the World Economic Forum this year, penta, along with our friends at Worth Media Group, teamed up to put on a panel event focused on how artificial intelligence will disrupt the working lives and the roles of the kind of people who show up for Davos to explore what the impact might be, in the C-suite and at the top of organizations, of the broad application of AI, and we were really pleased that the panel got a lot of attention. We were written up by our friends at Politico and our colleague Matt, who's on the podcast with us today, was our panelist for the event, joined by co-panelist Ravin Giussetheessen, who's a senior partner at Mercer, and Valerie Boulier, the chief sales and marketing officer for the ADECO Group, based in Switzerland. So maybe, matt, if we can start with you, do you want to just give us a sense for the conversation on the panel where we took things and some of the things that you as a group of panelists concluded?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think we're trying to be a bit provocative. I think that there's a lot of discussion around AI disruption or augmentation among I don't know if people could compare AI to the disruptive equivalent for white collar workers. What kind of trade and globalization has been for blue collar manufacturing workers over time? There's fear rescaling a lot of those types of conversations, but we actually tried to center it a little bit more, as you said, andy, on the C-suite and companies and what does it mean and how do you think about that stuff. I would say that from the conversation, some of the pieces that popped out to me were probably AI should make analytics and understanding the mechanics of the company comparatively easy. I don't think it is yet a substitute for the storytelling role that especially modern leaders of companies really need to engage with, even in our work. It's always interesting when we talk to CEOs or work with CEOs is that I'm always reminded that most of the time, their qualifications is that they ran a very successful P&L within their company. Talking to reporters on the record is not typically part of the skill set that you build as you go to the top. So, like with many new jobs, it really does change the job. But I think that vision and storytelling, that the human elements of being a leader will be at a premium because of AI. But I think it's also going to change a lot.
Speaker 3:One of the things that, andy, you and I talked about prior to the panel was the idea around kind of an AI coach or an AI bot for managers themselves, where what if the typical span of control that idea that Any given person can probably manage six to nine people and somewhere north of that you might be duplicative, or somewhere south of that you might be duplicative, somewhere north of that, things get out of control. But if AI can play a coach to a person working for you and you say to the AI hey, how should I think about preparing this meeting for this meeting? That's best practices on that stuff is not, it's not super dependent on one person. So if the span of controls of managers moves from like high single digits to mid double digits, that's actually that would be a radical shift in organizational design. You would have much flatter organizations. Whether that's possible or not, who knows, but that's the type of disruption that we could see for managers and leaders of organizations.
Speaker 3:And just one more that we've chatted about was from an interviewing perspective. We talked about consulting firm that has I would say in talking to them it's still early stage but a chat bot that gives prospective interviewees a case and that has pretty profound implications for talent and recruiting and how you think about that stuff there. In theory, for a round one interview, you could interview as many people as apply. There doesn't have to be a resume screen.
Speaker 3:So for talent discovery and really finding talent wherever it is, that could likewise have profound implications in terms of talent discovery and then skill set matching and finding jobs that are really a fit for people and what they will excel at or be happy at. So we tried to probe on some of those types of things. Thinking about it from that dimension, I think that it'll be interesting to see how some of this plays out in the coming years, cause I think that we can all see like, oh, writing memos and what that means has changed a lot. But I think there's probably coming a lot deeper change within organizations and how organizations are structured and how people relate to each other and what those relationships look like and that I think we only have the hints of now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it was a really good conversation and it was obviously refreshing to be focused up somewhere else other than the kind of is the AI going to take over humanity and ruin the world?
Speaker 2:AI and the future.
Speaker 1:Which got plenty of our time. So some of those sort of economic and managerial implications were fun to explore, Stacy Connell, I guess. One last thing on sort of themes and topics I wanted to ask you both, which is I think in some ways that the conversation in Davos can be a sort of an interesting barometer for how leaders are thinking about the economy for the year ahead. So what was maybe from your respective geographic viewpoints, what was your sense for? Should we be thinking that things are going to work out well for Europe and its economies over the course of the year ahead? How do you think, Stacy, this looks for the US, based on what you heard in Davos?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the most important thing and again there was less predictive in the conversations and more planning to different scenarios. I definitely don't think that the US economy was the dominant uncertainty in the crowd, for sure, and I think, andy, I was a little more struck. I was a little more struck by, again, the uniqueness of Davos was how much of there was never a single conversation that I was in that was just about one part of the world. So it was less about what's gonna happen in the US economy or what's gonna happen in the European economy and I'd be curious if Connell had the same but what is gonna happen in the interplay of all of these things, even looking at Asian markets and what's happening there? So I think it was again I was struck less by people predicting what's gonna happen and more by using the opportunity to get multiple perspectives to inform their planning of different scenarios pending whatever does happen, connell.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think, thinking about Europe, my sense was people were less pessimistic than they had been in previous years and certainly that the sentiment I would say was more one of kind of cautious optimism.
Speaker 4:I think there's concern about China and that's a theme that just come ups all the time about how that will pan out this year and its ability to recover, and only this past week there's been a very interesting ruling in the Hong Kong Supreme Court which could have quite a material impact on the Chinese economy, and that will be, I think, something that people will be watching very, very closely and that was coming up fair bit of discussion around India as well, not so much about the elections I think it's a. It's assumed that the BJP will hold power but where the Indian economy goes in the next five to six years. I think people are taking India very, very, very seriously now as an economic actor on the world stage, and fair play to India. They turned up both on the high streets in Davos for the fringe and, by all accounts, at the World Economic Forum itself to sort of meet those expectations.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, thank you. So last question from Issa. Davos is now well into its 50s. The meeting, in various forms, has existed for more than 50 years, so dramatically older than the four of us I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask each of you the sort of fundamental question about whether you think Davos and meetings like it really work in the world of 2024. Is it important and does it still work? Who fancies a go at that one?
Speaker 2:I'll go first. I'll say absolutely this is one of these things. It's like my time in the US Congress. There used to be a lot of critique around what we called codels and these international trips of delegations of the United States congressional members going into other parts of the world and having conversations about business and diplomacy Very easy to criticize from the outside, completely different experience on the inside and an irreplicable value. So I think absolutely it has value. I think it should continue. I think the place that Davos should move to make it ever more valuable is to, if we could say, follow the pentalead and get deeper on these conversations around the fringe. Go deeper, bring these topics but bring some real point of view and advance the conversations a little further. Use the opportunity of all these great people in one place to actually advance thinking a little bit further. I still think there's opportunity for people to come in and shape the conversations with a clear perspective in Davos.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree. I think that there's a ton of value there. The meeting of minds and people who have great responsibility across the globe is always a good thing. I mean even for Penta. The way we articulate Our value to clients is helping them understand stakeholders and helping the stakeholders understand them, and real understanding happens when you get together in person. So I think it's all to the good. I will say that, like, 50 years is an impressive run and these meetings will never go away. There's always a need and a desire for people to connect, whether it's at WEF or something else is more ephemeral. Like, 50 years is a good track record, but the value is always in the convening and the people who decide to go and the reasons that they decide to go and the meeting of the people, whether it's in Davos or in other places. That's where the value really sits and for WEF, that's the goal is to continue that hard to quantify value and momentum.
Speaker 4:I agree. I don't think I have too much to add to that.
Speaker 3:That's not the spirit of Davos, though it's that everything has been said, but not everyone has said it, so you got to say something.
Speaker 4:Well, like I think you mentioned the role of the World Economic Forum.
Speaker 4:I think that's an interesting one to potentially think about and explore, like they've been around for as long as globalization has been around in its current incarnation, and there's no question that globalization has shaped the world up until about eight or nine years ago or whenever, and there has been an unquestionable debate has kicked off about whether globalization is the way forward.
Speaker 4:If I were in the World Economic Forum, I'd want to own that space, and that means possibly being a slightly more point of view organization than just a convening organization. You know, can I imagine a world where we retreat behind our borders, no matter how big or small they may be, and we hope that we can prosper in isolation? Personally, I can't, but I do acknowledge very many people and to the point of you know the Penta thesis. There is serious work to be done about how relationships are maintained and grown and how you understand and study those around you, whether it's in a globalized framework or in a more isolationist frame. In that sense, yeah, yeah, it'll be fascinating to watch and see how, how the World Economic Forum adapts to the world around it in the coming years.
Speaker 1:Very good. Well, matt Stacy Connell, you now have permission to put away your snow boots and crampons for another year. Thank you so much for joining the show today To our listeners. Remember to like and subscribe, wherever you listen to your podcast, and follow us on LinkedIn. At Penta Group. I'm your host, andy Whitehouse, and, as always, thanks for listening to what's At Stake. See you next time.