#rethink : Beyond Davos: When “Spirit of Dialogue” meets an age of insularity
Beyond Optimization: A new forum for human resilience, trust, and human–AI sensemaking”
Dear Mr Laurence Fink, Dear Mr André Hoffmann,
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a paradox: an elite gathering that claims to serve the many. In 2026 that paradox is turning into strategic irrelevance. Davos’s theme - “A Spirit of Dialogue” - reads like an aspiration from a calmer era, not an operating model for a world sliding into distrust and fragmentation. (Semafor)
The evidence is blunt. A Davos-timed Edelman poll cited by Semafor reports a mood of “sullen acceptance and insularity,” with 70% of respondents saying they distrust people with different values and opinions. (Semafor) The same week, Oxfam’s inequality report argues that billionaire wealth is consolidating into political and media power, widening the gap between institutions and lived reality. (AJE News) In that context, “dialogue” is not a theme. It is a contested resource - and a strategic liability when absent.
Larry Fink’s (Chairman and CEO at BlackRock) critique lands because it is internal. “For many people, this meeting feels out of step with the moment,” he told Semafor. He also argues that Davos too often “mistook big-picture growth for lived reality,” and warns that AI could replay the pattern as gains flow “to the owners of models, data, and infrastructure.”
If you accept those premises, Davos’s problem is structural: an economic forum cannot remain the primary venue for legitimacy, social cohesion, and cognition risk.
That mismatch should be treated as a trigger for a serious alternative: a “World Harmonisation Forum” (WHF) or a “World Human Forum.” Not a rebrand, but a redesign - from “optimizing the world economy” to “fostering harmony within society” or to “stabilizing the human operating system” that any economy depends on. A credible path is a January 2028 launch as a post-Davos platform built around three capabilities.
(1) Human-machine sensemaking (Intelligence 5.0). In 2018, Swiss strategist Christopher H. Cordey described “Intelligence 5.0” as a response to a “new war of intelligences” and the need for “navigateurs d’incertitudes” - leaders trained to act under ambiguity. He even staged a moment in which a hybrid actor connects to a “World Harmonisation Forum” to pitch “NeurCoin” as a transactional harmonization layer between augmented humans (H+) and AI (IA). The point is not the token; it’s the governance layer: a shared, auditable engine for sensemaking and foresight across sectors.
(2) Legitimacy by design. The WHF must start where Davos struggles: lived reality and plural trust. Embed labor, youth, and community operators into agenda-setting, with authority over metrics and outcomes. Treat information ecosystems as critical infrastructure, given the concentration risks flagged by Oxfam. (AJE News)
(3) Implementation, not proclamation. Fink’s instinct to bring the mountain “down to earth” - convening where the modern world is built - is directionally right. The WHF should go further: rotating field forums in manufacturing corridors, energy transition zones, and AI compute hubs where commitments can be stress-tested against constraints, skills, and politics.
I hope you will agree that Davos doesn’t need to vanish. But it does need an evolutionary successor fit for 2026–2028: a forum that treats dialogue as engineered capability, and trust as measurable infrastructure.
Three critical questions
For the WEF Board:
If “Spirit of Dialogue” is now competing with insularity, distrust, and narrative warfare, are you willing to redesign the WEF from an economic forum into a human-systems forum - even if that means shrinking legacy influence, surrendering agenda control, and publishing measurable “trust outcomes” you can be held accountable for?
For WEF Participants (CEOs, ministers, investors, civil society):
If the mountain is “coming down to earth,” will you keep coming to Davos for curated consensus - or will you commit capital, data, and political risk to a new kind of platform that stress-tests decisions in the real world (workforces, supply chains, cities) and accepts the discomfort of plural truths?
For Davos, Switzerland, and Geneva Internationale:
Do you want to remain the world’s convening capital by defending the old architecture - or by hosting the reinvention: a World Harmonisation Forum or The World Human Forum that treat dialogue as strategic infrastructure, anticipatory intelligence as governance, and human legitimacy as the ultimate asset?
Conclusion
Davos has long been a symbol of Swiss convening power - and Geneva Internationale remains a unique platform for norms, mediation, and multilateral machinery. But symbols don’t preserve relevance; strategic reinvention does. If the WEF, Switzerland, and Geneva Internationale want to remain central in an era defined by fractured trust, cognitive warfare, and human–machine governance, they should not merely defend the WEF model - they should actively explore and help shape the next one. The World Harmonisation Forum or the World Human Forum are plausible candidates: not a rejection of Switzerland’s convening legacy, but its modernization - taking “dialogue” off the banners and putting it into the operating system of global decision-making.
Source
Linkedin Post Le WEF survivra-t-il au départ de son président et fondateur Klaus Schwab ?
Semafor Insularity threatens Davos dialogue goal.
Semafor BlackRock’s Larry Fink says Davos feels ‘out of step’ to many
Al Jazeera Billionaires have more money and political power than ever, Oxfam says
Intelligence 5.0 - Revue Militaire Suisse - Cordey