Davos vs the Clinton Global Initiative

I have been attending Davos for 5 years. Tomorrow I will go to Clinton´s first Annual Conference. I am a trustee at President Clinton´s foundation. I don´t know if anyone else gave President Clinton the idea of creating his own “Davos” but I did in 2003. It´s great to see it happening. A Davos with a purpose! This is what I tried to do at the March 11th conference on terrorism. Klaus Schwab, the entrepreneur founder of the World Economic Forum used to put together the most amazing conferences in the world. Davos 2000 was a truly remarkable experience. But as opposed to advertising in the conference world repetition is not reputation, it´s boredom! Last year Davos was my last. The Davos format is becoming so predictable that at Davos the most important things happen at the pizzeria accross from the Congress Center. The sessions themselves are more opportunity for self-promotion than debate and the role of the Fortune 1000 companies is too large. Not that I don´t believe that private entreprise should be part of the dialogue to improve the state of the world (WEF´s motto). But I also believe that there are too few people at Davos telling corporations that they are certainly partly to blame for the world´s status quo. As I fly to NYC tomorrow I very much hope that the Clinton Foundation will put together a more hands on, challenging event. We will see.