The Future of Davos: Is a Hipper World Forum On Its Way?

If Davos is getting old, as I speculated on this blog earlier this week, the question is what will take its place? I spent my last day at the World Economic Forum trying to suss that out. The New Yorker‘s John Cassidy, who was not invited to Davos this year, posits that the WEF is a positional good—one whose value is “is mostly a function of its desirability to others.” If so, the naysayers who poopoo the event and wish it would go away “have the power to make it do precisely that – by ignoring it,” muses the FT‘s John McDermott. As one of the many media savants left off Klaus Schwab’s invitation list this year, McDermott’s farcical response was to organize his own version of Davos in his backyard in London. (MORE: Davos Wisdom, 2013: Five Lessons from the Global Forum) McDermott may be onto something. All along the famed Promenade t...