| Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director

The Centre for Industry Transformation helps leaders navigate competing priorities and pressures to deliver on both growth and the transition to more sustainable, inclusive and equitable societies. Its platforms drive value and impact through three pillars:

– Insight: Actionable foresight, analysis and real-time perspectives to inform decision-making

– Interaction: Collaboration between the most relevant peers outside their traditional networks

– Impact: Catalytic support to galvanize diverse leaders and action towards shared goals

In the past year, the platforms have welcomed additional Partners, seen deeper engagement and responded to a greater number of requests for collaboration than in previous years.

The waves of COVID-19 pandemic resurgence and response have accelerated digital transformation and technology adoption, caused widespread supply chain blockages, increased ESG expectations, and transformed many sectors through new workplace planning and talent management.

These challenges and others notwithstanding, industry leaders also have unprecedented opportunities. Businesses are the most trusted institutions in society and, for those that can address changing behaviours, demand is growing. Employees and consumers are increasingly motivated by purpose rather than prestige and are willing to emotionally invest in the businesses they believe in.

The rapid adoption of such technologies as artificial intelligence and machine learning, 5G networks, cloud computing, the internet of things and edge computing offers the potential for new revenue streams. This in turn can lead to improved environmental, social and governance outcomes. At the same time, biotech, space, quantum technologies and the metaverse are all increasingly being integrated into real world applications for the benefit of society and consumer markets.

In this context, industry leaders can and are building businesses that are agile, resilient, tech enabled, people-centric and planet-friendly to deliver strong returns and play a material role in addressing global challenges. To help them achieve their goals, leaders can tap into new networks to build partnerships with companies outside their traditional siloes, collaborate with civil society representatives and experts, and develop sustained, trusted relationships with policy-makers.

The Centre engages 1,200 of the world’s largest and most innovative companies in efforts to shape the future of industry ecosystems. Each of the 10 Industry Transformation Platforms incorporates the most relevant businesses, innovators and policymakers to address systems-level challenges and opportunities. Industry-specific CEO communities remain at the heart of each platform.

In 2021-2022, the Centre developed three key areas:

– Streamlined and strengthened the value proposition and product offerings for innovative and high-growth companies

– Initiated a revision of the Centres for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network to facilitate greater interaction between national policy and innovation ecosystems with key industries

– Replicated the successful CEO communities, with the creation of nine cross-industry C-level title (CxO) communities that immediately became popular with Partners, such as the Chief Digital Officer and the Chief Operating, Supply Chain and Procurement Officer communities

Throughout the Centre’s activities, three clear themes emerged as core to the industry transformation agenda in all sectors: people, planet and technology for good. The main achievements of the last year include:

– The Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative brings new cooperative energy and global vision to the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. Launched in 2021, the Collaborative made progress in bringing together a cohort of 1 million people living with Alzheimer’s, linking a network of 90 clinical trial sites as part of a global, trial-ready system for developing and testing new therapies, and investing to boost health-system preparedness through innovative solutions.

– UNICEF and members of the World Economic Forum Supply Chain & Transport Industry Action Group developed a charter to support the inclusive and safe distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, which contributed to the delivery by UNICEF-COVAX of more than 1 billion vaccines to vulnerable communities primarily in low- and middle-income countries.

– The New Frontiers of Nutrition initiative partnered with over 40 organizations to markedly improve the availability, access and consumer adoption of nutritious choices in order to strengthen the physical and mental health of individuals. Guided by research in behavioural science, the community placed the awareness of good nutrition higher on the global agenda and identified market-led innovation pathways to cement nutrition as a cornerstone of human resilience.

– The EDISON Alliance aims to ensure that every person can affordably participate in the digital economy, focusing on financial inclusion, health and education. The alliance launched the “Guidebook to Digital Inclusion Bond Financing” and the 1 Billion Lives Challenge to bring new services to 1 billion people through commercially sustainable partnerships by 2025. Commitments, with investments and programmes to support them, reached the halfway mark in just nine months.

– A first-of-its-kind Audience Representation Index developed in collaboration with Accenture, Ipsos and Nielsen provided a benchmark for how well consumers see themselves represented in film and TV, gaming, news and magazines, and sport. The World Economic Forum Power of Media Taskforce on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, with its mission to improve measurement, accountability and transparency, continued to collaborate with the industry to strengthen the index framework and explore opportunities to improve diversity and representation in each media sector.

– The Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics aim for consistent and comparable disclosure on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. More than 160 global Forum Partner companies have committed to ESG disclosure, with over 60 having done so, backed by the skills and competencies of a community of 300 ESG practitioners. (See the “Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics” box.) The initiative catalysed the establishment of the International Sustainability Standards Board, mandated to create global standards with the endorsement of over 40 governments and jurisdictions.

– The Clean Skies for Tomorrow Coalition amplified collaboration in the aviation industry. Established by eight founding champions, the coalition engaged over 200 organizations in the aviation, energy and finance sectors as well as corporate travellers to promote a net-zero pathway for the industry.

– The Low-Carbon Emitting Technologies (LCET) initiative, comprised of major chemical-sector companies, established the industry’s first CEO-led coalition for the transformation to a net-zero and circular future. By establishing a project development company, the LCET initiative moved to the critical implementation stage, focusing on technological innovation in conjunction with industry partnerships in order to promote the collaborative implementation of low-carbon technologies.

– The Transitioning Industrial Clusters towards Net Zero initiative was launched at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, in collaboration with Accenture and the Electric Power Research Institute. This global movement seeks to accelerate the transformation of over 100 industrial clusters globally needed for net-zero emissions, while delivering on jobs, industrial competitiveness and economic growth. Four global clusters from the United Kingdom, Spain and Australia joined the initiative with a total emission reduction commitment equivalent to the emissions of Denmark (approximately 30 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent).

– With only 2% of plastic packaging effectively recycled, the Consumers Beyond Waste initiative is driving a systemic shift from single-use items to a reuse model that eliminates plastic waste and reduces carbon emissions. The project helped to accelerate new reuse solutions at the country level by engaging such innovators as Loop and Algramo. As such, reuse solutions in the food, personal and home care categories progressed in Chile, France, Indonesia, Japan and the United States, among others, in partnership with leading industry retailers and manufacturers.

– Financing the Transition to a Net Zero Future engaged more than 50 financial institutions to develop financing blueprints and a set of policy recommendations for breakthrough decarbonization technologies to enable the net-zero transition of the steel, aviation and shipping industries.

– Through the Technology, Innovation and Systemic Risk project, over 100 financial services firms and public-sector leaders collaborated on research that identified short- and long-term risks stemming from the increased use of technology in financial services. The initiative also outlined plausible mitigation strategies.

– A total of 120 senior cybersecurity leaders contributed insights to the flagship Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2022 report that seeks to advance the debate on cyber-risk and to continue elevating cybersecurity from a technical topic to a strategic imperative. The report reached over 150,000 readers and was featured in over 230 international media outlets.

– The Partnership against Cybercrime strives to amplify public-private cooperation to combat cybercrime and overcome the existing barriers to cooperation. The community launched the Cybercrime Atlas initiative, a joint effort by leading experts to map the cybercrime landscape to inform decision-makers and support collaborative efforts to disrupt cybercrime.

– The Digital Transformation for Long-term Growth initiative convenes over 120 organizations from a multitude of sectors for peer knowledge exchange and collaboration on pre-competitive transformation frameworks. In addition to bimonthly exchanges, it established the Chief Digital Officer community.

– The global deployment of the Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI), an assessment and benchmarking tool for digital maturity in manufacturing, was accelerated and expanded. It was originally launched and piloted in Singapore, with approximately 600 companies from 30 countries undertaking the assessment. A new independent and not-for-profit organization, the International Centre for Industrial Transformation, was established to further scale the Index’s adoption at the global level.

– The Forum established a new global Centre for Urban Transformation and the Urban Transformation Summit to advance public-private collaboration and collective action in cities across the globe. The inaugural Summit in December 2021 brought together more than 350 mayors, business executives, community leaders and experts in urban development from 38 countries in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.

The increased Partner focus on impact-oriented activities resulted in greater concentration on high-impact, multi-sector collaborations. Every platform now hosts at least one flagship initiative and most operate across multiple Forum communities, creating greater overall alignment and coherence. A priority for the year ahead will be to further strengthen the strategic alignment in order to meet community-driven needs and agendas within a shared, flexible framework.

In parallel, constituents’ increased appetite for peer exchange in the face of rapid change both strengthened the core peer communities and led to the establishment of new CxO communities. The Centre will continue to invest in them as core vehicles for value exchange and as a means to increase the breadth of relationships with Partners.

The International Business Council (IBC) is a group of 120 leading CEOs from international companies who are champions of the principles of stakeholder capitalism. Chaired by Brian Moynihan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bank of America, the IBC brings global and cross-industry CEOs together to exchange views on good corporate practice, to prioritize and drive action on key and timely global issues, and to align their corporate values and strategies to serve society better.

Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics

One exemplary effort is the Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics that were disseminated by the World Economic Forum in 2019 to align corporate values and strategies with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Faced with a proliferation of voluntary standards of measurement that limited the ability of companies, investors and stakeholders to keep firms accountable for their vision and match them with their actions, the IBC created and promoted the adoption of a set of common Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics that allow the consistent and comparable measurement of the effects of a business on its wider group of stakeholders.

The metrics were identified in conjunction with the main professional services firms – Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC – and led to collaboration with the world’s most prominent international standard setter for financial accounting to develop common, international standards on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

To date, over 160 global companies from the Forum’s partnership community have committed to embedding the Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics into their reporting materials. This constitutes a strong signal by an international group of prominent issuers for the need to advocate for the global alignment and convergence of ESG reporting systems in capital markets. Over 60 companies published their annual reporting materials incorporating the Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics in the past year. The Forum itself is one such organization. Its performance on ESG-related aspects is published in this Annual Report.

To build capacity and skills and raise the bar in the ever-evolving area of ESG reporting, the Forum created a global community of over 300 ESG practitioners representing the companies committed to regularly taking part in peer exchange, reviewing best practices, and engaging in collective dialogue with international and jurisdictional regulators and standard setters.

Mobilizing a community of companies that voluntarily report on their ESG performance through a set of common metrics is a step towards the convergence, simplification and standardization of the sustainability reporting ecosystem. The group represents an influential constituency that has engaged with policy-makers, financial market regulatory authorities and international standard setters to get a consensus on forming a body that would oversee the development of international standards for all capital markets.

Building on the momentum of this initiative, and in recognition of the systemic relevance of the Forum’s private-sector coalition, the project team participated as a member of the Technical Readiness Working Group of the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation, which laid the basis for the establishment of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), whose mandate is to create international standards for sustainability disclosures.

Launched in November 2021 at COP26 and endorsed by over 40 governments and jurisdictions, the ISSB will continue to cooperate with the Forum and its private-sector coalition as it develops international sustainability disclosure standards for all financial markets. In addition to supporting the ISSB in its mission, the Forum and its platforms enable the coalition to hold a regular dialogue with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, and other regulators and standard setters to test and contribute to shaping upcoming regulations on mandatory sustainability reporting to promote a harmonized approach among jurisdictions.

Explore Centre for Industry Transformation initiatives here →