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Best of LinkedIn: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026 · Best of LinkedIn: Strategy, M&A & Investments

• 0:00
  Speaker 0: provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennis, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about WEF annual meeting, twenty twenty six.
• 0:07
  Speaker 0: Frennis specializes in B to B market research for strategy and consulting teams with a focus on tech.
• 0:13
  Speaker 0: and ICT.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep dive.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Today, we are heading up the mountain.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: We're going to strip back all the noise and really look at the strategy and consulting trends coming out of Davos, twenty twenty six.
• 0:24
  Speaker 0: And before we dive into the big topics and believe me, there are some heavy ones, we should probably set the scene a little.
• 0:30
  Speaker 0: Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the vibe was.
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  Speaker 1: different.
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  Speaker 0: It really was.
• 0:33
  Speaker 0: If you're picturing that snowy postcard, well, Joan Guy called it a no snow Davos.
• 0:38
  Speaker 0: It was literally warm.
• 0:40
  Speaker 0: And that feels like a pretty good metaphor for the mood in the room.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: We went through, I mean, tons of posts from people on the ground, consultants, CEOs, you name it.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: And the feeling wasn't optimistic or pessimistic.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: It was just pragmatic.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 0: The official theme was a spirit of dialogue.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: But the real subtext, I mean, the thing people were actually talking about was execution and resilience.
• 0:59
  Speaker 0: It feels like the age of the big visionary keynote is sort of dead.
• 1:04
  Speaker 0: Nobody's there for the promise of twenty thirty anymore.
• 1:07
  Speaker 0: They're just trying to get through twenty twenty six.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: The patience for fluff has just evaporated.
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  Speaker 1: With all the geopolitical tension, which we'll get to and the economic pressures, the whole conversation has moved from what if to how now.
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  Speaker 1: It's about operational reality.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Okay,
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  Speaker 0: so we've got a lot to cover.
• 1:25
  Speaker 0: We've broken it down into four main themes.
• 1:27
  Speaker 0: We'll hit AI shift from hype to action, the very tense global landscape, the physical cost of all this tech, and finally, how leadership has to change.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: And we have to start with AI.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: It's the obvious one.
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  Speaker 1: But this isn't the same AI talk from a couple years ago.
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  Speaker 1: The hype cycle is definitely over.
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  Speaker 0: This is theme one.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: From hype
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  Speaker 0: to agentic execution.
• 1:47
  Speaker 0: And that word, agentic, doing a lot of work.
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  Speaker 0: For anyone listening who's hearing that buzzword in every pitch deck, what does it actually mean here?
• 1:54
  Speaker 0: Well,
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  Speaker 1: think about it like this.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: We used to have chatbots.
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  Speaker 1: You ask, it answers, it's passive.
• 1:58
  Speaker 0: It waits for you.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Agentic AI has agency.
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  Speaker 1: It can take action, it can execute tasks, it can complete workflows all on its own.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: It's the difference between, you know, a tool and an employee.
• 2:11
  Speaker 0: And Vivian Way had a really... sharp take on this.
• 2:14
  Speaker 0: She said the big story isn't large language models anymore.
• 2:17
  Speaker 0: In fact, she pretty much called them commodities.
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  Speaker 1: Which is a huge market shift.
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  Speaker 1: A few years ago, the model was the product.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Now it's a utility like electricity.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Way's point is.
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  Speaker 1: the real story is AI operationalization, embedding it into the actual workflow.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: so it does something.
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  Speaker 0: She gave a great example that really makes it click.
• 2:36
  Speaker 0: She talked about EVA, the WF's own AI concierge.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Right, and this wasn't just some FAQ bot.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: EVA handled seventy-five percent of attendee requests, autonomously.
• 2:47
  Speaker 0: And we're not talking simple questions.
• 2:49
  Speaker 0: We're talking about rescheduling meetings between high-level people, coordinating calendars, delivering briefs.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: That's the agentic part.
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  Speaker 1: It didn't just tell you the meeting moved, it moved it.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: It went into the calendar, found a new slot, checked the other person, and confirmed it.
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  Speaker 0: That's a live system at scale.
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  Speaker 1: Precisely.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: But, and this is a critical but that came up, just because the tech can do it doesn't mean companies are ready.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Dr.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Florian Mueller raised a really interesting flag about what he calls the micro productivity trap.
• 3:18
  Speaker 0: This concept really stood out to me.
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  Speaker 0: It's the idea that we're using this revolutionary tech to do the same old things.
• 3:25
  Speaker 0: just a little bit faster.
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  Speaker 1: It's the classic mistake.
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  Speaker 1: Mueller says most companies are patting themselves on the back because AI writes their emails twenty percent faster.
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  Speaker 1: That's a micro productivity.
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  Speaker 1: If your process is broken, doing it faster just means you fail faster.
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  Speaker 0: You're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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  Speaker 1: While your competitor is building a speedboat, that's the trap.
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  Speaker 1: You feel productive, but you aren't creating new value.
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  Speaker 0: Mihir Shuklu was on the same page, right?
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  Speaker 0: He said, we need a real commitment to applied AI.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, his point was that if you're still just running pilots in twenty twenty six, you're already behind.
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  Speaker 1: The sandbox phase is over.
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  Speaker 1: It's time to redesign entire value chains around these agents.
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  Speaker 0: OK, but this raises the massive workforce question.
• 4:06
  Speaker 0: If EVA is doing seventy five percent of the work of a coordinator.
• 4:10
  Speaker 0: What happens to the coordinator?
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  Speaker 0: The
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  Speaker 1: rules are just changing, fundamentally.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Gina Varju Brewer from SAP framed it as human AI power couples.
• 4:19
  Speaker 0: Sounds a little like a reality show, but I see the point.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: It's functional.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: It's about AI handling the speed and scale and humans providing judgment and context.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Vivian Way actually gave this new job a name, Agent Managers.
• 4:31
  Speaker 0: Agent Managers.
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  Speaker 0: So your job is to manage the bot that does the job.
• 4:35
  Speaker 0: Basically,
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  Speaker 1: yeah.
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  Speaker 1: You supervise, you check the output, you handle the exceptions.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: But this creates a huge new problem, which Helen Oakley flagged.
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  Speaker 0: The governance
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  Speaker 1: gap.
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  Speaker 1: A massive gap.
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  Speaker 1: Oakley said confidence in AI is high, you know, seventy to eighty percent of execs get it.
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  Speaker 1: But there is zero clarity on ownership.
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  Speaker 1: If an agent makes a bad trade or denies a loan,
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  Speaker 0: who's responsible?
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  Speaker 0: Is it the manager?
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  Speaker 0: The CIO.
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  Speaker 0: The vendor.
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  Speaker 1: Nobody knows.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: And Oakley's point is you can't scale what you can't govern.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: If you don't know who goes to jail when it goes wrong, you can't roll it out.
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  Speaker 1: It becomes a legal problem, not a tech one.
• 5:07
  Speaker 0: And you definitely can't roll it out if you're feeding it bad data.
• 5:12
  Speaker 0: Patrick O'Pongrats threw some cold water on a lot of these AI strategies.
• 5:16
  Speaker 0: Necessary
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: cold water, I think.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: He pointed out that so many strategies fail because they're built on batch data.
• 5:23
  Speaker 0: Which, for anyone not deep in tech, just means old data.
• 5:26
  Speaker 0: From yesterday or last week.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: And Pongrats used a brilliant analogy.
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  Speaker 1: He said running an AI agent on batch data is like driving a Formula One car with a map from last Tuesday.
• 5:36
  Speaker 0: You're going two hundred miles an hour.
• 5:38
  Speaker 0: but you're steering based on where the curve used to be.
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  Speaker 1: A recipe for a crash.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: You need real time data.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Avinash Vashistha took it even further.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: He said, we're in the era of the AI native enterprise.
• 5:47
  Speaker 0: He came up with a new metric too, intelligence velocity.
• 5:50
  Speaker 0: Which
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: I guarantee you is going to be in every consulting deck by next quarter.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: The old model was cost per seat.
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  Speaker 1: The new one is intelligence velocity.
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  Speaker 1: How fast can you turn data into a decision?
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Speed is everything.
• 6:02
  Speaker 0: So that's the internal picture.
• 6:03
  Speaker 0: Agentic AI, a need for speed.
• 6:06
  Speaker 0: a governance mess, but this is all happening while outside the world is getting, well, pretty aggressive.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Which is our theme too, the geopolitical landscape.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: The Global Risks Report literally calls this the age of competition.
• 6:20
  Speaker 0: And you could feel it in Davos.
• 6:22
  Speaker 0: Yeah.
• 6:22
  Speaker 0: Klaus Schmeinsberg used the word angst to describe the mood.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Angst is perfect.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: There was real anxiety about the US president's arrival, and this wasn't just about diplomacy, it was about the business environment.
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  Speaker 1: John Stackhouse noted the US is now actively shaping the agenda, not just participating.
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  Speaker 0: And the pivot is away from stakeholder capitalism.
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  Speaker 1: And toward aggressive growth and AI-driven disruption.
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  Speaker 1: The gloves are off.
• 6:47
  Speaker 0: Ornick L, who goes by Mimee, she pointed out that economic power is now just being used as a weapon.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: It's not just about tariffs anymore.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: It's about fragmenting trade using market access as a political tool.
• 6:59
  Speaker 0: Julio Romo connected this to corporate finance in a fascinating way.
• 7:03
  Speaker 0: He said, reputation is now a cost of capital.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: That's a huge insight for any CFO listening.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: He's saying your geopolitical position directly affects your borrowing costs.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Market access is political.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: If you're seen on the wrong side of a dispute, your risk premium shoots up.
• 7:16
  Speaker 0: So you can't just look at the P&L.
• 7:18
  Speaker 0: You have to look at the map.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Pierre-Marie called it building a geopolitical muscle.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: He says companies need to embed this kind of risk analysis into their core strategy.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: It's not a PR issue anymore.
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  Speaker 1: It's a survival skill.
• 7:31
  Speaker 0: But there's a more invisible layer to this competition.
• 7:34
  Speaker 0: Angelika Sher Regina and Tyler S brought up securing cognitive space.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: This is the really scary stuff.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Tyler S noted that cyber insecurity is number six on the global risks list, but it's not just about hacking a power grid anymore.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: It's about hacking the public conversation.
• 7:51
  Speaker 0: AI enabled misinformation.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: At a scale, humans just can't counter.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Sherry Jean's point is we have to defend against it.
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  Speaker 1: It's a new domain of warfare.
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  Speaker 1: If you can destabilize a country by flooding it with lies, you don't need missiles.
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  Speaker 0: It's terrifying.
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  Speaker 0: AI agents running our companies and hostile AI is hacking our reality.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: And this is the big but.
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  Speaker 1: None of this digital world exists without the physical world.
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  Speaker 1: And that brings us to theme three.
• 8:16
  Speaker 0: Theme three.
• 8:18
  Speaker 0: Energy, industry, and planetary boundaries.
• 8:21
  Speaker 0: The cloud isn't actually in the sky, is it?
• 8:23
  Speaker 0: It's in a data center.
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  Speaker 0: A
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  Speaker 1: very, very hungry data center.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Benoit Bego had some sobering numbers.
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  Speaker 1: We have over eleven thousand of them now.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Drawing more than sixty gigawatts of power.
• 8:34
  Speaker 0: and the water use.
• 8:35
  Speaker 0: That's what got me.
• 8:36
  Speaker 0: He said semiconductor manufacturing uses over a trillion liters of fresh water a year.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: One trillion liters.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: In a world with water shortages, this is the collision.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: You can't have infinite digital growth on a finite planet.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: The physics wins eventually.
• 8:52
  Speaker 0: We'll eat.
• 8:53
  Speaker 0: cheetah connected this to the grid.
• 8:55
  Speaker 0: He said electricity demand in the Middle East and Africa is set to triple.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: And the grids just aren't ready.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: He's saying we have to use AI to make them more efficient, but that takes huge investment.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: It's a chicken and egg problem.
• 9:06
  Speaker 0: And Kim Hedegard pointed to the money bottleneck.
• 9:08
  Speaker 0: He said we have to de-risk first-of-a-kind projects.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: You hear that term a lot in heavy industry.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: First of a kind.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Hate it.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Too much risk.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Hedegard is saying we need to make these big green infrastructure projects bankable, turn dialogue into delivery.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: It feels
• 9:24
  Speaker 0: like the only way out is collaboration.
• 9:26
  Speaker 0: Michael Camerilango had a really nice line for this.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Great places don't compete, they complete.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Complete.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I like that.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Like organs in a body.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: The heart doesn't compete with the lungs.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: He's arguing cities and industries need to integrate.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Waste heat from a data center warms the local houses, that kind of thing.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: But
• 9:42
  Speaker 0: Anne Chevrier pointed out a bitter irony here.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: She did.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: It's the paradox of our time.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Innovation cooperation is rising.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: We're sharing open source AI.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: But peace and security cooperation is collapsing.
• 9:56
  Speaker 0: We're building a shared digital brain while we build walls around our countries.
• 10:00
  Speaker 0: That's
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: the tension right there.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Technically integrated, politically disintegrated.
• 10:04
  Speaker 0: Okay, so let's pull this together.
• 10:06
  Speaker 0: We've got AI that demands a new way of working, a world that demands a new way of strategizing, and a planet that demands a new way of building, who on Earth can lead through all this.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: And that's our final theme.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Theme four.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: leadership and the human element.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: The consensus seems to be that the hero CEO model is broken.
• 10:23
  Speaker 0: Neha Cabra had a great analogy.
• 10:25
  Speaker 0: She said we should think of modern CEOs less like geniuses and more like elite athletes.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: It makes perfect sense.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: It's not just about talent on game day.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: It's about training cycles, nutrition, and, you know, recovery.
• 10:37
  Speaker 0: And recovery is the part corporate culture always ignores.
• 10:41
  Speaker 0: We celebrate burnout.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Cabra says that's dangerous.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: She talks about decision hygiene.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: An exhausted leader is a noisy leader.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: They over control.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: They create panic.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: You don't need intensity in a crisis.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: You need endurance.
• 10:53
  Speaker 0: You also need decency.
• 10:55
  Speaker 0: Shelly Zales talked about FQ, the female quotient, but she had another one.
• 10:59
  Speaker 0: DQ.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: The decency quotient.
• 11:02
  Speaker 0: We've got IQ, EQ, now DQ.
• 11:03
  Speaker 0: Is that just another buzzword?
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: I don't think so.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Zales argues decency and resilience are strategic assets.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: In a world this anxious, a leader without decency just won't keep their best people.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: It's a retention tool.
• 11:16
  Speaker 0: And Rachel Kednack added a critical point about who is actually building all this stuff.
• 11:20
  Speaker 0: She warned that the rooms where AI is built don't look like the world that AI affects.
• 11:25
  Speaker 0: Which
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: goes right back to risk.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: If you have a homogenous team building your AI, you are baking their blind spots right into the code.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Diversity isn't just nice to have, it's a quality control mechanism.
• 11:36
  Speaker 0: So for someone listening, maybe not a CEO yet, what's the practical advice to navigate all this?
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Triennel, Chef, had the most practical, unglamorous tip of all.
• 11:45
  Speaker 0: Relentless follow-up.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: It's not sexy, is it?
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: But she says it's what separates the talkers from the doers.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Execution compounds.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: In a world full of big ideas, the person who actually sends the email and closes the loop is the one who gets things done.
• 11:59
  Speaker 0: We've all felt that.
• 12:00
  Speaker 0: It's true.
• 12:01
  Speaker 0: And
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: finally, Alina Bull completely flipped the script on networking.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: We always think, what can I get?
• 12:07
  Speaker 0: Right.
• 12:08
  Speaker 0: Who do I need to meet in this room?
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Bull says, stop that.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Ask, what do I bring to this room?
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Focus on contribution.
• 12:14
  Speaker 0: That's a much healthier and... Frankly, a more powerful way to operate.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: And in a world where an AI can get you any information, your unique human contribution is the only thing left that has real value.
• 12:26
  Speaker 0: OK, so let's try to recap.
• 12:27
  Speaker 0: We've gone from the what of AI to the messy operational how.
• 12:32
  Speaker 0: We've mapped a world where economics is a weapon and our attention is a battleground.
• 12:37
  Speaker 0: We've hit the physical limits of our digital dreams.
• 12:39
  Speaker 0: And we've learned that leadership is now an endurance sport that requires decency.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: It's a lot.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: But if I had to boil it down, it's this.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Reality is back.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: The years of hyper over.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Twenty-twenty-six is about the hard, granular work of making things work in a world that's breaking apart.
• 12:57
  Speaker 0: Which leaves me with one final thought for you to chew on.
• 13:00
  Speaker 0: We talked about agent managers and human AI power couples.
• 13:04
  Speaker 0: But if an AI like EVA is already handling seventy-five percent of your tasks,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I think I see where you're going with this.
• 13:10
  Speaker 0: Are we just training the AI to do our old jobs?
• 13:13
  Speaker 0: Or are we being forced to evolve into the kind of strategic human leaders that an AI simply can't replace?
• 13:20
  Speaker 0: Because if your job is just the tasks, the clock is ticking very, very loudly.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: That's the question that should drive everything we do from here on out.
• 13:27
  Speaker 0: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.
• 13:30
  Speaker 0: Also check out our other editions on private equity, venture capital, strategy and consulting and M&A.
• 13:36
  Speaker 0: Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe.