The inclusion of a broader diversity of voices and thoughts helps raise hopes that real breakthroughs can be made at the World Economic Forum (WEF), according to the event's managing director Kiva Allgood, with the gathering issuing a call for more constructive dialogue amid the current complex global landscape.
The 2026 annual WEF meeting opened on Monday in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos, with the five-day event drawing nearly 3,000 leaders and experts worldwide to discuss five pressing global challenges, including enhancing cooperation, unlocking new sources of growth and deploying innovation at scale and responsibly.
This year's WEF is being held under the theme "A Spirit of Dialogue", and Allgood stressed that the event aims to live up to that title and beyond, as she expects focus discussions on a number of key topics.
In an interview with the China Global Television Network (CGTN), she underscored the important role of dialogue, saying that it has been a new form of "infrastructure" for facilitating connections that form a essential part of the global supply chain. "Dialogue has become almost like the next infrastructure and especially in the work that I focus on with manufacturing and supply chain. Any product -- the phone you're holding in your hands -- that is the result of thousands of different suppliers, millions of different workers from across the globe. It's maybe taking minerals from one place and then supply from another. So the criticality of discussion and dialogue really truly is the new infrastructure, it's something we have to pay attention to," she said.
"I say on a daily basis, I get the pleasure of working at the beautiful intersection of industry, government and academia, and that's really what we try to do here, every single year. But I think specifically this year, we're very focused on ensuring that we're able to give all of our partners and the people that we get to collaborate with a voice," she added.
Allgood said she is eager to hear the full spectrum of different perspectives at the forum, and pointed to the collaborative work done by the WEF's Global Lighthouse Network -- a project which aims to share experience and help manufacturers around the world adopt the latest technologies -- as an example of the importance of international voices working together.
"Having the diversity of voices and the diversity of thought is a critical part of the equation, especially in the work that I get the pleasure of doing. We know from our Global Lighthouse Network that we now have 223 sites globally and we have sites all across the world and they are the best of the best of deploying, scaling new technology in manufacturing. But their supplier base is global, right? The workforce is global. So for us, the dialogues are really [important] and we're really excited about some of the announcements we're making as well. There are things that are universal," she said.
Allgood further expressed her confidence that the WEF gathering will help turn the many ideas and discussions among diverse voices into concrete, global action.
"of our sessions here, it's not just about the dialogue, but it's the actions that they take afterwards and the things that they learn. Whether that's a new use case out of the Global Lighthouse Network(GLN), whether that's our SmartStart USA program, which is really a co-created curriculum to help people want to work in manufacturing and supply chain. I often say people think 'oh, data centers are super exciting,' but if you think about a factory, it's got 10 times as much new tech, right? Factories are just as exciting, if not more so, than data centers and [other] things that are talked about. So our job is to really shed a light on that and talk about it more openly and then put action and pen to paper, which a lot of the announcements you'll see this week are exactly that," she said.
Diverse voices raise hopes for real breakthroughs at Davos: WEF managing director
