By mid-April 2020, against the backdrop of the
COVID-19 pandemic, the
COVID-19 recession, the
2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war, and the resulting "collapse in oil prices", the former
Governor of the Bank of England,
Mark Carney, described possible fundamental changes in an article in
The Economist. Carney said that in a post-COVID world, "stakeholder capitalism" will be tested as "companies will be judged by 'what they did during the war', how they treated their employees, suppliers and customers, by who shared and who hoarded." The "gulf between what markets value and what people value" will close. According to a 15 May 2020 WEF article, COVID-19 offered an opportunity to "reset and reshape" the world in a way that is more aligned with the United Nations 2030
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), as
climate change, inequality, and poverty gained even greater urgency during the pandemic. This included resetting labour markets, as more people work remotely speeding up the process of the "future of work". The reset would advance work already begun to prepare for the transition to the
Fourth Industrial Revolution by upskilling and reskilling workers. Another post-COVID concern raised by the WEF is food security including the "risk of disruptions to food supply chains", and the need for "global policy coordination" to prevent "food protectionism from becoming the post-pandemic new normal". In her 3 June 2020 keynote address opening the Great Reset forum, a joint initiative of the WEC and then Prince of Wales
Charles,
Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that there has been a "massive injection of fiscal stimulus to help countries deal with this crisis" and that it was of "paramount importance that this growth should lead to a greener, smarter, fairer world in the future". Georgieva listed three aspects of the Great Reset:
green growth, smarter growth, and fairer growth. Government investments and government incentives for private investors could "support low-carbon and climate-resilient growth" such as "planting mangroves, land restoration, reforestation or insulating buildings". In June 2020, Klaus Schwab, who founded the
World Economic Forum (WEF) in 1971 was chairman at the time, described the three core components of the Great Reset. In one of the Great Reset Dialogues,
John Kerry and other members of a WEF dialogue discussed how to rebuild the "social contract" in a post-COVID world. In a comment according to
Charles III (then Prince of Wales), the economic recovery must put the world on a path to sustainability, which would include
carbon pricing. He emphasized that the
private sector would be the main drivers of the plan.
Fourth Industrial Revolution Klaus Schwab used the concept of a "Fourth Industrial Revolution" in a 2015 article published by
Foreign Affairs, and in 2016, the theme of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, was "Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution". In his 2015 article, Schwab said that the first
Industrial Revolution was powered by "water and steam" to "mechanize production". Through electrical power, the second industrial revolution introduced mass production. Electronics and information technologies automated the production process in the third industrial revolution. In the fourth industrial revolution the lines between "physical, digital and biological spheres" have become blurred and this current revolution, which began with the digital revolution in the mid-1990s, is "characterized by a fusion of technologies". The article, originally titled "Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better", has been criticized as portraying an unrealistic utopia at the cost of privacy. Both versions of the article describe the loss of privacy as undesirable. On 28 January 2021, Davos Agenda virtual panel discussed how artificial intelligence (AI) will "fundamentally change the world". 63% of CEOs believe that "AI will have a larger impact than the Internet." During 2020, the Great Reset Dialogues resulted in multi-year projects, such as the digital transformation programme where cross-industry stakeholders investigate how the 2020 "dislocative shock" had increased and "accelerated digital transformations". Their report said that, while "digital ecosystems will represent more than $60 trillion in revenue by 2025", "only 9% of executives [in July 2020] say their leaders have the right digital skills". == Endorsements ==