Schwab was professor of business policy at the
University of Geneva from 1972 to 2003, and since then has been an honorary professor there. Financing the meeting proved difficult, and Schwab contributed funds from his own savings and received financial support from his parents. A few days after the first meeting, Schwab founded the non-profit European Management Forum Foundation, which was renamed the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 1987. He financed the foundation's capital of 25,000 Swiss francs from the profits of the first event in Davos, which generated total revenue of approximately two million Swiss francs. The inaugural meeting in Davos was considered an unexpected success, but the following year the event saw a significant decline in attendance to below 300.
Pierre Werner became the first sitting head of government to participate, presenting his so-called Werner Plan for the creation of a European Monetary Union. In 1972, Schwab refused a management position at
Mannesmann and
Gutehoffnungshütte and instead accepted a part-time professorship in business policy at the
University of Geneva. He held this position until 2003 and has since been an honorary professor there. At the third meeting in 1973, participants adopted the Davos Manifesto, a code of conduct based on Schwab's stakeholder concept, which states that "The professional function of corporate management is to serve customers, employees, investors, and society, and to balance their conflicting interests." The events of 1973, namely the collapse of the
Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate mechanism, the
Yom Kippur War, and the first oil crisis of 1973, significantly increased international attention to the Davos meeting. As a result, the number of participants rose to 780 in 1974 and reached 860 in 1975. In 1978 Schwab invited Chinese leader
Deng Xiaoping, who was leading China on a course of economic liberalization. Although Deng did not attend the forum in person in 1979, Beijing sent for the first time a delegation of high-ranking Chinese economists. In April 1985, Schwab convened the first regional India Economic Summit in New Delhi with the new Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi. In November 2009, then Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh acknowledged Schwab's role in the context of India's economic opening: "When the history of India's globalization and liberalization is written one day, you (Klaus Schwab) will be represented in the most prominent place." In 1986 Schwab arranged a historic first public meeting between Turkish Prime Minister
Turgut Özal and Greek Prime Minister
Andreas Papandreou, personally inviting both leaders to appear on the same panel in Davos. “That the meeting took place at all is thanks to Klaus Schwab (…) a man with an uncanny knack of bringing together unlikely partners», wrote the Financial Times. Two years later Schwab used shuttle diplomacy to bring the two leaders who were on the brink of war over Cyprus back to Switzerland, where they negotiated and signed the Davos Declaration aimed at normalizing relations. At the 1987 World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, German Foreign Minister
Hans-Dietrich Genscher appealed to the West to reach out to the Soviet Union under
Mikhail Gorbachev. "Let's take Gorbachev seriously. Let's take him at his word!" Genscher said in his speech, which is considered a turning point in the end of the Cold War. "There was no better place for this speech than Davos," Genscher wrote more than 20 years later. Regarding Schwab, he wrote: "This man is a phenomenon (...) A man full of ideas who gets things done without holding public office; getting things done in the sense of achieving them." During the 1992 World Economic Forum annual meeting,
Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid activist and chairman of the
African National Congress (ANC), appeared outside South Africa for the first time alongside President
F. W. de Klerk and the Chief Minister of
KwaZulu-Natal,
Mangosuthu Buthelezi. To facilitate this historic meeting, Schwab travelled to South Africa several times to negotiate the terms of participation. President Mandela later stated that his time at the WEF had been instrumental in convincing him of the benefits of a market economy. Schwab and his wife Hilde created the
Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in 1998. Schwab founded the
Global Shapers Community in 2011 within the WEF to work with young people in "shaping local, regional and global agendas." In 2015, the WEF was formally recognised by the Swiss Government as an "international body".
Downfall and resignation (2024–2025) In June 2024,
The Wall Street Journal reported allegations of harassment and workplace misconduct against Schwab by former WEF employees. The WEF denied the allegations, stating Schwab "has never made sexual advances toward an employee" and calling the claims "vague and false." An independent inquiry found no evidence of "material wrongdoing". Following additional whistleblower allegations of financial impropriety and research manipulation in 2025, the WEF announced an internal investigation. Schwab resigned as chairman in April 2025 and subsequently filed defamation complaints against anonymous whistleblowers, maintaining his innocence while describing the allegations as "stupid and constructed." In August 2025, an external investigation by the Zurich law firm Homburger found "no evidence of material wrongdoing" by Schwab or his wife Hilde.
As author In 1971, Klaus Schwab published (Modern corporate management in mechanical engineering). In 2016 Schwab wrote a book about the
Fourth Industrial Revolution, a concept first introduced by a team of scientists developing a high-tech strategy for the German government. Schwab initially introduced the phrase to a wider audience in a 2015 article published by
Foreign Affairs. Schwab includes in this fourth era technologies that combine hardware, software, and biology (
cyber-physical systems), and emphasises advances in communication and connectivity. Schwab expected this era to be marked by breakthroughs in emerging technologies in fields such as
robotics,
artificial intelligence,
nanotechnology,
quantum computing,
biotechnology, the
internet of things, the
industrial internet of things, decentralised consensus,
fifth-generation wireless technologies,
3D printing, and
fully autonomous vehicles. "Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution" was also the 2016 theme of the
World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.
The Great Reset and conspiracy theories In
June 2020, accompanied by a video message from
Charles, Prince of Wales, Schwab launched
the Great Reset, a five-point plan to enhance sustainable economic growth following the global recession caused by the
COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Its stated objective is to support recovery from the global pandemic in a manner that emphasises
sustainable development. According to Schwab, the intention of the project is to reconsider the meaning of capitalism and capital. While not abandoning capitalism, he proposes to change and possibly move on from some aspects of it, including
neoliberalism and
free-market fundamentalism. The 'Great Reset' has also been the target of
several "debunked" conspiracy theories, which heavily overlap with related conspiracy theories concerning the
'New World Order',
Qanon, and
COVID-19. In August 2025, Schwab founded the Geneva-based Schwab Academy, through which he publishes a book series on the Intelligent Age. == Controversies ==