Bro. Klaus Schwab: Conversation with Bro. Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer - Davos 2

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Jul 27, 2022

Bro. Klaus Schwab: Conversation with Bro. Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer - Davos 2022

Klaus Martin Schwab (German pronunciation: [klaʊs ˈmaʁtiːn ʃvaːp]; born 30 March 1938) is a German engineer, economist and founder of the dubious and controversial World Economic Forum (WEF). He has acted as the WEF's chairman since founding the organisation in 1971.

Schwab was born to Eugen Wilhelm Schwab and Erika Epprecht in Ravensburg. His parents had moved to Germany during the Third Reich in order for his father to assume the role of director at Escher Wyss AG.Schwab's family was monitored by the Gestapo,[5] which in 1944 also interrogated his mother (who was from Zurich) for using a Swiss accent in public.[4] He is a citizen of Germany although he has three Swiss grandparents and two Swiss brothers.

Schwab has been married since 1971 to Hilde Schwab, a former assistant of his.[6] The wedding took place in Sertig Valley at a Reformed church.The couple live in Cologny in Switzerland. The Schwabs have two adult children, Nicole (born 1975/76) and Olivier. Nicole Schwab co-founded the Gender Equality Project.

Education
Schwab attended 1st and 2nd grade at the primary school in the Wädenswil district of Au ZH, in Switzerland. After World War II, the family moved back to Germany where Schwab attended the Spohn-Gymnasium in Ravensburg until his Abitur in 1957.

In 1961, he graduated as a mechanical engineer from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich,[11] which awarded him a doctorate in engineering entitled: Der längerfristige Exportkredit als betriebswirtschaftliches Problem des Maschinenbaues (Longer-term export credit as a business problem in mechanical engineering). He was also awarded a doctorate in economics from the University of Fribourg,and a Master of Public Administration degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Career
Schwab was professor of business policy at the University of Geneva from 1972 to 2003, and since then has been an Honorary Professor there.Since 1979, he has published the Global Competitiveness Report, an annual report assessing the potential for increasing productivity and economic growth of countries around the world, written by a team of economists. The report is based on a methodology developed by Schwab, measuring competitiveness not only in terms of productivity but also based on sustainability criteria.

During the earlier years of his career, he served on a number of company boards, such as The Swatch Group, The Daily Mail Group, and Vontobel Holding. He is a former member of the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group.

As author
Schwab has authored or co-authored several books; some consider him to be "an evangelist" for "stakeholder capitalism". The Fourth Industrial Revolution is one of his pet ideas, and he sees "human enhancement" as driver for this revolution. In this he was seconded by Jack Ma and Eric Schmidt, the latter of whom wrote that "the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are extraordinary. Leadership has to be equally extraordinary to manage the complexities of systemic change." Indeed WEF data predict that "by 2025 we will see: commercial use of nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than human hair; the first transplant of a 3D-printed liver; 10% of all cars on US roads being driverless."

In January 2017 Steven Poole in The Guardian criticised Schwab's Fourth Industrial Revolution book,[20] pointing out that "the internet of things" would probably be hackable. He also criticised Schwab for showing that future technologies may be used for good or evil, but not taking a position on the issues, instead offering only vague policy recommendations.

The dominant ideology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, transhumanism, has attracted at least one academic bioethicist critic, although it has its supporters in the popular press, too.The Great Reset has attracted its own share of critics, and certain among these approach the topic from a biblical perspective. The Financial Times "innovation editor" found "the clunking lifelessness of the prose" led him to "suspect this book really was written by humans — ones who inhabit a strange twilight world of stakeholders, externalities, inflection points and "developtory sandboxes"." One writer sought to "engage in the discourse of posthumanism and cybernetics and how these debates relate to craft and making.." and to produce "a humble attempt to reorient makers to the necessary discourse required to navigate the inevitable changes they will face in their disciplines. Thus, the article seeks to transfer posthumanist literary understanding to intellectually position craft in the Fourth Industrial Revolution."