Davos 2025: Five ways to stand out with your thought leadership

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In January, businesses will jostle for attention at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum — which is set to be dominated by geopolitics, artificial intelligence, purpose, climate and resilience. Will yours stand out?

Here, our expert editors explain how to approach these themes so that your business leads the conversation at Davos 2025.

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Political risk: all awareness and no action
Businesses are used to dealing with isolated instances of political instability. But political volatility in liberal democracies and strategic competition between the US and China are new, and suggest a structural shift in the global order.

Today’s thought leadership tends to look at how businesses can build their awareness of political risk in order to understand their exposure.

But, there’s less focus on what comes next. This gap between honduras mobile phone numbers database awareness and action is fertile ground for thought leadership because integrating intelligence into strategic decision-making is not easy. For example, businesses’ geostrategic and political risk experts are not necessarily connected to decision-making centres of power (business unit leaders and boards). And complacency — or fear of over-reacting — can mean that decision-makers ignore political risk intelligence.

So as geopolitical tensions grow, we expect businesses’ response to political risk to be a critical topic at Davos. Businesses can lead on this by assigning responsibility for political risk to an internal influential executive. Other ideas include ‘war-gaming’ different scenarios and strategies to expose weaknesses in contingency plans, as well as collaborating with peers as companies seek the knowledge they need to move ahead with confidence.