Davos 2025: Finding Resilience Through Collaboration
Every January, the world’s most powerful leaders and business elites gather at the World Economic Forum in Davos to talk about the future. This year’s theme was “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age,” meant to be a vision of global challenges—climate change, AI safety, economic inequality—solved through cooperation. These kinds of global issues are too big for any one nation or one company to solve alone. The future is complex, and it demands collective action.
Meanwhile, the same week in the United States, newly inaugurated President Trump launched what he called a “revolution of common sense.” His administration immediately focused on cutting “bureaucracy,” (in the form of slashing agency staff), prioritizing national interests, and pulling back from global commitments like the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization.
These two worldviews—Davos’ interconnected, tech-driven future vs. Trump’s nationalist, simplified approach—are clashing in real time.
Meanwhile, trust in institutions to do the right thing keeps falling. New research from the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that 61 percent of people globally feel a sense of grievance toward business, government, and the wealthy, believing that institutions serve the elite at their expense. High-income individuals were 16 points more likely to trust institutions than their low-income counterparts. These trends suggest that people are growing increasingly disillusioned with traditional power structures at a time when global problems are becoming urgent.
So what happens when leaders like Trump ignore complexity instead of engaging with it? When collaboration is framed as a weakness rather than a necessity? We’re about to find out.
The risk isn’t just that the U.S. falls behind; it’s that we forfeit our ability to shape the future altogether.
Smart business leaders recognize that ignoring global challenges won’t make them disappear. Instead of reacting in isolation—or even market by market—adopting a systems approach is a smarter move to complex problems. Mapping interdependencies, leveraging cross-sector partnerships, and designing interventions that account for long-term ripple effects are some of the ways global business leaders can help lay the groundwork for better cooperation. The private sector isn’t just another stakeholder in the system; it has the resources, influence, and agility to drive change faster than government alone.
Don’t forget that we too have a role in the global system as individuals: demanding accountability through consumer choices, shareholder activism, and civic engagement where necessary is one way we can use our own agency in creating a better world. The Trust research also shows that individual consumers aren’t going to be afraid to act (sometimes in violent or aggressive ways) when the business community isn’t being socially responsible.
As these competing visions play out, leaders have to ask themselves: Are we reacting to today, or building for tomorrow? In an interconnected world, resilience isn’t about going it alone—it’s about designing collaborative solutions that recognize complexity, and then taking responsibility to act.
