ENTER THE WEF
Establishment | WEF website
1971 - The Beginning
In January 1971, the first European Management Symposium was launched.
The first European Management Symposium was held in Davos, Switzerland, from 24 January to 7 February 1971. Some 450 participants from 31 countries – chief executives and senior managers from among the top companies in Europe – gathered in the Alpine enclave. The 50 faculty members included professors from the foremost business schools in the United States, as well as other thought leaders on management techniques and corporate strategy. The first week’s focus was on “The Challenge of the Future”, while the second featured discussion and debate on “Corporate Strategy and Structure.”
Convening the meeting was the European Management Forum, which would be officially established as a foundation under the supervision of the Swiss Confederation on 8 February, with its nominal headquarters in Chur, the capital of the canton of Graubünden (Grisons), and an initial endowment of 25,000 Swiss francs.
The Forum’s founder was Klaus Schwab, a German-born engineer, economist and professor with double doctorates, a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard and business experience in Germany and Switzerland. At the request of his former employer, the German Engineering Federation (Verband Deutscher Maschinen - und Anlagenbau, or VDMA), Schwab had written a book, Moderne Unternehmensführung im Maschinenbau (Modern Enterprise Management in Mechanical Engineering).
In it, Schwab proposed that the management of a company should serve all its stakeholders – die Interessenten – acting as a trustee charged with achieving long-term sustained growth and prosperity for the enterprise. The stakeholders included the corporation’s owners and shareholders, as well as its customers, suppliers, collaborators of any kind, government and the communities in which it operates or which may be affected by its activities. This stakeholder concept became the Forum’s guiding principle.
In 1970, Schwab left the Swiss industrial group, Escher Wyss, where he had served in top management, and set up a three-person office in Geneva to pursue his vision of creating a platform to allow European CEOs to exchange ideas, concerns and knowledge with counterparts in government and leaders from academia, media and civil society. Schwab’s first collaborator in this project was Hilde Stoll, whom he married in 1971 and who has remained her husband’s trusted partner – his “social conscience”, as he puts it – ever since.
Davos, the setting of Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), was a place of recreation and relaxation, where people took in clean mountain air to restore their health and recharge their minds. Schwab wanted participants in the European Management Symposium to feel relaxed enough to speak frankly, while maintaining camaraderie of purpose and mutual respect. This became known as the “Davos Spirit”, still the hallmark of all Forum gatherings.
Nobody, not even Klaus Schwab, after this first symposium could be aware of the powerful platform that had been created.
Founding 1971 (WEF website)
Klaus Schwab welcomes participants to the inaugural European Management Symposium in 1971. Otto von Habsburg (left) delivered the keynote speech at the opening session
The convener of the first meeting in Davos in 1971 was Klaus Schwab. After having written for the first time about the stakeholder concept he wanted to create a platform where political, business and other leaders of society could meet to discuss common problems.
Based on the success of this idea and in order to create an institutional framework for the future, Klaus Schwab established at the end of the first meeting, on 8 February 1971, a not for profit foundation under the supervision of the Swiss Federal Government. He used the surplus from the first meeting to endow the foundation with 25’000 Swiss francs.
Key establishment dates
The inaugural European Management Symposium, which was held in Davos from 24 January to 7 February, was intended to allow top managers of corporations to interact with all their stakeholders.
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EIDGENÖSSISCHES DEPARTEMENT DES INNERN DÉPARTEMENT FÉDÉRAL DE L’INTÉRIEUR DIPARTIMENTO FEDERALE DELL’INTERNO
3003 Bern, 3 March 1971
Decree by the Federal Department of the Interior concerning the supervision of the
Foundation “EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT FORUM”
According to the official Document dated 29 January 1971 and the entry into the Trade Register of the Canton Graubünden of 8 February 1971 (published in the Swiss Trade Bulletin N° 42 of 20 February 1971, p. 410), a Foundation by the name of “EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT FORUM”, headquartered in Chur, exists in the sense of Articles 80-89 in the Code of Civil Law. The purpose of the Foundation is to promote events that serve a closer cooperation of the international, and in particular the European industry, in the elaboration of role models and concepts for responsible and successful management. Within the scope of its objectives, the Foundation can foster particular projects related to research, training and further education in the field of management, especially on an international level.