Objectives

The Global Economic Symposium aims to identify global challenges, examine their policy and business implications, formulate action plans in response to them, and monitor practical progress towards the fulfillment of these plans.

The GES focuses on global economic problems, in the sense that they affect the entire globe (such as climate change) or appear in many countries (such as the problem of supporting retirement in ageing societies). The GES is a convenient source of knowledge on these problems by providing underlying facts and research.

The GES is centered on action. It promotes the formulation of action plans to address global problems. These action plans can take the form of business strategies, government policies, or civil society initiatives. The GES seeks to build communities that monitor and evaluate these action plans.

The GES seeks to create an interdisciplinary dialogue. The interests of various stakeholders in society are often viewed as opposed to one another: employers versus employees, employed versus unemployed workers, the public versus the private sector, developed versus developing countries, and so on. The GES, by contrast, seeks to establish common ground among decision makers. For this purpose, the Symposium examines what strategies are required to align the interests of business, governments and civic representatives more closely with the public purpose.

The GES seeks to invest in the leaders of the future. While the core participants of the GES are senior politicians, business executives, top-flight academics and other civic leaders, the Symposium also provides an opportunity for particularly promising young achievers in these communities to contribute to the solution of current and future global economic problems.