President Makoto Gonokami attended the 2019 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, from January 22-25.
Influential leaders in business, government, academia, arts and culture from all over the world gathered at Davos to attend the annual meeting. There, they held intensive discussions on various global challenges to tackle. During the meeting, President Gonokami attended a variety of sessions where he passionately exchanged opinions with the other leaders. At the joint press conference regarding Society 5.0, he introduced the role of universities in realizing the brighter future society envisioned and stressed the importance of public-private-academic partnership. He had cordial talks with Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, as well as leaders from the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), a community comprising the presidents of 28 of the world’s top universities.
IdeasLab sessions are unique to WEF meetings, where researchers from the world’s top-class universities and research institutes share their cutting-edge research with audience members over a series of lively and fast-paced presentations. The IdeasLab sessions also aim to create new insights and ideas through group discussions between the audience and speakers.
The audience, composed of people from a wide variety of sectors, included business and government officials in addition to those from academia. At the end of the session, speakers and the audience were involved in a fruitful and lively discussion.