More than 2,000 leading figures from the worlds of business and politics arrive in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos today for four days of high-altitude networking and debate at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
German chancellor Angela Merkel will give the opening address today, offering participants an opportunity to assess her government's enthusiasm for further economic and structural reforms. Unusually, there is no high-level political representation from Ireland, although AIB's Dermot Gleeson, Bank of Ireland's Brian Goggin and Island Capital's Denis O'Brien will be there.
Other Irish participants include EU commissioner Charlie McCreevy, former EU commissioner Peter Sutherland, former president Mary Robinson, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, Concern's Tom Arnold and U2's Bono.
The theme of this year's meeting is The Creative Imperative - The Need to Respond Creatively to New Challenges in Business, Economics and Geopolitics.
Programme director Jonathan Schmidt says we now live in a "post-globalisation, post-knowledge age" in which being "cheaper, better, faster" is no longer enough.
"We are transitioning to a world being reshaped - not by the Wal-Marts of the world - but by the Apples and Googles. This generation of companies are creative, innovative, and design-led - connecting the company more directly with the customer's needs and aspirations, and anticipating new demands.
"In other words, having downsized, digitised and globalised, the companies that incorporate effective design and harness creativity capability stand a better chance succeeding," he said.
The emergence of China and India will be big issues and China has doubled its representation at Davos, while India is staging a major public relations campaign, greeting arrivals at Zurich airport with a barrage of advertising.
China's economic strength is fast translating into geopolitical power, a development that alarms some of its neighbours and unnerves many in the US. Both countries are moving steadily up the value chain, with India taking a strong position in pharmaceuticals, software and IT-related services, while China grows in IT hardware and manufactured goods.
The flight of jobs to China and India has become so firmly established as a fact of economic life that last month's news that three large American corporations - Intel, JPMorgan Chase and Microsoft - were investing hundreds of millions of dollars to establish back-office operations in India received little attention.
A number of sessions at Davos will look at the future of job creation, particularly in Europe and the US and others will examine the phenomenon of worker migration. One reason so many politicians and business leaders come to Davos is to share their assessment of the state of the world economy and to alert themselves to threats or opportunities that may lie ahead in the coming year.
Robust growth in 2005 despite oil price rises has not obscured the risks posed by global imbalances, notably the US current-account deficit, which is forecast to remain above 6 per cent of GDP in 2006.
If the size of the US deficit poses a risk, a sudden correction caused by a sharp drop in the value of the dollar could strangle economic growth in the US by pushing up interest rates and in Europe by precipitating an abrupt rise in the euro exchange rate. A session on the global housing market will examine the threat posed by a sharp fall in house prices, particularly in the US, where a housing boom has fuelled a sustained, consumer spending spree.
This year's meeting in Davos promises to be more serious and business-oriented than in recent years, with fewer workshops and more carefully structured sessions that will focus less on issues such as poverty and AIDS and more on the concerns of the corporations that pay for the annual meeting.
