3 things leaders should prioritize in 2025

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2025. Image: World Economic Forum / Boris Baldinger
- At the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2025, what did leaders from different industries view as the priorities for the coming year?
- Over the course of the event, cooperation and adaptability emerged as key themes for addressing challenges in a rapidly evolving global landscape.
- From humans-over-AI to adaptive mindsets, here's how seven leaders plan to negotiate our accelerated digital age.
With the curtain closed on this year’s Annual Meeting in Davos, what did we learn?
While the focus of the World Economic Forum’s gathering of global leaders was very much on how the world best moves forward in our accelerated digital age, leaders had different takes on how we can achieve this.
“The world today is still nearly as connected as ever," said Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, during the opening ceremony. "But it has also started fracturing along new lines."
Here are three lessons for the year ahead from seven leaders in their field.
In the age of AI, people are more crucial than ever
As debate continues on whether artificial intelligence is here to save or destroy us, the world is simultaneously having to adapt to its rapid emergence. And while two-fifths of workers’ skill sets will be transformed or become outdated in the next five years due to advanced technology, AI is no longer viewed as simply here to take over everyone’s jobs.
As Jay Lee, Clark Distinguished Chair Professor and Director of the Industrial AI Center at the University of Maryland, says: “How can we use the tool AI to augment our workforces, not just replace things that we do?”
It’s an opportunity to “double down on those critical human skills”, says Amit Sevak, CEO of Educational Testing Service (ETS). What used to be called ‘soft skills’ – such as communication, creativity, collaboration – which were for many decades not prioritized, have come into focus in the AI age, Sevak says.
Lee makes the point that “humans are the centre of the universe” and should therefore have “the major role” in helping society.
For Cristina Mittermeier, renowned photographer and conservationist, it’s not just humans that should take priority over technology, but nature itself.
“We're just starting to understand the important role that animals like whales play in the carbon cycle,” she says. “We need more whales than ever, because whales fertilize plankton. Plankton absorb carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. We're just learning the inner workings of our planet, and it turns out that it is the fabric of life that keeps the mechanisms going.”
Mittermeier wants to “compel people to look at animals and ecosystems in a different way” and to treat our planet “like a special, fragile capsule that's taking us safely across the universe”.
Adopting an adaptive mindset is key
Technology is advancing at such a pace, it’s not just a matter of employees and organizations reskilling for the AI age. It’s an almost continuous learning process. Sevak talks about the “half-life of a skill” and how it is rapidly decreasing. He says that a skill learnt now is worth half the value of one learnt six years ago.
“I think leaders should be prioritizing adaptability to new external realities,” Sevak says. “The marketplaces are shifting faster and there are more geopolitical questions being raised. What's the role of China? What are the regulations coming out of Europe? What are the different governmental changes that are happening in key markets? There are the technology changes, political changes, and certainly all of the shifts in the skilling and human capital side are such that having that adaptive spirit – not being so fixed or having a fixed mindset, but more of a growth mindset, or an adaptive mindset – is going to be particularly critical this year.”
Keep adapting and looking forward is also the advice of David Steinbach, CIO at the global retail investment management company Hines.
“Good decision-making is top of the list. I think it's going to be easy to fall back into some old habits and to forget some of the lessons that we've all learned. It's going to be easy to fall into recency bias. And I think that that's probably the single biggest thing that investors need to be thinking about this year is not to fall prey to those.”
Collaboration and communication are also paramount
Outsourcing used to be an optional extra, but now “collaboration is key”, says Christophe Catoir, President of human resources provider Adecco.
“When you want to build a competitive advantage,” he says, “speed is much more important than before. So you need to partner with the best around you and to create a community of people, of companies, who are able to create together an engine for growth. Before it was OK to have insourcing, outsourcing – it was a choice. Today, I'm not sure it's a choice.”
For Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, collaboration among world leaders is essential “in order to bridge the health gap”. She talks about “exploiting synergy” to overcome the “systemic distortions within countries”.
“We as the global health community have to collaborate a lot better to make sure that we speak with one voice.” And to achieve that, says Nishtar, there are three things leaders must do: “They must communicate, they must communicate, they must communicate with clarity.”
It’s a sentiment that Gita Gopinath, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, would likely agree with. As a leader, she values “hearing from a multiple set of voices... people think that they can disagree with me”.
Gopinath warns against getting “caught in an echo chamber” and actively encourages a diversity of opinions: “encouraging people to speak to you freely and honestly is very important”, she says.