Davos demonstrated why we need to choose continuums over dichotomies

Returning from the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos, I’m struggling to shake off the scale, speed and seismicity of the unfolding technological and geopolitical change. It was a privilege to be part of some of the discussions, ones that potentially or concretely could lead to billions in capital being mobilized, where policy frameworks affecting unilateral or multilateral political systems were debated, built, or ruptured, and where futures were actively designed.

As the CEO of a global development organization advocating for the scaling of existing technologies — such as biodigesters — in discussions dominated by AI-generated grid transmission, or making the case for catalytic official development assistance financing for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across increasingly fragile contexts, in rooms where others chase trillion-dollar tech, it often felt like whispering into a hurricane.

The sheer velocity and scale of technological and geopolitical disruption have created an attention economy where the immediate trumps the essential, where the transformative eclipses the foundational. But, here's what many discussions today can sometimes miss. These aren't dichotomies, they're continuums. Unless we recognize this, we risk building a future of unprecedented abundance for some alongside unprecedented absence for most.

The sessions, curated by many dynamic and deeply engaged team members at the World Economic Forum, crystallized for me around what I call the five Ps. There are five interdependent imperatives that, if dichotomized or ignored, will result in these tectonic technological and geopolitical shifts leading to short-term gains for the fewer and fewer and losses for us all.

The concentration of wealth is morally troubling and economically unstable. The conversations in Davos on inclusivity came with strong rhetoric, but the mechanisms to deliver it remain dangerously vague, alongside the eroding of institutions so necessary to enable it. We cannot allow AI-driven productivity gains to follow the same extractive patterns as previous technological revolutions. This requires more than good intentions — it demands new ownership models, new financing mechanisms and a fundamental rethinking of who captures value from innovation.

AI is set to accelerate productivity exponentially; this was clear from every session I attended. What remains uncertain is whether these gains will be measured, reinvested and distributed equitably. I have previously suggested the concept of explicit and contractual shared productivity gains between more prosperous and low-income countries as a framework for harnessing AI's efficiency gains towards development outcomes.

This is not theoretical: the fix is to treat productivity as a public good and share its gains more equitably across sectors. Take, for instance, the case of a dairy farmer in the Netherlands. If they are able to save two hours or more a day from automation, some of those gains can be used to support increases in productivity in Ethiopia, for example. Or in the case of healthcare, a doctor in a high-income country can create a 30% productivity gain through less paperwork or simple patient diagnosis. These gains could go to verifying or supporting AI-enabled diagnosis in, say, South Sudan.

Elon Musk's vision of abundance — increasingly central to tech optimism — suggests we can simply innovate our way beyond planetary limits. Perhaps to Mars, through fusion, through geoengineering. This is a seductive narrative, but a dangerous one.

Economic growth that ignores ecological thresholds doesn't deliver development; it delivers crisis on an instalment plan. True progress requires solutions that respect environmental limits while meeting human needs — solar home systems in rural Uganda matter as much as solar arrays in orbit. We need innovation frontiers and ground-level implementation, not one at the expense of the other.

The Bretton Woods institutions, multilateral system and policy frameworks that can shape and govern AI deployment, climate finance and development assistance were built for a different era. Creaking for years, they risk imploding under the weight of current disruption and risk collapsing entirely under what's coming.

At Davos, the urgency of rethinking governance structures was stark, as was the lack of consensus on what comes next. The political economy of shared productivity gains — how we measure, tax, distribute and reinvest them — will determine whether technological acceleration leads to shared prosperity or deepened inequality. Twentieth-century institutions cannot be retrofitted onto 21st-century challenges. We need new frameworks that enable collaboration across sectors and borders, that create incentives for equity and that move faster than the technology they're meant to govern.

The great paradox of our moment: technologies that enable connection and democratize information are simultaneously concentrating power in unprecedented ways. We're witnessing a shift from 'power to' and 'power with' towards 'power over' and it's accelerating. When a handful of individuals command resources greater than many nations, when their decisions shape global systems without democratic accountability, we've created a governance crisis masquerading as innovation.

None of us can afford to be naive about this power concentration. We need strategies that build countervailing power – through democratic oversight of foundational technologies, through deliberate efforts to diffuse, rather than concentrate control.

We stand at a genuine inflexion point. One path leads towards further divergence, towards the dismantling of global cooperation, towards a race to the bottom where winners accumulate and losers multiply. This path treats development and innovation as competing priorities, basic needs and frontier technologies as zero-sum choices.

The other path is harder. It requires nuance, tolerance and patience. It asks us to choose continuums over dichotomies. To see the threads connecting biodigesters to fusion, solar home systems to space-based arrays, SME financing to AI moonshots. The lack of access to electricity for over 700 million is not a separate problem from AI governance or climate finance or geopolitical realignment. They're the same, viewed through different lenses. Address one while ignoring the others and we've addressed nothing sustainably.

Davos this year was defined by scale, speed and seismicity. What we need now is the sustained attention to ensure those forces serve everyone, not just those who shaped the conversation.