I was at a dinner last night with some of the new group of Global Leaders for Tomorrow, or GLTs. One of them asked, “How does the Forum live up to its motto of ‘Committed to improving the state of the world’?” I reeled off a number of instances where ideas provoked in Davos, or initiatives launched there, had lived up to this grand aspiration: the start of the Uruguay Round of the Gatt, the identification of “eurosclerosis”, Mandela’s conversion to market economics, and so on.

But the conversation took a more interesting turn. Other Davos veterans at the dinner said the improvement often came from far less exalted actions that would never be visible on the world stage. Almost everyone who had been had a story of a person encountered, or a session attended, that had truly changed the way in which they viewed the world — or at least some part of it.

The aggregate of these personal transformations has real power to change the world for the better.

Incidentally, although I’ve written in an earlier posting about the variety of constituencies gathered in Davos for the Annual Meeting, I’ve never explained how hard we try to ensure that there is no class system in Davos. A huge percentage of the participants in Davos are used to — the other 359 days in the year — getting precisely what they want, with a crowd of assistants to help them achieve exactly that. In Davos, they have to signup for sessions with everyone else (and sometimes the sessions they want to attend are full, sad to say) and go through the same security checks as well.

Would you let this man into the Congress Centre?