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Klaus Schwab

( 1938 Births )

Early life and education
Career

World Economic Forum (19..

Downfall and resignation..

As author

Controversies

Salary level and lack of..
Controversy with Davos m..
The ''Great Reset'' and ..

Awards and honours
Publications

Articles
Books

Personal life
References
External links

C O N T E N T S

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Klaus Martin Schwab (; born 30 March 1938) is a German mechanical engineer, economist, and founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF). He served as the WEF's chairman from 1971 until his resignation in 2025.

Early life and education

Klaus Martin Schwab was born on 30 March 1938, to Eugen Wilhelm Schwab and Erika Epprecht

(2026). 9781119756132, Wiley. ISBN 9781119756132

in Ravensburg. His parents had moved from Switzerland to Germany during the Third Reich in order for his father to assume the role of director at Escher Wyss AG, an industrial company and contractor for the Nazi regime. Although his father was baptized Lutheranism, Schwab was raised Catholic Church. Although he has three Swiss grandparents and two Swiss brothers, he is a citizen of Germany and has declined multiple offers for naturalization, from both Kurt Furgler and Ueli Maurer.

Schwab attended first and second grades at the primary school in the Wädenswil district of Au, Zürich, in Switzerland. After World War II, Schwab attended the Spohn-Gymnasium in Ravensburg until his Abitur in 1957.Patrik Müller, Andreas Maurer. An impossible gift: Why the naturalisation of WEF founder Klaus Schwab will fail. Aargauer Zeitung, 20 August 2019.Jürgen Dunsch: Host of the Mighty: Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum in Davos. FinanzBuch Verlag 2016. p. 26f. In 1961, he graduated as a mechanical engineer from the ETH Zurich in Zurich, with a doctorate in engineering, with a dissertation titled Der längerfristige Exportkredit als betriebswirtschaftliches Problem des Maschinenbaues (Longer-term export credit as a business problem in mechanical engineering). He also earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Fribourg, and a Master in Public Administration degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. While attending Harvard, Schwab found a mentor in future National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Career

Schwab was professor of business policy at the University of Geneva from 1972 to 2003, and since then has been an honorary professor there. Schwab and his wife Hilde created the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in 1998.

World Economic Forum (1971–2025)

In 1971, Schwab founded the European Management Forum, which was renamed as the World Economic Forum in 1987.

(2026). 9780415702041, Routledge. ISBN 9780415702041

Also in 1971, he published Moderne Unternehmensführung im Maschinenbau. In 2003 Schwab appointed José María Figueres CEO of the WEF, as his successor. In October 2004, Figueres resigned over his undeclared receipt of more than US$900,000 in consultancy fees from the French telecommunications firm Alcatel-Lucent while he was working at the Forum. In 2006, Transparency International highlighted this incident in their Global Corruption Report.

Schwab founded the Global Shapers Community in 2011 within the WEF to work with young people in "shaping local, regional and global agendas." In 2015, the WEF was formally recognised by the Swiss Government as an "international body".

The phrase Fourth Industrial Revolution was first introduced by a team of scientists developing a high-tech strategy for the German government. Schwab, as the former executive chairman of the WEF, introduced the phrase to a wider audience in a 2015 article published by Foreign Affairs. "Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution" was the 2016 theme of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. On 10 October 2016, the Forum announced the opening of its Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco. This was also subject and title of Schwab's 2016 book.

(2026). 9781524758875, Crown Publishing Group. . ISBN 9781524758875

Schwab includes in this fourth era technologies that combine hardware, software, and biology (cyber-physical systems), and emphasises advances in communication and connectivity. Schwab expected this era to be marked by breakthroughs in emerging technologies in fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the internet of things, the industrial internet of things, decentralised consensus, fifth-generation wireless technologies, 3D printing, and fully autonomous vehicles. In November 2019 on his book tour Schwab met with Vladimir Putin at the annual SPIEF to present to him a copy.

Downfall and resignation (2024–2025)

In June 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported allegations of sexual harassment and workplace misconduct against Schwab by former WEF employees. The allegations included claims that Schwab engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct, discriminated against a pregnant employee, and ordered mass firing of employees over 50 years of age.

The WEF denied the allegations, stating Schwab "has never made sexual advances toward an employee" and calling the claims "vague and false."

Following additional whistleblower allegations of financial impropriety and research manipulation in 2025, the WEF announced an internal investigation. Schwab resigned as chairman in April 2025 and subsequently filed defamation complaints against anonymous whistleblowers, maintaining his innocence while describing the allegations as "stupid and constructed."

As author

Schwab wrote about the Fourth Industrial Revolution in a 2016 book. In January 2017, Steven Poole in The Guardian criticised Schwab's Fourth Industrial Revolution book, pointing out that "the internet of things" would probably be hackable. He also criticised Schwab for showing that future technologies may be used for good or evil, but not taking a position on the issues, instead offering only vague policy recommendations. The Financial Times innovation editor found "the clunking lifelessness of the prose" led him to "suspect this book really was written by humans—ones who inhabit a strange twilight world of stakeholders, externalities, inflection points and 'developtory sandboxes'." The political scientist Klaus-Gerd Giesen argued that the dominant ideology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is transhumanism.

(2026). 9783658305116 ISBN 9783658305116

Controversies

Salary level and lack of financial transparency

While Schwab declared that excessively high management salaries were "no longer socially acceptable", his own annual salary of about one million (about US$1.2 million) has been repeatedly questioned by the media. The Swiss radio and television corporation SRF mentioned this salary level in the context of ongoing public contributions to the WEF and the fact that the Forum does not pay any federal taxes. Moreover, the former Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung journalist Jürgen Dunsch made the criticism that the WEF's financial reports were not very transparent since neither income nor expenditures were broken down. Schwab has also drawn ire for mixing the finances of the not-for-profit WEF and other for-profit business ventures. For example, the WEF awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to USWeb in 1998. Yet shortly after the deal went through, Schwab took a board seat at the same company, reaping valuable stock options.

Controversy with Davos municipality

In June 2021, Schwab sharply criticised the "profiteering", "complacency" and "lack of commitment" of the municipality of Davos in relation to the WEF annual meeting. He mentioned that the preparation of the COVID-related meeting in Singapore in 2021/2022 had created an alternative to its Swiss host and sees the chance that the annual meeting will stay in Davos at between 40 and 70 per cent.

The Great Reset and theories

In June 2020, accompanied by a video message from Charles III, Schwab launched the Great Reset, a five-point plan to enhance sustainable economic growth following the global recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Its stated objective is to support recovery from the global pandemic in a manner that emphasises sustainable development. According to Schwab, the intention of the project is to reconsider the meaning of capitalism and capital. While not abandoning capitalism, he proposes to change and possibly move on from some aspects of it, including neoliberalism and free-market fundamentalism.

The Great Reset was criticised by commentators for encouraging economic deregulation and expanding the influence of private corporations, particularly multinational corporations, in policymaking at the expense of governments. Others argued that it overemphasised health and exaggerated the ability of a small group of decision-makers to reshape the global economy, or that it amounted to crony capitalism. The initiative also became the focus of conspiracy theories circulated mainly by conservative commentators on platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Claims included that the pandemic had been engineered by a secret group to control the global economy, that lockdowns were intentionally designed to cause economic collapse, or that a global elite sought to abolish private property while using vaccines to subjugate populations. Such theories gained traction when political leaders including U.S. president Joe Biden, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau referred to the idea of a post-pandemic "reset" in public statements.

Awards and honours

Schwab has been conferred with the French Legion of Honour (knight distinction), the Grand Cross with Star of the National Order of Germany, and the Japanese Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun. He also was awarded the Dan David Prize, and was recognized by Elizabeth II as an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George.

Publications

Articles

"Global Corporate Citizenship: Working with Governments and Civil Society". Foreign Affairs, vol. 87, no. 1 (Jan–Feb 2008), pp. 107–18. .

Books

The Global Information Technology Report 2001–2002: Readiness for the Networked World | Berkman Klein Center with Geoffrey S. Kirkman, Peter K. Cornelius and Jeffrey D. Sachs, New York, Oxford University Press (2002). , .
The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva: World Economic Forum (2016). .
Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, with Nicholas Davis. New York: Crown Publishing Group (2018).
COVID-19: The Great Reset, with Thierry Malleret. Forum Publishing (2020). .
Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley (2021). .
The Great Narrative: For a Better Future, with Thierry Malleret. Forum Publishing (2022). .
Thriving and Leading in the Intelligent Age, Schwab Academy (2025). .
Longevity and Retirement in the Intelligent Age, Schwab Academy (2025). .

Personal life

Schwab married Hilde Schwab, his former assistant, in 1971. The wedding took place in Sertig at a Reformed church. The couple lives in Cologny, Switzerland. The Schwabs have two adult children. His daughter, Nicole Schwab, co-founded the Gender Equality Project.His son, Olivier Schwab, was a former head of technology at the WEF.

External links