An insider's look at Davos

Lynda Gratton

It's a surreal place. Picture 2,000 people in a mountain resort packed into a conference centre for five days. Weird things are going to happen… and they do. Here are the 10 weirdest things that happened to me at Davos this year:

1. Sitting in a group of five people building a new society from scratch. I had the UK's Labour leader Ed Milliband on my right and Buddhist priest Matthieu Ricard on my left. You couldn't make this up!
2. Getting into an elevator only to see that the only other occupier was Bill Gates. "Hi Bill!"
3. Getting out of the bus from the airport late at night with my dear friend and colleague at London Business School, Professor Francesca Cornelli. She is wearing five-inch high heels, and as she steps out of the bus she turns to me and says in her gorgeous thick Italian accent: "Is there snow at Davos?' We had six feet of it, but Francesca assured me that her heels acted as fantastic crampons.
4. Walking down an icy road with the FT's Mrs Moneypenny at 1.00am between parties. Sadly she slipped and broke her wrist – the beginning of a night spent in hospital. No doubt more of this in next Saturday's FT.
5. Meeting Drew Huston, the guy who invented my favourite piece of technology, Dropbox (actually just before Mrs MP broke her wrist). He is 27 years old and the business has been valued at $4 billion. I even have a photo of us together – he is a real hero of our research team.
6. Walking past IMF leader Madame Christine Lagarde twice – and both times she smiled and said bonjour. How cool!
7. I kept missing Mick Jagger: there were various sightings but not by me. No Bono to be seen.
8. Meeting numerous CEOs – there are whole herds of them. The ones that really caught my eye were Rick Goings of Tupperware (yes, there really is a Tupperware party every two minutes around the world) who is interested in so many areas, and the surgeon Toby Cosgrove who is President of the Cleveland Clinic and a fantastic leader. Also, Ernesto Zedillo, the former President of Mexico. On my first panel on leadership, his opening remarks were "I am skeptical about leadership" – and that's just the sort of debate we need.
9. Plus vast faculties of professors. I moderated the Wharton Innovation Lab on Jobs and the Skill Gap - which was really interesting and scary at the same time.
10. And finally: getting home to London on Sunday night and cooking supper for the family. No Tony Blair, no CEOs, no Professors: the weirdest thing about Davos is the withdrawal symptoms. But perhaps if I go into my drawing room I might just find Bill sitting and talking to Mick!