In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - Børge Brende: Between World Orders, Global Cooperation and Digital Transformation

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

How do world leaders find common ground in an era of growing polarization? In this episode, Nicolai Tangen speaks with Børge Brende, President and CEO of the World Economic Forum, about bringing together global leaders to tackle shared challenges. They explore the shifting geopolitical landscape, the resilience of financial markets despite global tensions, the transformative power of AI and new technologies, and how the iconic Davos gatherings create opportunities for world leaders to find solutions. Børge shares his philosophy on building trust and his belief that equal opportunities are fundamental to a country's success. With 1,000 employees facilitating progress through public-private cooperation, the World Economic Forum continues to address humanity's greatest challenges. Tune in! In Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday. The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen, Sebastian Langvik-Hansen and Pål Huuse. Background research was conducted by Une Solheim. Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi everyone, I'm Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund. And today I'm really excited because I'm joined by my fellow Norwegian, Børge Bredde. And Børge, he's the president and CEO of the World Economic Forum, the organization behind the iconic Davos gatherings. And that's where the world's most powerful leaders meet each year to shape the global agenda. Børge also happens to be, I think, the best connected person in the world.

So, Böger, pleasure to have you here. Of coming from you, that means a lot. Böger, let's... Before we move on to the big, the really big topics, for listeners who don't know, what exactly is the World Economic Forum? The World Economic Forum is 55 years old. It is an international organization for public-private cooperation. It's based here in Geneva, Switzerland.

It's not for profit. And as you said, we're most known for our annual meeting in Davos that brings key people from business and governments together. But we have hundreds of meetings. We have hundreds of different initiatives, public, private, in the field of fighting corruption to nature and climate, to reviving growth and trade. How many people work at the forum? How big? All together around a thousand people.

How do you define success for the organization? What is it that you want to achieve? It is when we can get people together and we can facilitate progress. And what's the key to that? So, of course, in today's world, where we see much more fragmentations and polarization, it's harder than in the past to get people that don't even agree in the same room. But even in the age of nationalism and nation states, there is also overlap in interest. So what we're trying to identify between companies and countries,

if there is overlap in interest, we can strike and we can maybe form an initiative, we can facilitate the progress that I was referring to. So for example, look at cybercrime. We probably lose like four or five trillion US dollars a year in cybercrime. That's like three, four percent of the global GDP. I think even the G2, China and the US can agree that is not a good idea. So there we can work on rules and regulations on how to get rid of this criminal use of cyber. I think there are also other areas like future pandemics. Hopefully in the future we can come back again to have some more consensus on nature and climate. So these are areas and this is our kind of modus operandi today. Berger, let's kick off with some of these big questions.

What does it mean to operate between two world orders? Which I guess is what we're doing just now. Yeah, we are. We had one world order after the Cold War, 89. That was like a win-win thinking. What is good for you is good for me and vice versa. To more of approach now that is more competitive. It's also more mercantilistic from the past.

And, you know, I'm not a big believer in beggar thy neighbor. I think you should rather prosper your neighbor. But that world order is not there anymore. And between world orders, it's always unruly times. We know that from history. Some people would say that there's like multi polarity without multilateralism. I would say it's more from soft power to hard power. There is tough competition. And I just hope that the new world order also will bring with it some thinking of common rules, so we don't end up in the law of the jungle in the future. I don't think we will go that far, but it's obviously a different world order than the one we were used to.

And how far do you think this geopolitical fragmentation will go? It's hard to say, but you know, world leaders also want to revive growth. To be re-elected, you need a good economy and I think they will also see that if you go too far in nair shoring, friend shoring, and only trade with people you like and not where you get the best and cheapest products, part of your then as input factor, will also come with economic cost and you will see more sluggish growth. So hopefully there will not be a full decoupling. I think there is gonna be a securing

of the global value chains, but I don't think there will be a full decoupling. And additionally, we are in a paradigm shift with the new technologies. I guess we'll come back to that, but that can also be supportive for economic growth and maybe it's of course then competition, but maybe also some cooperation. So in your mind, do you think this is a temporary situation or are we at the beginning of an even more significant split? I think we're not gonna see the old era back

with the era where you had globalization and you had like the UN charter basis of the corporation, the rule of law. I think there still will be aspects of this. But I think there will be more strong powers. It will be interests where we will also go into a situation where trade will look differently. But hopefully it will be a re-globalization.

And hopefully the new technologies can also play a good factor, be a good and positive contributor to growth and not a situation where the winner takes it all. Do you think we'll see a period of economic stagnation? I think there are elements that are now slowing down the global growth. And I think the fact that we have the highest global deaths since 1945 also gives nation states a harder time if we're going to see a recession.

There is not that much of fiscal muscles. But at the same time, I don't think we're going to see a repetition of the sluggish growth from the 1970s. And why is that? I think, as I already mentioned, the new technologies are so incredibly powerful. And the way that trade was the engine of growth for decades grew two to three times more than trend growth. I think the new technologies will be the big game changer. They will increase productivity, maybe with 10% in the coming decade, and they can then

be the factors that will still continue with growth, even if there is more decoupling in the global economy. And the global economy has been surprisingly resilient so far, even in a very difficult geopolitical situation. So I'm more half, half-glass full than half-glass empty. Why do you think the economy and financial markets have been so resilient? Why do you think the economy and financial markets have been so resilient? I think there is... We already see the effect, especially in the US, and I think partly also in India,

of the new technologies. I think you're seeing productivity gains, you're seeing huge investments, you're going to see new breakthroughs in medicine and sciences that we haven't seen in a long time. I think this is part of it. And I think what we've seen so far on protectionist measures have not been so severe that you have impacted too much the growth that was already there post-COVID and also due to the huge stimulus. But it is a fact that we are growing slower now than before COVID. And for decades, we had a global trend growth of close to 4%. We are no more than we're closer to 3%. And that is not going to solve the big challenges we have globally. It's not going to lead us

to meeting the sustainable development goals. It's not going to eradicate poverty in the same way as we saw in the last decades, provided that the new technologies will not bring us up closer to 4% again. And that is my hope. And the positive thing with the new technologies, they're not polluting. They're not building like big pipes with huge emissions. This is growth, where it's a very different growth than in the past, much more sustainable. Back in January in Davos, the Americans were really optimistic and very bullish about the outlook, whilst Europeans, they were kind of more like they were in some kind of funeral. What's been happening in the US since and just where do you see the US going in a way,

both at home and also at the world scene? It's hard to predict. There's news every day. But at the same time, the US is like 27% of the global economy with 5% of the global population. They have almost 50% of the global military power. A lot of the big and most innovative companies are in the US. So I think there still is going to be a vibrant economy in the US, but they're also facing inflation and immigration. The latter is high on the administration's agenda. The first one is more complicated if you are paying more for imports and you're creating also a tougher market at home when it comes to access to labor can lead to higher inflation.

So these were the two big eyes that were promised by Trump fighting inflation and eyes that were promised by Trump, fighting inflation and immigration. But overall, I do think still that the US economy is very solid. I think it's going to continue to grow, I believe, more in the soft landing than in the hard landing.ically. Of course, it is definitely a different administration than in the past. And the Europeans are struggling with this. But at the same time, I think the zeitgeist also has changed in Europe since Davos. In what ways? Because in Davos, there was like gloom and doom when it came to Europe.

I think things are not as bad in Europe. Look at the fastest growing of all the OSD economies, including the American economy is Spain. And Spain was almost written off 20 years ago. At least 15 years ago, they had youth unemployment of 40%. Another very fast growing economy is Greece. That was definitely written off. And the whole euro was written off and is still the second most important currency in the world. We're seeing also scientists and others coming to Europe.

Europe is seen as a place where there is high life quality. We know there is a talent war going on. So maybe Europe can get in a better shape when it comes to talent. But red tape, bureaucracy, and so far not the most robust follow- up of the Dragir report is holding Europe back and also internal political impulses. We have the AfD, a big party now in Germany, but at the same time, we also see that some of the incubant parties are also doing better. So I'm more optimistic on Europe now than I was just a few months ago.

How do you read the relationship between US and China? That relationship is the most important one in the world. The so-called G2. As I mentioned, US almost 30% of the global GDP, China almost 20, that's almost half of our global economy. And they are definitely competing. It's a big competition between these two nations. They have different interests, swears.

And China has been also constantly relying less on export to the US. If you look now at the Chinese export to the US, it's gone down from 20% of their export in 2013 to now, I think is around 11, 12%. So they're more resilient, they're more diversified. But of course, China is also faced with the economic domestic challenges as in the US. There is an export led economy when export is harder. And also the demand globally is changing

from manufactured goods to services and digital trade. And these are areas where China is now trying to pivot towards, but traditionally they've been the big exporter of manufactured goods. And there we see that the demand has peaked. You also know that the property prices, there is also a shrinking of the workforce. So China is also faced with structural challenges, but they're also very good at addressing those things. And they are making changes now, for example, in the community for entrepreneurs

and also startups and tech companies that I think is well noticed by this community in China. Just moving on to how you get to your priorities, you play a very big role, I mean, you and the World Economic Forum in shaping the global conversations. How do you decide what should be on the agenda in Davos? So we try to look at what are the topics where we can make also progress, where bringing people together at least can increase the understanding of each other's challenges. And in many ways, we are in the same boat.

That I think we are forgetting if we are faced with trans-bondary challenges, we cannot solve them as then single nation states. We also think that while countries are not very indebted, some countries are more indebted than any time since the Napoleonic War. So it's like serious, private sector is still very vibrant. They have a lot of money to invest. So to work between private sector and government, I think is the way forward also to then addressing and solving some of the key challenges. You need the private sector on board to also make the right changes. These are things

we would like to discuss also in Davos in 2026. What's the best way to discuss these topics? Because you have big public sessions, you have smaller invites only tracks, you have bilateral meetings, you've got all kinds of formats. What do you think is the most efficient way of meeting people and discussing big problems? All that bow, I think it's not either or. We have to combine it. A big public session where the presidents and also key Fortune 50 CEOs increases the global attention.

It can also be a good input to smaller meetings where the same people can meet and discuss. And there is then also the so-called Chatham House-based meetings where you cannot use what is said there publicly that also are pretty successful. And then you have bilateral meetings where people meet in Davos and they can discuss border conflicts, they can discuss challenges between nations or companies. So I think the whole ecosystem is also based on an understanding that in Davos you come with a mindset to find solutions, not to just articulate what you disagree on. You get together the so-called global elite. Who are the really important people in the world today? So we say that we bring together leaders from governments and leaders from the private sector

and also leaders from universities, science, labor unions, also civil society. And together they form a unique multi-stakeholder blend where I think we can then achieve things together. And we've seen that in the past. For example, the whole notion of finding traffic rules when it comes to the new technologies, that the humans should be on top of the algorithms and not the algorithms of the humans, shouldn't be controversial. These are things that we are able to discuss in Davos, but we're not able to finalize, of course,

these kind of rules that's for other bodies to do. But the strength of a multi-stakeholder meeting like this is that we can bring players together, that it is necessary to bring together to see any kind of progress. This group which you called multi-stakeholder group, how has that changed over the last 10 years? What type of people are coming in and who are going out? So that's a good question. You know that in the companies, we have seen a tendency of CEOs lasting shorter than in the past, three, four years, and then some companies just changed the CEO. We also know that being in power today is tough being in government. There is an anti-incubant factor for those countries at least that do have these kind

of elections. So I think we in the past could see some people come for decades. That's less frequent now, at least from Europe and North America. We see that the name tags are changing much more frequently. What are the implications? I think it's also a sign of short-term thinking in many companies and in many countries. It takes time to really be successful in implementing a strategy. So if you're elected in a country, you have to really work hard the first year to implement the reforms.

And hopefully, you will see the positive results four years later when the elections are there. But, you know, some reforms you can only see the result of in a decade's perspective. And I think the same are in companies. Some companies are more long term and not only focused on the last quarter's results. But I think there is a tendency for that, but with the new technologies, with all the challenges we're faced with, I think one also should not forget that we should also acknowledge the importance of being medium long term in your perspective, and that should also be rewarded.

Is it more difficult to build trust in a world where people are changing more frequently? more frequently. So it comes with its challenges, but we're also being better at including C-suites from companies, not only the CEO and the chairperson, but also other people in the leadership of companies and the same with countries. So we also know invite key opposition leaders from some countries. So overall, I think we're still able to have a great crowd in and at our meetings. We are, for example, now going to go to Tianjin, China for summer travels in four weeks. And the signup there is incredible. We haven't seen these kind of numbers in a long time. So I think there is a lot of interest to also decipher what is really happening to connect the dots. So before people came also for the initiatives and the partnerships, I think that still is important.

But the world has become so complex that we're seeing a lot of leaders coming and say, we really just need to meet to understand what are the possible prospects for the future, what are the scenarios out there and more focus on resilience, how to build capacity to handle the unknown. On a more personal level, what's the best way to build relationships and trust? Because that's kind of what you do for a living, right? I think that you have to be an honest broker. You have to not then over promise. You should always over deliver instead of the opposite. And we are an impart impartial organization so we are very clear that we work as closely with India as we do with the US, Brazil, China and we are like a facilitator and a platform. We're not

an organization that is an activist organization saying that we are working for this and this. The furthest we go is to say that we're facilitators of progress. I think that is building trust and over time they do see that they get positive results of engaging with the world economic farm. What's the key to handling powerful people with big deals? I think it's to have a good agenda that they feel that is worth their time and be very serious about that, hardworking. And we don't give in to all the demands from all these leaders. We are very open and transparent about what we can deliver.

And over time, I think that has been our strength. And leaders do come back. And that's a big compliment. In Davos this year, we had more than 60 heads of states and governments. We had 70 out of 100 Fortune 100 CEOs. And this is not done overnight. It's hard work over years and building that kind of trust.

What's the most difficult diplomatic situation you've been in? Wow. It was hard when I was foreign minister in Norway and we negotiated the peace agreement in Colombia between the FARC guerrilla and President Sanchez. It's especially because it was an armed conflict that had with President Santos. It was hard because this kind of internal armed conflict had gone on for 50 years. It was also a bit of a challenge when I was given the task to repair and rebuild the diplomatic relations between China and Norway, something that took a few years because there was no trust. And you have to stick, of course, to your national values and your integrity. But at the same time, it is in a country's interest, two countries' interest to be able

to work together. I need to ask some slightly difficult questions too. So, lots of private jets at Davos, kind of a pretty big contrast to the climate focus you have. Just how do you look at these things? So it is true that a lot of also governmental leaders do come with their presidential or official planes. You know, when we have had Trump twice in Davos. He does land with Air Force One. Well, he's got a new plane now. Yeah, yeah, I saw that.

But it still would be counted. And it's also true that some of the big CEOs of the world that run companies that have a bigger turnover than many countries, they also come with their official plans. I think that is de facto a reality and is not going to change with Davos. So I'm just registering this and it's a fact. What about this being very exclusive and elitist in a world where we perhaps need more transparency and openness? I think we're very transparent. I think we're very open.

I think the World Economic Forum has like 40 million followers in social media and we put out a lot of things there. media and we put out a lot of things there. I was indirectly addressing this earlier on, because you used the word elite, but I didn't really want to go into a discussion about it. But you know, when you have the head of states and governments from countries, you have the key CEOs from the key companies, you have the leaders, directors from the key Ivy League institutions of the world, you can say these are the true leaders in the world that can, if they come together,

make a positive influence. You can also call them the elite. I think they're all very, at least most of them, very hardworking people that have come to these positions and I think it's good to bring them together. Some of our meetings are open to the public. to these positions and I think it's good to bring them together. Some of our meetings are open to the public.

Some meetings, as I also mentioned, are closed meetings because if you discuss, for example, between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the border conflict, that cannot be for open camera if you want to have progress. When we have had discussions among Palestinians and Israelis in have progress. When we have had discussions among Palestinians and Israelis in Davos, when we have had discussions also between Americans and Chinese. Of course, these should be closed meetings to make sure that we make progress. And if there are things to announce, then it will be announced in the press conference. Now, your founder Klaus Schwab recently stepped down. And I appreciate this is a very sensitive issue, but what can you tell us about this?

So, our founder Klaus Schwab has stepped down after 55 years. He is our founder and I worked with him closely for the last seven and a half years. He is our founder and I worked with him closely for the last seven and a half years. He is now 87 years old and he said that he chose now to step down due to age. That was his statement. And what is your statement? Yeah, the same. Okay. How will you change the leadership culture going forward? So the human capital of the World Economic Forum is the real capital.

As I mentioned, I have a thousand colleagues atF, and these are the people that also contribute every day to the mission of the forum, to improve the state of the world or to facilitate progress. But, you know, to motivate people that is of this kind of caliber that we recruit, you have to build a strong teams. It's all about motivation. If you're motivated, you get so much done. And if you feel what you're doing is also important, you're even more motivated.

So that will be an is my big task, making sure that we have the best talent in the world, that one person can go very fast, but if you want to go far, you have to go all together. And the World Economic Forum should also be a great place to work, have a great workplace culture. That is my goal. What have you brought from a life in politics? you were head of the Red Cross and so on.

What leadership ideals have you brought into the organization? We know that understanding also how governments work and also the private sector and how you can then by matching them, making progress, is something that you learn if you work both in private sector and in garment. So I'm spending a lot of my time on trying to be creative in new ways of breaking impulses because there are so many impulses. So for example a few years ago during COP26 in Glasgow we got this idea of having the leading global companies using their purchasing power to green their supply chain saying that for example Apple says that 25% of their aluminium needs to be green.

If you have companies doing this, it sets really a strong example. It's their right because they're privately owned companies, so they can do this. And that creates also a big demand. We have, for example, for years now had a coalition of 100 companies going further than the national legislation on fighting corruption, opening up for transparency. We are losing trillions of US dollars every year in corruption that should have been invested differently. These are the areas where I think with my background, I hopefully can combine political political insights, insights from multilateral organizations,

also with the private sector. That is unique at the farm because we're public-private. You still talk about climate initiatives and so on. Now in some parts of the world they talk less about it. What is your view on the kind of U-turn or backlash we've seen against ESG and climate initiatives? So politics maybe have changed, but science hasn't. But it is true that when you discuss climate, you also have to bring in energy. It's like a triangle.

There's still like 700 million people on our planet that don't even have access to electricity. That is needed to support progress and development. And we need to decouple growth in energy and CO2 emissions in the future. But at the same time, we also have to do it in a way that we don't compromise on energy security. We have seen in Europe how bad an idea it was to base almost half of our natural gas from Russia. Diversification is also important. So I think it's not simplistic. Changing the energy demand and changing the way we also support our development with different energy sources is the most complex transition transition we've been through probably for decades. And we're trying to show the complexity but still what you can do with new technologies. Like looking at the gen AI now can accelerate, for example, fusion nuclear that we thought was like maybe going to be available in three or four decades commercially. Maybe

we can do it in a decade. That means a lot. Look at the big developments we have had in China on renewables. China is the first electrostate and a country that is basing a lot of their energy now on electricity sourced from renewables. But of course it has to be balanced. They balance it with then coal, LNG, and also nuclear. So we're trying to be balanced, but still facilitating progress. And we still believe that the cost of inaction far exceeds the cost of action. We briefly touched on AI a couple of times. And it's just totally revolutionary in the way that we, in many of the things we do in our company, just how do you think it will shape the future of global business?

It's already changing things very fundamentally. I thought we were going to be in like the hardware phase for a bit longer where you needed like trillions of US dollars investing in the new language models. But I think that deep-seek experience from China, suddenly this company that no one had heard about had then a language model that was developed for maybe one third, one quarter of what others had done, shows that we're maybe a little bit closer to the software phase where we can do applications. And with that, I think we're just gonna see like thousand flowers blossom in the energy field and AI field, sorry, in the years

to come. And where I expecting big, big changes is in medicine, the synthetic biology. There's going to be so many breakthroughs, but also, of course, there are jobs that are today done by humans, back offices, and all that, that will be replaced by Gen.AI. But that is also the history that you then move higher up in the value chain. Like if you increase productivity, you can also increase prosperity, but it also creates some fear, of course, fear for jobs and fairs about the future. But like look here in Switzerland, when I'm now a basis, 95% of the population worked in the agriculture sector 100 years ago.

And now it's like 2% and they produce much more food than back then, with 2% of the population. And you could ask, where did all these people go? Yes, they went up in the value chain, created prosperity. That's the population. And you could ask, where did all these people go? Yes, they went up in the value chain, created prosperity. That's the future. And that's working at the World Economic Forum. For example, not a bad place. How do you think AI will change the geopolitical power balance? geopolitical power balance. So the competition is fierce.

And I think the two big nations, China and the US, also knows, know that the country that's on top of the new technologies will probably emerge as the most powerful nation also of this century. So that competition is gonna continue, but I think there's also other players that will come in. And things are very hard to predict. If you look at, for example, the list of the 10 companies in the world with the highest market cap today,

many of them did not exist two or three decades ago. So it doesn't mean that the largest companies in a few decades even are started yet. And they don't need to come from the big, in one of the big players country, but they do have things that of course, work in their interest. For example, access to data. Data is the new oxygen

in this economy. If you're big, a big home market, and you have access to data, you have a comparative advantage. If you have a lot of capital interested in investing, if you have great universities, if you have great R&D, if you have great engineers, well-educated people. So I think the competition related to the new technologies will be more important than some of the more military defense parts of the competition. Do you think AI will increase global inequality? I'm not so sure. Because in theory it should decrease it, but don't you need a certain level of education, energy and so on to really utilize it? really utilize it? And innovation and entrepreneurship and also a young population that is very tech savvy.

So as I mentioned, like in the platform economy, the winner took it all. We have this big, almost private superpowers that are very dominating. But I think also you will see a lot of startups and a lot of opportunities also in emerging economies. Look at for example, India in this. 1.4 billion people have no electronic digital ID. There is like 130 unicorns in China and it is like 10 or something adding almost on a quarterly basis. We see growth there is mainly related to services and digital trade. So I think there is, the jury is out.

If you need the huge trillion dollars of investments, there will be advantages for those that have a lot of capital and where you want to allocate your capital. But at the same time, we know that a lot of good ideas have been developed in garages and other places in the past. So it's opened up also huge opportunities for the countries with a lot of young people. Look at Nigeria, look at Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam. These are very fast growing economies that are emerging economies.

Bugger, moving on to a bit more personal questions. What part of your job do you enjoy the most? Where are you really in the flow? When I can feel that we can contribute to finding either solutions or make progress. When we could, for example, have 50 Israeli CEOs meeting with 50 Palestinian CEOs and they said that we can work together. When we're not thinking about putting together a delegation of CEOs that want to go to Damascus and invest in a war-torn Syria, I think that is great. I also felt that the best moment for me in Davos when I went to a small meeting between Americans and also Chinese that looked at who can we even in this polarized world find

ways of working together. That's the part of the job I feel most meaningful. Now, as we know, no profit is honored in his own country. You were the foreign minister, but it's really after you went global that you become a rockstar and a heavyweight. Why do you think that is? I'm not so sure. If I'm in that latter category.

I don't feel like that. But I'm enjoying my job here at the World Economic Forum, but I also enjoyed every day, almost at least, in Norwegian politics for almost 30 years too. And I learned so much through that. And, you know, I'm very fond of my home country. I think that Norway is one of the best governed and run countries in the world. And if you look at the Nordic countries together, they're like 10th largest economy in the world and they have been able to have substantial economic growth, but at the same time they're not doing so badly when it comes to addressing inequalities too. So it's, my view is that equal opportunities is incredibly important for a success of a country,

but of course if you work hard you cannot end up with the same results as those that don't work so hard. But equal opportunities, meaning that you have access to good schools, have a good educational system that every young talent can succeed. I think that is something that is extremely close to my heart. How do you relax? How do you chill? How do you relax? How do you chill? In the mountains, maybe. In Norway, I like it in the mountains. I also like a Saturday morning with no speeches, no travel, just to have a cup of coffee and sit and read Financial Times a Saturday morning. I'm like, I feel very privileged, very, very privileged, and I can use one and a half hour on that. So I'm easily satisfied in that respect. What else do you read? So I read, of course, all the relevant papers. I read... I'm sorry, what is all relevant papers? What is that? Yeah, so I read Financial Times, I read Wall Street Journal, I read New York Times, I read

also Washington Post. Of course, not every page every day, but these are the papers that I read. I read a few Norwegian papers too. Of course, I need to follow a bit what is happening at home. what is happening at home. And then I also try to read books, mainly on things that I'm not so knowledgeable about. For example, the new technologies, I forced myself to read a lot of books about AI and technology, even if I do still prefer to read books about geopolitics and geo-economy. But I do understand that in this

role I need to become more tech savvy. What are you the most grateful for in life? grown up in a country where you could pursue your interests and that I have had the chance to also contribute through public life for many years and also seeing my kids growing up in a country where there is peace and they have had access to good education. And lastly, what is your advice to young people? Work hard, be serious, but not think about always if it's greener on the other side of the fence. You know, I have not applied for jobs in my life. I think I work very hard, but opportunities do come if you just do well in what you're doing and try to work on something that you're passionate about and don't stress about the career. The less you stress about your

career and more committed you are to what you're doing, then things have a tendency of solving itself. That's what I'm trying to tell also to all the very ambitious young people at the World Economic Forum. Well, Bojja, you for sure have been very committed to what you do and a big congratulations with everything you have achieved. Big thanks for being with us. Thank you, Nicolai. Thank you for inviting me to your podcast. It and a big congratulations with everything you have achieved. Big thanks for being with us. Thank you, Nicolai.

Thank you for inviting me to your podcast. That's a big honor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.