Thriving and Leading in the Intelligent Age: Mastering Change with Purpose
BY Klaus Schwab
The future is not something that happens to us. It’s something we create.
We are entering an age where intelligence—human, artificial, and collective—has become the world’s most powerful resource. In Thriving and Leading in the Intelligent Age, Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder of the World Economic Forum and author of the global bestseller The Fourth Industrial Revolution, offers an essential guide for those determined to lead this transformation with clarity, courage, and purpose.
Drawing on decades of engagement with business, policy, and science, Schwab explains how the Intelligent Age reshapes every domain of decision-making—and how leaders can harness its potential for progress.
Whether you’re an executive, entrepreneur, professional, or curious learner, this groundbreaking book equips you to:
→ Build strategic intelligence to anticipate change before it disrupts your organization
→ Lead teams and institutions where human and artificial intelligence work in synergy
→ Align innovation with ethics, empathy, and long-term value creation
→ Thrive personally and professionally amid volatility by developing adaptive, values-based leadership
→ Translate global technological shifts into sustainable growth and societal benefit
The first volume in the Intelligent Age Series, this is both a manifesto and a manual for the leaders of tomorrow.
The Intelligent Age will shape us—or we can learn how to shape it.
Klaus Schwab
Professor Klaus Schwab (1938, Ravensburg, Germany) is the Founder of the World Economic Forum. In 1971, he published Modern Enterprise Management in Mechanical Engineering. He argues in that book that a company must serve not only shareholders but all stakeholders to achieve long-term growth and prosperity. To promote the stakeholder concept, he founded the World Economic Forum the same year.
Professor Schwab holds doctorates in Economics (University of Fribourg) and in Engineering (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and obtained a master’s degree in Public Administration (MPA) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
In 1972, in addition to his leadership role at the Forum, he became a professor at the University of Geneva.
He has received numerous international and national honors, including 20 honorary doctorates.
His books include The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2016), a worldwide bestseller translated into 30 languages, Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2018), The Great Reset (2020), and Stakeholder Capitalism (2021).