Thousands of chief executives, politicians, leaders of non-governmental organisations and media folk are once again assembled in Davos for their annual debates on how to improve the world. It is a worthy affair, with “stakeholders” discussing how best to combine business with societal good, like an ersatz global parliament.

The World Economic Forum is evolutionary – it usually misses the coming crisis but Klaus Schwab, its founder and impresario, is brilliant at adapting to the last one. It absorbed the 1990s anti-globalisation protests by inviting NGOs and companies to forge a consensus, and tried the same after the 2008 crisis with banks and regulators.

The trouble is, despite the parties and whirl of events, Davos feels old and staid. The excitement is with the revolutionaries – the technology companies that promise to remodel the world, not just to strike a compromise with the existing one. As the late Steve Jobs of Apple said: “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.”