This is the final post from Macquarie University historian Professor David Christian summing up his impressions gained from his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

There are many tribes at Davos: business leaders (who pay for the rest), journalists, politicians, representatives of NGOs, bankers (I thought they all looked a bit defensive), faith leaders, and my own tribe, the academics. I’m a historian, interested in history at very big scales, and how it might guide discussions about the future.

I left the conference full of admiration. Was I seduced by the glitter? Every second person seemed to be the CEO of a huge corporation, or a major NGO, or a journalist from a major newspaper or the president of a university. Was it that almost everything I heard had substance, even if I didn’t agree with it? Or was it the receptions and soirees and the fantastic organization? By my reckoning there must have been three support staff for every participant.

The first two days seemed to be all about the Euro and the financial crisis. Is capitalism broken? Can it be fixed? This struck me as a very “Western” agenda. Are the Indians or the Chinese or the Koreans this gloomy about capitalism? But I’m not an economist, and of course it’s true that if the Euro implodes it will be bad for almost everyone.

However, sustainability was on the agenda and in a pretty serious way. There is a powerful emerging conversation between CEOs, some of whom are actively involved in building sustainable technologies, companies and products, and the political leaders who have dominated public debate on sustainability so far. Hearing calls to tax carbon from leading corporates was exciting and impressive. The organizers of the Rio conference later this year will work to build on this emerging alliance and tap into the managerial, technological and economic skills of the corporate world.

The original vision of Klaus Schwab, who founded the Forum in 1971, was of a business world that takes responsibility not just for its shareholders, but also for its stakeholders – for everyone businesses affect, from consumers to employees to anyone touched by what businesses do and produce. The Forum is designed to ensure that the dialogue between businesses and stakeholders is serious, ongoing and productive.

Today that dialogue is global. It is helping to create a global community of influential, thoughtful and often brilliant people who seem genuinely committed to the project of a capitalism that can contribute to building a better world for later generations. That’s an attractive and hopeful image of capitalism. And it’s a vision that carries a strong commitment to the work of correcting capitalism’s many weaknesses, including its encouragement of growing inequality, and its blindness to ecological “externalities” (a lovely weasel word), and to issues of human well-being and inter-generational equity.

To my surprise, there is growing interest among economists, politicians and corporate leaders in the simple question: what is growth for? There were several panels on the issue of well-being or happiness. If capitalism is to serve people rather than just generate profits, we have to be able to measure well-being so as to distinguish between growth that contributes to well-being (of today’s and future generations) and growth that doesn’t.

As someone who teaches young people, I found the final panel inspiring. It featured “Young Global Shapers” – entrepreneurs under 30 who have created businesses that are successful and angled at a better future. This was an astonishing group of articulate, thoughtful, ethical, and entrepreneurial young people, from India, Botswana, Britain and the US.

If the future is in the hands of people like this, I like the look of it!