The World Economic Forum welcomes a new cohort of 23 Lighthouses to its Global Lighthouse Network (GLN), demonstrating how industrial transformation can be scaled with measurable impact amid persistent disruption from geopolitical volatility, cost pressures and rapid technological change. Announced in the week leading up to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026, the new Lighthouses are leading companies and value chains that are rewiring operations using advanced technologies – particularly artificial intelligence – to strengthen competitiveness, resilience and sustainability.
Alongside the cohort announcement, the Forum is publishing its annual white paper, Global Lighthouse Network: Rewiring Operations for Resilience and Impact at Scale. Drawing on insights from more than 220 Lighthouse sites across more than 30 countries, the report examines how leading manufacturers are strengthening operational resilience, embedding AI across production and value chains, and scaling digital transformation beyond pilots to deliver sustained performance impact.
“Competitiveness today is no longer defined by efficiency alone, but by the ability to sense, adapt and respond at speed,” said Kiva Allgood, Managing Director, World Economic Forum. “This year’s industrial transformation sites show how intelligence-led operations are being scaled to place resilience and sustainability at the core of how industry operates.”
The new cohort demonstrates particularly strong progress in three areas:
building resilience amid volatility
embedding AI into core operations
scaling digital transformation across networks rather than single sites.
The cohort also reflects the Network’s expanded framework, which now recognises excellence across five dimensions: productivity, supply chain resilience, sustainability, customer centricity and talent.
“These Lighthouse sites reflect a shift in how manufacturers approach transformation, from testing what’s possible to institutionalising what works,” said Jayanta Banerjee, Chief Information Officer, Tata Steel. “Leaders are embedding AI into day-to-day decision-making and extending change across value chains, aligning digital capability with workforce strategy and sustainability to deliver results that hold up under sustained volatility.”
The Forum is also launching Lumina, a new AI-powered industrial intelligence platform. Lumina consolidates eight years of Global Lighthouse Network data and Lighthouse Operating System frameworks, drawing on insights from more than 1,000 successful industrial transformations into a decision-intelligence platform that helps leaders benchmark performance, prioritise investments, scale proven use cases and avoid common pitfalls as they accelerate transformation across industries.
The launch of Lumina reflects a broader shift among leading manufacturers toward multi-technology deployment and data-driven decision-making. Insights from the Lumina dataset show that 94 per cent of successful transformations combine multiple technology domains, with AI most often deployed alongside IoT, cloud and digital twins. Lighthouses that pair these technologies with workforce and sustainability initiatives outperform peers by an average of 16 per cent or more, demonstrating that competitiveness increasingly depends on integrating technology, talent and emissions reduction.
"Lumina provides the strategic blueprint of Lighthouse sites, offering a scalable model for future-ready transformation,” said Jimmy Gu, Vice President, Supply Chain Performance and Digitalisation, Schneider Electric. “By decoding these successes, it empowers our entire organisation to accelerate digital transformation and deliver exceptional value."
