Emerging Technology and Geopolitics
As geopolitical and technological forces converge, innovation offices and government institutions in the Bay Area play a pivotal role in fostering tech diplomacy and strategic capabilities. This event will explore how these entities collaborate to establish frameworks for international cooperation. Join us to discuss how tech diplomacy, guided by these pioneering institutions, can address global challenges and support sustainable growth to foster entrepreneurship and innovation amidst geopolitics.
Agenda
5:00 pm: Fireside Chat on the Future of Entrepreneurship
The discussion will focus on the crucial role of Bay Area innovation offices and government institutions in shaping digital sovereignty, cyber resilience, and AI leadership. Zahar Barth-Manzoori, Olaf Groth and Martin Rauchbauer will explore how these entities collaborate to create frameworks for international cooperation, addressing global challenges while fostering sustainable growth through strategic partnerships between government, industry, and academia. This conversation will offer valuable insights into the future of global tech diplomacy.
5:15 pm: How do emerging technologies converge with diplomacy?
How do emerging technologies intersect with diplomacy? Government representatives will share best practices for cultivating innovation and entrepreneurship, focusing on partnerships, overcoming challenges, and building successful initiatives in the Bay Area. Key topics include collaboration strategies, initiatives’ results and impacts, and value-add insights. The goal is to provide practical takeaways for fostering an innovative, resilient ecosystem that supports global engagement and tech-driven growth across borders.
5:50 pm: How Business Needs to Adjust to global Innovation
This panel delves into emerging technologies, commerce, and GeoTech convergence. Corporations are navigating a world where technology, geopolitics, and global business practices are deeply interconnected. The convergence of emerging technologies with national security, diplomacy, and commerce creates complex challenges for industries and businesses. Focusing on global investment challenges, regulatory environments, and talent attraction, international business representatives will share initiatives that foster entrepreneurship. Geotech’s role in shaping business strategy is emphasized, addressing how technological infrastructure and digital resilience can enable cross-border partnerships. Panelists will discuss attracting innovators and fulfilling critical needs, showcasing initiatives that bridge GeoTech, commerce, and talent in the Bay Area and beyond.
6:30 pm: Reception
Moderators
Zahar Barth-Manzoori is the Director of the German Center for Research and Innovation (DWIH) in San Francisco. After completing her doctorate in Middle Eastern Studies at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel – supported by a scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation – she began working at the DAAD in Bonn in 2011 as head of the Events and Visitor Programs Department. In 2015, she took over the position as Head of Section Joint Scholarship Programs Middle East, North Africa, returning to her professional roots. From May 2020 until her departure for San Francisco, she played a leading role in setting up DWIH San Francisco as head of the DWIH management office at DAAD. As an experienced science manager and passionate networker, she is particularly looking forward to initiating international university collaborations, fostering knowledge transfer between research, business and society, and supporting research-based innovation in San Francisco.Zahar Barth-Manzoori
Olaf Groth is a scholar-entrepreneur, capacity builder, strategy adviser, author and speaker for the AI and emerging tech-driven transformation of global organizations and economies.Olaf GrothGroth has 28 years of experience as an executive and adviser building strategies, programs, ventures and capabilities across 35+ countries with multinationals (e.g. AirTouch, Boeing, Chevron, GE, Qualcomm, Q-Cells, Vodafone, Volkswagen, etc.), consultancies, startups, foundations, governments and academia. Groth is the founding CEO of advisory thinktank Cambrian Futures and of concept development firm Cambrian Labs. He serves as professional faculty for strategy, policy, technology and futures at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, adjunct professor of Practice at Hult IBS, and honorary adjunct professor at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, teaching across the US, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Martin Rauchbauer is a senior Austrian diplomat and a tech governance expert who currently is on a sabbatical in the San Francisco Bay Area after having served for two years as Austria’s first Tech Ambassador to Silicon Valley and more than five years as Head of Open Austria and Austrian Consul in San Francisco. Martin shaped the emerging field of tech diplomacy, engaged in transatlantic tech diplomacy and digital human rights. He also developed digital humanism as a strategic focus of Austrian foreign policy. In Silicon Valley Martin co-founded Open Austria’s Art + Tech Lab, and the European art + tech + policy initiative The Grid. At Berggruen, he looks at new and innovative ways to reorganize the relationship between governments and tech companies. Analyzing the growing trend of tech diplomacy in global tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, he will launch a new initiative on the global governance of new technologies supported by various stakeholders in the private and policy sector.Martin Rauchbauer