All posts filed under: Internationalization

Invitation to BRIDGE SF Summit, San Francisco, September 6-9th, 2016

Published by Gert Christen

BRIDGE SF brings public, private, non-profit, and academic institutions together to  drive innovation for a better tomorrow in cities. Organized in conjunction with the San Francisco Mayor’s Office and the University of California, Berkeley, City Innovate  invites policymakers and leading innovators for a four-day event focused on citizen-critical issues. Topics among others are: Mobility in Cities (City of San Francisco, City Innovate and MIT Media Lab) City Planning Best Practices (University of California Berkeley and UI Labs Chicago) City Infrastructure of the Future: (ID3 and CivicMakers) Urban Sensors (City of Los Angeles and Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) Global City Knowledge Transfer (U.S. Department of Commerce and National Resource Defense Council) The Digital Age of Manufacturing (City Innovate) Clean Energy (City of San Francisco and Intelligent City Forum) The full program of the event can be found here. An event brochure can be downloaded. Registration for the Bridge SF Summit here. Looking forward to meeting you at the Bridge SF Summit 2016!

The Startup Ecosystem in Hong Kong

Published by Gert Christen

I had the chance to spend a few days in Hong Kong in the spring of 2015 at the invitation of the Hong Kong trade development agency Invest Hong Kong. My first visit after many years and naturally I was looking forward to understand what initiatives the Hong Kong government was undertaking and how high the entrepreneurial spirit was. The spirit is high! Driven by the realization that starting your own business may in fact be less risky than a corporate job: The banking crisis of 2008 and international headquarters moving to Shanghai and Beijing brought about a new generation of Hong Kong entrepreneurs – those who seize the day to build a new generation of businesses. The government is highly supportive (events several times a week, financial incentives for foreign startups to open offices in town, a once-a-year show for startups), first corporations created their own incubators (e.g. Swire Group’s Blueprint or Accenture’s FinTech lab), and a grass-roots entrepreneurship scene has emerged. I was impressed by the spirit and the very concerted effort “from Hong Kong …

Zurich startups meet New York! Zurich meets New York!

Published by Gert Christen

We brought 10 selected hi-potential startups to New York and they got to pitch before a full house. Really enjoyed that evening – great energy and a great impression made by Swiss startups in the “Big Apple”. Since then, one of the startups set up their New York office in the space where we held the event: Flatev. … running the show that night: David Weber, project manager for the event at the City of Zurich and myself, MC for the night.