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About the conference
Science and business make many things possible. But in today’s fast-moving world, open dialogue and open communication are more important than ever before.
How can science, business and politics best cooperate to tackle the major challenges of the 21st century? This is the question that was addressed at Future Dialogue in Berlin on October 26, 2009.
This high-level conference brought together a panel of 22 top scientists, policy-makers and business leaders, as well as an exclusive, international audience of over 500 participants, to discuss ways of improving co-operation between business, science and politics. The sessions were chaired by the news weekly The Economist.
- The aim of Future Dialogue was threefold:
- to heighten awareness of the cutting-edge scientific solutions that are being developed in response to the challenges we currently face
- to explore ways of overcoming the constraints to co-operation between science and business, ensuring that innovative research is both financed and translated into marketable solutions
- to debate how best to engage the support of the general public and policy-makers
The morning session, Facing up to the challenges of the 21st century: the role of science, business and politics, focused on the state of dialogue between the three partners. Constraints to effective co-operation between science, business and politics were identified and ways to improve the relationship were analyzed.
In the afternoon, three parallel sessions took the discussion a step deeper and focused on three specific challenges – global warming, access to healthcare and the growing cities of the future.
The lessons of the conference have been summarized in a conclusion paper.