Do you already know how you are going to change the world? This virtual team and project-based experience will help you develop the right mindset and skills needed to imagine the future of global governance. Based at the heart of international Geneva, and drawing on a large community of innovation experts, our ambition is to create leaders and teams who imagine and build the future of global governance with foresight across multiple innovation horizons. We invite you to learn from our community of innovation practitioners and international negotiation experts from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), civil society organizations (World Wide Fund for Nature, Youth for Climate) and large tech companies such as Microsoft. They will share with you case studies and stories of accelerating and scaling change in their communities towards a positive future.

Since innovation is a skill to be practiced and a muscle to be exercised, you will practice the tactics and tools taught in our classes, and then apply your ideas and energy into world-changing impact. This year, we challenge you to imagine the future of international negotiations: What will they look like? How to build innovative forms of negotiations? Who will be the actors involved? What technology will they use? Who will design the negotiation process? And most importantly, how to significantly and fairly include the most affected stakeholders?

 

Why foresight, innovation and technology?

Foresight is about futuring and trend finding. It is also about having a view of the future: a vision of knowing what the future could hold and why. An increasing number of international organizations develop innovative bottom-up practices to find disruptive solutions to global issues such as international migration, humanitarian aid, and global health. They apply foresight to identify weak signals and capitalize on the opportunities they portend, as well as prepare contingency plans for adverse scenarios. They do so with digital technologies and the participation of a number of stakeholders with different views and perspectives.

 

Our program has three parts:

Days 1 - 3:

Learn from innovation practitioners and international negotiations experts:

• ·       Learning with innovation (OCHA)
• ·       Bottom up innovation in international organization (UNAIDS)
• ·       AI for good (ITU)
• ·       Prediction and modeling with artificial intelligence (Geneva Science Policy Interface)
• ·       Social media and digital advocacy (Swiss Youth for Climate)
• ·       Design Justice and inclusive participation (University of Geneva)
• ·       Civil society and multi-stakeholder governance (UPF)
• ·       Tech companies and multi-stakeholder negotiations (Microsoft)

 Day 3 - 5:

• 2-day Bootcamp: practice the innovation and foresight tactics and tools to imagine the future of international negotiations.

Day 5:

• Present your disruptive ideas and solutions to a panel of experts from international Geneva.

 

Target Audience:

This summer school is tailored towards undergraduate, graduate and PhD students from all around the world who want to learn more from - and network with - foresight, innovation and digital technology experts in international Geneva.

 

Course credits

The equivalent of 3 ECTS credits can be obtained (to be validated by the home university) upon submission of a paper.

Students of the Summer School will receive a certificate for completing the summer school if they meet the compulsory attendance requirements. Please note that this is not an official University of Geneva transcript, as Geneva Summer School courses are not accredited University of Geneva courses. It is the students’ responsibility to validate the course for credit at their home university before commencing the Summer School, as specified in the Geneva Summer School Regulations.