Keynote speakers

Dr. Annalee Saxenian is Professor and Dean at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information and a Professor in Berkeley´s department of city and regional planning. She has made a career of studying regional economics and the conditions under which people, ideas, and geographies combine and connect into hubs of economic activity. Her latest book, The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy (Harvard University Press, 2006) explores how and why immigrant engineers from Silicon Valley have transferred the institutions of technology entrepreneurship to emerging regions in their home countries-Taiwan, Israel, China and India in particular-and launching companies far from established centers of skill and technology. The ℌbrain drain,ℍ she argues, has now become ℌbrain circulationℍ — a powerful economic force for the development of formerly peripheral regions that is sparking profound transformations in the global economy.