Europe is a pioneering regulator of digital goods and services, but a digital innovation laggard: Mario Draghi, esteemed European statesman and respected economist, concluded in an influential study on European competitiveness that Europe “is weak in the emerging technologies that will drive future growth,” noting that only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European.

Should Europe resign itself to this fate? The EU’s Senior Envoy for Digital to the United States, Gerard de Graaf, and Heikki Hietala, a Finnish diplomat who spent a year at Stanford as a visiting scholar grappling with how Europe can up its innovation game, discuss this question and more with CISAC’s AJ Grotto.

The event also marks the release of a white paper authored by Heikki Hietala, "Blueprint for a Global Technology Strategy – Policy Recommendations for Finland and Europe," during his tenure as a visiting scholar at Stanford last year.

Speakers

Gerard de Graaf, Senior Envoy for Digital to the U.S. and head of the EU office in San Francisco

Heikki Hietala, Adviser to the Under-Secretary of State and Director-General for International Trade, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland

Moderator

Andrew Grotto, Founder and Co-Director, Stanford Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance