Geopolitics and technological changes: the future today

Course description

The so-called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, a series of innovation that has already started to shape our lives, is predicted to transform production and, more generally, our societies in the next few years. The course aims to provide students with tools to understand and manage risks and opportunities resulting from such technological change in the global context. To do so, it provides an understanding of the global contemporary context and its contemporary process of change; it explains the concept of the geopolitical code, providing examples of application; it illustrates the nature of political risks before focusing on innovation, competitiveness, and technology management.

Upon successful completion of the course, students will:

- be familiar, both from a theoretical and empirical perspective, with the features of the main models of the international system, its current structure and its contemporary process of change, and the main challenges characterizing it;

- be able to analyse political risks to a different range of organizations (States, companies, NGOs);

- be able to identify and outline processes to manage innovation and technological change in a simulated professional environment by connecting global, regional, and local variables that influence or define the issue.

Course content

The course is divided into two main parts. In its first part the course focuses on politics: it begins with an overview of the features of the international system while outlining perspectives on how to understand international politics, before focusing on geopolitics and tools, such as the geopolitical code, that allow any organization to map its geopolitical standing and political risks to be aware of. In the second part, the course focuses on technology management: after illustrating the relationship between the international system and technological change, it focuses on the relationship between innovation and competitiveness. Finally, it deals with contemporary global technological changes (for example: AI, industry 4.0, 3D printing, etc.) and the transformation they are likely to create, and the process of technology management.