This has been a particular exciting day in Beijing and sadly our last one before we had to Shenzhen early tomorrow. Following my keynote talk on „Technology Foresight in the Age of AI“ and the best paper prize ceremony we headed towards Tschighua University. At the X-Labs we met with Prof Pearl, the current director, who gave us some excellent insights into the X-Labs with some very insightful details about how the importance of IP for X-Lab startups has been growing over the past years. A very exciting place with some fantastic companies that have grown out of it, with an extremely delicious coffee from „Yee Coffee“, one of the X-Labs spinouts.

Following that meeting with met with Prof Rong from Tsinghua’s School of Social Sciences and some of his colleagues, before we had to go to Kangxin Partner for a meeting. It was very interesting to hear how the company moves forward with own investments in new technologies for providing more advanced IP services. This meeting was then followed by a visit to Peking University, where we met Prof Justin Yigu Lin, former Chief Economist and Vice President of the Wold Bank. Having the chance to discuss with him the role of IP for different types of technologies in countries that have to catch up was extremely interesting. Also, I have to say that the campus is very impressive and beautiful. The day then came to a nearly close with a fantastic dinner with Prof Yuan Zhou („Joseph“) and his team from Tsinghua’s School of Public Policy and Mangement at the 1911 restaurant, where we had some interesting deserts including white rabbits and yellow pigs. Then it was finally time to head home and pay tribute to Aocheng, who had turned 25 today with a very special cake from Blackswan bakery. What a day!