In our increasingly globalized world with its merging markets and growing international cooperation, embracing the ensuing diversity among the different players still poses a considerable challenge. This reality is particularly present in the technology transfer context where collaboration among different academic institutions and industry is fundamental.

 Working with diversity essentially translates into answering the following questions: HOW do we interact and work effectively with partners and colleagues coming from diverse cultural backgrounds who think, communicate and act differently from us? HOW do we decode their behaviour and thus ensure successful collaboration?

 This session looks at the learnings from Intercultural Communication to answer these questions. The aim is to examine the role of cultural awareness and cross-cultural competence for problem-solving in an international cooperation context.

The session starts with a short theoretical introduction on cultural awareness and extends to real-life case case-studies and their practical solutions.

Session co-facilitated with Michaela Germinario