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Futurist and strategist for transformations of economies, industries, and organizations driven by AI, data and compute at the center of geostrategic competition.
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Olaf has 30 years of experience as an executive and adviser building strategies, capabilities, programs and ventures across 35+ countries in North America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia with boards and senior executives in multinationals, consultancies, startups, VCs, foundations, governments and academia. He is the founding CEO of geotech futures analyst firm Cambrian Futures and of solution development studio Cambrian Labs. Olaf also serves a Professor of Practice for Global Foresight, Strategy, Innovation and Policy at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, Adjunct Professor of Practice at Hult International BusinessSchool and Honorary Adjunct Professor at UT Malaysia’s.
He is the Faculty Director for the Berkeley Executive Education program Emerging Technology Strategies, Sr. Adviser and Executive-in-Residence at Berkeley’s Institute for Business Innovation, Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley’s Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE), and a Startup Mentor at Berkeley Skydeck. He serves on the advisory board of Hayden.ai, has been a member of the Global Expert Network for the 4th Industrial Revolution, the Global Alliance for AI Governance (AIGA) at the World Economic Forum and frequent moderator at its Annual Meeting of the New Champions (AMNC “Summer Davos”) in China, and a contributor to IEEE’s Global Initiative on Ethics for Autonomous & Intelligent Systems.
Olaf is lead co-author of a most recent award-winning book on the Cognitive Economy, The Great Remobilization:Strategies & Designs For A Smarter Future (MIT Press, 2023), The AI Generation: Shaping Our Global Future With ThinkingMachines (2021) and its hardcover sibling Solomon’s Code: Humanity in a World of Thinking Machines (Pegasus, 2018). He runs the tech and economics podcast ValleyTalk with two European journalists, is a frequent commentator on CBSKPIX News, ABC 7 News, Fox News, KRON News, NPR and Bloomberg TV (USA), Deutsche Welle, ARD and ZDF (Germany),Channel News Asia (Singapore), CGTN, China Radio International, and various podcasts, as well as contributor for outletslike WIRED, Financial Times, Straits Times, The Hill, Harvard Business Review (USA, Germany, France, Italia, Spain, Arabia), California Management Review, Quartz, Wirtschaftswoche, Handelsblatt, Tagesspiegel, FOCUS, Die Zeit, World EconomicForum, Huffington Post, Peter Drucker Forum, LSE, Today’s CFO, Thunderbird International Business Review, WorldFinancial Review, European Business Review, Roubini Econo Monitor, Duke CE Dialogue.Olaf holds PhD & MALD degrees in global affairs with business, economics and technology focus from the Fletcher Schoolat Tufts University, MAIPS & BA degrees with economics focus from the Middlebury Institute at Monterey. He studied negotiation at Harvard, economics at Georgetown, finance at Berkeley, and strategic leadership at CCL.
He is being represented by Stern Strategy Group and Aevitas Creative Management.
