Go top
Menu

Briefing

Salzburg Global Vision


Originally founded in 1947 to encourage the revival of intellectual dialogue in post-war Europe, Salzburg Global Seminar today is a game-changing catalyst for global engagement on critical issues in education, health, environment, economics, governance, peace-building and more.

Triple Lens Thinking


From the very start, Salzburg Global Seminar has sought to break down barriers separating people and ideas. Today, we span the world’s regions and we challenge countries at all stages of development and institutions across all sectors to rethink their relationships and identify shared interests and goals. Our reach and vision demand a program approach that reaches beyond academic and policy silos and engages diverse voices. Following a strategic review in 2012 and 2013, Salzburg Global’s program is now designed around three cross-cutting clusters that reflect the values underpinning everything we do. We use these clusters – Imagination, Sustainability and Justice – to support triple lens thinking to shift societies and lay the foundations for global citizenship. The most powerful solutions are simultaneously imaginative, sustainable and just. Imagination is needed to find solutions to the immense challenges our planet and society faces. If our shared future is to be viable and prosperous for the next generations, we must find sustainable solutions to these challenges. And to ensure that prosperity for all, and not just for the privileged few, those imaginative, sustainable solutions must also be fair and just.



Imagination

Imagination lies at the heart of human development, opportunity and capacity for resilience – and will inspire the global transition to a knowledge economy. We ask how societies can renew and reconfigure their education, culture and media practices, and foster science and entrepreneurship to create inclusive, knowledge-based communities of the future.

Sustainability

The most basic necessity in any society is human safety and well-being. We work to improve life chances for present and future generations in a holistic way, connecting health, environment, money and work. We ask how societies can move beyond short-termism and target research, investment and policies to manage risk, promote equity and build dynamic resilience.

Justice

As power is dispersed in a multipolar world, shifts in allegiance and identity are triggering radical shifts in relationships between individuals and institutions. We ask how societies can reframe responsibilities, rights and cooperation between citizens, business, governments and regions to foster conditions for peace and prosperity.

Acadamies

To scale up innovation and reach young adults outside current elite structures, Salzburg Global Seminar expands the reach of our program through the Salzburg Global Academies. Launched ten years ago, our Academies are built in collaboration with forward-looking higher education institutions, scholars and teachers. These intensive and highly selective courses – held in Salzburg or adapted to the needs of other regions – are used to develop, test and implement creative global curricula, pedagogy and research. Salzburg Global Academies, covering Global Citizenship, Media and Global Change, and the Future of International Public and Private Law, involve faculty and students from both elite institutions and those typically underrepresented in leadership echelons. Through our programs we prepare outstanding young people from all backgrounds for lives as global citizens with the skills to drive change.




Strategic Convening

Salzburg Global Seminar designs, facilitates and hosts international strategic convening to aid current and future leaders to tackle issues of global concern. Our strategic convening is designed to challenge established mindsets, inspire collaborative and impactful solutions and build lasting networks. We do this by mapping trends, prioritizing issues, defining needs, building partnerships, identifying game changers and early stage innovators, activating networks and setting long-term goals for our programs. Working with specialist partners, including the world’s foremost policy makers, corporations, civil society organizations, think tanks, universities, donors, entrepreneurs and artists, we foster new alliances and develop fresh leadership to customize multiyear programs which reframe problems in fresh ways and seek innovative and early-stage solutions to global challenges. Salzburg Global sessions – at our historic palace retreat of Schloss Leopoldskron and around the world – are not your typical conferences. Our programs are designed to maximize interactions and creative exchange between all professional levels of our participants, moving discussions out of their usual comfort zones. We guide participants as they practice active cross-cultural engagement, assess their own leadership effectiveness, and evaluate how to adapt and apply findings in their own institutions, regions and communities. Our programs seek to create lasting impact. We do this, together with our specially selected partners and Salzburg Global Fellowship, by developing strategies for local needs, facilitating collaborations to drive change at scale, connecting hubs of networks across countries and regions, mentoring new leaders, and evaluating progress to reform and improve our processes.

Fellowship


Many Salzburg Global Fellows came to Schloss Leopoldskron at inflection points in their careers and now hold leadership positions in business, international and national government, media, academia, civil society organizations, science and the arts across all global regions.

We connect this extraordinary human capital through our Salzburg Global Fellowship. Online and through events around the world, Salzburg Global nurtures an ongoing network of relationships and engagement, and hosts vibrant cross-sector discussions to stimulate the exchange of new ideas and best practices.

Spanning sectors and regions, the Salzburg Global Fellowship equips our partners to magnify their effectiveness around critical issues.

We regularly draw on this wellspring of leadership for collaboration, expertise, introductions, session design and moderation, nomination of prospective participants and applied practice, as well as encouraging them to return to Salzburg, not only again as Fellows, but also as faculty, resource specialists and session chairs. We also link new and established members from different generations and sectors for crowd-sourcing ideas, strategy assessment, mentoring and support.