Dr. Christoph Beier is Vice Chair of the Management Board of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. He holds a number of honorary posts, e.g. as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Tongji University Shanghai as well as the Board of the Bertelsmann Transformation Management Index (Bertelsmann Foundation). He studied geography, politics, ethnology and agriculture at the Technical University of Munich.For many years, Christoph Beier has been enthusiastic searching for those actors and mechanisms that might trigger innovation and foster development, such as tech startups, innovation hubs or the collaboration with global networks.