Missions · Silicon Valley 2025
The cradle that still
sets the pace.
San Francisco · Berkeley · Sunnyvale · Stanford — 24–30 April 2025
The mission
Not technology tourism.
A mission with purpose.
In April 2025, the Innovation Bridge Foundation led its first major international mission: twenty-six people — entrepreneurs, managers, professionals, academics and university students — seven days at the heart of the ecosystem that has been inventing the future first for half a century.
The presence of university students was not a detail. The first bridge the Foundation wants to build is the one between the "differently young" — who often hold the decision-making power — and young people, who represent the future in every sense. We went to the place where that future is invented first.
The method is precise: every visit has an institutional framework, interlocutors identified by name, questions prepared in advance. We do not go to photograph campuses — we go to understand how the people who build them think.
The itinerary
Seven days, three areas
San Francisco
24–26 Apr
- Italian Consulate General
- Berkeley Lab
- Airbnb
- Translated
Sunnyvale / Bay Area
27–28 Apr
- Meta
- Cisco
- Innovit
Cupertino / Stanford
29–30 Apr
- Apple
- Tesla
- Stanford University
Images from the mission
In the field
The meetings that stay with you
The conversations that matter
Every mission is defined by the people it meets, not just the logos on the campuses. These are the encounters that marked this week.
Don Norman
Father of human-centred design
Dinner with the founder of Human-Centred Design — the meeting that confirmed the Foundation's thesis.
Alessandro Ratti
Lawrence Berkeley Lab
Access to frontier research where ideas are born long before they become products.
Salvatore Giammarresi
Airbnb
A company culture built entirely around the user experience.
Paolo Parigi
Meta, Research Manager
The human and scientific side of one of the world's largest technology campuses.
Massimo Malizia
Cisco
How the company that built the infrastructure of the Internet is now building that of AI.
Alessandro Cannas
Google's approach to responsible AI and applied research.
Organisations visited
Where we went
Who came
The delegation
26 people from the worlds of business, finance, institutions and academia.
The full list of participants with name, role and organisation is available in the editorial reportage.
Next mission
China 2026: the paradigm has shifted.
After Silicon Valley, the Foundation led a delegation of 22 people through Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Shenzhen to meet Xiaomi, BYD, Alibaba, Tencent and the pioneers of humanoid robotics.