Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer in the Obama administration, and Alec Ross, the State Department’s Senior Advisor for Innovation, will lead a “technology delegation” of United States business and thought leaders to New Delhi and Rajasthan, it has been announced.
A statement from the office of the State Department spokesman said that the delegation was “an important first step of the U.S.-India Innovation Exchange, announced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna during the June 4 U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue”.
The Strategic Dialogue identified technology as a vital common interest between the two countries and it was founded upon a shared innovation-based culture devoted to cutting-edge research and visionary entrepreneurship, officials said.
Citing the global leadership of the U.S. and India in technology sectors such as software and computing, and telecommunications and energy, the State Department said this particular delegation was designed to leverage U.S. and Indian expertise to help produce real-world technology solutions in three areas — energy, education and e-Governance.
The meetings with Indian business and government leaders would help to spur “productive discussion and thought around identifying new projects” and they would aim to deliver projects ready for investment and ultimate market entry.
Officials also said that project ideas would likely take on the form of public-private partnerships, private-private joint ventures, and “working groups dedicated to finding new ways to tackle big problems”. They added that the U.S. was “optimistic about the potential of new projects arising from the Delegation”.
