The Summit
A new global platform for business diplomacy
The inaugural World Business Diplomacy Summit convenes government, diplomacy, business, academia and international institutions in Washington, D.C. for a high-level exchange on the changing relationship between commerce, diplomacy and global cooperation.
Why this Summit, and why now
International commerce no longer sits downstream of international relations. Corridors, standards, sanctions regimes, technology controls and investment screening now shape which markets can reach which, and on what terms. A company's ability to operate across borders increasingly depends on the quality of its relationships with governments and institutions — and a state's economic strategy increasingly depends on the private actors who carry it.
Business diplomacy is the discipline that sits between the two. It is practised constantly and studied rarely, and it has never had a dedicated global convening platform at the level its consequences deserve.
The World Business Diplomacy Summit is founded to give it one.
The room
The Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building, where the inaugural edition convenes.
A convening, not a conference
The inaugural edition is built as a single day of concentrated exchange rather than a multi-track programme. One room, one running order, and a set of conversations that participants attend together rather than choose between.
Attendance is by invitation and application, and every request is reviewed by the Summit Secretariat. The purpose of that review is not exclusivity for its own sake — it is composition. A room that convenes diplomacy and business usefully has to be assembled deliberately.
Detail
The zodiac, set in brass and marble into the floor of the Great Hall.
Built to return
The inaugural edition marks the beginning of an annual gathering. The Summit is designed from the outset as a recurring institution: each edition is archived in full — programme, participants, partners, proceedings and any communiqué issued — so that the record accumulates rather than resets.
Washington, D.C. anchors the first edition. The intention is that the Summit builds institutional history year after year, and that its archive becomes a reference for how business diplomacy developed over the period.
Attendance is by invitation and application.