Founded by Dr. Pippa Malmgren
Human thinking is improved by human experience.
Thinking Expeditions takes small groups of senior leaders to the places where the world is actually being decided — the Arctic, the ocean floor, the robotics factory, the launch pads, the space economy — and puts them together with the people building it.
For clarity amidst complexity.
The programme
Many expeditions. One permanent council.
Each expedition takes a small group of senior leaders to the place where the story is actually happening. Some are led by Dr. Pippa Malmgren; others are led by Fellows we have invited for their exceptional thought leadership.
01 · Invitations open
Arctic Assembly
Why Iceland. Why now.
Reykjavík, Iceland · October 8–12, 2026 · Led by Dr. Pippa Malmgren
There are officially eight Arctic nations: Canada, Denmark (via Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. China officially designates itself a “Near-Arctic State” because its Polar Silk Road is a central pillar of national strategy. Turkey and the UAE are now positioning themselves as Arctic players too. The Americans are moving back into Greenland. And the GIUK Gap — the strategic maritime corridor between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom — is back on the geopolitical map.
There is no better place to learn about the reasons that the Arctic is now a geopolitical hot spot than the Arctic Circle Assembly. This is the most important annual gathering on the planet for those who understand this. Dr. Pippa Malmgren has been invited to speak there for the second consecutive year by its founder, the former President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson. This year, she is not going alone. She is leading a Thinking Expedition.
The images
02 · Registering interest
Oceans, Space and Intelligence: The Vast Economy
Exploration of the seas, the stars and the subject of intelligence
Dates TBA · Led by Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, Adnan Hassan, and Dr. Pippa Malmgren
Much of what matters to the world economy in the coming decades is underwater: cables, cores, cooling, protein, minerals, carbon, data, and the sovereignty questions that accompany them. But where is the border between the sea and space? Perhaps it is the one frontier that is the least understood and the most valuable space of all.
This expedition takes a small group into the Caribbean to examine the ocean and space economies directly — at exactly the moment when AI, AGI and other forms of intelligence are compressing the time every nation and institution has to adapt. Small states may have huge advantages.
The questions on the table
- The subsea cable network: who owns the physical internet, and what happens when a strand is cut.
- Blue food and blue protein: aquaculture as an industrial economy rather than a conservation story.
- Seabed minerals, marine carbon, and the legal architecture that has not caught up with either.
- Small island states as sovereign actors — flexible enough to adopt AI and automation at speed, skipping traditional development stages entirely.
- Ports, shipping, insurance and the choke points that decide the price of everything.
The shape of the days
The design principle is the same as in every Thinking Expedition: small groups, working sites, real practitioners, long meals, time in the water, time looking at the stars, time understanding the dynamics of small nations in an AI world.
The images
03 · Announced
Austin Robotics Expo
America's Shenzhen
Austin, Texas · July 2027 · Led by Led by Dr. Pippa Malmgren with technology thought leaders
Texas and Austin, in particular, are the center of America's Shenzhen: the place where capital, silicon, energy, and physical manufacturing sit together. In July 2027 it is host to the largest American Robotics Expo.
This expedition takes a small group to see the robotics and physical AI that will drive the US economy going forward.
What we look at
- Humanoid and industrial robotics lines, from prototype to production.
- Physical AI: the software layer that turns a machine into a worker and systems into outcomes.
- Energy — the grid constraint that decides which factories exist.
- The capital stack behind the new industrial economy, and who is underwriting it.
- Defence-adjacent manufacturing and the reshoring of critical supply.
The expedition rhythm
Meeting robots and site visits by day, dinner conversations each evening. Seats and sponsorships for July 2027 are now being discussed.
04 · In development
The Space Economy
Information to follow
To be announced · Led by Dr. Pippa Malmgren
The Arctic is the real key to the space race: polar orbits, ground stations, and the subsea cables that carry what those satellites see.
This expedition follows that thread upward — into launch, orbital manufacturing, earth observation, sovereign space programmes, and the insurance and legal architecture forming around them.
Status
The itinerary, host geography and speakers are being assembled now. Register your interest and you will be briefed as soon as the programme is set — founding sponsors and council members first.
05 · Announced
Y'All Street and Digital Rail Finance
Dallas, and the migration of American capital
Dallas, Texas · 2027 · Led by Dr. Pippa Malmgren with capital markets thought leaders
Texas has become America's Shenzhen: the place where capital, silicon, energy policy, and physical manufacturing sit within a few hours of each other: Austin is physical build — EVs, semiconductors, small modular reactors, cars, robotics; Dallas is money and property; Houston is oil, gas, and medical; San Antonio is the connector to Latin America. All of it is rich with possibility.
This expedition takes a small group onto the floors where physical AI is being built, and into the rooms where it is being financed.
What we examine
- The Texas Stock Exchange and the re-listing of corporate America.
- Digital rail finance: tokenized treasuries, stablecoins, instantaneous settlement, and 24/7 collateral movement.
- Energy and compute as the collateral of the next cycle — the Permian, the grid, the new nuclear, the new semiconductors, and the new data centers.
- Freight, logistics, and physical rail: the older rails that still underpin the real economy.
- Regulatory arbitrage between Texas, Delaware and Washington, and what it means for capital formation.
- The Mexico: Texas Nexus — where the world's most important emerging market is juxtaposed with the most dynamic industrialized economy.
The expedition rhythm
Trading floors, exchange leadership, and visits to factories and entrepreneurs by day; one long table each evening to discuss what we have learned about American capital — human and financial.
The images
Sponsorship
Sponsor a Thinking Expedition.
Presenting Sponsor
Two company representatives and four client guests. Named as the official Presenting Sponsor. First offers for future Thinking Expeditions.
Associate Sponsor
Named as Associate Sponsor for a specific session — the Lagoon afternoon, the Silfra experience, or the closing dinner.
Programme Partner
Named as Programme Partner for a specific session. Full three days with all thirty guests.
Government Host Partner
For government bodies and investment promotion agencies co-sponsoring the expedition to position their country as a destination for global capital and strategic thinking, and to brief guests on the investment landscape.
Pipeline
This is a permanent travelling council.
The Arctic is the first. These are the geographies being built next — each one chosen because something is happening there that cannot be understood from a desk.
- 01
Austin, Texas
America's Shenzhen. The capital of the new industrial economy.
- 02
Dallas, Texas
Y'All Street and digital rail finance: the new American capital centre and the settlement rails beneath it.
- 03
Kyushu, Japan + Taiwan
Semiconductor heartland. The supply chain the world depends on.
- 04
Mexico
The high-tech nearshoring revolution rewriting North American supply chains.
- 05
Antarctica
An emerging geopolitical hot zone. Territorial claims, resource rights, climate leverage.
- 06
Estonia
The world's most digitally governed nation. NATO's cyber defence frontline.
- 07
Kenya / Rwanda
Africa's technology leapfrog: drone logistics, satellite internet, mobile money.
- 08
Greenland
Rare earths, US military repositioning, and the Arctic's most contested real estate.
- 09
Taiwan
Semiconductors, sovereignty, and the most watched flashpoint in the world.
- 10
Dubai / UAE
Sovereign AI funds, the Abraham Accords tech economy, and the Gulf's bid for neutral digital infrastructure.
About
Founded by Dr. Pippa Malmgren.
Dr. Pippa Malmgren is an economist, author and adviser who has spent three decades translating geopolitics, technology and markets for presidents, central bankers, boards and investors. She served in the White House, has advised some of the world's largest institutions, and writes on the forces reshaping the global economy — from the Arctic and the ocean floor to physical AI, digital rails and the space economy.
Thinking Expeditions is her answer to a problem she kept encountering: the most important shifts of our era cannot be understood from a screen. Working alongside the Geopolitica Institute, each expedition is researched, curated and hosted to the standard of the world's finest private travel — small groups, exceptional places, unusual access, and long meals with the practitioners actually building what everyone else is only reading about.
The result sits between a luxury expedition, a private council and an executive education programme: rigorous intelligence delivered in extraordinary settings, with logistics, hospitality and safety handled invisibly so that thinking is the only work our guests have to do.
Access, not itineraries
Heads of state, astronauts, central bankers, factory floors and research vessels — rooms that cannot be booked.
Small groups of leaders
Deliberately small cohorts of principals and decision-makers, curated for the quality of the conversation.
Carefully Curated
Research, curation, logistics, hospitality, and safety are handled invisibly, so thinking is the only work our guests have to do.
Design a Thinking Expedition
Tell us about your leadership group and what you are trying to understand, and we will work with you to curate and create a valuable Thinking Expedition.
Register your interest
Registering interest for all the upcoming expeditions.
Tell us which geographies matter to you. We will write before invitations open for each one.