News from the IPL
ANNOUNCEMENTS
U.S. Department of Defense Announces Award of New Flexible Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Hub in Silicon Valley
U.S. Department of Defense
As part of the Department of Defense effort to partner with the private sector and academia to ensure the United States continues to lead in the new frontiers of manufacturing it recently announced that the Obama administration will award a Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Flexible Hybrid Electronics to a consortium of 162 companies, universities, and non-profits led by the FlexTech Alliance. The announcement follows a highly competitive nationwide bid process for the seventh of nine such manufacturing institutes launched by the administration, and the fifth of six manufacturing institutes led by the Department of Defense. Part of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation announced by President Obama in 2012, this newest institute will bring the best minds from government, industry and academia together to advance U.S. leadership in manufacturing flexible hybrid electronics. The emerging flexible hybrid electronics sector promises to revolutionize the electronics industry, and the Silicon Valley-based FlexTech Alliance consortium, backed by companies as diverse as Apple and Lockheed Martin and major research universities including Stanford and MIT, represents the next chapter in the long-standing public-private partnerships between the Pentagon and tech community.
State of Oregon, Regional Partners Pilot Economic Development Partnership to Improve Efficiency, Strengthen Collaboration
Business Oregon
The state of Oregon and four of Oregon’s largest private economic development organizations have signed a landmark agreement to improve business development coordination and align efforts to grow Oregon’s economy. Under the pilot project, the state and its regional partners will work as one team to create jobs by helping existing Oregon businesses expand and recruiting new companies to the state. The groups will also coordinate state and regional marketing messages, develop joint strategies on company recruitment and expansions, and work together on international trade, foreign direct investment and economic development policy.
Editor's Pick
The Innovation Game: Why and How Businesses are Investing in Innovation Centers
Capgemini Consulting
With tech startups rapidly eating into traditional sectors, large organizations face an increased pressure to innovate. The challenge is that traditional innovation approaches are broken. A recent study revealed that only 5% of R&D staff feel highly motivated to innovate. In certain sectors, more than 85% of new products fail and an overwhelming 90% of companies consider they are too slow in launching new products and services. The weaknesses of traditional innovation approaches have led some organizations to explore different avenues and seek new inspiration. These organizations have launched innovation centers in major technology hubs with the explicit mandate to accelerate digital innovations. These innovation centers, comprising teams of people and often physical sites, are established in a global tech hub. The goal is to leverage the ecosystem of startups, venture capitalists, accelerators, vendors, and academic institutions that these hubs provide. Major global technology hubs are the preferred destinations for setting up innovation centers. 60% of companies that have set up these centers have a presence in the Silicon Valley but many more hubs are emerging – the top 10 cities in our analysis represent only 33% of total innovation centers. The US and Europe have the largest share with 29% of total innovation centers closely respectively, followed by Asia at 25%. Penetration varies significantly between sectors; manufacturing is a clear leader at 58%, but despite facing increasing pressures from digital disruptions, Financial Services lags at only 28%. It is extremely challenging to make a success of innovation centers. Success factors include clarity on the role of the innovation center, governance for innovation implementation, and a strong connection with the rest of the business.
Innovation Policy
Innovation: A Conceptual History of an Anonymous Concept
Benoit Godin, INRS
Innovation is a concept that everyone understands spontaneously – or thinks he understands –; that every theorist talks about and every government espouses. Yet, it has not always been so. For the last five hundred years, the concept innovation has been a dirty word. The history of the concept of innovation is an untold story. It is a story of myths and conceptual confusions. This paper studies the ways in which thoughts on innovation of early-modern society gave rise to innovation theory in the twentieth century. Namely how, when and why a pejorative and morally connoted word shifted to a much valued concept. It offers a history of the concept of innovation, going back to Antiquity. A history that takes the use of the concept seriously: from polemical to instrumental to theoretical.
The Continuing Growth of Global Cooperation Networks in Research: A Conundrum for National Governments
Caroline S. Wagner, Han Woo Park, and Loet Leydesdorff, PLOS One
Global collaboration continues to grow as a share of all scientific cooperation, measured as co-authorships of peer-reviewed, published papers. The per cent of all scientific papers that are internationally coauthored has more than doubled in 20 years, and they account for all the growth in output among the scientifically advanced countries. Emerging countries, particularly China, have increased their participation in global science, in part by doubling their spending on R&D; they are increasingly likely to appear as partners on internationally coauthored scientific papers. Given the growth of connections at the international level, it is helpful to examine the phenomenon as a communications network and to consider the network as a new organization on the world stage that adds to and complements national systems. The network has features of an open system, attracting productive scientists to participate in international projects. National governments could gain efficiencies and influence by developing policies and strategies designed to maximize network benefits—a model different from those designed for national systems.
Cities, Clusters & Regions
Better Foundations: The Returns on Infrastructure Investment in Ontario
The Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity
Discussions regarding infrastructure investment as a driver of economic growth have returned to the forefront of policy debates. Both Ontario’s provincial government and the federal government have proposed record commitments to infrastructure in their latest budgets. However, not all infrastructure assets enhance productivity. Fostering productivity growth is the single greatest challenge for both public and private sectors in Ontario. Simply investing in infrastructure will not necessarily provide productivity boosts, unless investments are strategic.
The Pittsburgh Roadmap for Inclusive Innovation
Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh
The Roadmap for Inclusive Innovation lays out a number of initiatives the City of Pittsburgh should undertake in the coming months and years to remain a hub of innovation for social groups, companies and people. The report identifies areas of improvement for City government operations and citizen interaction. This Roadmap does not aim to be the sole solution, but an inclusive path forward to strengthen Pittsburgh’s economy in the digital age. The City joins other interested parties in addressing these challenges. By working together and complementing local institutions, City government looks to serve as the conduit for action by opening up its resources and provide amplification for the work and needs to achieve these goals. The Roadmap seeks to bridge the digital divide and provide opportunities for Pittsburghers to participate in the new economy. Focusing on inclusion means providing opportunities in the high-tech, high-skill innovation economy. Diversity of gender, race, and background strengthens the chance for success in a competitive environment by improving decision-making and understanding of diverse markets. The City’s challenge is ensuring that these economic gains are reaped by all communities.
Metro Energy Production a Big Part of the Clean Power Plan
Joseph Kane, Adie Tomer and Robert Puentes, The Brookings Institution
In the face of congressional gridlock, the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan represents major environmental action, aiming to simultaneously address the country’s air pollution concerns, public health needs, and climate future. Building off several previous initiatives, the plan looks to cut power plant emissions by 32 percent under 2005 levels in the next 15 years, an undertaking not without its detractors. Although the country as a whole has a long way to go to rein in air pollution —with more than 5.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide spewed out annually— and states are ultimately responsible for meeting the Clean Power Plan’s regulatory targets, metro areas should also be a big part of this discussion. In addition to their growing energy demands, these regions contain some of the nation’s largest power plants by total capacity, which can lead to a host of different environmental hazards and economic costs for nearby residents and businesses. In turn, seeking cleaner, more sustainable ways to produce energy directly implicates many metro areas.
Statistics & Indicators
Inclusive Growth Report 2015
World Economic Forum
There is no bigger policy challenge preoccupying leaders around the world than expanding social participation in the process and benefits of economic growth and integration. A geographically and ideologically diverse consensus has emerged that a new, or at least significantly improved, model of economic growth and development is required. But despite accumulating evidence that reducing inequality can actually strengthen economic growth, the political consensus about inclusive growth is still essentially an aspiration rather than a prescription. No internationally- recognized policy framework and corresponding set of indicators or measurable milestones has emerged to guide countries targeting broad-based progress in living standards, rather than economic growth per se, as the bottom- line measure of national economic performance. This report proposes a set of indicators and provides country rankings and profiles.
Policy Digest
Monitoring the Knowledge Transfer Performance of Universities: An International Comparison of Models and Indicators
Ainurul Rosli and Federica Rossi, CIMR
This paper discusses how to appropriately monitor and assess the performance of universities’ knowledge transfer activities.
This paper argues that not all knowledge transfer activities can be appropriately measured with the same indicators. For example, the more such activities involve the transmission of tacit knowledge through interactions, the more the characteristics of such interactions matter for the ability of the knowledge transfer process to generate impacts. The more knowledge transfer generates large externalities, the more difficult it is to quantify its impact, and the less likely are private organizations to pay for it: hence, income is less likely to be a good proxy for the value of the knowledge transferred.
A fair and accurate system of assessment of universities’ knowledge transfer performance should allow the transfer of different forms of knowledge to be represented and assessed comprehensively.
First, the range of knowledge transfer activities considered must be broad enough to reflect the variety of activities undertaken by universities. If the choice of activities to be measured is not comprehensive enough, the performance of universities that engage in activities that are not measured may be undervalued, and vice versa, those universities that focus on the activities that are best measured by the chosen indicators may enjoy an advantage.
Second, for many activities, both output-oriented and process-oriented indicators should be used: the focus on output-oriented indicators may penalize universities that transfer knowledge whose social and economic impact is not accurately reflected by the measurable outputs it generates.
Third, the system should be structured in such a way as to avoid the creation of perverse behavioural incentives. If the chosen indicators specifically measure only some knowledge transfer activities and not others, this creates implicit incentives for universities to engage only in the activities that are measured, but these activities may not necessarily be the most effective ways to transfer knowledge for all universities.
Events
Waterloo Innovation Summit
Waterloo, September 16-18, 2015
Join top business, academic and policy decision-makers in one of the world’s leading innovation ecosystems. Hear from influencers, share best practices with enablers and experience first hand what it takes to lift your region into global contention.
Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy
Atlanta, Georgia, 17-19 September, 2015
The Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy provides a showcase for the highest quality scholarship addressing the multidimensional challenges and interrelated characteristics of science and innovation policy and processes. The conference attracts over 300 researchers from more than 35 countries and includes a series of plenary talks; parallel paper sessions to discuss ongoing research; and a young researcher poster competition. Next year’s session will explore the research front addressing the broad range of issues central to the structure, function, performance and outcomes of the science and innovation enterprises.
Investable City: 2015 Canadian Urban Forum – Charting a Course for Canada’s Urban Agenda
Toronto, 8 October, 2015
Join the conference to help build momentum for positive change in Canada’s urban policy framework. The opening plenary features an address by the Hon. Glenn Murray (MPP, Ontario’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change). Four interactive sessions address: Creating Investment-Ready Conditions; Getting to Effective Public Policy; Building Economically Resilient Infrastructure; and Integrating Investment and Public Policy.
4th European Colloquium on Culture, Creativity and Economy
Florence, Italy, 8-10 October, 2015
During the past decades myriad links between culture, creativity and economic practice have become major topics of interdisciplinary study. This colloquium aims to bring together leading edge scholars from across the social sciences to critically examine the intersections between these spheres and symbolic and culturally embedded values in particular, and how they are pervaded by and pervade the global economy. Our aim is to create a space for vibrant critical discussion about how ‘creativity’, cultural meanings, cultural phenomena, cultural workers and organizations are not only valuable to the market but increasingly drivers and framers of the systems of value and taste that economic actors attempt to capture and trade upon. Though culture and creativity have always been central to human civilization there is increasingly a need to understand culture and creativity as central agencies and motifs in the current stage of globalized capitalism, in the digital and knowledge economy, and in the development of human values, communities, regions and cities.
World Future Cities Summit
Toronto, 13-15 October, 2015
The technology driven transformation of cities into Smart and Intelligent Cities is a one trillion dollar business with Smart City conferences and exhibitions springing up all around the world to discuss opportunities. The Greater Toronto Region is a world leader in smart urban transformation but it has no permanent globally recognized conference. On October 13-15, 2015 the Metro Toronto Convention Centre will host the World Future Cities Summit and will inaugurate the annual Greater Toronto conference. The Summit will feature the Mayors’ Summit and ten universities participating in six future city technology conferences all running in parallel. Mayors’ Summit speakers from Europe, the US, the UK, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and India will join Canadian Mayors, civic and government leaders and leaders from industry, academic and research institutions.
RSA Winter Conference: Great Transformations – Recasting Regional Policy
London, UK, 19-20 November, 2015
This conference provides a platform for scholars across the globe to address great transformations taking place across our economic, political, and social spheres amidst heightened uneven development and inequality in a post-crisis era of ongoing market liberalisation, financialisation, global competition and changing patterns of regulation and governance. The world has continued to witness highly differentiated shifts in socio-economic relations in the recovery from the global financial crisis (GFC), with some places benefiting, while others have seen a worsening of problems. The inter-related processes of industrialization, urbanization, and regional and local development are now becoming increasingly complex and pose a major challenge, firstly for our conceptualization’s of regional and urban development and, secondly, for specifying appropriate policy-fixes to ‘hold down’ the global and provide the atmosphere for sustained economic growth.
DRUID Academy Conference 2016
Bordeaux, France, 13-15 January, 2016
The conference is open for all PhD students working within the broad field of economics and management of innovation, entrepreneurship and organizations. We invite papers aiming at enhancing our understanding of the dynamics of technological, structural and institutional change at the level of firms, industries, regions and nations. DRUID is the node for an open international network – new partners are most welcome. We encourage all PhD students to submit their research to the conference. Do not hesitate to apply even if you have not been in contact with DRUID previously.
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This newsletter is prepared by Jen Nelles.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe.