News from the IPL
ANNOUNCEMENT
GM Innovation Lab at Communitech Touts 1,000-year Vision
Communitech
“Electric, connected, shared and autonomous” – it’s a vision for the future of driving you’d expect to find in a slide deck from Uber or Lyft, or in the pages of an Arthur C. Clarke novel. Instead, this dream was delivered by Steve Carlisle, President and Managing Director of General Motors Canada, at the recent opening of GM’s brand new innovation lab in the Communitech Hub. GM is one of the oldest car manufacturers on Earth, founded when there were fewer than 8,000 cars in the United States. While older companies aren’t typically known for their forward-looking vision, these days no one is looking further ahead than GM. Its innovation lab, called “2908 at Communitech,” is a nod to how the company sees the future of its business: 1,000 years from its 1908 inception, solving problems in a world radically different from our own. Initial priorities of the lab will be to explore and experiment with advanced smartphone applications, autonomous driving technology, and new sharing services and approaches.
EDA Awards $10M for Regional Innovation Strategies
SSTI Weekly
This week, U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker announced the 25 recipients of the Economic Development Administration’s 2015 Regional Innovation Strategies grants. These awards support innovation and capacity-building in regions around the country through two grant programs: the i6 Challenge and the Seed Fund Support Grants competition. The Regional Innovation Program remains a key priority for SSTI. Seventeen i6 Challenge recipients will receive a total of $8 million to create and expand proof-of-concept and commercialization centers, while eight Seed Fund Support Grant winners will share a total of $2 million to support cluster-based seed capital funds.
White House Rolls out Plan to Connect Young Americans with High Skill Jobs
SSTI Weekly
The White House recently released a preview of its plans to build a stronger pipeline between K-12 education and high-skill employment. The President’s Computer Science for All Initiative would boost investment in states, districts and teacher training to improve computer science (CS) education for K-12 students. The three-year, $4 billion plan would also call on multiple federal agencies to focus investments on improving CS skills. The president also proposed nearly $6 billion in new funding to help young people acquire skills and access to high-quality job opportunities. Much of this support would come through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act youth formula program, with $2 billion in additional support though programs for at-risk students, $200 million for apprenticeship programs and $20 million for the Summer Jobs and Beyond program. Funding for both initiatives will be included in the president’s fiscal year 2017 budget request next week.
President Obama Announces the Computer Science for All Initiative
The White House
The President recently unveiled his plan to give all students across the country the chance to learn computer science (CS) in school. The country has made real progress in education — over the past seven years, 49 States and Washington, D.C. have raised expectations by adopting higher standards to prepare all students for success in college and careers. It is now time to take the next step forward. The economy is rapidly shifting, and educators and business leaders are increasingly recognizing that CS is a “new basic” skill necessary for economic opportunity and social mobility. By some estimates, just one quarter of all the K-12 schools in the United States offer CS with programming and coding, and only 28 states allow CS courses to count towards high-school graduation, even as other advanced economies are making CS available for all of their students. Fortunately, there is a growing movement being led by parents, teachers, states, districts, and the private sector to expand CS education. The President’s Computer Science for All Initiative builds on these efforts.
Editor's Pick
Cities, Data and Digital Innovation
Mark Kleinman, Institute for Municipal Finance and Governance & Innovation Policy Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs
Local governments are abuzz with the opportunities that Big Data, Open Government, and Smart Cities offer to drive economic growth, improve transparency and accountability, build public engagement, and deliver higher quality city services at lower costs. Kleinman finds that while there is no silver bullet for success, a number of factors can help cities harness the power of the data revolution. Cities need to: develop comprehensive strategies, based on understanding the strengths of their economies, and the city’s role in the global production chain; promote both the start-up and scale-up of local digital innovators, and link innovators to the city’s challenges; build support from higher level governments and create strong partnerships with local universities; become intelligent clients for smart city solutions; and implement digital inclusion policies to ensure all citizens benefit. Kleinman sees huge opportunities for Toronto given the city’s fundamental assets, which include strong educational institutions, talent attraction, livability, diversity, and a stable banking system. However, these opportunities are restricted to some extent by fragmented governance arrangements and the lack of strong public-private networks across the wider Toronto region. He believes that city leaders in all sectors should develop a shared narrative about the future of the city region and the role that digital innovation and data can play.
Innovation Policy
Reshoring: Myth or Reality?
Koen De Backer, Carlo Menon, Isabelle Desnoyers-James, Laurent Moussiegt, OECD
The news that companies in OECD economies are increasingly bringing manufacturing activities back home has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. Headline cases of a number of large multinational companies have given increased visibility to the phenomenon of reshoring in the economic press, academic research and policy discussions. The debate on re-shoring (often also called “backshoring”, “nearshoring”, “onshoring”) is very lively with some even arguing that the time of offshoring has come to an end. But considerable disagreement exists about how important this trend actually is for economies, particularly with respect to the number of jobs that reshoring is supposed to bring back. While policy makers in OECD economies hope that reshoring might help to revitalize their slumping manufacturing industries, the rationale for policy measures around reshoring is not clear-cut.
Work: Thriving in a Turbulent, Technological and Transformed Global Economy
The Council on Competitiveness
This report reviews long-term trends affecting the U.S. labor market, and tech challenges and opportunities they present for America’s workers. It also looks across a multitude of Council initiatives and reports to highlight some of the many recommendations to strengthen America’s workforce that emerged from this body of research, analysis and dialogue between U.S. business, education, technology and labor leaders. These recommendations offer a roadmap to align U.S. education and training to 21st century skills needs, leverage intellectual capital more effectivly, supply businesses with the talent needed to compete globally and enable America’s most valuable competitive asset – its people – to apply their creativity and effort toward productive, prosperous lives.
Cities, Clusters & Regions
OECD Region Territorial Reviews: The Metropolitan Region of Rotterdam-The Hague, Netherlands
OECD
This report examines the Netherland’s new Metropolitan Region of Rotterdam-The Hague (MRDH), drawing on lessons from governance reforms in other OECD countries and identifying how the MRDH experience could benefit policy makers beyond Dutch borders.
Statistics & Indicators
Horizon 2020 Indicators: Assessing the Results and Impact of Horizon
European Union
Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU research and innovation program ever. Almost €80 billion of funding is available over seven years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private and national public investment that this money will attract. The legal basis for Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation program for 2014-2020, specifies a list of compulsory Key Performance Indicators to be taken into account in its evaluation and monitoring system. For the first time ever these Key Performance Indicators are identified prior to the start of the EU Framework Program. This is a significant development as it provides a solid and coherent basis for the monitoring and evaluation system for Horizon 2020, coupled with the focus on measuring results and impacts of the Program. This publication presents the full set of Key Performance and Cross-Cutting Issues Indicators for Horizon 2020, including those for the European Institute of Technology and EURATOM, and describes the new information system and data sources which support the monitoring and evaluation strategy for Horizon 2020
Science and Engineering Indicators 2016
NSF
This publication is first and foremost a volume of record comprising high-quality quantitative data on the U.S. and international science and engineering enterprise. SEI is factual and policy neutral. It does not offer policy options, and it does not make policy recommendations. The data are “indicators.” Indicators are quantitative representations that might reasonably be thought to provide summary information bearing on the scope, quality, and vitality of the science and engineering enterprise. The indicators reported in SEI are intended to contribute to an understanding of the current environment and to inform the development of future policies.
Policy Digest
Why the U.S. Needs a Tech-Driven Growth Strategy
Gregory Tassey, ITIF
The most important goal for economic policy is the long-term increase in productivity and incomes. Achieving this requires an investment-driven process targeting several critical categories of assets that drive productivity growth and wages. Unfortunately, what passes for U.S. growth policy is far from investment oriented. Instead, policymakers rely almost exclusively and myopically on macro stabilization tools, especially monetary policy, in large part because they continue to rely on simplistic and incomplete economic models that misrepresent modern technology-based growth. The result has been slow growth in real incomes since globalization has greatly increased worldwide competitiveness. America needs a four-point investment strategy designed to increase long-term productivity growth. This is the only way to achieve steady increases in the standard of living.
In spite of the United States’ historically large application of monetary policy since the Great Recession in the form of unprecedented purchases of U.S. Treasury and mortgage-backed securities, coupled with interest rates near zero, acceptable rates of economic growth have not resumed. These gargantuan efforts have done little to boost productivity.
The major reason for such poor economic results is government’s excessive reliance on monetary policies. Americans have a near collective obsession with the day-to-day actions of the Federal Reserve Bank; however, its role is limited and simple: stabilizing the business cycle and ensuring that actual growth is not too far from real growth potential. While providing a more stable economic environment can have a positive effect on short-term investment and consumption, monetary and, in certain ways, fiscal stabilization tools cannot change long-term rates of economic growth—arguments by both liberals and conservatives to the contrary. In an intensely competitive global economy, sustained high rates of productivity and income growth require persistent investment, specifically in areas that drive productivity advances. In fact, virtually all U.S. economic growth problems can be traced to secular underinvestment in the four major categories of economic assets:
- Technology innovation: the long-term driver of productivity growth;
- Technology-based capital investment: in particular, hardware and software that embody most new technology and thereby enable its productive use;
- Human capital: skilled labor capable of using the new hardware and software and associated techniques; and
- Infrastructure, including physical and digital: necessary to efficiently develop and use modern complex technology systems.
The first category, technological innovation, is the basis for long-term productivity growth, and the other three enable its development and delivery to markets where the resulting productivity advances have their impact on income growth. Unfortunately, multiple barriers within the U.S. economy prevent adequate rates of investment in these four asset categories; in fact, in a number of ways, U.S. policy harms, rather than enables, increases in investment in these four areas. It is time for economists and policymakers to recognize that America needs a new economic growth strategy, grounded not in fiscal and monetary policy, but in policies explicitly focused on spurring technological innovation. This means tax and spending policies need to be explicitly realigned to promote public and private investment in these four key areas.
Events
Regional Studies Association Annual Conference 2016 – Building Bridges: Cities and Regions in a Transnational World
Graz, Austria, 3-6 April, 2016
Throughout history, cities and regions have been cornerstones of economic, social and cultural institution building and centres of communication and trade across borders of empires and nations. In a globalized world dominated by multi-level governance and declining economic and political significance of the nation-state, cities and regions are becoming ever more so important in building bridges across nations, supra-national unions, and even continents. These challenges surpass the usual aspects of integration: it is not sufficient to reduce barriers for the mobility of labour, goods, services and capital, to create a homogeneous competitive environment, and a solid monetary system. What is needed in addition are more elements of a new regionalism, which is based on non-hierarchical relationships, on self-government, and on the creation of flexible alliances leading to inter-regional transnational cooperation. The development of a region is affected by its competitive and complementary relationships with other increasingly distant regions. These relationships have to be embedded in an overall structure of relations which encompass the purely economic ones and have strong social, cultural, legal and political dimensions. The objective of the conference is to initiate an interdisciplinary dialogue about the future of a transnational world of urban and regional cooperation. We welcome submissions from researchers, policy makers and practitioners working in all areas of regional analysis.
Urban Dialogues: Creating Inclusive Urban Space in Uncertain Global Times
Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 3-6 May, 2016
This workshop will explore the construction of inclusive urban spaces in uncertain global times. One of the major impacts of the global economic crisis is the way it has deepened inequalities at a time when the state’s capacity for public intervention to tackle inequality has diminished. These developments raise questions about what forms of governance step in when the state withdraws and how urban policy can be developed to reflect the interests of all. To address these issues further research is needed to evaluate the opportunities and challenges ahead. There is a need to reflect on the usefulness of previous urban development approaches and explore the potential for alternative structures in both established (UK) and emerging (Brazil) economies. This multi-disciplinary workshop will promote scientific excellence and international collaboration in the field of urban governance with a view to informing future policy in a way that will enrich the lives and well being of all those living in cities.
The Organization, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research
Torino, Italy, 9-10 May, 2016
The aim of the workshop is to bring together a small group of scholars interested in the analysis of the production and diffusion of scientific research from an economics, historical, organizational, and policy perspective. As in previous years, we aim to attract contributions from both junior and senior scholars; a minimum number of slots are reserved for junior researchers (PhD students or postdoc scholars who obtained their PhD in 2013 or later). Up to 18 papers will be selected from open submissions on the basis of peer review. The workshop aims at including papers form various streams of research developed in recent years in and around the area of public and private scientific research.
Regional Studies Association 2nd North American Conference: Cities and Regions: Managing Growth and Change
Atlanta, Georgia, 16-17 June, 2016
In the wake of the global financial crisis, cities have searched for new policies and practices capable of addressing major shifts in socio-economic relations at the urban and regional scale. These divergent and differentiated efforts have led to the intensification of underlying problems in some cities and a return to growth in others. Regional policies, particularly in the North American context, responded to economic challenges by adopting new technologies and new institutional and organizational forms to manage growth and change at the city scale. The result is a complex and uneven landscape of public and private actors delivering financial services, scaling-up supply chains, coordinating firm networks, diffusing process and material innovations, and organizing new forms of civic representation and participation. This conference provides a platform for researchers to address the effects of these policy, organizational, and institutional innovations and their impact on work, identity, governance, production networks, infrastructure investments, technology diffusion, and ultimately place. The conference will focus on the policy implications of emerging forms of governance and policy delivery relative to uneven development and inequality in a post-crisis era of ongoing market liberalization, financialization, and global competition.
3rd International Workshop on the Sharing Economy
Southampton, England, 15-16 September, 2016
Enabled by digital platform technologies, the sharing economy allows households, individuals, businesses, government and non-government organisations to engage in collaborative production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. It can potentially lead to an increase in employment, economic efficiency, sustainable use of resources, broadened access to highly valuable assets, and enhanced social relationships. The sharing economy can also give rise to innovation driven business models appealing to a different group of customers, normally ignored by mainstream businesses, and based on a novel supply chain and operations model which makes it possible to outsource to platform users a significant portion of business functions. These inevitably challenge conventional business and policy thinking about the role and functions of customers, employees and the organization. To no small degree, the interest in the sharing economy is fueled by ongoing international media stories about the expansion of new and highly successful sharing economy platforms (such as Uber, Airbnb, Taskrabbit, Blablacar, etc.). The academic debate is yet to fully catch up with this business media buzz. It has only now started to critically investigate the popular claims about the sharing economy. There is still very little systematic understanding of the antecedents of the sharing economy, its organizational forms and their novelty, the enabling and constraining factors of the sharing economy and its impacts. Hence, the purpose of this workshop is to engage with different strands of academic scholarship on the sharing economy originating across different disciplines (such as management and business studies, economics, geography, legal studies, sociology, political sciences and other disciplines) to help to develop an integrated understanding of the sharing economy phenomenon, its drivers, forms and implications for individuals, businesses and society.
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This newsletter is prepared by Jen Nelles.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe.