The IPL newsletter: Volume 17, Issue 339

An OECD Horizon Scan of Megetrends and Technology Trends in the Context of Future Research Policy

OECD
Analysis of future trends, whether derived from extrapolations, simulations, projections or scenarios, can provide important insights for the future. They can offer support and guidance for decision makers and investors, and alert policy makers, the business community, researchers and society more generally to important upcoming issues. Interpretation of future trends, however, always needs to be done with care: they do not foretell the future, they merely indicate how the future might evolve under certain conditions and in a given subject area. A somewhat fuller picture of possible futures can be assembled by bringing together numerous trends from different subject areas. This can strengthen the basis for developing narratives or storylines, which in turn can enrich our view of where the world is heading and what challenges and opportunities may lie on or beyond the longer-term horizon. The purpose of this brochure is to provide scene-setting and food for thought in support of the RESEARCH2025 process being launched in February 2016 by the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation (DASTI). 

Scale-Up UK: Growing Business, Growing our Economy

University of Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Oxford Said Business School, and Barclays
Over the last two decades the UK has made great advances in developing a vibrant entrepreneurial sector. Start-up rates have increased dramatically, early stage capital is more plentiful, and the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle is a globally recognized hub for entrepreneurial activity. Yet, the UK start-up revolution has largely occurred on the ‘input’ side: more start-ups and more early-stage investments. There is a growing concern about the ‘output’ side: Where are the big success stories? Where is the economic impact in terms of employment and economic growth? Since 2012, an estimated 600,000 new UK company registrations were reported, resulting in 3.3m active businesses in 2015. However, although there has been an increase in entrepreneurial activity in the UK, there is a concern with the growth performance of these new companies. The 2014 Coutu scale-up report on UK economic growth argues that there are too few high-growth companies in the UK. Drawing on a long pedigree in addressing the topic of company growth, Barclays launched the “Scale-up UK” initiative in 2015, with the intention of contributing new insights and policy recommendations for the scale-up challenge of the UK economy. 

New Institutional Geographies of Higher Education: The Rise of Transregional University Alliances

John Harrison, Darren P. Smith, and Chloe Klinton, Loughborough University
This paper opens up debates about the deepening uneven geographies of higher education through a critical analysis of transregional university alliances. Focusing on the formation of research consortia and Doctoral Training Centres it reveals the emergence of over fifty transregional alliances between UK universities. Despite each consortium operating at a variously defined regional scale there has been no explicit attempt to account for their geographical basis. Providing the first-ever analysis of this unfolding phenomenon, the authors demonstrate how the rise of transregional alliances is indicative of, and a response to, universities operating in an intensely neoliberalized political economy. Bringing together emergent theories of regionalism with emerging worlds of (neoliberal) higher education, the paper reveals how, why and where universities are engaging in more intensively targeted, exclusive approaches to regional development. It argues that higher education is conducive to the weakening of fixed regional territories and propose the metaphor of ‘regional constellations’ for interpreting transregional geographies. Finally, the analysis suggests that while high-performing research institutions may compete better by forming consortia, transregional alliances lead to a more unequal and divided university sector.

Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2016: An OECD Scorecard

OECD
This report monitors SME and entrepreneur access to finance in 37 countries. It includes indicators of debt, equity, asset-based finance and framework conditions for SME and entrepreneurship finance, complemented by an overview of recent developments in public and private initiatives to support SME finance. Taken together, these indicators form a comprehensive framework for policy makers and other stakeholders to evaluate the financing needs of SMEs.

Creative Economy Employment in the US, Canada, and the UK: A Comparative Analysis

NESTA
This report is part of Nesta’s ongoing research programme to better understand the size, growth and industrial/occupational structure of the creative economy, in the UK and internationally. The creative economy is defined as employment in the creative industries (both in creative jobs and in other roles), plus employment in creative jobs outside the creative industries. The current report makes two contributions. First, it compares the size, growth and geography of employment in the UK and US creative economies between 2011 and 2013, and provide comparable figures for size of employment in the Canadian creative economy in 2011. Second, it explores the differences in structure between the creative industries of the UK, the US and Canada by comparing the distribution of creative intensity across industries in the different countries. 

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.  

OECD Blue Sky Forum on Science and Technology Indicators

Ghent, Belgium, 19-21 September, 2016
Every ten years the OECD Blue Sky Forum engages the policy community, data users and providers into an open dialogue to review and develop its long-term agenda on science, technology and innovation (STI) data and indicators. This event is known as the “OECD Blue Sky Forum”, an open and unconstrained discussion on evidence gaps in science and innovation and on initiatives the international community can take to address data needs in this area.

Regional Studies Association Winter Conference 2016 – New Pressures on Cities and Regions

London, UK, 24-25 November, 2016
This conference provides an intellectual and policy-relevant platform for scholars around the world to address the new and emerging challenges facing cities and regions. The global economic slowdown poses major concerns to many territories – through shortfalls in employment, household incomes, corporate profitability and tax revenues. The steel industry has been one of the hardest hit, forcing massive plant closures and redundancies from China to the UK. Austerity in public finances threatens the infrastructure required to lay the foundation for future growth and development. Economic uncertainties and uneven development also contribute to growing social unrest and new waves of international migration. Heightened regulation of the banks and other financial institutions is bound to have an impact on the funding of house-building and other real estate development, with uncertain consequences. Meanwhile the accelerating pace of technological change in many industries and occupations means different skills and capabilities are required of the workforce, causing painful adjustments for many communities. And looming concerns about climate change and accelerating environmental degradation complicate the task of urban and regional revitalization. The 2016 Winter Conference of the Regional Studies Association presents a timely opportunity to discuss these issues, to clarify the research imperatives, and to consider the challenges facing policymakers and practitioners. The conference organizers are keen to attract papers and sessions that address a broad research and policy agenda, including contributions from any discipline which can offer relevant insights into the urban-regional-global nexus.