The IPL newsletter: Volume 17, Issue 340

The Rise of Knowledge Workers is Accelerating Despite the Threat of Automation

Josh Zumbrun, The Wall Street Journal
In the past three decades, the number of jobs for knowledge workers has never been rising as quickly as it is right now. As recently as the mid-1980s, you could categorize American workers into roughly three equal-sized groups of about 30 million people each. About 31 million people had nonroutine cognitive jobs, what is often called “knowledge work,” consisting of varied intellectual tasks such as professional, managerial or technical occupations. Just under 30 million people had jobs that consisted primarily of routine manual work—on assembly lines or in warehouses, doing physical tasks day after day. About 30 million people had jobs consisting of routine office work—bookkeepers, filing clerks,  bank tellers and so on—work that doesn’t involve much physical activity but is highly routine and doesn’t necessarily require high levels of knowledge. A fourth, smaller group, did nonroutine manual tasks, such as many service occupations. But over the past three decades, almost all job growth has come from the two categories of work that are nonroutine. Meanwhile, routine jobs have been under a lot of pressure,especially during periods of recession.

The Vital Importance of High Performance Computing to U.S. Competitiveness

Stephen Ezell and Robert D. Atkinson, ITIF
High-performance computing (HPC) refers to systems that, through a combination of processing capability and storage capacity, can rapidly solve complex computational problems across a diverse range of scientific, engineering, and industrial fields. High-performance computing has become indispensable for enterprises, scientific researchers, and government agencies to generate new discoveries and innovate breakthrough products and services. As such, HPC represents a strategic, game-changing technology with tremendous implications for economic competitiveness, scientific leadership, and national security. This report explains why adoption, use, and production of HPC technologies matters. For commercial industries, The report also explains why it is important that the United States remains a leader in the production of high-performance computing systems, explaining that: 1) it is critical for U.S. national security; 2) it would be risky to depend on foreign vendors for access to leading HPCs should they no longer be produced in the United States; 3) there is a symbiosis between HPC production and use, and U.S. industries and enterprises benefit through first-mover advantage by having quicker access and availability to leading-edge HPCs; and 4) HPCs represent an important source of exports, employment, and economic growth that the United States should compete vigorously to retain.

 2016 Canada Private Equity and Venture Capital Breakdown: I

Pitchbook
The 2016 Canada PE & VC Breakdown: I report, first of two Canadian publications this year, analyzes trends across private equity and venture capital investment in Canada, assessing how activity has shifted over the past years in terms of sector, size and more. While some datasets of Canadian activity reflect trends similar to what has been observed in other markets, there are some distinct departures that set it apart, such as the boom in VC invested in the first quarter of 2016. Accordingly, the report breaks down such outliers by providing contextual yearly and quarterly activity to better amplify your knowledge of the PE and VC landscape in Canada. In addition, the report delves into PE and VC-backed exits, as well as PE fundraising.

World Future Cities Summit

Toronto, June 9-10, 2016
The World Future Cities Summit is the leading event for communities, value-makers and network builders. It takes place June 9-10 at MaRS in Toronto. The i-CANADA New World Order is about learning from the best around the world – and becoming one of that elite circle of sustainable, thriving communities! Join industry experts, global thought leaders and your peers at the heart of smart community success for a unique opportunity to gain valuable knowledge and insights.

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.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Changing Patterns of Territorial Policy: Smart Specialization and Innovation in Europe

Seville, Spain, 29 – 30 September, 2016
The smart specialization approach is characterized by the identification of strategic areas for intervention based both on the analysis of the strengths and potential of the economy and on a process of entrepreneurial discovery with wide stakeholder involvement. It embraces a wide view of innovation that goes beyond research-oriented and technology-based activities, and requires a sound logic of intervention supported by effective monitoring mechanisms. This conference aims to take stock of the smart specialization experience and assess its current state of the art both in terms of conceptual developments and practical implementation. It offers to a limited number of participants from academia, European Institutions and territorial authorities, a unique opportunity to discuss these issues, to define the scope and main avenues for future research and policy analysis, and to address the challenges confronting policy makers and practitioners. The conference organizers are keen to attract papers that address the whole spectrum of topics, disciplines, and methodologies encompassed by the smart specialization approach, including contributions from all areas of regional analysis with a link to smart specialization.

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.