The IPL newsletter: Volume 17, Issue 341

Technology Collaboration Programmes: Highlights and Outcomes

OECD
Accelerating energy technology innovation is crucial to meet energy and climate goals, to support economic growth and to enhance energy security. Successful development and deployment of innovative energy technologies requires that stakeholders from both the public and private sector share knowledge, work collaboratively and, where appropriate, pool resources to deliver integrated, cost effective solutions to common challenges. Four decades ago, the founders of the IEA had the foresight to create a multilateral technology collaboration mechanism. The year 2015 marked the 40th anniversary of the mechanism as well as the rebranding of the IAs as Technology Collaboration Programmes (TCPs). This publication provides an overview of the activities and recent accomplishments of TCPs. The 39 TCPs operating today involve about 6 000 experts from government, industry and research organisations in 51 countries around the world. Participants in TCPs have examined more than 1 900 energy-related topics in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy, fossil fuels, fusion power and cross-cutting issues.

A Policymaker’s Guide to Digital Infrastructure

Robert D. Atkinson, Daniel Castro, Stephen Ezell, Alan McQuinn, and Joshua New, ITIF
Infrastructure has always been important to nations’ economic growth and success, but the infrastructure needed for today’s economy is rapidly changing with advances in information and communications technology (ICT). This new infrastructure—some of it hybrid infrastructure that integrates both physical and digital aspects, some of it pure digital infrastructure—is critical to delivering the next wave of innovation and economic growth to all but the very poorest of nations. Some have argued that there is little innovation in infrastructure because—just like 50 or even 100 years ago—cars still drive on roads; planes fly in the air; and trains run on tracks. But while there may be innovations in physical infrastructures (e.g., self-healing concrete), many of today’s opportunities for improvement depend on embedding digital technologies in physical infrastructures. Successfully building out digital infrastructure (hybrid and purely digital) across all types of infrastructure will unlock new economic opportunities, job creation, and better quality of life.

OECD Compendium of Productivity Indicators 2016

OECD
This publication presents a comprehensive overview of recent and longer term trends in productivity levels and growth in OECD and some G20 countries. The statistics include measures of labour, capital and multifactor productivity, as well as indicators of international competitiveness.

Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship 2016

Arnobio Morelix, E.J. Reedy, and Joshua Russell, Kauffman Foundation
The Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship is an indicator of business growth in the United States, integrating several high-quality sources of timely information into one composite indicator of entrepreneurial business growth. The Index captures growth entrepreneurship in all industries, and is based on data covering the universe of all U.S. employer businesses (approximately 5 million firms) and a privately collected benchmark of growth businesses. This report measures business growth from both revenue and job growth perspectives. Moreover, it also present trends on business exits—more particularly initial public offerings, a business milestone commonly associated with innovative, high-growth companies. This report presents trends in growth entrepreneurship over the last decade for the United States. Trends in growth entrepreneurship also are reported at the national level for specific industries for some of the Index components, when available. Additional Growth Entrepreneurship Indices present trends for all fifty states and the forty largest U.S metropolitan areas by population. 

2016 Urban Governance Survey

LSE Cities, UN Habitat, and UCLG
The 2016 edition of the Urban Governance Survey undertaken by LSE Cities in partnership with UN Habitat and UCLG (Decentralisation and Local Governance Committee), and supported by the MacArthur Foundation, has been launched today. The renovated website displays data from 104 cities spanning five continents, with new survey questions, and is now available in English, Spanish and French. A key element of LSE Cities’ New Urban Governance project, the new online platform presents both the results of the survey and contains more in-depth analysis of existing institutional arrangements and governance challenges faced by cities around the world. It seeks to both address the data challenges confronting research on urban governance, while providing an accessible and detailed resource for the wider public.

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.

Schumpeter Conference on Evolutionary Economics

Montreal, 6-8 July, 2016
The Schumpeter Conference is a major event for social scientists interested in Neo-Schumpeterian themes such as the economics of innovation and economic development and trying to build a credible response to neoclassical economics with the contribution of different compatible theoretical currents such as behavioural, ecological and post-Keynesian economics, system dynamics, agent-based models and innovation management, among others.

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.

5th European Colloquium on Culture, Creativity, and Economy

Seville, Spain, 6-8 October, 2016
In recent years, myriad links between culture, creativity and economic practice have become major topics of interdisciplinary debates. There is a growing consensus that the intersections between these spheres, and symbolic and culturally embedded values in particular, pervade the global economy. Culture is not confined to artistic practice or heritage, nor is creativity confined to networks of creative workers and entrepreneurs: culture and creativity are practiced by workers and individuals in a range of occupational, institutional and geographical settings. Indeed, far from being restricted to global cities and urban settings, a growing body of research highlights the presence and uniqueness of cultural and creative activities in suburban and rural settings and across the Global South. Moreover, digital technologies and processes of globalization continue to create, destroy and restructure the markets and conditions under which cultural production, intermediation and consumption are undertaken and experienced. These are in turn underpinned by a plurality of micro-spatialities and micro-processes through which the dynamics and spaces of culture and creativity emerge. Together, this underlines the importance of paying critical academic attention to the particularities of the different social, political, technological and cultural models that enable, hinder or displace the creative and cultural economy. For research and policy, there is a strong need to generate nuanced and tempered accounts which understand both the potentialities and limitations involved in the intersections of culture, creativity and economy. There is a need to pursue new research avenues that not only encompass but go beyond critical engagement with policies. For example, a “critical agenda on critical approaches” might unveil significant aporias and pitfalls in the ways we study the webs that tie culture, creativity and economy together. More than ever perhaps there is a need for critical and radical academic debate that addresses questions about the value and values inherent in culture and creativity; questions surrounding the ownership and marketization of culture and creativity; and the dynamics of cultural and creative spaces, production and work.

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.