The IPL newsletter: Volume 19, Issue 391

Announcements

Next Generation Manufacturing Supercluster Kicks into High Gear

Government of Canada
The Government of Canada is committed to growing the economy, creating good jobs and keeping Canada competitive. That is why the Government is bringing together small, medium-sized and large companies, academic institutions and not-for-profit organizations to generate bold ideas under the Innovation Superclusters Initiative. Recently, the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, announced the signing of an agreement to invest up to nearly $230 million, matched dollar for dollar by the private sector, in the Ontario-based Next Generation Manufacturing Supercluster (NGen), a group of businesses, post-secondary institutions and non-profits working together to make Canada a world leader in advanced manufacturing. The funding agreement means NGen can move forward with activities to build up next-generation manufacturing capabilities, such as advanced robotics and 3D printing, while ensuring “Made in Canada” will symbolize excellence in innovative manufacturing worldwide. It is projected that this supercluster will create more than 13,500 jobs and add more than $13.5 billion to Canada’s economy over 10 years.

U.S. Department of Energy Launches Manufacturing Innovator Challenge

via SSTI Weekly Digest
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced two new manufacturing prizes as part of the Manufacturing Innovator Challenge, an effort to crowdsource solutions for next generation manufacturing, to increase energy productivity and strengthen America’s industrial base. Both prizes focus on additive manufacturing: Additive Manufacturing for Disaster Response and Solid State Lighting Manufacturing. Participants will be asked to share designs that represent an innovation in each respective application of additive manufacturing.

Editor's Pick

Rise of the Global Startup Cities 

Center for American Entrepreneurship
For decades, venture capital was an almost exclusively American phenomenon—as late as the mid-1990s, nearly all global venture capital investments went to U.S. companies. However, things have changed significantly in recent years, as the geography of startup activity and venture capital investment is undergoing a rapid and profound period of globalization. Today, U.S. companies capture just over half of venture capital investments worldwide. To assess the changing global map of startups and venture capital investment, the Center for American Entrepreneurship analyzed more than 100,000 venture deals in the PitchBook database. It aggregated these venture deals into more than 300 metropolitan areas spanning 60 countries. The analysis covers the years 2005 and 2017, which includes the period before the economic crisis, the Great Recession, and the subsequent recovery.

Innovation Policy

AI Momentum, Maturity, and Models for Success

Accenture/SAS
For quite some time, AI has had an allure to improve processes, raise productivity and make both top-line and bottom-line impacts for organizations. Advances in data and analytics have enabled early adopters of AI across industries globally to grow beyond experiments and quick hits and provide examples for paths to success with AI. SAS, Intel and Accenture, working with Forbes Insights, surveyed business leaders and interviewed thought leaders around the world to identify those early adopters and uncover their emerging best practices for AI. Valuable takeaways from the study include insights on ethics, oversight, process implications and likely needs to shift education and training to prepare for realizing the full potential of AI.

What’s Holding Back UK Productivity? Lessons from Decades of Measurement

National Institute of Economic and Social Research
UK labour productivity is significantly lower than that of many other similarly advanced economies and has been so for decades, with negative implications for UK living standards. To make matters worse, during the last ten years labour productivity growth has stalled in most industrialized countries, and particularly in the UK. This has led to a renewed policy focus on productivity growth, as evidenced by successive government productivity plans and efforts to re-invigorate industrial strategy. This paper for the National Institute Economic Review surveys the evidence on UK productivity performance, identifying what we know about the causes of its weakness, what we do not know and what this means for policy.

Cities, Clusters & Regions

Early Stage U.S. Startup Ecosystems Report 2018

Startup Genome
At Startup Genome, we try to identify the actual underlying dynamics—the code or genome—of how startup ecosystems actually develop and what actions can be taken to support their growth. This report tries to answer the foregoing questions, and they helped frame a research project with the Kauffman Foundation. To make headway on these, we jointly selected six U.S. metropolitan areas that are not in the top 40 most populous and which have been faring less well economically than the country as a whole. (For this, we used data from the fantastic Economic Innovation Group.)

For Amazon, HQ2 Location Decision was About Talent, Talent, Talent

Alan Berube, Brookings
Though the cat’s been out of the bag for more than a week now, Amazon’s announcement recently that the company will split its next “headquarters” between the New York City and Washington, D.C. regions sends a clear signal about what matters most to regions seeking to build a high-tech economy: talent.  The Long Island City and National Landing (née Crystal City) sites have a lot of other things going for them, too. They have buildings that Amazon can occupy quickly. They have excellent transit access. They are proximate to airports from which Amazon employees can access markets all over the country, and travel back and forth to HQ1 in Seattle (Amazon employees in Northern Virginia will literally be able to walk to Reagan National Airport). They’re in the Eastern Time Zone, arguably improving Amazon’s ability to work in the European market. Other finalists had several of these ingredients, too. Where they couldn’t match New York and D.C. was the deep tech talent pool.

Statistics and Indicators

Useful Stats: Business R&D Intensity by State (2011-2016)

SSTI Weekly Digest
Since 2011, more than half of the nation’s new investment in business research and development has come from California companies, and more than three-quarters has come from the top five states, according to an SSTI analysis of recently released NSF data. For the second time this year, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) has updated the data for the Business R&D and Innovation Survey (BRDIS),  a primary source of information on domestic and global business research and development expenditures. In 2016, companies reported nearly $317.7 billion in self-funded and self-performed domestic R&D, a $20 billion (7.0 percent) increase from the previous year, according to the updated data. This type of business R&D represented 4.0 percent of the gross state product in California and Washington in 2016, the most of any states. Using NSF data, this article focuses only on domestic R&D that is paid for and performed by a company. The interactive map below includes data on self-funded business R&D by state, the intensity of this R&D, and how this changed over the five-year period from 2011 to 2016. For additional information, an Excel spreadsheet is downloadable at the bottom of this page.

The State of U.S. Venture Capital in 15 Charts

Pitchbook
There was $27.9 billion worth of venture capital invested throughout the US during 3Q 2018, pushing year-to-date deal value to more than $84 billion. That’s already a decade-high record, and there’s a quarter remaining. One major reason for the bounty of capital is the rise of big deals: Rounds totaling more than $50 million are becoming increasingly prevalent. The 3Q 2018 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, created in partnership with Silicon Valley Bank, Perkins Coie and Solium, provides a look at the current VC landscape by examining data on fundraising, exits, corporate venture capital and more. This is an overview of the report with a collection of charts.

Events

CFP: WICK#6 PhD Workshop: Economics of Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge

Turin, Italy, 9-10 January, 2019
The main topics the workshop will cover are Economics of Knowledge and Innovation, with a special focus on Firm and Regional Innovation Strategies, Economics of Science, Green Innovation, Smart cities, and Energy policy. Sessions will be methodologically heterogeneous. Econometric contributions, as well as Complex Network Analysis and computational methods, such as Agent-Based Models, are very welcome. The event will feature keynote contributions from Prof. Massimo Riccaboni (IMT Lucca and KU Leuven), Dr. Giovanni Marin (University of Urbino) and Dr. Ernest Miguelez (CNRS and GREThA, University of Bordeaux).

The 13th Workshop on THE ORGANISATION, ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Bordeaux, France, 20-21 May, 2019
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 2016 or later). Up to 18 papers will be selected from open submissions on the basis of peer review. Contributions are invited on (but not limited to) one or more of the following topics:

  • The evaluation of science policy
  • Organising research activities in universities, PROs and private R&D labs
  • Spillovers from scientific research
  • Role of gender and family in scientific research
  • Science research networks and collaboration
  • Scientific careers and mobility

Deadline for the submission of papers or extended abstracts (min 3 pages) is January 31st 2019. Submissions should be previously unpublished works. All submissions are reviewed with respect to novelty, academic quality and relevance.

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy

Atlanta, GA, 14-17 October, 2019
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.

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This newsletter is prepared by Jen Nelles.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe