DELIVERED
TRIPLE HELIX INTERACTIONS AND OPEN INNOVATION IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
Friday 29 January 2016, 18:00 CET
Moderator: Professor Panayiotis H KETIKIDIS, Chairman of the South East European Research Centre and President of the THA Chapter of Greece
Davis Cook
Davis Cook is the CEO of the Research Institute for Innovation and Sustainability. He is an entrepreneur and a leader, passionate about using collaboration to solve the diverse challenges of business and society. Under his leadership, RIIS has provided strategic support to a wide range of organisations to achieve innovation excellence. Davis fulfils a number of leadership roles in various innovation and entrepreneurial ventures. He sits on the Management Committee of the SA Innovation Network, is a Non- Executive Director for the SA Innovation Summit Foundation, and a founding partner of an SA-based VC fund. He was the lead author for the Gauteng Innovation Strategy, a multi-helix focused strategic policy for the Gauteng Provincial Government, and has contributed in various ways to a variety of ‘innovation for economic development’ programmes in SA and globally.
His career has spanned global strategy, management and risk consulting, and economic policy development at both provincial and national government level. He has started (and failed) several of his own renewable energy businesses, and intends to do more. His academic background includes physics, applied maths, politics, economics and development studies.
TALK 1
GETTING TRIPLE HELIX SYSTEMS TO WORK IN EMERGING MARKETS
The talk covered the following themes, using South Africa as an example of an emerging market struggling (from our perspective) to create a coherent national system of innovation:
Overview of the THS and OI activities RIIS is undertaking;
Organic vs synthetic development of triple helix interactions;
Resource allocation by TH actors in emerging markets (as seen
in Southern Africa), and impact on innovation activities
Constraints on effective interactions, and impact on
collaborative innovation efforts;
Potential solutions to dealing with each of constraint.
Dr Juha Miettinen
Dr Juha Miettinen is an experienced international innovation policy and instrument professional with twenty years of experience in innovation systems development and innovation support, technology transfer, business development and methods in public- private, triple helix, collaboration regionally, nationally and internationally.
Juha has resided in Africa (Namibia) for the last five years working as the Chief Technical Advisor and Team Leader in charge of an extensive regional innovation funding programme; Southern Africa Innovation Support Programme, SAIS, aspired for strengthening innovation ecosystems in several Southern African countries (saisprogramme.com). Before joining SAIS in 2011, as a COO in one of the leading innovation and science park companies in Finland, Hermia Limited, he earned wide experience and practical knowledge on Finnish and European innovation systems and methods. Throughout his career Juha has been a member of supervisory and steering boards of innovation initiatives and programmes. He is also a trained company board member.
Juha holds a MSc (International Economics) degree from the University of Tampere and BSc (Economics) from the University of Oregon, US. He is busy with his PhD on Triple-Helix collaboration in emerging economies.
TALK 2
TRIPLE HELIX COLLABORATION IN THE MAKING? – CASE STUDIES FROM SOUTHERN AFRICA
Innovation is widely seen as the driver and catalyst of economic growth and well-being in modern societies. Innovation ecosystems describe the diverse array of participants and resources that are interrelated, contribute to, and are necessary for innovation advancement towards and in a knowledge-based economy. This ecosystem encompasses companies, entrepreneurs, investors/financiers, researchers, universities/higher education units and the public sector in different forms and levels. In many cases the University-Industry-Government collaboration mechanism triangle forms an anchor and a key approach to the functioning of these ecosystems.
It can be argued that in Southern Africa to a large extent the national and regional innovation ecosystems are still largely emerging and to some extent in infant phase. For the region and countries to move towards innovation and knowledge-driven economies, these innovation ecosystems needs to be built up and operations enhanced.
This presentation strived to respond to the following questions:
How is University-Industry-Government (Triple Helix) collaboration portrayed in Southern Africa?
What are the key challenges and opportunities related to Triple Helix interactions and collaboration in an emerging innovation ecosystem?
What policy, funding and implementation instruments should
be developed and used to strengthen University-Industry- Government collaboration in emerging innovation ecosystems?
The material has been compiled around a regional innovation development programme, The Southern Africa Innovation Support programme (SAIS, www.saisprogramme.com), aiming at supporting national and regional innovation systems in the SADC region by bringing together the elements of the systems of innovation in each participating pilot country: Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia. The duration of the programme phase I has been April 2011 up to December 2015. The total budget mainly financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland is about 8 MEUR.
DELIVERED
ENTREPRENEURIAL UNIVERSITIES/UNIVERSITY ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATION: VIEWS FROM EUROPE AND THE USA
Wednesday, 30 March 2016, 18:00 CET
Moderator: Professor Panayiotis H KETIKIDIS, Chairman of the South East European Research Centre and President of the THA Chapter of Greece
TALK 1
ELAINE C RIDEOUT
Elaine C Rideout is co-author of Innovation U 2.0 Reinventing University Roles in a Knowledge Economy. A serial entrepreneur, she has founded ten ventures, the largest employing eighty employees. Dr Rideout holds the MPP from the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, and a PhD in Psychology from NC State University, where she is a Kauffman Fellow, a Kauffman Emerging Scholar, and Adjunct Professor.
INNOVATION U 2.0 REINVENTING UNIVERSITY ROLES IN A KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY
While all successful universities can point to entrepreneurial ventures that have spun out from university research to the benefit of local economies and society in general, nonetheless it’s surprising how much research universities vary in their ability to commercialize their own scientific and technological breakthroughs. Many US universities capitalize on core research competencies to help grow technology clusters, others, not so much. Similarly, there exists an astonishing variation in curricular offerings in entrepreneurship and student venturing. As co-author of Innovation U 2.0, Reinventing University Roles in a Knowledge Economy, Dr Rideout highlighted how successful universities catalyze venturing both at the faculty, student, and community levels. What strategies, practices and policies can universities adapt to up their innovation production and economic impacts?
TALK 2
PROFESSOR RICCARDO FINI
Professor Riccardo Fini is an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Technology Innovation Management and CIG Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Bologna (UNIBO), and Fellow at Imperial College London. He is serving as Associate Dean and Director of the Master in Entrepreneurship and of the Global MBA (Innovation) at the Bologna Business School. Before joining UNIBO, he researched at Ecole des Mines Paris, Case Western Cleveland and University of Bozen. He was IEF Marie Curie Fellow at Imperial College and Assistant Professor at UNIBO. His research has been published in leading entrepreneurship and innovation journals such as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and Research Policy. He has been invited to contribute to the University of Chicago Handbook on T echnology T ransfer and the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management, and has been awarded more than €350.000 of research funds. Dr Fini has given three keynotes on science and public policy in Brisbane, Porto, and Singapore, and invited to present his research in thirty universities and business schools in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. He was featured in Nature, Times Higher Education and The New York Times.
ENGAGEMENT AND COMMERCIALIZATION: DISCUSSING THE IMPACT OF ACADEMIC RESEARCH, THE CASE OF IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON
The talk focussed on recent findings emerging from an innovative study of academic engagement and commercialisation at Imperial College London. The study combines a wide range of data to provide insights into the extent of collaboration with industry, consulting, patenting and entrepreneurship by Imperial academics, as well as individuals’ motivations and perceived barriers to engagement. One of the most interesting insights coming from the research is how patenting, licensing, and spin-outs capture only a small component of the pathwa ys to University’ s impact. The presentation shed light coming from the Imperial College London case on how to transform the way Universities measure, manage, and organise research in order to generate higher impact.
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