Monthly Archives: December 2015

Can policy transform regions into entrepreneurship and innovation hubs?

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This post was contributed by Helen Lawton Smith, professor of Entrepreneurship at Birkbeck’s Department of Management. Prof Lawton Smith attended a workshop – ‘Can Policy Transform Regions into Entrepreneurship and Innovation Hubs? Theory, Evidence and Practice’ – hosted by the college’s Centre for Innovation Management Research (CIMR) on Friday 4 December

Angel of the North - Image courtesy of Tom Blackwell under CC via Flickr.com

Angel of the North – Image courtesy of Tom Blackwell under CC via Flickr.com

The latest CIMR workshop brought together both those who design policies and those who analyse the policy making process. It hosted representatives from the north of England, suggested to be comparatively disadvantaged economically, and the prosperous south. International comparisons were offered to provide insight into what works in policy making and what should be avoided.

 

 

The speakers were

  • Professor Roy Sandbach, ‘Innovation North East… building regional prosperity’
  • Dr Elvira Uyarra, ‘Key challenges of ‘smart’ policies for regional transformation’
  • Dr Adrian Healy, ‘From principles to practices in Smart Specialisation: Lessons from European Regions’
  • Professor Bjorn Asheim, ‘Smart Specialisation – an innovation driven strategy for economic diversification’
  • Rupert Waters, ‘Challenges for policy-makers in Buckinghamshire’
  • Professor Jeremy Howells, ‘Innovation intermediaries and innovation: Changing dynamics and future perspectives’
  • Dr Federica Rossi, ‘Evaluating the performance of regional innovation intermediaries: insights from the experience of Tuscany’s “innovation poles”’
  • Dave Waller, ‘’What makes a successful innovation ecosystem: great innovation and technology; great policies; plenty of investment funds; great culture or none of the above: just leave it to the market’
  • Dr Ana Colovic, ‘’Why are cluster policies created and how do they work? A comparison between Austria, France, Japan and Sweden’
  • Dr Rosa Fernandez, Chair of final discussion session

The following five themes were addressed throughout the day:

  1. Is it possible for regions to be transformed into Entrepreneurship and Innovation Hubs?

Policy makers everywhere are under pressure to transform lagging regions into leading centres of entrepreneurship, while continuing to support already successful areas of innovation. Roy Sandbach opened the workshop, drawing on the North East Strategic Economic Plan of 2013. The Plan encouraged the North East to ‘become an exemplar for open innovation and Smart Specialisation’, through innovation which would create economic value, social good or both. The Plan hoped to create the conditions and networked solutions to transform the region.

Other speakers argued that the role of policy is to develop new paths for policy, extend existing ones, and create an entrepreneurial state embedded in the economy. Jeremy Howells suggested that the role of policy makers is primarily to change the behaviour of firms, in order to convince them that it is in their interests to innovate.

Adrian Healy spoke on the political reality of delivering Smart Specialisation, using experience from a seven country FP7 Smart Specialisation Project. He argued that innovative and entrepreneurial regions develop independently of politics. Healy cited evidence from academic studies that 80% of economic growth is demand-led, so that only around 20% of structural change could be addressed by policies. He also suggested that policy can sometimes follow practice, such as when private sector developments are imitated by policies which provide supporting infrastructures. In addition, he argued that public procurement can have a crucial role in stimulating entrepreneurship. An example he gave of this was the North East subsea programme, which was not part of the regional development strategy.

Dave Waller also shared his own experience of local innovation policy and practice in England. He demonstrated the dissonance between local politics and economic theory, using an example from Oxfordshire. The result was wasted resources, duplication and fragmentation. Waller suggested more international benchmark evidence was required, building on work such as mapping research and innovation in Amsterdam.

The first theme was not without controversy therefore, and Sandbach concluded with a lesson for the Northern Powerhouse; ‘We must drive the Powerhouse as an economic vision fuelled by innovation rather than as a political item with insular, local devolution debates at the heart.’

  1. How important is analysis, international comparison and evaluation in developing appropriate policies?

In order to make effective policies, all the speakers agreed that policy makers need to be exceptionally focused on analysis. This might include analysing the national and regional context, the area’s potential for innovation, current programmes, global benchmarking, networks, entrepreneurial activity, university strengths or local corporate innovation strategies.

The workshop heard about geographical disparities, which result in varied difficulties for policy-makers in different regions. A major problem in the North East, for example, is that it has the lowest Business R&D expenditure in the UK and business formation rates have fallen by 10% in the past year. The North East is ranked lowest of 12 regions, and 89th in Europe on Attitude, Ability, Aspiration analysis, and thus presents a particular set of challenges. By contrast, London is ranked second on the 2014 Santander Enterprise Index. Analysis must also relate to the theoretical underpinnings of policy.

That there is a dialogue between academic practitioners and policy makers was very clear. Policy practitioners draw on academic theories (often developed by economic geographers) such as the theory of ‘anchor firms’. Anchor firms are different bases of analytic, symbolic and synthetic knowledge. Elvira Uyrrara argued that analysis should also relate to the formulation of programmes, including their scale of delivery and their tools for measuring and evaluating. She highlighted the diverse set of concepts that underpin Smart Specialisation and argued that the theoretical underpinnings are still in progress.

  1. What is the significance of Leadership, Engagement and Collaboration within and across regions?

There was a general consensus after Roy Sandbach’s presentation that the basis of an effective strategy relies on the set-up of a sound and inclusive governance structure. Entrepreneurial strategy requires a shared vision about the future of the region and the thorough integration of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

A contested issue, however, was whether Roy Sandbach was right to suggest that business leadership would always be the driving force in regional transformation, Bjorn Asheim argued that in some contexts, the public sector or universities can be directive. In some areas, it was claimed that local entrepreneurs were disinterested in the policy-making process, such as the SMEs in the North East.

In Europe, Smart Specialisation (SMART) is the single largest attempt at an orchestrated, supranational Innovation and Entrepreneurship strategy, which requires leadership, engagement and collaboration. Dave Waller, having faced the challenges of regional innovation strategies for Smart Specialisation, argued that SMART should be about addressing structural weaknesses and facilitating conversations between the right people.

SMART relies on networking, and the support of regional stakeholders. Elvira Uyrra pointed out that SMART has been criticised for not having a fully developed theoretical framework and for being too vague in terms of its target and mix of policies.

The points resonated with Jeremy Howells and Federica Rossi’s presentations on innovation intermediaries. Howells argued that intermediaries are a conceptual lens through which to view the dynamics and evolution of systems of innovation, and are of major policy significance as catalysts within a system.

Federica Rossi also identified intermediaries as important for changing the behaviour of firms and thus indirectly changing the capacity of regions to innovate. Using the case of Tuscany’s innovation poles, which aimed to provide a range of knowledge intensive business services and to strengthen the regional innovation system, she highlighted critical problems in evaluating interventions. These included a lack of sector differentiation, inadequate indicators and missing activities.

  1. What are the social and economic priorities of regional transformation?

Although innovation and job creation are obvious priorities of regional transformation, Bjorn Asheim highlighted other areas of focus, such as gender, migration and diversity. Adrian Healey also spoke about gender profiles of different sectors, as some are predominately male, and others dominated by women. It was concluded that equality of opportunity certainly needs to form part of any policy-making agenda.

Ana Colovic highlighted national differences in approaches to the design and implementation of cluster policies. She questioned whether cluster policies need to be designed if innovation is going well independently. In addition, she noted some of the challenges for policy makers in reality, such as considering whether all the policy tools available and variety of implementing agencies are made clear to actors. Colovic concluded by thinking about the contrasting budgets allocated in different countries for innovation strategies, and questioned what the appropriate level of budget would be to meet both local and national priorities.

  1. What would success look like?

Rosa Fernandez told the workshop that for Roy Sandbach, success would mean 60,000 new jobs created in the North East – but where would they come from? Dave Waller recognised success more in stronger leadership and governance, the development of useful tool kits, better spatial, temporal and more granular mapping of economic activity, and the application of Smart Specialisation principles to all aspects of EU programming.

Adrian Healey, on the other hand, measures success in terms of the gains made from shared governance, shared leadership, common objectives, overcoming fragmentation and getting beyond existing structures. He argued that success would rely on changing the mind-set of local authorities, as the only part of the system not fully connected is the public sector.

The biggest challenge for regions is to build capacity. However, as Henry Etzkowitz argued, the sheer scale of Silicon Valley’s financial and talent resources makes it difficult for Europe to compete. Maybe it need not all be bad news however, as the UK and Europe could yet be a Land of Opportunity.

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Game-changer: Sport Business Centre hosts launch of Play-Offs book

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This post was contributed by Nick Eisen, Business Engagement Reporter, Birkbeck School of Business, Economics and Informatics

The Agony & The Ecstasy, A Comprehensive History Of The English Football League Play-Offs (book cover)

The Agony & The Ecstasy, A Comprehensive History Of The English Football League Play-Offs (book cover)

Birkbeck Sport Business Centre‘s public seminar series struck a more literary note in presenting the launch of author and journalist Richard Foster’s book, The Agony & The Ecstasy, A Comprehensive History Of The English Football League Play-Offs, at the British Medical Association on Monday 16 November.

As Foster explains in his book (the first to be written on the Play-Offs), the competition was introduced “as a system for deciding the last promotion slot for the three lower divisions of the Football League in the 1986/87 season”.

The richest sporting match in the world

When the competition began, it could be regarded as resembling one of its own participant underdog teams – unfancied and not expected to go far. But, as the author said, underdogs have defeated giants, providing some of the Play-Offs’ most memorable moments. Similarly, perhaps to a much greater degree, the competition itself has had an impact beyond all initial expectations.

The Play-Offs began as an interim attempt to reinvigorate a game in decline: attendances were falling and 1985 had seen several disasters, including the tragedy at Heysel Stadium, where dozens died and hundreds were injured when a wall collapsed.

In their first season, the Play-Offs received no television coverage. Now every match is televised live. In 1987 the monetary return on winning promotion to the top division was about £500,000. Now, winning is estimated to be worth more than £130 million. That figure could exceed £200 million when the 2016/2017 English Premier League television deal begins. The Football League Championship Play-Offs Final is the richest single sporting match in the world.

Room for improvement

With humour, energy and able backing from his support team, Foster communicated his expertise and passion for the Play-Offs to a large and appreciative audience, and brought to life his favourite memories from three decades of the competition.

As a staunch advocate for the Play-Offs, Foster nevertheless saw room for improvement and has acknowledged the competition’s critics, including those who have questioned its fairness as a way of deciding promotions.

An audience member also asked about the difficulties posed by the Premiership’s delayed-payments process for newly promoted clubs lacking the immediate cash resources of established rivals, and Foster pondered the possibilities of weighting payments towards poorer newcomers.

On balance, however, the author favoured the Play-Offs: his book describes the competition’s drama and spectacle re-engaging fans and clubs at a dismal time in the 1980s, and continuing to do so today.

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Gender, Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Similarity and difference

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This post was contributed by members of the Transforming Institutions by Gendering contents and Gaining Equality in Research (TRIGGER) team – a research project in Birkbeck’s Department of Management – following a ‘Gender, Entrepreneurship and Innovation’ networking event at the Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning Economy (CIRCLE) at Lund University, Sweden., Monday, November 30

TRIGGER - CIRCLE event. (Photo courtesy of Lucinda David)

TRIGGER – CIRCLE event. (Photo courtesy of Lucinda David)

This international panel was made up of people with differing expertise in gender, entrepreneurship and innovation. It included academics whose roles are to support female entrepreneurship, those who have first-hand experience of supporting the gender equality process in the university setting, those whose roles had been to fund gender sensitive research and those who research gender differences.

The mixture of experience led to interesting perspectives and insights on women’s attitudes towards entrepreneurship and career development more generally. A key theme raised by Henry Etzkowitz was similarity and/or difference:

Under what conditions do women want similarity or want differences from men in the way they are perceived and supported?

The panellists were:

  • Professor Asa Lindholm Dahlstrand, Circle (Lund University) and expert on entrepreneurship
  • Professor Helen Lawton Smith, TRIGGER project, Birkbeck
    Professor Carin Holmquist, Stockholm School of Economics (SSE): first chairwoman of the SSE Business Lab
  • Professor Per Eriksson, Lund University, former head of Vinnova, now Lund University
  • Helena Ljusberg, Senior Business Developer, Lund University Innovation Support System
  • Dr Cristina Glad, Former Executive VP, BioInvent International AB
  • Dr Linnea Taylor, WINGS (Women In Great Sciences), Lund University
  • Professor Henry Etzkowitz, Stanford University & Birkbeck, Author of Athena Unbound

Differences are not in people, but in structures

On similarity and the issue of perception of what women entrepreneurs do, Carin Holmquist forcibly made the point that women are driving business as much as men. She argued that there is no difference between male/female entrepreneurs. It is time to stop making assumptions about the peculiarities / needs of women entrepreneurs: differences are not in people, but in structures. She cited Tiger Woods, “I am the human race”. However, there is a tendency to disadvantage women as role models. Often when thinking of an entrepreneur, male entrepreneur figures, such as Bill Gates or Richard Branson come up. Even though women do not set up big hi-tech giant companies, they set up other types of business, which are not often seen as “innovation”. Successful entrepreneurship is what creates value and/or employment regardless of whether “technical” or “soft”.

Women and men are similarly gifted at identifying markets and handling customers. The issue is not about including women in, but more about accepting women’s ideas. Nowadays, as Cristina Gad pointed out, there are many more role models, both male and female, and very good activities for researchers who want to become entrepreneurs as well as mentoring programmes on commercialisation of research. For example at Lund, Helena Ljusburg told about a support programme on entrepreneurship called “Innovation Toolbox”. It is a network of organisations to support innovation including a laboratory incubator. But it is important how women define themselves (for example as an engineer, or as a woman engineer?)

Differences in career development

All is not easy, however. On differences in how women approach career development, it was agreed that women and men behave differently when applying for a job or for promotion. Men can be much more pushy while women are more afraid to step up. Inequality is reinforced where there is a bias in various committees, especially funding bodies, where men sit on the board and look at the process. There are obvious different outcomes of processes if more women are involved in the promotion committees.

Women are also disadvantaged in their careers by differences in perception about maternity leave. Linnea Taylor finds that men are celebrated as a role model if taking up paternity leave but it is expected that a woman will take up 100% maternity leave. Carin Holmquist argued that a main reason for women in founding a company is to combine work and family. There is a danger of the discourse about women and men being equal and the same where there are different cultural and practical circumstances. But women can do more to help themselves. Helena Ljusberg who supports women entrepreneurs said that it is important for female founders to learn leadership skills, and how to delegate tasks to others.

For Per Eriksson the main lesson learned in supporting the careers of other people is that you tend to help people you like and that look like you. He started a gender pilot at Vinnova. He also appointed a woman as a deputy and he termed it as “job marriage”. For him it was a huge learning experience because of the opportunity to learn from the difference and complementarity between male/female.

Gender paradox

In Sweden as elsewhere, inequality encountered by female immigrants is an issue of difference. Even for well-qualified ones, female immigrants generally have far fewer career opportunities: as shown by Eurostat data, the female foreigner is less likely to have access to social networks.

From the discussion it seems as if there is a “gender paradox”. Many speakers mentioned the importance of networking with the like-minded female while others mentioned about complementarity (working with males). The answer to the question of under what conditions do women want similarity and under what conditions women want difference is “it depends”. If it is access to money, then the answer is working with a man. It is usually men that are the brokers of finance. However, Henry Etzkowitz argued, it is vital to recognise that the informal channels or social networks should be gender blind. Access to informal connections helps regardless of gender.

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This article was written on Wednesday, 7 December by Helen Lawton Smith, Ning Baines, Viviana Meschitti, Asa Lindholm Dahlstrand

Racism and Nationalism after the Scottish Referendum and 2015 General Election

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This post was contributed by Dr Brendan McGeever of the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck)

Racism-Nationalism-in-the-UKOn Friday November 13 the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research very generously hosted a one-day colloquium on the theme ‘Racism and Nationalism after the Scottish Referendum and 2015 General Election’. The event brought together seven speakers to address the relationship between racism and nationalism in the Scottish, Welsh, English and Northern Irish contexts. The rationale for doing so was born out of a desire to reflect on the historic events of the past year or so – the Scottish Referendum of September 2014 and the General Election of May 2015.

With the dramatic electoral surge of the Scottish National Party and the prospect of the EU Referendum to come, the British state, it seems, has entered a new phase of constitutional crisis. In these changing times, with UKIP also on the rise electorally and the future of the Union seeming uncertain, the colloquium offered a timely opportunity to explore the extent to which racism across Britain is finding expression through the assertion of new nationalisms.

‘Non-racial’ Wales, and Unionism in Northern Ireland

The day was split into three sessions. In the first of these, Dr Bethan Harries (University of Manchester) presented on racism and nationalism in Wales, and Dr Robbie McVeigh addressed the Northern Irish context. Dr Harries began proceedings by showing how a discourse of national ‘innocence’ has led to an erasure of Welsh complicity in colonialism. The dominant political narrative in Wales, Dr Harries argued, is not ‘post-racial’ but actually ‘non-racial’, and it presents serious barriers to the elaboration of an anti-racist politics in the here and now.

In the second presentation, Dr McVeigh offered a stark picture of Northern Ireland, where the decline of Unionism as a political force is leading to the articulation of a specifically defensive type of racist politics that is not just colour-coded, but anti-Catholic as well. Dr McVeigh further argued that as Unionism continues to be rooted in a shrinking demographic base, the politics of racism and British nationalism will likely come to be posed in ever sharper terms.

Ethnic and national belonging in Scotland

The second session was dedicated entirely to Scotland, and included presentations by Dr Nasar Meer (University of Strathclyde) and Dr Brendan McGeever (Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck). In his presentation, Dr Meer surveyed elite political discourses in Scotland on ethnic and national belonging, showing that despite the real advances that have been made in recent years, there remains much to do.

By referencing various interviews with members of the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government, Dr Meer showed how implicit hierarchies continue to shape elite understandings of Scottish nationhood. In a paper co-written with Professor Satnam Virdee (University of Glasgow), Dr McGeever suggested the question of racism has been largely occluded from the national conversation that has been taking place since the beginning of the Independence referendum campaigns, and that this has further consolidated the longstanding Scottish myth that there is ‘no problem here’.

This national re-imagining of Scotland as a uniquely ‘tolerant’ society acquires its powerful appeal, argued McGeever, precisely through its capacity to define itself in opposition to that which it is not (e.g. British/English). According to McGeever, not only does this project Scotland’s disproportionate role in Slavery and Empire onto England, but it arguably prevents any serious discussion of racism in the country today.

England, north and south

The third and final session consisted of two papers on England, the first given by Professor Anoop Nayak (Newcastle University), who explored racism and nationalism in North East England, and the second by Dr Steve Garner (Birmingham City University) who discussed south England. Professor Nayak’s contribution took the form of a historical-geography of the North East, showing how its transition from being a region of production to consumption has been accompanied by further transformations in the politics of racism and identity. Professor Nayak argued the case for decoupling whiteness from nationalism, and suggested that English nationalism is not of high capital in the North East and that local and regional identifications remain much stronger. This, he argued, is reflected in both the politics of racism and anti-racism.

The final paper by Dr Garner presented a quite different picture of South England. Based on a range of qualitative interviews with white working class participants in Bristol and Plymouth, Dr Garner showed how English national belonging is deeply racialised, and is structured by a ‘moral economy of whiteness’. Garner examined the affective and emotional routes through such racialised nationalism is articulated, showing how ‘nation’, ‘welfare’ and ‘immigration’ provide the frame through which racism and (localised) English nationalism come to be expressed.

Finally, Professor Claire Alexander (University of Manchester) gave a set of closing remarks that offered insights into each of the presentations. Professor Alexander closed the event by inviting participants to reconsider Englishness and English nationhood, and to question why minorities in England continue to find them so difficult to claim as their own.

With Britain’s constitutional crisis remaining far from resolved, it seems that the various issues discussed in this colloquium are unlikely to go away any time soon.

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(Homepage slider image caption: ‘UK Grunge Flag’, CC Nicholas Raymond via Flickr)