IGL2018 Programme
View the programme for each day by clicking on the links below.
To access the slides from the main day, click on the speaker's name. Please note not all speakers used slides during the conference.
Laura Bechthold, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
Laura Rosendahl-Huber, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition*
Andrea Blasco, Laboratory for Innovation Science Harvard
Karim Lakhani, Harvard Business School
Michael Menietti, Laboratory for Innovation Science Harvard*
Igor Asanov, University of Kassel*
David McKenzie, World Bank Group
Thomas Astebro, HEC Paris
Francis Flores, University of Kassel
Guido Buenstorf, University of Kassel
Rembrand Koning, Harvard Business School*
Sharique Hasan, Duke University Fuqua School of Business
Aaron Chatterji, Duke University Fuqua School of Business
Misha Teplitskiy, Laboratory for Innovation Science Harvard*
Eva Guinan, Harvard Medical School
Karim Lakhani, Harvard Business School
Prithwiraj Choudhury, Harvard Business School*
Evan Starr, University of Maryland
Rajshree Agarwal, University of Maryland
Yael Hochberg, Rice University
Hans Christensen, University of Chicago
Eric Floyd, University of California, San Diego
Esther Bailey, University of California, Irvine*
Chaired by: Kirsten Bound, Executive Director of Research, Analysis, and Policy, Nesta (UK)
Sandrine Kergroach, Senior Economist, OECD (France)
John Van Reenen, Professor of Applied Economics, MIT Sloan School of Management (USA)
Sarah Weisberg, Chief Scientist, BioBus (USA)
Recent studies have revealed the extent to which inequality is stifling innovation. Are innovation policies that focus on supporting existing innovators merely tinkering in the margins compared to the gains that could be made from tapping the swathes of lost potential? What does the data tell us? How widespread is the problem? What are the kinds of policy interventions that really work, and does this require a fundamental re-think of our approach to innovation policy?
Chaired by: Sameeksha Desai, Director of Knowledge Creation and Research, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (USA)
Josep Miquel Piqué, President, International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation, Executive President, La Salle Technova Innovation Park, and former CEO, 22@ Barcelona Innovation District (Spain)
Jonathan Ortmans, President, Global Entrepreneurship Network (USA)
Jennifer Vey, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program, the Brookings Institution (USA)
Cities have put forward a range of initiatives (from innovation districts to technology trials, to entire communities) to attract innovation and entrepreneurial activity, and support its sustainable integration. This session will showcase some of the most novel initiatives in this space, and the impact they are having on their local ecosystems.
Chaired by: Juan Mateos-Garcia, Head of Innovation Mapping, Nesta (UK)
Katy Börner, Professor of Engineering and Information Science, Indiana University (USA)
César Hidalgo, Associate Professor, MIT (USA)
A session showcasing examples of how to use “big data” in innovation and growth policymaking, including mapping the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems more accurately and in real time, and measuring the “impact” of policy interventions.
Chaired by: Albert Bravo-Biosca, Director, Innovation Growth Lab, Nesta (UK)
Alfonso Gambardella, Professor, Bocconi University (Italy)
Ina Ganguli, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts at Amherst (USA)
Laura Rosendahl Huber, Senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (Germany)
In this session, we will look at some of the leading trials in this policy space and find out what they can tell us about what can work to improve innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth. The session will showcase results from full impact evaluations to small tweaks to the status quo, demonstrating how experimental approaches can be used not only to evaluate policy programmes, but also to design and continuously improve them.
Chaired by: Karim Lakhani, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School and Director, Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (USA)
Balaji Bondili, Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP (USA)
Dyan Finkhousen, Director, Open Innovation and Advanced Manufacturing, GENIUSLINK™, GE Global Operations (USA)
Mike Morris, CEO, Topcoder (USA)
Businesses innovation processes are increasingly becoming more collaborative: Industries coming together to tackle a common challenge, businesses teaming up to apply for collaborative R&D grants, large multinationals working closely with their suppliers to increase (and spread) innovation through their supply chains, big corporates engaging with startups with novel ideas, and large and small business collaborating more closely with universities to build on their knowledge and expertise. In this session we will hear the industry view on what policymakers can do to make the most of these collaboration opportunities, with examples of places where it has (or hasn't) worked well.
Chaired by: William Maloney, Chief Economist, Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions, World Bank Group (USA)
Tera Allas, Senior Fellow, McKinsey Center for Government (UK)
Miriam Bruhn, Senior Economist, Finance and Private Sector Development Team, Development Research Group, World Bank Group (USA)
Chad Syverson, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business (USA)
Evidence for developed and developing economies alike reveals a sharp decline in total factor productivity (TFP) growth in recent years. If this “productivity slump” is part of a longer-term trend, it is particularly worrying as many of the same countries are simultaneously experiencing declines in labor force growth and savings rates. How should policymakers respond and repair the “productivity machine”?
Chaired by: Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive, Nesta (UK)
Eva Camerer, Head of Innovation Policy, Innovation Norway (Norway)
Rodney Ghali, Assistant Secretary to Cabinet, Impact and Innovation Unit, Privy Council Office (Canada)
Matt Homer, Chief Innovation Officer, Future State (USA)
As governments across the world struggle to cope with the demands and implications of emerging technologies, policymakers must develop new approaches to encourage and support innovation, and to manage its risks. A more experimental approach to innovation policy is evolving, focusing on methods that allow quick and safe testing out of new technologies to explore their impact, before they scale. There are promising case studies to point to - from experimental approaches to FinTech regulation, Norway’s autonomous shipping testbeds, and Canada’s work to incentivise experimentation with a new funding directive for Government Departments. In this session we will hear some examples of these new approaches, to discuss key issues, emerging trends, and the way forward.
Karim Lakhani, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School and Director, Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (USA)
Chaired by: Jon Baron, Vice President of Evidence-Based Policy, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (USA)
Kelly Bidwell, Director, US Office of Evaluation Science (USA)
Iqbal Dhaliwal, Executive Director, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (USA)
David Turvey, General Manager, Insights and Evaluation Branch, Australian Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (Australia)
An increasing number of countries are embracing the idea of policy experimentation, testing their new programmes at small scale to learn whether they work before deciding whether to scale them up. This approach requires a change in culture and processes, and raises a number of challenges, from political to organisational. In this session we will learn how different governments around the world are overcoming these challenges, the benefits they derive from being more experimental, and the models they are using.
Albert Bravo-Biosca, Director, Innovation Growth Lab, Nesta (UK)
"The Politics of Innovation: Why Some Countries Are Better Than Others At Science & Technology"
Mark Zachary Taylor, Associate Professor, Georgia Tech
Location: Cafe ArtScience
Chaired by: Jennifer Vey, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program, the Brookings Institution (USA)
Chandra Briggman, Director, Venture Cafe Foundation (USA)
Josep Miquel Piqué, President, International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation, Executive President, La Salle Technova Innovation Park, and former CEO, 22@ Barcelona Innovation District (Spain)
Paulina Villa, Innovation District Manager, Ruta N Medellin (Colombia)
Over the past two decades, demographic and market forces have been driving an increased clustering of anchor institutions, firms, startups, and amenities in small geographic areas of cities around the world. In this interactive session, leaders from innovation districts in Medellin, Colombia, Barcelona, Spain and Boston, Massachusetts will discuss the challenges that motivated district development in their city, the strategies employed to overcome them, and key outcomes and impacts of those efforts. The session will also provide an opportunity for participants to share insights from their own experiences
Facilitated by: Juan Mateos-Garcia, Head of Innovation Mapping, Nesta (UK), and Chantale Tippett, Principal Researcher, Innovation Systems, Nesta (UK)
This session will give participants an opportunity to turn their data into insight by walking them through key phases of the project pipeline. Starting with an overview of how big data can be used to explore questions of interest in the innovation policy landscape, the session will then be broken down into a series of practical exercises covering data collection, analysis and outputs. These will consist of a combination of short presentations with insight drawn from Nesta’s vast experience and small group exercises. The practical exercises will encourage participants to reflect on how they might implement projects in their own institutional context. The session will conclude with a Q&A on the use of big data for exploring innovation and a recap of key points.
You can access the interactive cards used in the session online here.
Chaired by: Gary Gray, Director, Technology & Innovation, Harvard Catalyst (USA)
Sam Liss, Executive Director, Strategic Partnerships, Harvard Office of Technology Development (USA)
Lesley Millar-Nicholson, Director of Technology Transfer Office, MIT (USA)
Christy Wyskiel, Senior Advisor to the President, Head of John Hopkins Technology Ventures, Johns Hopkins University (USA)
Cutting-edge technologies emerging from the world’s research institutions have incredible potential for commercial use. Without clear paths to market, though, these early technologies often languish on the shelf. Panelists from three top US universities discuss the innovative approaches their institutions are taking to “bridge the gap” between concept and commercial product.
Facilitated by: Jenn Gustetic, Program Executive, Small Business Innovation Research, NASA (USA)
This workshop will explore a recent NASA case study about how government agencies can address societal challenges with matrixed organizational support, multiple strategic partners, and numerous internal and external open innovation approaches and audiences. Beginning in 2012, NASA utilized a strategic process to identify broad societal questions, or grand challenges, that are well suited to the aerospace sector and align with national priorities. This effort generated NASA’s first grand challenge, the Asteroid Grand Challenge (AGC), a large-scale effort using multi-disciplinary collaborations and innovative engagement mechanisms focused on finding and addressing asteroid threats to human populations. The AGC, initiated in 2013, sought to expand public participation, partnerships, and other approaches to find, understand, and overcome these potentially harmful asteroids. This session will explore a selection of AGC activities implemented from 2013 to 2017 and their results. The strategic development of the initiative will be discussed as well as initial successes, strengths, and weaknesses resulting from the first four years of AGC activities and approaches.
Facilitated by: Lisa Corsetto, Senior Policy Associate, J-PAL (USA), Alison Fahey, Senior Policy Manager, J-PAL (USA), Ariella Park, Senior Policy Associate, J-PAL (USA), and Claire Walsh, Senior Policy Manager, J-PAL (USA)
Do decisions always need to be informed by evidence from your local context? How can results of impact evaluations conducted in different contexts apply where you work? At J-PAL we adopt a generalizability framework for integrating different types of evidence, including results from the increasing number of randomized evaluations of social programs, to help make evidence-based policy decisions. Join J-PAL staff for a workshop on how to use the generalizability framework to make evidence-informed decisions.
Facilitated by: Jaime Frias, Senior Economist, World Bank, (USA), Justin Hill, Senior Private Sector Specialist, World Bank, (USA), and Marcio Cruz, Senior Economist in the Trade, The World Bank Group (USA)
Investing in innovation and technological catch-up holds potential for vast productivity gains in developing countries, yet few countries make these efforts. Whilst many developed nations are worrying about a slowdown of diffusion, with frontier firms pulling away from the majority. Join this debate to discuss and learn about the causes and solutions to this “innovation paradox,” including when and how to rely on specific policy instruments, and what is the latest evidence that support the choice of policies to advance innovation.
Facilitated by: Bas Leurs, Head of Learning Experience Design, Nesta (UK)
What can organisations achieve by becoming more experimental, and how can this be done? This workshop will focus on how to foster an experimentation culture in your organisation, create a better dynamic between exploring and validating ideas, and re-frame failure in order to learn about what works. Participants will share (under Chatham House rules) experiences, challenges and lessons learned when strategically planning and doing experiments. Attendees will leave the session with clearer insight on what drives impactful experimentation, and practical ideas of how to use this strategically in their own work.
Facilitated by: Steve Rader, Deputy Manager, NASA Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation
This workshop will focus on lessons learned and best practices for starting up on Open Innovation Program in an organization. The session will draw upon the experience of NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation as well as from its collaboration with organizations from around the world.
Facilitated by: Triin Edovald, Principal Researcher, Nesta (UK), Teo Firpo, Researcher, Nesta (UK) and James Phipps, Head, Economic Analysis and Policy Development, Nesta (UK)
In this workshop, policymakers will discuss the key political and scientific factors that need to be considered in scoping, designing and running RCTs. The workshop will consist of a series of short presentations, group work and small roundtable discussions. At the end of the session, participants will be familiar with a simple framework of key factors needed for a successful RCT; they will also have an appreciation for how this framework can be applied to specific cases.
Facilitated by: John Williams, Director of Innovation and Technology, US Small Business Administration (USA)
The potential for public procurement as demand-side R&D and innovation promotion policies is yet unreached. This is partly attributed to the difficulties of executing such projects. During this interactive workshop, participants will learn from the experiences of running the U.S. SBIR program.
Facilitated by: Benjamin Reid, Head of International Innovation, Nesta (UK) and Rosa Carbo-Mascarell, Project Manager, Digital Liberties (UK)
In this session, participants will get to playtest and feedback on a new innovation policy-themed board game developed by Nesta. This will be an opportunity to think more widely about the role simulation and games can play in innovation policy training and practice.
* Note participants are expected to attend both simulation sessions in order to complete the game.
Facilitated by: Tris Dyson, Executive Director, Challenge Prize Centre, Nesta (UK)
Challenge prizes shine a light on a neglected issue or problem and incentivise new enterprise and endeavour to find better solutions. This workshop will focus on lessons learned and best practices for the development of challenge prizes drawing from the experience of Nesta’s Challenge Prize Centre.
Facilitated by: Bas Leurs, Head of Learning Experience Design, Nesta (UK) and James Phipps, Head, Economic Analysis and Policy Development, Nesta (UK)
Adopting experimental policy-making requires policy-makers to change how they think about failure. New ideas and approaches may not work as first planned, and robust evaluations may find different impacts than those reported by beneficiaries. But as there is a tendency to talk loudly about one’s successes, whilst trying to hide failures, how can we better learn from failure if we don’t often hear about it? In this interactive workshop, participants will exchange experiences (under Chatham House rules) and lessons learnt through semi-structured discussions. It is said that finding out what doesn’t work is as useful as knowing what does. We hope this proves to be the case for attendees.
Facilitated by: Alex Glennie, Principal Researcher, International Innovation, Nesta (UK)
Eva Camerer, Head of Innovation Policy, Innovation Norway (Norway)
Ana Ponte, Unit Coordinator for Partnerships and Cooperation, ANI (Portugal)
Nadine Teles, Junior Consultant for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, ANI (Portugal)
National innovation agencies are often thought of as funding bodies, supporting innovation, entrepreneurship and growth primarily through the provision of grants or other types of financial support. Yet in recent years, many have taken on a much wider remit, offering a range of advisory and support services, and frequently playing a role in driving forward ambitious societal missions or international collaborations. Through a mix of short presentations and interactive workshop discussions, this session will give participants the opportunity to learn about how innovation agencies around the world have been adapting their approach in response to these new demands, and to explore the skills and capabilities that they need to develop in order to provide innovators with smarter, more inclusive and more dynamic support in the future.
Facilitated by: Benjamin Reid, Head of International Innovation, Nesta (UK) and Rosa Carbo-Mascarell, Project Manager, Digital Liberties (UK)
In this session, participants will get to playtest and feedback on a new innovation policy-themed board game developed by Nesta. This will be an opportunity to think more widely about the role simulation and games can play in innovation policy training and practice.
* Note participants are expected to attend both simulation sessions in order to complete the game.