Stanford Professor to explain what we can learn from the US at All-island Innovation Conference

Collaborative networks are the locus of innovation and explain why high-tech clusters form in some regions but not others, even when the regions have comparable resources. 

That is a key message of Professor Woody Powell, a leading economic sociologist at Stanford University, California who will be speaking at InterTradeIreland’s 2010 All-island Innovation Conference. The conference, entitled Building Collaborative Networks for Innovation, takes place on 28 and 29 June at University College Dublin.  

Professor Powell will explain the factors required to build robust business clusters and how these can be applied to other countries including Ireland when he delivers a keynote address at the opening day of the innovation conference.

As part of his research into the biotechnology industry in the US, Professor Powell studied eleven regions that were rich in resources such as scientific knowledge, money and business skills. Each community had the potential prerequisites needed to form biotech clusters, yet only three formed robust clusters while the other eight did not.

Speaking in advance of the conference, Professor Powell said, “During my keynote address I will outline the key factors and explain the role that collaborative networks play in forming robust biotech clusters in the US.” He added, “The lessons I have drawn from my research, which I will share at the conference, are transferrable to other industrial sectors.” He concluded, “The lessons are also transferrable to other countries, including Ireland, and could be instrumental in the development of a robust knowledge-based economy on the island of Ireland.”

InterTradeIreland’s Strategy and Policy Director, Aidan Gough said, “Connectivity is the key that can unlock and transfer creative potential into commercial reality. Forming these connections around an enterprise, across this island and beyond is a key aim of InterTradeIreland and this two day conference. It is critical to the future competitiveness of the island.”

 
Aidan Gough, Director, Strategy and Policy, InterTradeIreland

Other speakers at the conference include some of the island’s leading business and academic leaders who will share their expertise and insight as to the potential opportunities of using collaborative networks to drive and facilitate innovation.

Speakers and panelists include Bernie Culligan, CEO Clarigen; Martin Curley, Director, Intel Labs Europe; Gina Quin, CEO, Dublin Chamber of Commerce; John O’Dea, CEO, Crospon; Leo Bishop, Head of Strategic Investments, Research, Development and Innovation Policy, IDA Ireland; Hubert Henry, Director of Innovation, Bord na Móna and Peter FitzGerald, founder and MD, Randox Laboratories.

According to Dr Martin Curley, Intel Corporation, “Mass collaboration will be a dominant paradigm for innovation in the knowledge economy, collaborative networks and innovation will be a foundation for this.”

Damini Kumar, the award winning designer, and the Director of Design and Creativity at NUI Maynooth will also be a guest speaker on Day 1 of the conference. Last year she was appointed a European Ambassador for Creativity and Innovation by the European Union to foster the principles and value of innovation and creativity at all levels of European society.

Day 2 of the conference will focus on Creating Innovation Communities and will bring together academic researchers from the across the island of Ireland and internationally. These speakers will explore and examine current research on the topic of innovation networks including the role that multi-national companies have to play in the development of such networks. 

The InterTradeIreland All-island 2010 Innovation Conference is being organised by NovaUCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre and UCD's Innovation Research Unit.

The conference forms part of the InterTradeIreland All-island Innovation Programme which aims to promote and encourage innovation across the island of Ireland. This Programme is organised by InterTradeIreland, Queen’s University Belfast, NovaUCD and the Centre for Innovation and Structural Change, NUI Galway.

Click here for further details on the conference. 

All are welcome to attend and the conference is free of charge.

ENDS

23 June 2010

For further information contact Micéal Whelan, NovaUCD, e: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie, t: +353 1 716 3712.

Editors Notes

Professor Woody Powell is an economic sociologist who holds appointments in several Schools, including Education, Business and Engineering at Stanford University, California. He joined the Stanford faculty in July 1999, after previously teaching at the University of Arizona, MIT, and Yale. His primary interests are in how ideas and practices emerge and spread. To study this, he examines how knowledge is transferred across units and organisations and the role that networks have in facilitating or hindering innovation. 

In recent work, he has examined the transfer of university science into commercial development by technology-based companies, and the emergence of new problem-driven areas of science. Using Stanford as a natural laboratory, Powell and colleagues are studying the university’s large multi-disciplinary initiatives in ‘biology and engineering’ and ‘energy and environment’, exploring how new knowledge is created in interdisciplinary scientific communities. 

Powell has been a member of the board of directors of the Social Science Research Council since 2000 and an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute since 1999. He holds honorary degrees from Uppsala University, Copenhagen Business School, and the Helsinki School of Economics, and is a foreign member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science.

The InterTradeIreland All-island Innovation Programme aims to promote and encourage innovation across the island of Ireland. Best international practice in an area of innovation is shared with business leaders, students, academics, knowledge transfer professionals and policy makers in each region via innovation lectures, seminars and master classes. The All-island Innovation Programme is complemented by a Community of Researchers working on innovation across the island. The aim of this community is to study innovation in several academic disciplines and to progress the development of an all-island knowledge economy via aligning best practice in innovation research with policy-making and its implementation.

NovaUCD is University College Dublin’s Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre.  NovaUCD is responsible for the commercialisation of intellectual property arising from UCD research and for the development of co-operation with the industry and business communities. NovaUCD as a purpose-built incubation centre also nurtures new technology and knowledge-intensive enterprises. NovaUCD has been funded through a unique public-private partnership that includes AIB Bank, Arthur Cox, Deloitte, Enterprise Ireland, Ericsson, Goodbody Stockbrokers, UCD and Xilinx.

UCD’s Innovation Research Unit provides an excellent interdisciplinary research environment for investigating the governance of complex innovation systems on the international, national, regional and sectoral level. IRU's emphasis is on applying new methods to innovation research such as agent-based simulation and social network analysis complementing quantitative and qualitative research in the social sciences. Research results shall support policymakers and business managers in facing the economic, social, and political challenges presented by developments in science, technology and innovation.