Building-up an action research strategy for regional economic diversification and innovation

Canada and Spain have very different histories and cultures, but they have many remarkable similarities with respect to economic diversification and leveraging participation in a rapidly globalizing innovation system. In particular, both countries have strongly regionalized political systems and both have substantial foreign investment in key manufacturing industries, clustered in specific regions. Likewise, both countries depend heavily upon unhindered access to extremely large neighbouring markets – the EU for Spain and the US for Canada.

In October of 2006, the University of Calgary and The Center for Innovation Studies undertook a new venture to begin creating a public consensus and a center of gravity for defining and promoting diversification and innovation goals in the western Canadian provinces. The venture was inaugurated with the First Banff Innovation Summit, which drew broad support and participation from across the political, community and industry spectrum. The Summit was not a conference. It was conceived as a hypothesis-driven action research initiative. Within a defined knowledge management structure, a select but diverse group of policy-makers and industrialists were charged to combine their experience in order to achieve consensus on a few clear principles that absolutely must be applied in order to move the regional innovation and diversification agenda forward.

The seminar will have two parts. The first part will share some of our experiences in conceptualizing and carrying out the Summit initiative as well as in transferring the principles into the public arena and building a strategy for longer term action. The second will outline some of the key findings that underpinned consensus on these principles, focussing specifically upon those that mirror similar issues in the Valencia region.

About Richard W. Hawkins

Dr Richard W. Hawkins is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy at the University of Calgary. He is also Senior Fellow at The Centre for Innovation Studies (THECIS), and Associate Senior Scientist in the Innovation Policy Group at the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). Prior to taking up the Canada Research Chair, he was Leader of the Network Economy Program and later Senior Advisor to the Society, Technology and Innovation Program at the TNO. Previous to this, he was Senior Fellow in the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex.

Dr Hawkins is a political economist who holds BA and MA degrees from Simon Fraser University (Canada), and a DPhil from the University of Sussex (UK). In addition to academic work, he has extensive experience internationally as a policy researcher, consultant and advisor. Major clients have included the European Commission, the OECD, the World Bank, Industry Canada, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), the UK Department of Trade and Industry, the UK Office of Science and Technology, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, the International Labor Organization, the Italian Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (AGCOM), the London Metropolitan Police Service, the Telecommunication Managers Association (UK) and the British Standards Institution.