Today was the first day of IC6, the world conference on intellectual capital for communities (cities, regions and nations). It took place at the World Bank office at Avenue D'Lena 66 in Paris/France.

Perspectives for the 21st Century and Global Innovation Programmes

• Speaker: Thierry Gaudin
• Charpie report delivered in 1967 raised innovation policy as political issue.
• The three folds of innovation policy: 1.) technical culture policy 2.) a policy to remove obstacles to innovations 3.) a challenging meaningful great program policy.
• Studies by Arthur D. Little about Boston and Stanford Research Institute about Silicon Valley.
• "As we may think" by Vannevar Bush as description what will happen 50 years after (remark: contains the vision of the memex).
• The "cognitive revolution" (1980-2180) follows the "industrial revolution" (1750-1970).
• The illusion of financial management: "we can control the world with 400 words".
• Twelve programs from http://2100.org (e.g. energy, planetary garden, global communication, ocean city, town reshaping/shrinking cities).
• "The reason to concentrate people in city is not so pushing like in the past" (due to internet and replacement of manpower by robots) (remark: that implies some changes to the Charta of Athens that seems to be still the basis of a lot of city development projects).
• "More commercial, less meaningful" :-)

Innovation Policy in an Open Innovation Context - The Case of Japan

• Speaker: Yoshiaki Tojo (METI, Japan)
• Changing Nature of Innovation: from closed to open innovation paradigm.
• Firms, entrepreneurs, research, consumers and citizens are sources of innovation.
• New agenda for innovaion policy: 1.) Fostering collaboration and diffusion of innovation 2.) Animating individuals for innovation in "edges" (long tail).
• Connections between "IP Market" (IP fund, licencing, IP purchase), "Knowledge Market" (R&D Collaboration, Data Sharing and Joint Mining, M&A for technology) and "Knowledge Network" (HRST mobility, Spontaneous knowledge spill-over, researchers network, discussion group/conference, web 2.0/social netwokrs).
• Emerging knowledge market instruments: patent pools, IP clearing houses, knowledge brokering platforms, auctions, prize mechanism, creative commons.
• The "Knowledge-Creation Community Cloud" (Image).
• Japan's 4th Science and Technology Basic Plan (2011-2015): 1.) promoting green and life innovation 2.) building R&D platform 3.) strengthening fundamentals.
• Agile innovation for short time to market! (Illustration by Hayanon).
• Possible IC6 Manifesto: Knowledge is the key ressource in society, and all individuals shall be empowered and animated to be knowledge workers and/or knowledge citizens. Let them be the dominant group in your society (derived from a Peter Druckers citation).

Innovation Policy and Strategy of India

• Speaker: Parveen Arora (Ministry of Science and Technology, India)
• Evidence Based Policy Planning for the country.
• "The progress of science and its offspring technology is changing the way many thinks of himself and the world ... Science shall put an end to superstition, rituals and dogma" (First Indian Prime Minister).
• The departement of science and technology runs a cross-ministry advisory board (remark: very good, also necessary in companies!)
• Example Instruments: Biotechnology Vision (2001), Knowledge Network Policy (2009), Skill Develop Policy (2009), Ethical Guidelines.
• From horizontal to sectoral focus: DBT, Health research, MoES - pharma, Auto, IT.

Managerial Quality - Measurement and Application

• Speaker: Baruch Lev (New York University, http://www.baruch-lev.com)
• Hint: the presentation Baruch gave was pretty similar to this one: http://www.disas.unisi.it/jmg/round/ancona_3.pdf.
• Our question: "What's the effect of managerial quality, or talent on corporate performance?" or "Are managers as important as the circumstances: economy and industry factors, firm size, intellectual property (patents, brands)?".
• Evidence of (managerial) people making the difference: compare Citigroup to JP Morgan Chase during the crisis; compare market capitalization of GE during Jack Welch as CEO and the take over of Jeff Immelt.
• Relevant Studies: "The effects of overconfident managers: They overinvest in poor projects and M&As" (Malmendier and Tate, December 2005), "Do CFOs have styles on their own" (Source missing), "Do CEOs matter?" (Copenhagen Business School, 2006), "Which CEO Characteristics and Abilities Matter" (University of Chicago, 2009), "Quantifying Managerial Ability: A New Measure and Validity Test" (Demerjian, Lev, McVay, 2009).
• Managerial quality is arguably the most important intangible asset of a company.
• Enterprise Performance = (Physical Capital + Human Capital + R&D/Brands + Other Resources) * Managerial Quality (remark: isn't managerial quality just part of human capital? Most of managers have normal employee contracts (they are not owner or entrepreneurs), they have just different roles and tasks so why separate?)
• Examples of managerial quality at IBM, Xerox, Dell, SwissRe (and 100 insurance companies worldwide).
• Finding: 24% of market-over-book-price depends on managerial quality.

Conditions for the Formation of Knowledge Networks: A Geographical Perspective

• Speaker: Johannes Glückler (University of Heidelberg)
• The MILECS case: technical vs. social networks (personal contacts are most important source of new information; the intranet is even less important than the internet and print information).
• Method: social network analysis.

  

• Constraints on personal knowledge transfer: 1.) Co-location 2.) Status level 3.) Status equality 4.) Native language equality (not significant are: language overlap, tenure difference, age difference, competence overlap, qualification equality).
• The CHEMICAL AG case.

IC Agenda, Regional innovation Policies and Higher Education Institutions (HEI)

• Speaker: P. Dubarle (OECD)
• Contributions to regional development and IC: supply of human capital, provision of technology, spinofs and entrepreneurship, cultural distributions, policy advice.
• Regional engagement policies emphasizing innovation and IC: Promote TTOs (transfer technology office) and HEI openness to contract research, favour a better integration of HEI in RIS, Connect HEI with clusters.

Technical Assistance for Knowledge Economies

• Speaker: Jacque Van Der Meer (European Investment Bank)
• Joined Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions (JASPERS), assistence is free of charge.
• Since 01.01.2010 "Knowledge Economy" is a new topic in JASPERS with four people covering R&D infrastructures, science and technology parks, incubators, information and communication technology, specialized health care infrastructures.
• Lisbon Strategy, Vision 2020 and CIP 2006-2013.

Knowledge Networks and Markets: Fostering the Circulation of Ideas to support Innovation

• Speaker: Dominique Guellec (OECD)
• Ministerial Council of IECD (28.05.2010): "We will (...) develop knowledge networks and markets (KNM) with effective protection of intellectual property rights".
• Three types of KNM: 1.) IP marketplaces (trading patents, brokers, pools, funds) 2.) Collaborative innovation (joined research, R&D outsourcing, R&D crowdsourcing (e.g. Innocentive), customer innovation, open source communities) 3.) Knowledge platforms (expert networks, expert markets).
• Innovation and productivity depend on access to knowledge: new inventions (recombination), division ov innovativ labour, avoiding undue duplications, direct competition between inventors, broader use (diffusion) of inventions.
• Internet/ICT and globalalization as drivers for a "new world" where invention activities are distributed and interconnected.
• "Knowledge networks and markets are the infrastructure that governs the circulation of knowledge, the nervous system of this new world".
• "Making universities the hubs of the knowledge economy".

The International Monitoring (IMO) Project in Germany

• Speaker: Peter Pawlowsky (University Chemnitz), Günther Koch (New Club of Paris)
• Project funded German Ministry of Education and Research.
• Mission Statement: develop an international monitoring strategy to cope with global dilemmas (e.g. business/individual interests, competition/cooperation, sustainability/maximizing short term profit).
• Trends: demographic change, tertiarization and quartiarization, growing change dynamics, increasing uncertainty, acceleration of technological change.
• Fields of actions of national expert panel: work systems and processes, management of uncertainty, change of work, intellectual capital.
• European Observatory on Intangible Assets (http://www.ll-a.fr/intangibles).
• Example of regional IC Report in Ortenaukreis (PDF in german) (close to Strasbourg).
• Reprecentative surveys on IC/KM in 2006 (n=2300) and 2010 (n=3500).
• Book: "Tipping Point" by Malcom P.
• "The Austrian Knowledge Report", the next step is a knowledge strategy for austria (http://wissen.cominno.eu.
• Why not take action for a real political movement: SIC! Social Intellectual Capital Party ("We engage for a strategy that the EU within 10 years will become the most competitive, most dynamic knowledge based social and economic area in the world") :-)
• Website: http://www.internationalmonitoring.com.

Innovation Futures: How emerging innovation patterns change the European innovation landscape

• Speaker: Karl-Heinz Leitner (Austrian Institute of Technology)
• "How will innovation be organised in the futures? It's about innovating innovation".
• New innovation patterns: open innovation (Chesbrough), user innovation (von Hippel), virtual customer methods (Dahan and Hauser), innovation communities, Commons-based Peer-Production (Benkler, Herstatt and Raasch), crowdsourcing (Howe, Brabham), personal fabrication (Greshenfeld), soft innovation and design innovation (NESTA, Stoneman, Verganti), user created content (OECD), value innovation (Kim and Malbourgne), eco-innovation models (Stahel, Braungarth, Lovins), service innovation patterns (Miles), innovation in the public sector (Windrum and Koch), social innovation.
• Weak signal scanning: ideas in action (high transparency at Dell Idea Storm), innovation culture of the tata group, 24 hours of innovation, MINATEC ideas lab, fully sponsored innovation camp for young people, design thinking in MBA programs, Bildr (do it yourself electronic kit), contest "Save our energy - The energy efficient city 2020), Venlo (a whole town adopts the principle of "waste is food"), breeding tables etc.
• Innocamps.
• Website: http://www.innovation-futures.org.

Aalto Camp for Societal Innovation (ACSI)

• Speaker: Pirjo Stahle (University of Turku)
• Global innovatio and learning platform that focuses on societal innovation.
• Pilot camp 28.06.-05.07.2010 in Finland.
• Why Finland? #2 Innovation Hotspot (HBR March 2009), #3 Global Innovation (Economist Intelligence Unit, April 2009), #1 Education System (OECD, PISA), #1 Availability of Scientists and Engineers (World Economic Forum, September 2009), #1 Prosperity (?).
• 3 Themes, 6 Cases: 1.) Learning and changes in working life 2.) Designing communities 3.) New services for the elderly (wellness and health).
• Website: http://www.acsi.aalto.fi.

Personal Insights

• Too much innovation and knowledge initiatives are about technologies not people and society.
• "Management by Voodoo" is a good metaphore for what is happening in a lot of places :-)