Place-based Innovation: a Bottom-up Approach to Boost Competitiveness
President, The Council on Competitiveness of Greece,
Chairman & CEO, PETSIAVAS S.A; Dr. Georgios Doukidis, Professor of eBusiness at the Department of Management Science and Technology at Athens University of Economics and Business; Mr. Hasri Hasan, Chief Operating Officer at Northern Corridor Implementation Authority (NCIA); Dr. Roberto Alvarez, the Executive Director at the GFCC; Dr. Saurab Biswas, the Executive Director of Commercialization and Entrepreneurship at Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station; Hon. Deborah Wince-Smith, the President of the GFCC and President and CEO of the Council on Competitiveness; and Mr. Dimitris Papastergiou, the Mayor of the City of Trikala.
Small rural communities and large urban areas have different problems, but both face multifaceted challenges that require new approaches. Place-based innovation can address local development needs by harnessing collaboration and engagement across universities, industry, and the workforce.
On July 21, the GFCC hosted the online conversation Building Competitiveness from Local to Global on Place-based Innovation. This session was part of the GFCC’s effort to enlighten the path to the GFCC 2022 Global Innovation Summit (Athens, Greece, November 14–16, 2022) and gather insights from global leaders on how to build competitiveness in today’s world.
Speakers from the United States, Greece, and Malaysia with wide-ranging expertise gathered to discuss their experiences with place-based innovation. The experts included were Mr. Simos Anastasopoulos, President, The Council on Competitiveness of Greece, Chairman & CEO, PETSIAVAS S.A.; Dr. Saurab Biswas, the Executive Director of Commercialization and Entrepreneurship at Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station; Dr. Georgios Doukidis, Professor of eBusiness at the Department of Management Science and Technology at Athens University of Economics and Business; Mr. Hasri Hasan, Chief Operating Officer at Northern Corridor Implementation Authority (NCIA); Mr. Dimitris Papastergiou the Mayor of the City of Trikala; Hon. Deborah Wince-Smith, the President of the GFCC and President and CEO of the Council on Competitiveness; and Dr. Roberto Alvarez (moderator), the Executive Director at the GFCC.
The session outlined the best practices for achieving place-based innovation and explored successful models worldwide.
New University’s Roles
Universities can catalyze sustainable development and economic growth within innovation ecosystems by generating knowledge, supplying a talented workforce, and acting as a resource for local startups and entrepreneurs.
If universities facilitate access to their resources and assets to local entrepreneurs, it can stimulate innovation and economic growth. Dr. Doukidis pointed out that giving local entrepreneurs the tools to innovate may be as simple as allowing them to use the assets already available at the local university. Dr. Doukidis believes opening universities and offering more resources can transform the surrounding area.
Regional economies also need to take advantage of the research inside universities, leveraging the in-house knowledge to create new businesses and improve local services. More collaboration between local universities and entrepreneurs can accelerate innovation and development efforts. Dr. Doukidis found that after the Greek recession, local universities adapted to help the local economy by teaching and mentoring entrepreneurs.
Yet, universities should also engage with global partners in other locations to extend their outreach and impact. Texas A&M has remote engineering campuses in France, Qatar, and Greece to allow students to engage with global partners, exchanging knowledge from their degrees and internships with the international community. Dr. Biswas explained that creating these entrepreneurship ecosystem incubators enables students and universities to generate innovation at scale and make a model that can be replicated worldwide by different institutions.
Human Capital
Human capital is the foundation of the innovation economy. An inclusive economy that has a skilled and driven workforce, passionate civil servants, and regional experts is more likely to succeed in innovating and digitizing.
A skilled workforce drives economic growth by helping companies maximize productivity, problem solve, improve profitability, and enhance creativity. Upskilling a population must be prioritized to provide a region with ample skilled talent. The Northern Corridor Implementation Agency (NCIA) has facilitated human capital development that focuses on enhancing graduate employability and equipping the workforce with skill sets tailored to the region's key industries. Their emphasis on a talented workforce has given the Northern Corridor in Malaysia an upper hand in creating its innovation ecosystem.
In addition to having a skilled workforce, a region needs local government and other decision-making teams to be passionate about the community in which they live. The city of Trikala, in Greece, has been at the stage of an innovative project with driverless buses pioneered by Mr. Papastergiou. The initiative's success was partly due to a team that put together a legal framework to support the unmanned public transport project and knew their city well enough to have the buses circulate the urban settings instead of secluded and protected environments.
People often feel loyalty to places they grew up or went to school, and regions need to take advantage of that to enhance their local economy. Greece has a wide-reaching diaspora around the globe with the potential to significantly impact local cities. One effort which reflects this is The Hellenic Initiative. The Hellenic Initiative is a global nonprofit organization that brings together Diaspora Greeks and Philhellenes to invest in the future of Greece through programs focused on crisis relief, entrepreneurship, and economic development. Additionally, individuals are contributing to their homeland as Dr. Doukidis gave the example of Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer and a Thessaloniki native, who established Pfizer’s largest international data analytics center in his hometown.
A Government that Enhances Innovation
Governments, both local and national, can jumpstart the innovation effort through their involvement and encouragement of innovation infrastructure, policies and frameworks, and open-mindedness.
Innovation requires resilient, sustainable, and inclusive infrastructures that foster and encourage creative thinking and opportunities for ideas to become a reality. Infrastructure promoting innovation should include open innovation, effective collaboration, a virtual workspace, and a physical workspace. At the NCIA, one of the main goals is to develop infrastructure that attracts private investments. Mr. Hasan explained that private investments play a crucial role in generating and sustaining economic growth, and since it helps lower the cost of business, it attracts more foreign investment.
Building new infrastructure and attracting investment requires flexible local and national policies. Without policies and frameworks to support new innovative endeavors, there can’t be a flourishing innovative economy. Dr. Biswas emphasized the importance of frameworks when trying to integrate a university’s research into the local economy. When implementing new ideas and work that has occurred in different regions, understanding the cultural and legal frameworks of a new region makes the transfer of knowledge much more manageable.
In addition, local governments must listen, understand, and know their community. A benefit of place-based innovation is tailoring innovation efforts to a specific region’s strengths. Mr. Papastergiou pointed out that before any changes were made in Trikala, he and his team performed a SWOT analysis of what their area had to offer. Part of Mr. Papastergiou’s process involved listening to his citizens. For him, it was an opportunity to answer any concerns his citizens had about radical digital change and keep any extreme voices at bay.
Next Steps
Successful regional innovation thrives on connectivity. Learning about future building can take leaders to the next step to connect universities, the workforce, R&D efforts, and the citizens and drive innovation.
Place-based innovation is just one aspect of competitiveness and the innovation ecosystem, but it’s an important place to start. On September 8m at 10 am EST, the GFCC hosts a session surveying competitiveness priorities.
