Centre
for Research on Innovation and CompetitionCentre
for Research on Innovation and CompetitionArchive
Forthcoming Events at CRICForthcoming CRIC Workshops & Conferences
CRIC has placed considerable emphasis on the organisation of academic events. These have taken a variety of forms, ranging from a conventional programme of visiting speakers at seminars through to a series of international 2-day workshops on specific themes of the CRIC research agenda. These latter events have played a prominent role in two senses. First, because they serve to disseminate CRIC's work to the attendees and raise the national and international visibility of the Centre. Secondly, because the attendees are themselves carefully chosen by CRIC to provide good papers at the workshops which stimulate our own research thinking and create collaborative opportunities. These events have been internally financed by CRIC, drawing on reserves originating in overheads on the ESRC core grant, but recently supplemented by monies arising from the additional project income of CRIC. In recognition of the importance of these events to the CRIC programme a publishing arrangement has been negotiated with Manchester University Press for the production and dissemination of the conference volumes in hard copy and electronic formats. Brief details of such events are provided below.
Workshop 1: 6-7 November 1997: 'Rescheduling Time' This event was organised jointly by CRIC & ESRC Centre for Micro-Social Change, University of Essex. A group of 11 eminent international academic experts in the field of work and time from a range of disciplines were invited to write papers around the themes of temporality and work. The workshop was designed to develop four main themes.
The insights generated in this workshop stimulated our subsequent work on consumption and time and instituted economic process. Workshop 2 : 17-18 March 1998: 'Services and Innovation Systems' The purpose of this CRIC-organised workshop was to develop our understanding of innovation systems in relation to service activity. It is a common place to observe that almost 70% of employment in the OECD economies is linked to non manufacturing activities. It is therefore something of a paradox that the innovation systems perspective has not yet been applied to services however broadly or narrowly they are defined. Papers were presented by 13 participants from 8 countries including 2 from the USA. Workshop 3: 20-21 May 1998: 'Conceptualising and Measuring Service Innovation' The purpose of this workshop was to examine the problems and opportunities in measurement of services innovation. Some papers were commissioned to appraise the issue from a theoretical perspective. Other papers re-examined the experiences of existing measurement systems. Again, 13 papers were presented by participants from a wide variety of leading centres in Europe and North America. The papers presented in workshops 2 and 3 are now published in Miles and Metcalfe (2000). The focus of these workshops has been at the core of the subsequent development of the CRIC programme. Workshop 4: January 1999: Innovation by Demand: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Demand and its Role in Innovation This workshop was instrumental to CRIC's work on consumption and innovation, through bringing together scholars presenting diverse economic, sociological and managerial perspectives. Sociologists - of technology, of networks, of consumption - have much to say about these issues; as do economists - of technological change, of the firm, of consumption. Through using different theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches, the object of their study may be the same (namely, the demand-innovative act relationship). To date there have been few attempts to find points of contact between these diverse approaches. The aim of the workshop was to bring together sociologists and economists to look at how they study the role of demand in the innovation process. Nine papers were presented and the participants came from the USA, Canada and several European countries. Workshop 5: March 1999: Symposium on Approaches to 'Varieties of Capitalism' This workshop involved a comparative analysis of the impact of varieties of capitalism on both innovative and competitive processes. It was organised in three sections: theoretical and analytical approaches; empirical case studies, and political dimensions. Nine papers were presented by contributors from the USA, Canada, Brazil and Europe. Workshop 6: October 1999 : Joint Workshop on Innovation in Services: CRIC and Sloan School, MIT This workshop was proposed by CRIC, jointly organised, and held at MIT, in the Sloan School of Management. The aims of the workshop were to focus on the nature of innovation in services and how innovation in services compares to innovation in manufacturing. The workshop was based on the belief that the two are closely intertwined, but that this needs to be established conceptually and empirically. Six CRIC participants were joined by seven from MIT, and four papers were presented from each side. Discussion took place over two days and highlighted a number of common approaches to research on innovation and services. As a consequence, researchers in CRIC and the Sloan School are collaborating on two projects, one in relation to design services and the other in relation to systems of medical innovation. Workshop 7: January 2000: 'The Emergence of Markets for New Technologies of Health and Medicine' This workshop was organised jointly with colleague in Manchester's Unit for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, and enjoyed additional funding from the Wellcome Foundation. Papers were presented by 16 participants from 8 countries. This workshop stimulated CRIC's first study of distributed innovation processes in medicine. Workshop 8: May 2000: 'Market Relations and the Competitive Process' This workshop focused on CRIC's developing work on new approaches to competition and engaged a wider audience in our analysis of the interface between economic sociology and economic perspectives on this topic. This theme is beginning to engage scholars from a number of disciplines including economic-sociology and institutional and evolutionary economics. The focus was upon understanding the dynamics of market institutions and the relations between market processes and innovation. Papers were presented by 14 participants from the USA, UK and Europe. This workshop reinforced the positioning of CRIC's work at the interface between economics and sociology. Each of these 8 workshops has been an important element in the overall CRIC research programme. They are all generating published output. Fourteen papers from Workshops 2 and 3 have been published as a book: Metcalfe and Miles (2000), Innovation Systems in the Service Economy, Kluwer Academic Publishers. The materials presented at workshops 1, 4, 5, 7 and 8 are being prepared as a series of edited books to come out in the special series agreed with Manchester University Press. 15-16 June 2000: Futures of Consumer E-Commerce, Consumers' Association, London In collaboration with the British Consumers' Association, this ambitious event aimed at generating serious debate between academics, business and policy makers regarding just what e-commerce offers to consumers. The high profile seminar was held over two days at the Consumers' Association head offices in London with invited speakers from pioneering e-commerce companies, the Government's office of the e-envoy and leading academics within this field. CRIC and the Consumers' Association also presented papers (click here to view CRIC's contribution). The event was successful with a collection of papers published in a special addition of Consumer Policy Review, all of which highlighted the pressing constraints on the development of this sector (ranging from issues such as which goods favour e-retail to the operational barriers generated by the banking sector). More importantly, the seminar demonstrated how three sectors within the knowledge economy could work together in discussion and generation of fresh insights into what has been a set of contentious issues. Further information on the E-Commerce Conference is available here. 28 June - 1 July 2000: 8th Conference of the International Joseph Schumpeter Society, Manchester This biennial conference, which is organised in the country of the current president of the society, is one of the leading events world-wide for scholars of innovation and economic dynamics. Professor Stan Metcalfe, as current president, hosted the conference in Manchester in 2000. The event took place over three days with 250 attendees and 120 papers presented. CRIC staff gave four papers, in addition to Professor Metcalfe's Presidential Address. This event clearly also served to disseminate the activity of CRIC, as many of the conference delegates visited the centre and met CRIC staff. Further information on the Schumpeter Conference is available here. 5-7 April 2002: Playing with the Future: Development and Directions in Computing Gaming Conference, Manchester The aim of this conference was to develop a better understanding of computer games, gaming and gamers at this rapidly moving point in the gaming industry. The conference bought together researchers from cultural studies, economics, sociology, psychology, computation, management and other disciplines, along with members from various sectors of the gaming industry such as developers, publishers and retail. Further information on the conference is available here. 5-7 July 2002: The Second Brisbane Club Meeting, "Organisational and Technological Transformation in Complex Adaptive Systems" This was the second in the series of Brisbane Club workshops and looked at the problem of economic and technological transformation, whether it be at the level of productive activities, firms, instituted market relationships, sectors or indeed if necessary, whole economies. Further information on this conference is avalable here. Frontiers of Innovation Research and Policy, A Workshop between the Instituto de Economia -UFRJ (Brazil) and CRIC : 25-27 September 2002 This Workshop was hosted in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It explored the latest thinking on the process of innovation and applying it to the formulation of innovation policies with special references to the Brazilian Economy. It brought together leading academics from Brazil and Europe, together with Brazilian policy makers in the field of Innovation and Science and Technology Policies. Further information on this workshop is available here. 12th International Conference of RESER on 'Services and Innovation' Hosted by CRIC : 26-27 September 2002 The conference reflected on available research results and new areas of study in Services and Innovation. It considered the varieties of innovation within services: how different sorts of firms organise innovation, how different types of innovation present different challenges for practice and research, and what determines the outcomes of service innovation (e.g., in terms of firm performance, employment and customer relations). Further information on this conference is available here. The Polanyian Workshop, "Polanyian Perspectives on Instituted Economic Processes, Development and Transformation" : 23-25 October 2002 The aim of this workshop was to develop a dynamic perspective on the Polanyian notion of an instituted economic process. It focused on the twin concepts of the development and transformation of economies and activities within them. The question was to ask what are the institutions of a market economy but to enquire into the reasons for their birth, growth, stabilisation, decline and disappearance. Further information on this conference is available here. Contrasting Theories of Consumption Workshop : 7-8 November 2002 Principal themes of CRIC's research programme are markets and competition, consumption practices, innovation, and the development of the service economy. This workshop was mounted to promote papers which, using appropriate sources of data and evidence, critically evaluated theoretical accounts of consumption as a process, and to encourage discussion of the advances and blind spots of the field to date. More information on this workshop are available here. The ASEAT/Institute of Innovation Research Conference : 7-9th April 2003 Innovation Studies has made great progress in the last 30 years, and has been a major contributor to revealing the powerful role of knowledge creation and exploitation in driving economic and social change. Furthermore, much of this progress has been achieved by cross-disciplinary work involving economists, sociologists, historians and political scientists. But the current developments in the global economy, in technologies and in political systems are continuing to pose new challenges to analysis. The purpose of this conference was to bring together the innovation studies community to take on these challenges. More information on this conference are available here. Industrial Ecology and Spaces of Innovation, 17-18th June 2003 To date, social scientists of innovation have not pro-actively and systematically engaged with industrial ecology scholars, to see what can be gained from bringing understandings about the innovation process - its embeddedness in structures of social relations (including those that inform consumption patterns and practices), industrial relations, technological relations, and capital/investment relations to perspectives already well developed by those directly working with industrial ecology concepts, either in an academic, consultancy, corporate or policy context. This concentrated two-day workshop brought together people actively involved across these areas of interest. More information on this workshop are availble here. Digital Games Industries: Developments, Impact and Direction, 19-20th September 2003 Against the backdrop of the highly competitive economic environment of gaming platforms, software and new game-enabled consumer technologies, the ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC) hosted a two day workshop on the socio-economics of digital gaming. The workshop aimed to bring together international delegates from academic, policy and commercial circles for an in-depth discussion on nature and characteristics of this emerging sector: the 'drivers', key 'players', the 'current state of play', and the impact of the industry on the modern economy and the framework of its evolution. More information on this workshop are available here. Knowledge Intensive Services and Changing Organisational Forms - 26-27 November 2003 This workshop had two aims. First, to explore the influence of a country's institutional arrangements on the evolution of knowledge intensive services - namely, the IT (software and computer services) sector and the management consulting services sector. Secondly, it aimed to analyse the implications for organizational performance and for questions regarding the boundaries, control and co-ordination of the modern enterprise. For example, suppliers of IT and consulting services are often locked in to the business strategy of their client firms, suggesting that the nature of the inter-organisational relationship (contractual and interpersonal) plays a key role in shaping organizational performance. More information on this workshop are available here. 'Healthy Innovation' Workshop, 8-10th July 2004 An International Workshop was held at the University of Manchester, 8th-10th July, 2004. It was jointly organised by the ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition, and the Centre for the History of Science Technology and Medicine with the support of the ESRC Programme on Innovative Health Technologies. More information on this workshop are available here. In addition to the academic events described above, other events were hosted in connection with specific projects funded outside the core funding. These included: Approaches
to Varieties of Capitalism: International Symposium Public
Lecture: Professor Michael Best |
CRIC has combined with PREST to form the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR).
New book: Trust in Food, A Comparative and Institutional Analysis by Unni Kjaernes, Mark Harvey & Alan Warde.
CRIC Final Report to ESRC:"Main Report" and "CRIC Performance Indicators 1997-2006".
'Instituted Or Embedded? Legal, Fiscal and Economic Institutionalisation of Markets' by Mark Harvey
'Beyond Efficiency and Market Shares: Competition within the Finnish Games Industry' by Mirva Peltoniemi
'Accounting for Economic Evolution: Fitness and the Population Method' by Stan Metcalfe
'Innovation and Final Consumption: Social Practices, Instituted Modes of Provision and Intermediation' by Andrew McMeekin & Dale Southerton
'Alfred Marshall’s Mecca: Reconciling the Theories of Value and Development' by Stan Metcalfe