On July 9, 2013 a visiting expert Mario Cervantes will deliver a workshop on “Smart Specialisation — The Role and Potential of Future Looking (Foresight) for Specialisation Strategies” at the National Research University — Higher School of Economics (HSE). The event is organised by the HSE Research Laboratory for Science and Technology Studies.

Mario Cervantes is Senior Economist at the Country Studies and Outlook Division, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry at Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Paris. In particular, he is responsible for the Working Party on Innovation and Technology Policy (TIP).

With more than 15 years of experience in innovation policy, Mr. Cervantes has written on a range of topics from industry–science relations, human resources in S&T, technology incubators, academic patenting and licensing, open innovation and globalisation of R&D and, more recently, on innovation for social challenges. Current activities include the system innovation, strategic public-private partnerships in STI and open science for innovation. A graduate of Columbia University (MA international economics), the University of California at Santa Barbara (BA economics and political science) and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), Mr. Cervantes has also studied at the Berkman Center, Harvard Law School, where he obtained a certificate in internet law, and was a Sloan Fellow in public policy at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Prior to joining OECD, Mr. Cervantes worked as a researcher at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, New York.

Summary of the presentation:

In light of the increasing diversity STI countries and regions cannot do everything so they need to focus on certain domains. They need to focus by developing distinctive and original areas of specialisation (not by imitating each other). These are the domains where innovative projects will complement the countries’ / region’s other productive assets. Specialisation by no means implies focusing on sectors per se but on activities, including research activities surrounding sectors. Rather than being a top-down strategy, smart specialisation involves a bottom-up process bringing together businesses, research centres and universities to identify a country or region’s most promising areas of specialisation, but also the barriers that hamper innovation and mobilising regional stakeholders around a strategic vision for the future growth of the region based on innovation. For governments, priority setting presents risks, hence the traditional focus on minimizing risks by spreading investments across sectors but leading to fragmentation is changing. Smart Specialization emphasizes the bottom-up process of entrepreneurial discovery to solve the problem of identification, selection & prioritization. Fine-tuning of priority setting through better diagnostic tools and indicators can help policy makers gather information on market and technology developments inside and outside borders. The workshop discusses the challenge in which domain or activity would a country region benefit from greater specialisation in R&D and innovation.

Venue: Higher School of Economics, room 522, 20 Myasnitskaya Street, Moscow.

Start time: 15:00.

Working language: English.

Everyone interested is welcome to attend!

If you need a pass to the HSE, please notify Olga Maximova on your participation prior to 17:30 the day before the event via e-mail: ovmaximova@hse.ru or by phone (495) 772-95-90 (ext. 11715).