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October 15^th, 2021; 12:00-1.30p.m. EDT

Community-based innovation strategies

Webinar on challenging prevailing ideas about innovation and identifying community-based innovation strategies

Please join us on Friday October 15th, 2021; 12:00-1:30 p.m. (EDT) for an online webinar discussion on community-based innovation strategies. Dan Breznitz, Professor and Munk Chair of Innovation Studies will present his new book, Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World. He will discuss how few communities are currently built around flourishing high-tech industries and how those which are not involved in high-tech industries can find their position in the four stages of the global production process. You will gain an overview of how communities with differing levels of technological capabilities can recognize their own advantages, which in turn allows to them to foster surprising forms of specialized innovation.

Main speaker:

Dan Breznitz - Professor and Munk Chair of Innovation Studies, University of Toronto.

Moderator:

Dhanaraj Thakur – Research Director, Center for Democracy & Technology (Washington, DC).

Commentators:

Maryann Feldman - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Andrew Cummings - Critical development anthropologist and affiliated researcher at the Latin America Social Science Faculty (FLACSO) El Salvador; and the NITLAPAN Research and Development Institute, Central American University, Nicaragua.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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Dan Breznitz is a University Professor and Munk Chair of Innovation Studies, in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy with a cross-appointment in the Department of Political Science of the University of Toronto, where he is also the Co-Director of the Innovation Policy Lab. In addition, he is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research where he co-founded and co-directs the program on Innovation, Equity and the Future of Prosperity. Professor Breznitz is known worldwide as an expert on rapid-innovation-based industries and their globalization, as well as for his pioneering research on the distributional impact of innovation policies. He has been a member of several boards, as well as serving an advisor on science, technology, and innovation policies to multinational corporations, governments, and international organizations. His work in the policy world led, in 2011, to him being awarded the GTRC 75th Anniversary Innovation Award for Public Service, Leadership, and Policy.

Maryann Feldman is the Heninger Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina, an Adjunct Professor of Finance at Kenan-Flagler Business School and a Research Director at UNC Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. Her research and teaching interests focus on the areas of innovation, the commercialization of academic research and the factors that promote technological change and economic growth.

Andrew Cummings is a critical development anthropologist with an MSc. and PhD from Aalborg University, Denmark. Research specialization in the emergence and evolution of innovation capabilities in social enterprises and territorial systems of innovation in the Central American and Latin American context. Additional research on a diversity of problems related to local/regional development planning and practice. Professor of postgraduate studies at the National University of El Salvador and Pontific Javeriana University, Bogotá, Colombia. Ex - director of masters program in Territorial Development, researcher and professor of Social Anthropology of Development and Territorial Economic Development, Sociology and Political Science Department at the Central American University José Simeón Cañas, El Salvador. Development practitioner, facilitator of dialogued processes of territorial development, accumulated during more than 25 of experience working in non-governmental think-tank National Development Foundation, El Salvador. International consultancy in Central America and Mexico.

Dhanaraj Thakur is Research Director at the Center for Democracy & Technology, where he leads research that advances human rights and civil liberties online. Over the last 15 years, he has designed and led several research projects aimed at tech policy audiences and ranging in scope from multi-national studies to community level work. He has been interviewed and his work quoted in several news media, including WIRED, CNN, the WSJ, the Economist, the Guardian (UK), and the Financial Times, among others. A former Fulbright scholar, Inter-American Development Bank scholar, and ISOC Ambassador, he brings an interdisciplinary background to his work that includes public policy, international development, and computer science. He holds a PhD in Public Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), and is a graduate of the London School of Economics, the University of the West Indies, and the University of Technology in Jamaica.

We hope to see you there

NACLICS organizing group