Carla-Leanne Washbourne
(University College London)
Julius Mugwagwa
(University College London)
Anne Marie Kagwesage
(University of Rwanda)
Remy Twiringiyimana
(UCL)
Format:
Panel
Streams:
Technology & innovation
Sessions:
Friday 8 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Urban-centric innovation ecosystems and sustainable development: views from COVID-19 and beyond.
Panel P29 at conference DSA2022: Just sustainable futures in an urbanising and mobile world.
This panel will investigate how innovation ecosystems, historically nurtured by the urban context, have shown strengths and vulnerabilities in response to COVID-19. These insights can help illustrate how innovation ecosystems can be supported in more sustainable research and innovation practices.
Long Abstract:
Cities are great concentrators of people and ideas and as such they have an increasingly large role to play in directing the global approach to sustainable development (Washbourne, 2020). Cities are highly interdependent, complex spaces where movements of people and ideas are juxtaposed with access to physical spaces, facilities and infrastructures. UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged COVID-19 as a “deeply urban crisis”. The virus presents a “challenge to the nature of cities themselves - in that it flourishes due to the very features that have enabled cities to thrive – agglomeration and density, close physical contact, diverse networks, fluid population bases” (Acuto and Hill, 2021) – all factors that have been so critical in making cities hubs of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Innovation is crucial for increasing productivity, economic growth and advancing livelihoods. Increasingly, governments (and other stakeholders) are focusing on innovation policy as key to sustainable development (Washbourne et al. and Mugwagwa et at., 2021). There are many different players involved in work relevant to innovation that are grouped together under the term ‘innovation ecosystem’. An innovation ecosystem is defined as “the evolving set of actors, activities, and artefacts, and the institutions and relations … that are important for the innovative performance of an actor or a population of actors” (Granstrand and Holgersson, 2020). Innovation ecosystems, therefore, provide an important lens through which to view the highly nuanced interactions between people, institutions, resources and space.
This panel presents findings from a range of studies looking at urban innovation ecosystems through lenses of knowledge production, research funding and governance and COVID-19 responses in both developed and developing countries. As cities react to COVID-19, it has been possible to identify strengths and weaknesses in the resilience of their structures and capacities for innovation, and in their broader national influences. Among others, this panel will tackle questions on how best cities can be reconfigured as locations and ecosystems of learning, knowing and doing that can flexibly deal with volatility, uncertainty and complexity.
The panel will be run as a session with four proposed papers presented by the conveners, with chair and discussants (TBC). Proposed papers:
• Kigali innovation city: decentring knowledge production for inclusive national development - Remy Twiringiyinama, UCL STEaPP
• Beyond science as usual: repositioning science and knowledge mobility for decision-making during a global pandemic - Julius Mugwagwa, UCL STEaPP
• Vulnerable by design? Rethinking actor location and agency in national innovation ecosystems - Anne Marie Kagwesage, University of Rwanda
• Has there been an urban-bias in the directions and functions of knowledge production during COVID-19? – Carla-Leanne Washbourne, UCL STEaPP
Methodology
Panellists will upload pre-recorded presentations of approximately 5 minutes each in length, along with slides and any supporting materials. Convenors will ask panellists to watch other people’s presentations in advance of the synchronous discussion session. The chair will ask two collaboratively pre-decided questions of each of the panellists at the start of the live session, based on the topic of their paper (approx. 5mins per panellist, ~20mins total). A discussant will briefly summarise the key shared insights between the papers. There will then be ~15mins of open discussion with the audience with chairs moderation.
This presentation explores COVID-19-relevant knowledge production across urban and rural contexts and unpacks the pros and cons of centring resources, processes and institutions for knowledge production, synthesis and application in urban settings for future social and environmental challenges.
Paper long abstract:
As the world becomes more urbanised and global cities grow in size and complexity, they become concentrators of triumphs and tragedies for the human and non-human world. It is perhaps then inevitable that COVID-19 has been viewed by many as a particularly 'urban' challenge. COVID-19 has caused widespread disruption, loss and damage as the first fully global modern pandemic. Its spread was strongly enabled by our dense and highly interconnected urban environments, transmitting the virus rapidly through and between cities with the everyday flow of human and animal transit. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged COVID-19 as a "deeply urban crisis" and academics and practitioners have contemplated that the virus presents a "challenge to the nature of cities themselves" (Acuto and Hill 2021).
Knowledge production processes which were ramped up to support rapid response and decision-making appear to have taken a strongly urban focus, reflecting the increasing dominance of urban concerns in global governance and the appreciable need for urban interventions to control the pandemic. What does this mean for our ability to understand and engage with issues experienced in non-urban settings? Urban areas constitute a very small proportion of global land area and many people still live in peri-urban or rural areas. This presentation reflects on the balance of COVID-19-relevant knowledge production across urban and rural contexts and unpacks the pros and cons of centring resources, processes and institutions for knowledge production, synthesis and application in the urban setting in light of future social and environmental challenges.
This study explores the nature of contemporary innovation ecosystems in Southern and Western Africa and provides recommendations for ways to support innovation ecosystem facilitation at and beyond country level, addressing gaps, challenges and blockages and focusing on building on existing strengths
Paper long abstract:
For policymakers and other actors in innovation systems, the pandemic has exposed many underlying challenges which countries have been trying to address through innovation processes, necessitating the need to rethink the organisation and deployment of these systems. In particular, there are many contextual realities which are coming to the fore, including confirmation of the complexity of the systems that affects actors' interactions and the limitations of traditional models of change and impact making.
In this study, we seek to better understand the range of existing innovation ecosystem support interventions and programmes in Southern and Western Africa to get insights on how to improve innovation systems performance in these regions. It takes a wide approach to innovation ecosystems and explicitly includes work beyond digital and financial sectors and innovations. It focusses on innovation ecosystems and support initiatives in 10 African countries with a view to identifying best practice, gaps and opportunities for the design of potential interventions to improve ecosystem facilitation mechanisms. It also explores collaboration and partnership opportunities for a wide range of national, regional and global development partners and stakeholders across the region.
The study recommends a number of facilitating mechanisms and activities that can support and improve innovation ecosystems, such as the establishment of mechanisms and programmes that support and facilitate cross-border innovation initiatives, and stimulate stakeholders' regional integration in existing regional bodies and frameworks.
This paper explores how the academic actors interact for knowledge production within the Kigali Innovation City (KIC)'s knowledge space, and policy implications of the identified decentring knowledge production dynamics for inclusive publicness of KIC.
Paper long abstract:
Science and innovation ecosystems are important for societal development, and how this nexus plays out is a function not only of who the actors in the ecosystem are, but also how they interact at multiple levels. Instigated in 2016, KIC is being developed in the sub-urban area of Rwanda's capital city of Kigali as a science and innovation ecosystem to inspire Rwanda's development aspirations of development agenda becoming a knowledge-based and technology-driven economy.
The paper reports on doctoral pilot research which focussed on fifteen KIC Knowledge Space actors categorised into: (i) Central actors - five academic entities physically co-located within KIC's geographical boundary; and (ii) Actors in proximity - ten universities located in close proximity to central actors. The study sought to generate contextually-grounded and place-based evidence through the triple helix system (THS) lens to understand actors' interactions in R&I in a developing country setting.
Interactions for R&I in KIC knowledge space were not only influenced by the academic actors, but they also stemmed from STI policy interventions driven by government and/or hybrid actors such as funding and capacity development agencies. Moreover, the academic actors in proximity played a leading role in initiating interactions for knowledge and innovation production. Drawing on that decentring knowledge production dynamics, the study advanced a set of policy implications - as a point of departure to leverage and align the existing efforts and synergies with the KIC's development outcomes, for an inclusive place-based ecosystem, with the potential to inspire inclusive national development.
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Julius Mugwagwa (University College London)
Anne Marie Kagwesage (University of Rwanda)
Remy Twiringiyimana (UCL)
Short Abstract:
This panel will investigate how innovation ecosystems, historically nurtured by the urban context, have shown strengths and vulnerabilities in response to COVID-19. These insights can help illustrate how innovation ecosystems can be supported in more sustainable research and innovation practices.
Long Abstract:
Cities are great concentrators of people and ideas and as such they have an increasingly large role to play in directing the global approach to sustainable development (Washbourne, 2020). Cities are highly interdependent, complex spaces where movements of people and ideas are juxtaposed with access to physical spaces, facilities and infrastructures. UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged COVID-19 as a “deeply urban crisis”. The virus presents a “challenge to the nature of cities themselves - in that it flourishes due to the very features that have enabled cities to thrive – agglomeration and density, close physical contact, diverse networks, fluid population bases” (Acuto and Hill, 2021) – all factors that have been so critical in making cities hubs of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Innovation is crucial for increasing productivity, economic growth and advancing livelihoods. Increasingly, governments (and other stakeholders) are focusing on innovation policy as key to sustainable development (Washbourne et al. and Mugwagwa et at., 2021). There are many different players involved in work relevant to innovation that are grouped together under the term ‘innovation ecosystem’. An innovation ecosystem is defined as “the evolving set of actors, activities, and artefacts, and the institutions and relations … that are important for the innovative performance of an actor or a population of actors” (Granstrand and Holgersson, 2020). Innovation ecosystems, therefore, provide an important lens through which to view the highly nuanced interactions between people, institutions, resources and space.
This panel presents findings from a range of studies looking at urban innovation ecosystems through lenses of knowledge production, research funding and governance and COVID-19 responses in both developed and developing countries. As cities react to COVID-19, it has been possible to identify strengths and weaknesses in the resilience of their structures and capacities for innovation, and in their broader national influences. Among others, this panel will tackle questions on how best cities can be reconfigured as locations and ecosystems of learning, knowing and doing that can flexibly deal with volatility, uncertainty and complexity.
The panel will be run as a session with four proposed papers presented by the conveners, with chair and discussants (TBC). Proposed papers:
• Kigali innovation city: decentring knowledge production for inclusive national development - Remy Twiringiyinama, UCL STEaPP
• Beyond science as usual: repositioning science and knowledge mobility for decision-making during a global pandemic - Julius Mugwagwa, UCL STEaPP
• Vulnerable by design? Rethinking actor location and agency in national innovation ecosystems - Anne Marie Kagwesage, University of Rwanda
• Has there been an urban-bias in the directions and functions of knowledge production during COVID-19? – Carla-Leanne Washbourne, UCL STEaPP
Methodology
Panellists will upload pre-recorded presentations of approximately 5 minutes each in length, along with slides and any supporting materials. Convenors will ask panellists to watch other people’s presentations in advance of the synchronous discussion session. The chair will ask two collaboratively pre-decided questions of each of the panellists at the start of the live session, based on the topic of their paper (approx. 5mins per panellist, ~20mins total). A discussant will briefly summarise the key shared insights between the papers. There will then be ~15mins of open discussion with the audience with chairs moderation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 8 July, 2022, -