Conference Towards intensive knowledge growth. European strategies in the global economy 7-9July08 Touluse

In March 2000, the European Council, launched the Lisbon Strategy aimed at making the European Union the most competitive knowledge economy in the world and achieving full employment by 2010. Despite this ambitious goal and despite a refocusing of the Lisbon strategy in 2005, Europe has not significantly improved its position in the global knowledge economy. The gap with the U.S. has not narrowed, while some emerging countries invest ambitiously in higher education and research. Companies have adapted to this new phase of globalization by developing global innovation networks spanning both developed and emerging countries. These networks represent both opportunities and challenges to European innovation systems.

Many countries have designed national innovation programmes and the OECD is launching a major project to develop an “Innovation Strategy”. In this context, the conference will draw on the European experience since 2000, on recent research on the knowledge economy and on inputs from companies on their R&D practices in order to identify the building blocks of a European strategy for innovation-based growth. The purpose is not to set quantitative targets but rather to discuss evolutions of European innovation systems with an integrated approach, taking full account of the interactions between public and private research, between research and higher education or between research and economic mobility.

The Lisbon strategy has suffered from the lack of a clear distinction between national policies on the one hand and European ones on the other hand. Moreover, since 2000, regions gradually devoted more resources on innovation, some of them designing their own research policy.

The conference has thus two broad objectives. First, to take stock of the recent contributions on the knowledge economy and identify the building blocks of national and European Strategies to promote innovation-based growth. Second, to develop an operational approach to the articulation between EU, national and regional research and innovation policies in the context of the emerging European Research Area.

The conference aims at fostering open and fruitful debates between researchers in the economics of knowledge and innovation, policy makers and business R&D managers. It thus has a third objective : identify major research themes to develop the « science of science policy » in Europe, a field in which the U.S. has launched important studies. In this perspective, the first plenary session will discuss the results from three reports on knowledge for growth. Besides, parallel sessions will include papers selected after an international call.

http://www.knowledge-conference-france2008.eu/index.php?lang=english