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| Latest news |
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UNU-MERIT hosts successful Medical Prizes meeting
Posted: 2008-02-07
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| Prof. Konrad Osterwalder, Rector of United Nations University, opening the workshop |
UNU-MERIT's Collaborative Creativity Group has hosted an international workshop on the use of prize competitions as an alternative mechanism to stimulate medical and pharmaceutical R&D. More than 50 experts drawn from research institutes, government, UN, NGOs, industry, patent organizations and funding agencies attended the meeting, which was co-organized by Knowledge Ecology International (KEI). The meeting was opened by the Rector of United Nations University, Prof. Konrad Osterwalder.
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2nd Charles Cooper Lecture this month
Posted: 2008-02-07
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| Dr. Shyama Ramani |
The 2008 UNU-MERIT Charles Cooper Public Lecture, which honours the founding director of the UNU Institute for New Technologies, takes place on 13th February. This year's lecture weighs in on the growing debate on whether it makes economic sense to invest in technological innovations that specifically target the poor. The speaker, Dr. Shyama Ramani, is senior researcher at the National Institute of Agricultural Research in France and coordinator of "Friend-in-Need" a Franco-Indian Tsunami Reconstruction Project. Afterwards, a panel of eminent scholars, including Richard Nelson (Columbia University),Shulin Gu (Tsinghua University), Suma Athreye (Brunel Business School) and Ana Castro (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), will lead an open debate on the topic.
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Explaining Success and Failure in Development
Posted: 2008-02-07
To mark his appointment as Professor of Development Economics at Maastricht University, Adam Szirmai will give his inaugural lecture on Friday 15th February on explanations of success and failure in economic development. Why do some developing countries experience spectacular growth and catch up, while others continue to lag behind? Adam Szirmai holds a joint professorial appointment at UNU-MERIT and the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance. |
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Call for papers: MEIDE 2008
Posted: 2008-02-07
Call for Papers: Second International Conference on Micro Evidence on Innovation and Development (MEIDE), Beijing, China, 21-23 April 2008. Co-organized by the Centre for Applied Statistics, Renmin University, Beijing, and UNU-MERIT, the Conference will pay particular attention to innovative activities within the group of major emerging economies commonly referred to as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa). The deadline for submission of abstracts is 31 January. |
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| Research & policy analysis |
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Collaborative Creativity Group
Posted: 2008-01-11
This month, we highlight the Institute’s Collaborative Creativity Group, a team of researchers working on policy aspects of access to knowledge, including open source software and open standards, open courseware, Creative Commons works, and the funding of public knowledge goods. The group is co-organizing, among other initiatives in 2008: an international workshop and open competition on the use of monetary prizes and generic production to fund medical innovation; the first major survey of Wikipedia users and contributors; a new research project on free/open source software (FLOSSinclude) and a study for the European Space Agency on the use of Open Source Software for space projects. |
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| Face of the month |
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Rishab Aiyer Ghosh
Posted: 2008-01-03
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| Rishab Aiyer Ghosh |
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh heads UNU-MERIT’s Collaborative Creativity research group, coordinating numerous studies on the socio-economic, legal and technical aspects of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) worldwide. He has led a number of ground-breaking European Union-funded research projects on FLOSS, including the first comprehensive study of open source users and developers, and a study of government use, skills development and gender issues in FLOSS. He is actively involved in a number of public policy initiatives on FLOSS in Europe, Asia and globally, including the UN Internet Governance Forum, and the Open Source Initiative, as well as serving as Managing Editor of First Monday, the peer-reviewed online journal on the Internet.
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| Events & networking |
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UNU-MERIT cements links with Chinese and Japanese universities
Posted: 2008-01-03
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| UNU-MERIT professorial fellow Geert Duysters (left) shakes hands with fellow conference organizers following the signing ceremony. |
On 5-6 December 2007, UNU-MERIT co-hosted the 4th International Conference on Innovation and Management, which took place at Yamaguchi University, Japan. Organized annually since 2004 by Yamaguchi University (Japan), Wuhan University of Technology (China) and UNU-MERIT, the conference series aims to bring together researchers in the field of innovation, technology and management, and managerial experts, to discuss the application of the latest knowledge and management techniques to enhance the international competitiveness of firms, technology sectors and countries. During the conference the three organizing institutions also signed an agreement to foster future collaboration. UNU-MERIT will host this year’s conference, in December.
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INNO-Views workshop held
Posted: 2008-01-03
Hugo Hollanders participated at the INNO-Views Workshop on "Innovation culture: Creating a favourable innovation climate in Europe," in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, on 13-14 December 2007. Held four times a year, the expert workshops explore new and emerging innovation themes and are convened as part of the PRO INNO Europe initiative of the European Commission’s Directorate General Enterprise and Industry. Hugo Hollanders and Funda Celikel Esser (EC Joint Research Centre) presented a paper titled: "Innovation performance: the role of socio-cultural factors, good governance and innovation efficiency." |
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| New publications |
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Featured publications this month
Posted: 2008-01-03
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New books
Posted: 2008-01-03
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| Cover of "Information and Communication Technologies and SMEs in the Context of Globalisation: Evidence from the Developing World" |
Lal, Kaushalesh. 2007. Information and Communication Technologies and SMEs in the Context of Globalisation: Evidence from the Developing World, Palgrave-Macmillan: New York.
This new book presents the findings of a UNU-MERIT research project coordinated by Dr. Kaushalesh Lal that studied the adoption of information and communication technologies by small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) in Malaysia, India, Nigeria, Jamaica and Costa Rica. The author analyses which government policy measures - and under what circumstances –were effective in enabling SMEs to effectively use new technologies and upgrade their business processes. With a key measure of success being the subsequent ability of SMEs to compete against multinational companies operating in these countries, the book notes that the impact of adopting quite similar policy measures can vary quite significantly across countries. A key conclusion, therefore, is that innovative approaches that adapt the available tools to each local context are a critical success factor.
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Book chapters
Posted: 2008-01-03
Rasiah, Rajah and Rajiv Kumar. 2007. "Foreign Ownership, Technological Intensities and Network Strength: Electronics Firms in East Asia", Shimizu Y. (ed), Economic Dynamism of Asia in the New Millenium: From the Asian Crisis to a New Stage of Growth, New Jersey: World Scientific, pp. 329-366.
Rasiah, Rajah. 2007 "Human Capital and Cluster Synergies: The Case of Penang and Jalisco," in A. J. Scott and G. Garofoli (eds) Development on the Ground: Clusters, Networks and Regions in Emerging Economies, London : Routledge.
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