Join us for the Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance ‘s seminar with Professor Richard Jones titled, R &D, Place, and Developing Regional Innovation Systems: Lessons from Greater Manchester. This is in-person only event. The event will be followed by the Q&A with the speaker. About the Talk A large part of the UK’s current economic difficulties arise from the fact that its major cities outside London underperform, with productivity levels in second-tier city regions like Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, and the Glasgow City Region remaining below the UK average. In connection with these regional disparities in economic performance, the attention of policy makers has been drawn to the fact that levels of public and private research and development in these cities is below average, and recent policy initiatives, such as the previous government’s “Innovation Accelerator” Pilot, and the current government’s “Local Innovation Partnership Fund”, have sought to address this. In this talk, Professor Jones will reflect on the experience of Greater Manchester’s Mayoral Combined Authority in building and implementing an innovation strategy aligned with the city region’s wider economic and social goals. Among the factors that have emerged as being important in this enterprise are: Coherent, evidence-based, and enduring local industrial strategy, identifying and supporting sectoral clusters with growth potential, Local political buy-in, with strong governance and connection with wider policy levers in areas like skills, transport and planning, Partnership working across public and private sectors, including connections with capital markets, Integration with wider regional and national innovation systems, Strong relationships with central government and its agencies. Professor Jones will discuss some of the successes, and some of the tensions that emerge, in such efforts to build stronger city-region innovation systems. Speaker’s Bio Richard Jones is an experimental sof

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