The programme is:

1. Developing a leading programme on the economic and social dimensions of urban and regional competitiveness,
2. Educating students and practitioners in techniques for understanding and influencing local and regional systems of innovation,
3. Informing evidence-based policy development.

Developing Cambridge-MIT Institute models

The programme is focused on the development of new models for developing world class research and knowledge exchange mechanisms that will improve regional (and thereby national) competitiveness. The Cambridge-MIT Institute will provide significant value added by brokering the links between world class faculty in both institutions. The Cambridge-MIT Institute also has established well developed ties to the key UK policy-making institutions in the area of innovation policy, including DTI, ODPM (and those employed in its successor), and the UK Regional Development Agencies. Through these channels and others, the Programme is working to establish a role in bringing these new models, research insights, and evidence to inform policy development for knowledge-based economic development.

Intellectual Content

Key intellectual questions

Over the past few years, the importance of the regional foundations of national economic performance has begun to attract considerable academic and policy attention, in the USA, the EU, the UK and in major global institutions such as the World Bank and the OECD. Highly eminent economists in the USA, such as Paul Krugman and Michael Porter, have come to argue that the success of the national economy in the global market-place is highly conditional on the economic competitiveness, performance and innovativeness of a nation’s individual regions and cities. The emergence of new highly cited academic journals (such and the Journal of Economic Geography) is testament to the rising academic profile of regional issues. In the USA, these issues have led to the establishment at Harvard of the Competitiveness Institute, which has as one its explicit aims the pursuit of detailed research and policy analysis of the regional foundations of USA economic performance. In the UK, although the UK Treasury, Department of Trade and Industry, and Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (or its successor), all now assign central importance to the economic competitiveness of the country’s regions and cities, there is as yet no research institute with this sort of focus.

The programme aims to undertake novel and detailed theoretical and empirical research into how regional and urban economies compete in the global marketplace, and how they contribute to national economic performance. It also consider a range of important questions of relevance for policy development, including the role of universities in regional (and hence national) development and the interfaces between knowledge-based institutions and businesses in regions).

Programme Activities

The Cambridge-MIT Institute has been actively engaged since its inception in advancing the understanding of the geography of innovation amongst academics and policy makers. Recognising the developing concentration of competencies in this area within the Cambridge-MIT Institute and within the two universities, and the increased focus on innovation studies within academic and policy circles, the Cambridge-MIT Institute consolidated its focus on regional innovation through the creation of a Cambridge-MIT Institute Programme on Regional Innovation. The programme has served as a vehicle for further developing research capabilities, faculty participation, and policy engagement. Current activities include convening academic-policy interchange is such areas such as poverty and place (with ODPM), universities and regional economic growth (with the World Bank) the spatial dimensions of venture finance, and knowledge-based competitiveness. A interdisciplinary workshop for young researchers from CU, MIT and other centres of excellence took place in June 2006. The programme is also actively involved with several of the UK regional development agencies in providing research support and policy guidance in the development of their innovation policies.

Last updated: 16/10/06