1. NESTA Policy and Research Unit: Invitation to Tender: Creative Clusters and InnovationRecent evidence suggests that there are significant links between a creative cluster in a geographical region and its innovative performance. Several mechanisms for this relationship have been presented. They include spatial externalities, economies of diversity, knowledge spill-overs and ‘creative buzz’.
We are interested in the following two questions:
What is the importance of the different mechanisms, through which creative clusters impact a region’s innovativeness?
What is the relationship between specific characteristics of a creative cluster and the dynamics of innovation in the regional economy?
NESTA aims to inform policymaking and development in the UK, so we’d like your proposals to focus on UK clusters and regions, and the implications for policy.
We are especially interested in research proposals that use economics, quantitative methods, spatial modelling and network analysis techniques. We welcome case study-based and ethnographic approaches as long as they can generate wider, transferable implications and policy recommendations.
2. NESTA Policy and Research Unit: Invitation to Tender: Innovative Places
We are inviting proposals for two projects under our Place and Innovation research strand.
Creating places for innovation by absorption
This project will focus on ‘place’ at the smallest unit of analysis. Literally, we are interested in exploring places, like buildings, public spaces, schools (building schools for the future), hospitals and/or any other specially designed place that was created with the aim of facilitating knowledge transfer and learning to boost local innovation capacity.
The project will showcase successful instances of ‘place (or space) making’
that have enhanced local and regional capacities to access, anchor or diffuse external knowledge. We are looking for five contributions in the format of essays, where three of them will focus on each of the three capacities (access, anchor, and diffuse) and two on distinctive cases of ‘place-making’
such as virtual, self-organised or naturally-evolved places.
Best practice in international knowledge sourcing
A firm’s external environment plays an important role in its innovation capacity. But the external environment is no longer confined to a firm’s adjacent territories but extended to include a much larger geography, expanding with its supply-chain, customers and other organisations and persons in its network. Nearly three quarters of firms in the UK are engaged
globally: selling to customers, running operations, outsourcing, or securing goods or services abroad.
Firms often form formal and informal alliances and partnerships with local or foreign firms. These provide them with access to otherwise inaccessible knowledge and expertise. Such inter-firm alliances and partnerships help transfer knowledge through a network of firms and organisations.
Most importantly, they help transfer knowledge from overseas partners to local partners. While a lot of research has already been done to investigate these relationships between large multinational companies and high-tech clusters, less attention has been paid to the practices of small firms (less than 250 employees) outside fashionable high-tech clusters in London, or around Oxford and Cambridge.
We think there is a need to look at the relationships of small firms outside Cambridge, Oxford, and London – and beyond IT and biotech sectors, as those represent a majority of firms in the UK. This project aims to investigate practical problems associated with absorbing knowledge developed in foreign locations.
How to Apply for tenders 1 and 2 – the closing date for all applications is noon Tuesday, 28th October 2008. For further information and guidance, please go to
www.nesta.org.uk/npru or email research@nesta.org.uk.
