4 – 5 August, 2020     

We invite you to come and join us virtually in Vancouver at our R&D Management Symposium, where we will discuss and debate our research, experience and pedagogy on the theme of Invention to Innovation: Creating the Conditions for Impact.

There are many reasons why we currently don’t get enough scientific inventions out of universities to address global challenges such as climate change and curing disease.

Some of these reasons have to do with innovation policy at the national, regional and university levels.

Some of them have to do with firm strategy. For instance, how open innovation practices promote or constrain science-based ventures and radical innovation.

Some of the reasons have to do with the ways we educate and support students and faculty in such areas as opportunity creation, technology-market matching, and managing under uncertainty, to give them the best chance of creating successful and impactful science-based ventures.

The 2020 R&D Management Symposium will be hosted by Simon Fraser University’s Chang Institute for Entrepreneurship and the Beedie School of Business in August 2020.

This symposium is affiliated with the R&D Management Conference, an international gathering of academics and practitioners interested in the study of research, development, technology management and innovation. The conference provides a valuable means of communication and exchange of ideas among academics and practitioners.

The event tracks are as follows:

1) Innovation Policy (Track chair – Prof Joseph (Yuan) Zhou, Tsinghua University)

Topics include:

• What roles can innovation policy play at university, regional and national levels to better translate breakthrough university inventions and to create knowledge economy jobs?
• What metrics matter?
• How can innovation policy complement or work in synergy with other forms of regulation, such as on climate or in healthcare?
• Can innovation policy promote the development of entrepreneurial mindset for STEM researchers?
• What should be considered when balancing and integrating demand side and supply side innovation policies?
• How important is international coordination of innovation policies?

2) Firm Entrepreneurial  Strategy (Track chair – Prof Riccardo Fini, University of Bologna)

Topics include:

• What factors impact the founding, growth and success of science-based university spinoffs?
• What pre-formation entrepreneurial processes lead to impactful science-based university spinoffs?
• How do firm entrepreneurial strategy and metrics differ from clean tech to biomedical to AI ventures?
• What entrepreneurial capabilities differentiate successful science-based university spinoffs?
• What factors are critical to scaling science-based ventures?
• Under what conditions can effectuation strategies be successful?

3) Innovation intermediaries from Universities, Incubators, to Ecosystem development (Track co-Chairs, Prof Alberto Di Minin & Prof Andrea Piccaluga, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna)

Topics include:

• What roles do innovation intermediaries play in creating the conditions for impact from breakthrough invention at universities in the areas of clean technology, biomedical / healthcare research, and Artificial Intelligence?
• How important is alignment/coordination of innovation intermediaries?
• What metrics matter?
• Is opportunity creation from breakthrough invention inadvertently suppressed by incubators and innovation intermediaries?
• What role does for-credit educational programming play in creating effective entrepreneurial mindset and innovation skillsets?
• Do university incentive and administrative systems act to suppress breakthrough invention and innovation?  If so, what models are exemplars?

Find out more at http://www.sfu.ca/changinstitute/randm2020.html