Institute News

SprinD will have its seat and head office in Leipzig and will be founded as a GmbH (Ltd).

SprinD aims to foster pioneering research with a wide range of application possibilities. The new German Agency for Disruptive Innovation is to promote innovations with radically new technologies and a great potential to change the market with new products, services and value chains.

More on the Commission for the Establishment of SprinD here.

As future location for the new agency the Commission recommends a well-developed urban region with a strong science orientation, e.g., the metropolitan Berlin region.

The final decision on the location is to be made in accordance with the future director. Both ministers thanked the Commission chaired by Dietmar Harhoff for their valuable entrepreneurial, scientific and political input.

SprinD aims to foster pioneering research with a wide range of application possibilities. The new German Agency for Disruptive Innovation is to promote innovations with radically new technologies and a great potential to change the market with new products, services and value chains.

More on the Commission for the Establishment of SprinD here.

For the fourth time in a row, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities opened its time-honored doors for the Munich Summer Institute (MSI) from 17 to 19 June 2019. A total of 114 attendants experienced three days with an interesting interdisciplinary program comprising 19 paper presentations and discussions as well as an overall number of 27 contributions to the poster slams. Additionally, each conference day also entailed a keynote speech embedded in the research theme of the respective event day.

On day one, organized by the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization and centered around innovation-related topics on strategy, digitization and organization, Robert Seamans (NYU Stern) refreshingly discussed the impact of artificial intelligence on labor.

Event day two was organized by the Center for Law & Economics of ETH Zurich and offered interesting insights into patent law and copyright-related research in innovation management, including an intriguing keynote speech by Catherine Tucker (MIT Sloan) on Algorithmic Bias.

Co-organized by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition and the Chair for Technology and Innovation Management of TUM, day three of the conference focused on the subject of entrepreneurship & innovation as well as on regulatory aspects and the financing of innovation, with keynote speaker Alfonso Gambardella (Bocconi) discussing a scientific approach to entrepreneurial decision-making.

Since its beginning back in 2016, the MSI aims to facilitate networking within the research community, to foster the international exchange of ideas and to inspire for new projects. Accordingly, the conference is set up as a joint project organized by the Center for Law & Economics of ETH Zurich (Stefan Bechtold), the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (Dietmar Harhoff), the Chair for Technology and Innovation Management of TUM (Joachim Henkel) and the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization of LMU (Jörg Claussen and Tobias Kretschmer).

We thank all organizing parties involved including the speakers, discussants and attendants for a truly outstanding MSI conference 2019 and we look forward to next years’ Munich Summer Institute 2020, which will take place from 2 to 4 June 2020.

The Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation (Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation - EFI) provides scientific advice to the German Federal Government and periodically delivers reports on research, innovation and technological productivity in Germany. A key task is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the German innovation system in an international comparison. Furthermore, Germany’s perspectives as a location for research and innovation are evaluated on the basis of the latest research findings. EFI presents proposals for national research and innovation policy.

To name a few of the EFI recommendations which have impacted German politics since the first report in 2008:

• the increase in research and development (R&D) expenditure to 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product (3.5 percent target),
• the improvement of the framework conditions for venture capital and start-ups,
• the expansion of Germany's e-Government,
• a stronger orientation of the German Federal Government towards digitalization and its implications,
• the introduction of tax incentives for R&D activities, as well as
• the establishment of a German agency for disruptive innovation.

From 17 to 19 June 2019, the Center for Law & Economics at ETH Zurich, the Chair for Technology and Innovation Management at TUM, the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization at LMU Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition will jointly organize the fourth Munich Summer Institute.

The Summer Institute will focus on three areas:

• Digitization, Strategy and Organization
  (chairs: Jörg Claussen and Tobias Kretschmer),
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship
  (chairs: Dietmar Harhoff and Joachim Henkel), and
• Law & Economics of Intellectual Property and Innovation
  (chair: Stefan Bechtold).

The goal of the Munich Summer Institute is to stimulate a rigorous in-depth discussion of a select number of research papers and to strengthen the interdisciplinary international research community in these areas. Researchers in economics, law, management and related fields at all stages of their career (from Ph.D. students to full professors) may attend the Munich Summer Institute as presenters in a plenary or a poster session, as discussants or as attendants. The Munich Summer Institute will feature three keynote lectures, 18 plenary presentations and a daily poster session (including a poster slam). Paper presentations will be grouped by topics, not discipline or method. The Munich Summer Institute will be held at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in the heart of Munich. Participation is by invitation only. The organizers will fund travel and hotel expenses for all plenary speakers and hotel expenses for all poster presenters and invited discussants.

Keynote speakers are:
 

• Alfonso Gambardella (Bocconi University)
• Robert Seamans (New York University)
• Catherine Tucker (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Further information

More information is available at the MSI website. Any questions concerning the Munich Summer Institute should be directed to Stefan Bechtold, Jörg Claussen, Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel or Tobias Kretschmer.

On 16/17 December 2019, the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition will host the 2nd Research on Innovation, Science and Entrepreneurship Workshop, an annual workshop for Ph.D. students and Junior Post-docs in Economics and Management.

The goal of the RISE2 Workshop is to stimulate an in-depth discussion of a select number of empirical research papers. It offers Ph.D. students and Junior Post-docs an opportunity to present their work and to receive feedback.

Keynote speaker of the RISE2 Workshop is Pierre Azoulay (MIT & NBER).

Please send your submissions as a PDF file to rise_workshop(at)ip.mpg.de.

See RISE2 Workshop
See Call for Papers