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SUMMARY:R&D\, Place\, and Developing Regional Innovation Systems: Lessons f
 rom Greater Manchester
DESCRIPTION:Join us for the Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance‘s se
 minar with Professor Richard Jones titled\, R&D\, Place\, and Developing 
 Regional Innovation Systems: Lessons from Greater Manchester. \nThis is i
 n-person only event. The event will be followed by the Q&A with the speake
 r.\nAbout the Talk \nA large part of the UK’s current economic difficult
 ies arise from the fact that its major cities outside London underperform\
 , with productivity levels in second-tier city regions like Greater Manche
 ster\, the West Midlands\, and the Glasgow City Region remaining below the
  UK average. In connection with these regional disparities in economic per
 formance\, the attention of policy makers has been drawn to the fact that 
 levels of public and private research and development in these cities is b
 elow average\, and recent policy initiatives\, such as the previous govern
 ment’s “Innovation Accelerator” Pilot\, and the current government
 ’s “Local Innovation Partnership Fund”\, have sought to address this
 .\nIn this talk\, Professor Jones will reflect on the experience of Greate
 r Manchester’s Mayoral Combined Authority in building and implementing a
 n innovation strategy aligned with the city region’s wider economic and 
 social goals. Among the factors that have emerged as being important in th
 is enterprise are:\n\nCoherent\, evidence-based\, and enduring local indus
 trial strategy\, identifying and supporting sectoral clusters with growth 
 potential\,\nLocal political buy-in\, with strong governance and connectio
 n with wider policy levers in areas like skills\, transport and planning\,
 \nPartnership working across public and private sectors\, including connec
 tions with capital markets\,\nIntegration with wider regional and national
  innovation systems\,\nStrong relationships with central government and it
 s agencies.\n\nIn my talk I will discuss some of the successes\, and some 
 of the tensions that emerge\, in such efforts to build stronger city-regio
 n innovation systems.\nSpeaker’s Bio\nRichard Jones is an experimental s
 oft matter physicist with a long standing interest in innovation policy an
 d regional economic growth\; he was\, until September 2025\, Vice-Presiden
 t for Regional Innovation and Civic Engagement\, at the University of Manc
 hester\, where he is currently Emeritus Professor of Materials Physics and
  Innovation Policy.\nHis first degree and PhD in Physics both come from Ca
 mbridge University and following postdoctoral work at Cornell University\,
  USA\, he was a lecturer at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Labo
 ratory.  He was a Professor of Physics at the University of Sheffield fro
 m 1998\, moving to Manchester in 2020.\nIn 2006 he was elected a Fellow of
  the Royal Society\, in recognition of his work in the field of polymers a
 nd biopolymers at surfaces and interfaces and in 2009 he won the Tabor Med
 al of the UK’s Institute of Physics for his contributions to nanoscience
 .\nHe is the author of more than 190 research papers\, and three books\, P
 olymers at Surfaces and Interfaces (with Randal Richards\, CUP 1999)\, Sof
 t Condensed Matter\, (OUP 2002)\, and Soft Machines: Nanotechnology and Li
 fe (OUP 2004).\nHe was Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at 
 Sheffield from 2009 to 2016\, was a member of EPSRC Council from 2013 – 
 2018\, and chaired Research England’s Technical Advisory Group for the K
 nowledge Exchange Framework.  He was a member of the Sheffield/Manchester
  Industrial Strategy Commission\, and was a Co-I of the ESRC funded Produc
 tivity Institute. He has written extensively about science and innovation 
 policy\, for example in the recent reports “The Missing Four Billion: ma
 king research and development work for the whole UK” (with Tom Forth\, N
 ESTA 2020) and “Science and innovation policy for hard times: an overvie
 w of the UK’s Research and Development landscape” (The Productivity In
 stitute\, 2022).\nIn Greater Manchester\, he was the Independent Science A
 dvisor to Innovation GM\, a public-private partnership bringing together b
 usiness\, the GM Combined Authority and GM’s universities with the goal 
 of developing Greater Manchester’s innovation ecosystem to help level up
  communities\, generate the solutions needed to achieve net zero\, and cre
 ate the conditions for more businesses in more places to benefit from glob
 al exporting and inward investment.  
URL:https://www.imperial.ac.uk/events/211074/rd-place-and-developing-region
 al-innovation-systems-lessons-from-greater-manchester/
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260915T110000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260915T120000
LOCATION:iCube \, Dyson Building of Design Engineering\, South Kensington C
 ampus\, Imperial College London\, London\, SW7 2AZ\, United Kingdom
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