Clusters, human capital and economic development in Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire

Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire are two of the most high tech economies in the UK (see for example DTI, 2002 and Garnsey and Lawton Smith, 1998). They are home to world class research universities and public and private research laboratories as well as a full range of business and professional services which support the development of their clusters. Building on previous work (Lawton Smith and Waters, 2011) this paper draws on national datasets to review the continued development of these economies. The paper considers issues such as new firm formation, sectoral composition and gross value added and relates them to social inclusion and worklessness. The paper draws on literature which emphasises the endogeneity of processes within regions, but also on studies which show that there are different kinds of high tech regions with varying industrial structures. Conclusions are drawn on the extent to which the presence of successful clusters (Spencer et al, 2010) influences outcomes for the local economy more generally, and how Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire have performed over the last ten years

Entrepreneurship, innovation and the triple helix model: evidence from Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire

This paper focuses on how regions become entrepreneurial and the extent to which the actors in the triple helix model are dominant at particular stages in development. It uses the case studies of Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire in the UK to explore this theme. Both can now be described as ‘regional triple helix spaces’ (Etzkowitz 2008), and form two points of the Golden Triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London universities. As entrepreneurial regions, however, they differ in a number of respects. This is not surprising given their differing geo-historical contexts. However, by comparing the two similar counties but which have their own distinctive features we are able to explore different dynamics which lead to the inception, implementation, consolidation and renewal (Etzkowitz and Klofsten 2005) of regions characterised by very high levels of technology-based entrepreneurship

The economic ecology of small businesses in Oxfordshire

Report by the Oxfordshire Economic Observatory (OEO) for the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), Oxfordshire Branch

Modeling Pine as a Carbon Sequestering Crop in Arkansas

Carbon Sequestration, Loblolly Pine, Carbon Offset, Carbon Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Resilience in leaders: conceptualisation and changes brought about by coaching

Resilience has emerged as a topic of growing interest in the leadership coaching context but little empirical research exists merging the three areas of resilience, leadership and coaching. Two significant gaps were identified. Firstly, numerous resilience measures exist but the leadership experience of resilience remains relatively unexplored, meaning that it is unclear to what degree leadership resilience can be integrated and consolidated with existing resilience approaches. Secondly, the broad scope of definitions and conceptualisations of resilience can mean that coaches seeking to work with resilience lack a coherent model appropriate for coaching. These two gaps give rise to a lack of common understanding about resilience between coaches and their leadership clients. As a result we know little about the degree to which coaching may influence resilience. This grounded theory study gathers interview data from eight leaders to elucidate how leaders experience resilience and what role they felt previous coaching had on their resilience. Eight executive coaches were subsequently interviewed about their experiences of executive coaching where they felt resilience was relevant. Together these perspectives shed new light on the concept of resilience in the leadership coaching context. Existing definitions of resilience often emphasise recovery or ‗bounce back‘ yet leaders in this study saw resilience as vital to dealing with the future, as well as the past. This led to a temporal perspective on resilience identifying a common thread that exists across the past, present and future. In addition, a wider conceptualisation of resilience is proposed that includes both capabilities and the capacity for resilience. Capabilities encompass skills that are often the focus of resilience training, while capacity reflects the resources required to apply these resilience capabilities. Together these aspects bring a more coherent approach to resilience. Coaching was found to already be influencing resilience in leaders in five ways and a new model is proposed to support leadership coaching practice

Universities, Innovation and the Economy

Universities are increasingly expected to be at the heart of networked structures contributing to society in meaningful and measurable ways through research, the teaching and development of experts, and knowledge innovation. While there is nothing new in universities’ links with industry, what is recent is their role as territorial actors. It is government policy in many countries that universities - and in some countries national laboratories - stimulate regional or local economic development. Universities, Innovation and the Economy explores the implications of this expectation. It sites this new role within the context of broader political histories, comparing how countries in Europe and North America have balanced the traditional roles of teaching and research with that of exploitation of research and defining a territorial role. Helen Lawton-Smith highlights how pressure from the state and from industry has produced new paradigms of accountability tha

Entrepreneurship policies and the development of regional innovation systems: theory, policy and practice

The regional innovation systems (RIS) approach tends to be short in the coverage of the importance of agency in the dynamics of economic change. This paper addresses this by putting the entrepreneur, which Schumpeter (Capitalism, socialism and democracy. Harper & Row, 1911/1934) placed at the heart of the analysis of economic change, as the driving force of regional innovation systems and associated policies. This is consistent with work by Feldman and Francis (Clusters and Regional Development, Routledge, 2006) who identified the entrepreneur as a regional agent of change. The paper provides an appraisal and synthesis of the regional innovation systems approach in relation to entrepreneurship policies. It addresses a number of areas where theoretical, empirical and policy-based issues are currently under-developed in relation to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship policy. There are three major themes. The first is the agency of both entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship policies in an RIS. The second is the rationale for entrepreneurship policies in an RIS. The third relates to what do entrepreneurship policies look like in RIS and how they might be evaluated as contributing towards an RIS

Does Mentoring Make a Difference for Women Academics? Evidence from the Literature and a Guide for Future Research

This paper aims at reviewing literature on mentoring in academia, with a focus on mentoring to enhance women’s careers. A significant gender imbalance in science persists, and mentoring has been recognized as an important instrument for fostering academic women’s careers and addressing such imbalance. However, often the benefits of mentoring are taken for granted. This review aims to unpack the concept of mentoring, understand which trends characterize the mentoring literature, and analyze the evidence; moreover, it aims to discover potential gaps and propose a model to guide future research. A systematic approach is undertaken: four relevant search engines, covering more disciplines, are browsed to look for empirical studies on mentoring academic women from 1990 to March 2017. The review shows that there are some problems. First, there is no agreement on the definition of mentoring. Then, often studies are poorly grounded from a theoretical and conceptual perspective. In addition to the dominating research stream, focused on the benefits for the mentee, three other streams are consolidating: impact on the mentors, the role of group mentoring, and mentoring as an instrument to change institutions. At the end, we propose a model to guide future studies built on a longitudinal perspective