About IGL2018

 
Building on the success of last year’s IGL2017, IGL2018 brought together 150 senior policymakers, practitioners and researchers from over 20 countries across three days (12-14 June):
  • Learn about the next generation of innovation and entrepreneurship policies;
  • Engage in wide-ranging discussions on crucial policy challenges including embedding innovation skills across the workforce, testbeds, and innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems;
  • Improve your organisation's capability to design policies that deliver measurable impact, using different tools such as randomised controlled trials and big data;
  • Meet a global community of peers to learn from and share experiences with.

IGL2018 was organised by IGL in partnership with Nesta, the Laboratory for Innovation Science at HarvardJ-PAL, the Ewing Marion Kauffman FoundationWorld Bank Group, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, with the support of the Global Entrepreneurship Research Network. It was held in Boston, MA on 12-14 June at the Harvard Business School (12 & 14 June) and MIT (13 June).

Over 40 speakers confirmed, including:

Tera Allas, Senior Fellow, McKinsey Center for Government, former Director General, UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Kelly Bidwell, Director, US Office of Evaluation Science
Dyan Finkhousen, Director, Open Innovation and Advanced Manufacturing, GE Global Operations
César Hidalgo, Associate Professor, MIT
Karim Lakhani, Professor, Harvard Business School and Director, Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard
William Maloney, Chief Economist, Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions, World Bank Group
Mike Morris, CEO, Topcoder
John Van Reenen, Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management
John Williams, Director of Innovation and Technology, US Small Business Administration

...and more than 13 practical sessions and workshop such as:

Designing and achieving grand challenges (led by NASA)
Developing an innovation procurement program (led by SBA)
Big data for innovation policy (led by Nesta)
Scaling up open innovation programs (led by NASA)
Designing experimental programs (led by Nesta)
Facilitating tech transfer (led by Harvard Catalyst/LISH)
Setting up innovation districts (led by the Brookings Institution & Nesta)
Policy instruments to support tech adoption (led by the World Bank Group)
Simulating policy through gamification (led by Nesta)

Past speakers include: 

  • Iqbal Dhaliwal, Deputy Director and Global Head of Policy, J-PAL at MIT
  • Clara Eugenia Garcia, Director General for Research, Development & Innovation, Spanish Government
  • Taina Kulmala, Head of Policy Analysis Unit, Prime Minister’s Office, Finland
  • Ilona Lundström, Executive Director, Tekes
  • David McKenzie, Lead Economist, World Bank
  • Raj Thampuram, Managing Director, Singapore Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)
  • Andrés Zahler, Head of Innovation, Chilean Ministry of Economy

 

Watch the highlights from IGL2017