( All participants)

On November 19th, 2019, the National Institute for Innovation Management (NIIM) and the Institute for Intellectual Property Management (IIPM) at School of Management, Zhejiang University (ZJUSOM) hosted the ‘Workshop on Innovation and Intellectual Property’. The workshop was attended by scholars from China, Brazil, Austria and the United States (US).

Prof. Can Huang, the Executive Deputy Director of National Institute for Innovation Management and the Co-Director of Institute for Intellectual Property Management, School of Management, Zhejiang University, opened the workshop by welcoming its participants and briefly introducing the School of Management, Zhejiang University and Hangzhou. Later, Prof. Huang gave a presentation on "Transforming China’s IP system to stimulate innovation". During his talk, he focused on China’s relatively young IP system, followed by its recent progress on legislation towards a better system.

（Prof. Can Huang is presenting）

Prof. Xiangdong Chen from Beihang University thanked Prof. Can Huang and the School of Management, Zhejiang University for their hospitality to host this workshop, before moving on to present the project “Multi-actor participation (map) based diversities of innovation ecosystem development – Comparative study between emerging and developed economies”. The project is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and focuses on emerging technologies and IP. Prof. Chen summarized some of the ideas about this project that were discussed earlier, and hopes to find opportunities for further collaboration with the workshop’s attendees. Later, he also gave a presentation about “Emerging technologies from emerging economies”.

Next, several presentations related to innovation and IP followed. Prof. Araken Alves de Lima from the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) of Brazil (the Brazilian IP Office) shared his thoughts about "IP and innovation in Brazil: Possibilities and Constraints". Though Brazil is one of the largest countries in the world, it ranks only 66th in terms of innovation according to the Global Innovation Index (GII). By 2030, Brazil aims to be in the top-20 of most innovative countries. Prof. de Lima summarized some of the strengths and weakness for Brazil to reach this goal.

His colleague Prof. Alexandre Guimarães Vasconcellos from INPI gave a presentation on “Innovative developing countries and their needs and abilities to address health challenges: The zika virus in Brazil”. Rather than speaking about developed vs. developing countries, Prof. Vasconcollos introduced and explained the concept of innovative developing countries (IDC). According to this new classification, the BRIC countries (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India and China) score much better compared to other classifications, such as the GII discussed earlier by Prof. de Lima.

After the morning break, Prof. Walter Scherrer from the University of Salzburg gave a presentation on "Innovation policy for digital transformation: A blend of systemic and open innovation patterns". During his presentation, Prof. Scherrer focused on public-private partnerships (PPP) as a useful instrument to stimulate open innovation, and how it offers benefits for all the involved stakeholders.

Prof. Paul M.A. Baker from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US presented "Geography of policy and networks of technological innovation". He said his main interests lie in the cross-cutting (or in-between) topics and issues of interdisciplinary research projects, such as the one presented by Prof. Chen earlier. During his talk, Prof. Baker shared his thoughts on all the previous presentations. For instance, Prof. Baker finds that much work on innovation focuses on developed, industrialized economies, whereas further insights can be gained from shifting our perspective to emerging economies. Also, he wonders what type of network applications might arise, and whether there is evidence of international collaboration.

The final presentation was by Dr. Wim Coreynen, who recently joined as postdoctoral researcher at IIPM. He presented one of his latest papers "What drives servitization? An abductive study of decision-makers’ motives and value strategies", which is currently under revision. In his presentation, Dr. Coreynen focused on which motives drive people to develop a strategy for service innovation, and whether different motives are associated with pursuing different service strategies.