Remarks at the Leibniz Convent Spring Reception

… We are not waiting until 2021 for a European Innovation Council. We have already launched a 2.7 billion euro pilot phase.

Of the three pillars, this is the most misunderstood. People sometimes have the wrong idea that strengthening our innovation means we are moving away from fundamental science. Taking from one and giving to the other.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Innovation needs science and the knowledge economy. Without it, many of the great ideas of great European thinkers will stay just as they are; as ideas.

Innovation is changing. The newest and most exciting breakthrough innovations all have one thing in common: fundamental science.  Full remarks

By Patrick Kilbride  …

So where is this new commitment to domestic innovation leading? Last month, on a panel at the Observer Research Foundation’s 2018 Raisina Dialogue, I told India’s minister of commerce and industry Suresh Prabhu and US ambassador to India Kenneth Juster that just as the US drove the world economy in the decades following World War 2, and China has assumed that leadership mantle in recent decades, India, in turn, would be the next great engine of global growth. Quick on his feet, Prabhu responded that perhaps it already was. Time will tell.

What we know for certain is that today, global economic leadership can not only be found in commodities, or in import substitution, or through reliance on an export-led manufacturing base. Innovation is the coin of the realm in the modern knowledge economy.  Rest

Mark Muro (@markmuro1) is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.

CEOs are hustling to decide what to do with President Trump’s corporate tax cuts. Unsurprisingly many of them are settling on a new round of stock buybacks and probably dividend hikes. Others are weighing takeovers and acquisitions. Financial maneuvers will likely predominate, along with one-time bonuses for employees.

Why is worker training the best use of the new windfall for companies large and small? The reason is clear: Nothing matters more in the knowledge economy than workers’ knowledge, just as nothing matters more in a digital age of artificial intelligence and big data than digital skills.  Rest (WSJ)

The results generated from these smart cities have caught the attention of forward-thinking world leaders, who see Smart Countries (or country digitization) as the logical next step. Cisco Systems launched its Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program to address these opportunities, partnering with countries to advance their national digital agendas.

Cisco has launched digitization efforts within 17 countries around the world. The common bond between each state is the desire to help grow gross domestic product (GDP), create new jobs, connect people, and increase opportunities for its citizens. For many emerging countries today, digitization is the single most effective way to jumpstart their economies and enable their citizens to expand commerce and access to the world market. Digitizing a nation is not trivial, and in my opinion, Cisco is the only company that has the vision, execution, partner network and political prowess to drive this strategy at a global level.

A global perspective to connecting nations

Interestingly, one of the early pioneers of the CDA program in France. From the top, France has a vision of connecting not just urban centers, but rural and government areas as well. As a result, France has become one of the fastest growing start-up ecosystems in the world. … France has also extended Internet connectivity to remote areas of the country, bringing commerce and innovation to traditionally underserved areas. With the help of Cisco, India is also transforming itself into a fully connected knowledge economy. Its Digital India program promises to connect 250,000 villages to the internet by 2019. Numerous other nations, including Israel, Germany, and UAE have launched similarly ambitious national strategies to accelerate their digital economies.

One of the reasons why Cisco’s CDA program is so successful is the company’s commitment to building long-term partnerships at the highest levels of academia, industry, and the public sector. Rest

BY THE OFFICE OF GORDON AND SARAH BROWN

Enabling the UK knowledge economy: A new STFC e-infrastructure strategy

(Credit: Pixabay)

STFC has developed a new e-infrastructure strategy, designed to support and strengthen UK research and UK industrial productivity.

As well as setting out STFC’s vision for e-infrastructure, this strategy identifies the e-infrastructure challenges facing STFC, its research communities and the UK, and proposes actions that could be taken to address these.

This document will contribute to a larger debate, as the e-infrastructure needed by UK researchers across academia and industry cannot be developed by STFC acting in isolation. It is expected that working with partner organisations and industry will ultimately lead to an agreed national e-infrastructure strategy for research and innovation to be implemented by UK Research and Innovation and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

Kuwait Knowledge Economy Forum

Kuwait just recently held their Knowledge Economy Forum with a focus on “Knowledge Governments: Best Practices and Lessons Learned” – more information can be found at www.keforum.org

If you’re not spending 5 hours per week learning, you’re being irresponsible

Why has the best investor in history, Warren Buffett, invested 80% of his time in reading and thinking throughout his career?  Why has the world’s richest person, Bill Gates, read a book a week during his career? And why has he taken a yearly two-week reading vacation throughout his entire career? … What do they see that others don’t?  The answer is simple: Learning is the single best investment of our time that we can make. Or as Benjamin Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” This insight is fundamental to succeeding in our knowledge economy, yet few people realize it. Luckily, once you do understand the value of knowledge, it’s simple to get more of it. …

To shift our focus from being overly obsessed with money to a more savvy and realistic quest for knowledge, we need to stop thinking that we only acquire knowledge from 5 to 22 years old, and that then we can get a job and mentally coast through the rest of our lives if we work hard. To survive and thrive in this new era, we must constantly learn.  Working hard is the industrial era approach to getting ahead. Learning hard is the knowledge economy equivalent.  Rest

Reimagining India’s learning landscape, By Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO Coursera

India is sitting on an untapped goldmine – a demographic dividend in an otherwise aging world. By 2030, India will have the largest working-age population globally, expected to reach 962 million. The world economy meanwhile, is plunging into a skilled manpower shortage. Manpower Group’s 2016-17 global Talent Shortage Survey reveals that 40% of employers are having difficulty filling positions. This opens up an opportunity for India that, if realised, can catapult it into an advanced knowledge economy.  Rest

‘People’s Platform’ connects global knowledge economy

Characteristic of the knowledge economy are “man-made brainpower industries” where there is rapid development, and the subsequent merging of new information and communication technologies, creating a global inter-connected economy.

In this global economy, time and distance are compressed through advances in information communication technologies and travel, leading to the intertwining of the world’s economic and cultural systems, in a process known as globalization.

Globalization has been defined as “a set of economic, social, technological, political as well as cultural structures and processes arising from the changing character of the production, consumption and trade of goods and assets that comprise the base of the international political economy.”

Globalization is one of many phenomena within the knowledge economy, and is the result of a larger building process of a world markets that started when mankind first began exploring the world by land and sea expeditions.  Rest

MR. [Gerard] BAKER [WSJ]: Turning to the issue of technology and what you’ve called the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Clearly, there are great concerns about jobs going away. Artificial intelligence is advancing very, very quickly. What can the world come together and, through an event like Davos, do to come up with solutions to the human consequences of this technological change?

‘We have to find the right balance between globalization and making sure that we maintain the social contract,’ says World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab. PHOTO: FABRICE COFFRINI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

PROF. SCHWAB: Davos can make a contribution in that we combine the fourth revolution with the educational system [ED: Davos thus contributes by strengthening the Knowledge Economy]. I personally feel that our present educational system should be much more flexible. We should have modules which allow people, lifelong, to continuously update themselves and maybe even to be certified every year with the progress they have made in terms of taking care of their own up-skilling.  Rest

The topic of workplace diversity has vexed businesses and employees for decades. Increasing diversity has long been promoted as the right thing to do, but that notion could be viewed as simplistic and ignoring the deep benefits that inclusion can bring to an organization. Scott Page, a professor of complex systems at the University of Michigan, tackles the issue in his new book, The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off In The Knowledge Economy. He discussed why diversity must be more than “feel-good metaphorical statements” on the Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111.

Knowledge@Wharton: What drove you to research this topic?

Page: It’s a little bit of a C.P. Snow moment. He was the British academic who said there are two academies: science and arts. Within the University of Michigan or almost any university, you’ve got people in the humanities and in the arts and philosophy departments talking about the need for inclusion on normative grounds, a sort of moral case for a more integrated society. Over in computer science and ecology and business, there are all these people showing in a knowledge economy this incredible value from people who have different perspectives, different ways of looking at problems, different tools.  Rest