Babbage Forum series of national industrial innovation policymaking roundtables continues

Professor Sir Mike Gregory and members of the Babbage Forum continued their series of national roundtables in Paris this month at Cnam. Joined by senior policymakers to further explore national approaches to industrial innovation policymaking (IIP), this meeting focused on key challenges for French policymakers and subsequent needs.

Building upon the recent Babbage Forum report on IIP in France, Head of the Babbage Forum, Professor Gregory, was joined by representatives from government, industry and academia, including former advisers at the Prime Minister’s Office, OECD, MESRI and Thales.

Exploring the Babbage prioritised themes of industrial capabilities, policymaking competencies, efficient innovation ecosystems and evaluation & legacy learning; the group provided a rich discussion and critical insights scheduled to be published as part of a series of reports later this year.

Professor Gregory said: “The Babbage Forum is committed to supporting more effective and robust industrial innovation policymaking. By bringing together expertise from the disciplines of engineering and operations management with economics, Babbage convenes leading academic figures and senior practitioners.

“Combining a multidisciplinary approach with a comparison of international practice, Babbage is developing unique insights into the state of the art in industrial innovation policy making in leading economies.”

Professor Gregory: “We are very grateful to our hosts in France. Following on from our roundtable in Korea, this meeting with French policymakers confirmed that these opportunities to conduct an international examination with senior individuals who have direct experience will provide approaches and practices that will be of real benefit to policymakers.”

Over the next six months, the Babbage Forum will be conducting similar meetings in nations represented by Forum members to develop a directly comparable international view of Industrial innovation policy-making approaches, challenges and need.

Participants from each of these meetings will be joined by further policymakers at the International IIP comparative roundtable the Babbage Forum will be hosting in Cambridge on the 26th of September.