Special session for the Globelics 2023 Conference “Innovation-Driven Knowledge-Economies and Transformation in the Global South”

Special Session Title

Policy, investment and activism for systemic transformation: Potential and barriers of Transformative Innovation Policy and Deep Transitions in Global South contexts.

Special Session Proponents

Diana Velasco, Bipashyee Ghosh, Johan Schot

The Session takes place at 11.30am IST, 8.00am CET

You can join the session via:

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83908523300?pwd=CLwab5Ywj68MSg9Cs7z1dYaJJavBgT.1

Meeting ID: 839 0852 3300

Passcode: 2023

Session Description: Background and Motivation

After six years of operating the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) composed of Global South and North innovation policymakers, funders, researchers, communicators and investors, a second phase of TIPC is about to be launched in 2023, drawing on the lessons learned over the past few years (Bernal-Hernández & Boni Aristizábal, 2023). As a knowledge network, TIPC has worked closely with the Globelics community over the past 5 years, in setting and advancing a “Transformative Innovation Policy’ research and action agenda (Ghosh & Torrens, 2020). Dedicated dialogue sessions and co-participation of scholars from both communities in each network’s conferences have led to a shared and complementary understanding of systemic innovation and transformations in Global South contexts. We acknowledge that Globelics scholars have played an active role in developing an action-research agenda and strengthen Transformative Innovation Policy in theory and practice in the Global South. 

In parallel, in 2022 a Deep Transitions Global Investors Panel composed of 18 private and public investors (from both the Global South and Global North) co-created an investment philosophy for the second deep transition (Schot et al., 2022). The Deep Transitions theory presents a framework to understand how large-scale societal developments unfold using historical analysis as a basis to understand and better shape desirable futures (Schot & Kanger, 2018). Spinning off from the panel and building upon fundamental research on just and multi-system transitions, a Deep Transition Lab (DTL) is launched in 2023. 

In the upcoming Phase II of TIPC and the DTL, we aim at expanding our community, and knowledge on systemic transformations, through more socio-technical experimentation with new investment and policy practices. These new experiments will be built on the legacy of the first phase of TIPC (see https://www.tipconsortium.net/resource-lab/) and a new set of experiments involving private and public funders. The coming set of experiments aims to analyse the transformative potential of new investments, monitor the transformative impact of existing investments, assess the transformative potential of portfolios, and construct complementary actions between public and private investors to achieve desired systems change (Schot et al., 2022).

Both the TIPC and the DTL aim to generate actionable knowledge on the policy and investment for transitions to sustainable futures. A special panel dialogue session in the 2023 Globelics conference on ‘Policy, investment and activism for systemic transformation’ will strengthen the knowledge infrastructure between our academic networks and communities of practice.  We believe that such as special session will offer a fantastic opportunity for knowledge integration on TIP in Global South contexts and broadening communities of practice devoted to accelerating the second deep transition. We believe that the ongoing action research on TIP and transformative investment can enrich discussions at the Globelics conference on the directionality of innovation in knowledge-economies. This will ensure alternative, more sustainable and just trajectories of development in the Global South, beyond the traditional catching-up strategies. 

Session Aim

This session seeks to advance the theory and practice of public and private transformative investment in systems of innovation through dedicated knowledge infrastructures, the TIPC and the DTL, with an emphasis on the Global South contexts.

Session Structure

The session will have a panel structure composed of Global South academics, practitioners, and investors. It intends to create a dialogue between the panelists and open the discussion to the audience through a Q&A session facilitated by the panel chair.

To position the audience and panelists in the discussion, there will be first a brief explanation of the TIPC and the DTL as platforms to accelerate systems change towards just sustainability transitions.

In a panel discussion, the barriers but also success factors will be discussed from the views and experiences of the panelists. Some guiding questions for the panelists are shared below:

• What are the main challenges to mobilising investments towards systems transformation in India?
• Why should we talk about transformative investment?
• What is the meaning of systems transformation from an urban and spatial perspective?
• Are there examples of best practices in policy for the contextualization of innovations for transformative change in society?
• How could transformative innovation from elsewhere in the Global South, be translated into India? 
• What is the role of platforms such as the TIP Consortium and the Deep Transitions Lab to accelerate system change in the Global South?

We will encourage panelists to ask each other at least one question to facilitate a rich discussion. There will also be an open space for the audience to ask questions to the panelists, comment and contribute to the session topic. The discussions could help academics and practitioners in India (where this year’s Globelics conference is hosted) to reflect and act upon the methodologies and challenges of enabling a transformative innovation and deep transition in their local contexts.

The session will have a hybrid setting, with the following structure:

Chair: Diana Velasco

Panelists:

1. Keya Chakraborty, Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, India
   (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-keya-chakraborty-2b4a0534/ )
2. Anabel Marin, IDS, UK (https://www.ids.ac.uk/people/anabel-marin/ )
3. Moumita Koley, IISC, Bangalore, (https://dstcpriisc.org/moumita-koley/ )
4. Erika Kraemer-MBula, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
   (https://www.uj.ac.za/members/erika-kraemer-mbula/ )

References

Bernal-Hernández, P., & Boni Aristizábal, A. (2023). Minding the gap between policymakers and researchers: the TIPC transformative learning history. https://www.tipconsortium.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/1-TIPC-Learning-History-final.pdf

Ghosh, B., & Torrens, J. (2020). Towards a Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) Research Agenda (No. 2020–03; TIPCWP). https://www.tipconsortium.net/publication/towards-a-transformative-innovation-policy-tip-research-agenda-2/

Schot, J., Benedetti del Rio, R., Steinmueller, W. E., & Keesman, S. (2022). Transformative Investment in Sustainability. An Investment Philosophy for the Second Deep Transition. https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/632d6cde6052c1b591d8dcbc/6374ee806f8d7b0ebbb045d0_Investment_Philosophy_16-11-22_NC_-_14.10pm.pdf

Schot, J., & Kanger, L. (2018). Deep transitions: Emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality. Research Policy, 47(6), 1045–1059.