ISSUE 38: SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2005

FRONT PAGE | ARCHIVE |

INTECH, MERIT and a merger made in Maastricht 

UNU Institute for New Technologies (UNU-INTECH) and the Maastricht Economic Research Centre on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) are on track in work to create a new organizational structure and research programme leading up to the formal merger of the two institutes to form UNU-MERIT at the end of this year.

The appointment of MERIT Director Luc Soete (right) as head of the Maastricht-based INTECH in January set the merger process in motion. MERIT research staff and students relocated to the INTECH building in April, marking the beginning of informal exchanges to identify common research interests and develop collaborative projects that bring together teams of researchers from both institutes.

Following a meeting of the advisory boards of both institutes in July to review progress, it is expected that the final institutional, financial and programme arrangements will be completed in time for the formal approval of the merger at the end of the year.

The merger will take advantage of the co-location of the two institutes to realize all possible synergies, both in research content and organization, and achieve the three-fold goal of establishing:

• A world class centre of academic excellence, attracting the best researchers in the area of science, technology and innovation studies from around the world;
• A crucial policy think-tank on knowledge policies at the global, national and regional level in the developing as well as developed world; and
• An international academic and policy training centre providing both PhD training and PhD supervision as well as policy training to students and civil servants from developing and developed countries. 

MERIT researcher Pierre Mohnen (left) and Ngoc Pham Quang, a PhD student at UNU-INTECH see the sights after  presenting a paper at a recent  international economics  conference in Beijing.

Five research themes will form the academic backbone of the integrated institute. They cover a broad spectrum of methodological and sectoral research expertise – from academic, data-based analytical work to demand-driven, policy research for a range of intergovernmental organizations, international development agencies and national governments. In each of these five areas, major efforts will be made to broaden the analysis to include both developing and developed countries, thus providing a major intellectual stimulus to existing research programmes.

The five themes are:

1. Micro-based evidence research on innovation and technological change: Research under this theme primarily involves the collection of data and development of indicators to measure science, technology and innovation. A key objective will be to provide new insights into the process of innovation in different country, and macro-economic settings. The outputs of these studies are expected to contribute to the work of institutions such as the OECD, World Bank, and a variety of economic think tanks around the world.
2. The role of technology in growth and development: This research area focuses on the many questions with respect to the impact of technology and innovation on growth and development, productivity growth, employment, and the consequences for income distribution. The enlargement of this branch of research will enable the investigation of a much broader set of issues relating to human capital and labour and economic growth, international aspects of wage and unemployment inequality, international labour market power, education, health and sustainable development. 
3. Knowledge and industrial dynamics: In contrast to the second theme, the focus of this research area will be at the micro level – analysing knowledge flows, learning, and the recombination of knowledge at the level of firms and sectors. Researchers at the two institutes bring a wealth of expertise in the biotechnology, information technologies, agriculture, and environment sectors. Building on this, the focus will be on broadening the analysis of the actual dynamics of industrial structure in both developing and developed countries, taking into account the origin of both foreign and domestic firms. 
4. Innovation, entrepreneurship and development: This research theme includes research on the international strategies of firms, their mergers and acquisitions, foreign direct investment. A key premise is that the ever growing global focus of firms renders a clear-cut division between developed and developing countries meaningless. The analysis will thus be enlarged to include corporate strategies and investment behaviour of multinational enterprises in the triad, emerging and developing economies, as well as technological upgrading in the developing world through alliances and mergers. 
5. The governance of science, technology and innovation: This theme covers ongoing research into national systems of innovation and innovation policy in developed and developing countries. This work will be broadened to look more systematically at the governance of innovation and international policy advice on science, technology and global sustainability.

FRONT PAGE

© 2005  United Nations University