Under partnership between Instituto Superior Técnico and the US Embassy regarding the “American Corners Portugal” program, the American Corner@Técnico promotes another lecture with an American speaker – supported by the Department of Engineering and Management (DEG) and Centre for Management Studies of Instituto Superior Técnico (CEGIST).
• Date: 20th June 2022, Monday
• Time: 5.00 p.m.
• Venue: Main building (meeting room)
• Speaker: Maryann P. Feldman (Heninger Distinguished Professor, Department of Public Policy, University of North Carolina & Research Director, UNC Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, Chapel Hill NC, USA).
• Title: “The Demise of the Local: Digitalization, Platforms, and Neoliberalism”.
• Abstract:
Technological change based on data, algorithms, andthe cloud expand choices, providing access to information on a scale previously unimaginable. Increasingly this new technology is embedded in, and contributes to a widening income and opportunity distribution. Many early pundits predicted that technology would increase economic and democratic participation and spread opportunity globally. The opposite has occurred — technology shifts local human-scale and personal interactions to impersonal but highly automated and globally scalable operations. Reinforced by corporate and government policy, local agency and autonomy are eroding and, as a result, proximity effects may be dissipating.
• Speaker bio:
Maryann P. Feldman is the Heninger Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina and Research Director at UNC Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. Her research and teaching interests focus on the areas of innovation, the commercialization of academic research and the factors that promote technological change and economic growth.
Dr. Feldman was the winner of the 2013 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research for her contributions to the study of the geography of innovation and the role of entrepreneurial activity in the formation of regional industry clusters. From 2014-2017, Dr. Feldman held a joint appointment at the National Science Foundation as the Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) Program Director and chaired an inter-agency working group on Science Policy.
Dr. Feldman’s work revealed that universities are necessary, but not sufficient, for technology-based economic development. She has written extensively on the process and mechanics of the commercialization of academic research, in particular with regard to the early development and growth of biotechnology, as an example of a transformative technology.
• Moderator: Rui Baptista (Full Professor, DEG/IST; CEGIST).
