European Commission

As you are probably already aware, U.S. economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz will be delivering the Schumpeter ‘Innovation in Enterprise’ lecture at the SME Assembly 2020, to be held online on 16 and 17 November during European SME Week. This promises to be a riveting address, so if you haven’t already saved the date, make sure to do so immediately. Ahead of the Assembly we are publishing a short introduction to Mr Stiglitz and his work on the Promoting Enterprise News Portal.

Joseph Stiglitz is an American economist, public policy analyst, and a professor at Columbia University. His CV is formidable – he is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and a former member and chair of the US president’s Council of Economic Advisers. In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University, where he has been a faculty member since 2001.

Stiglitz has also served as chair of the international Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, appointed by President Sarkozy of France, and currently serves as co-chair of its successor, the High Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. In addition, from 2011 to 2014, Stiglitz was president of the International Economic Association (IEA).

Excellence rewarded

In addition to his impressive work Stiglitz is the recipient of a long list of international awards. Chief among these are the John Bates Clark Medal, which he was awarded in 1979 by the American Economic Association, and later, in 2001, he was recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Stiglitz received the Nobel Prize along with George Akerlof and Michael Spence for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information.

The economic theory of asymmetric information proposes that an imbalance of information between buyers and sellers can lead to market failure. Analysis of these markets looks at questions such as why interest rates are often excessively high on local lending markets in Third World countries, or why rich landowners don’t bear the entire harvest risk in contracts with poor tenants.

Stiglitz and his co-laureates proposed a common explanation and extended the theory, augmenting it with the realistic assumption of asymmetric information: agents on one side of the market have much better information than those on the other side – tenants know more than landowners about their work effort and harvesting conditions, for example. For more information on markets with asymmetric information, check out the Nobel Prize site.

Stiglitz is also the author of several books, most recently The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future. His other books include People, Power, and Profits; The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them; Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity; and Globalization and its Discontents.

Don’t miss out!

In 2011, Time magazine named Stiglitz as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Delivered by such a formidable keynote speaker, the Schumpeter ‘Innovation in Enterprise’ lecture at this year’s SME Assembly is a not-to-be-missed event that promises to be full of valuable insights for innovative businesses. 

Register for the SME Assembly and contact the SME Assembly Secretariat for more information.

In the interests of the safety and wellbeing of our community, the decision has been taken by the German Presidency of the Council in cooperation with the European Commission to transform the SME Assembly 2020 into an online event.

The event will feature the usual array of top-level speakers, panels and masterclasses, and will feature a highly curated programme designed for the European enterprise community to share, innovate and continue to build the resilience that has helped us get through the unprecedented challenges presented by COVID-19.

In this edition we will also be sharing the latest EEPA 2020 announcements, including introductions to some of our top finalists, as well as a closer look at the projects awarded Special Mentions by the 2020 jury.

Don’t forget that we also want to hear YOUR stories, how are you facing these challenging times? Share your news and updates to be featured in an upcoming issue or on the Promoting Enterprise News Portal.

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SUBSCRIBE AND DON´T MISS ANY UPDATES

In the interests of the safety and wellbeing of our community, the decision has been taken by the German Presidency of the Council in cooperation with the Commission to transform the SME Assembly 2020 into an online event.

The SME Assembly 2020 will feature a combination of high-level panels and interviews, expert roundtables, interactive workshops, informative masterclasses, and innovative networking opportunities to help answer the difficult questions facing our community post-COVID.

Top speakers, such as Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz, have already confirmed their participation in this year’s event. We are delighted to inform you that Professor Stiglitz will deliver the 2020 Schumpeter ‘Innovation in Enterprise’ Lecture from New York.

We will also be joined by many other top speakers such as Commissioner Thierry Breton, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Peter Altmaier, the distinguished economist Dr. Maja Göpel, and many more.

So, if you haven’t already, SAVE THE DATES in your diaries.

You can start following the SME Assembly 2020 conversation and join in by using #SMEAssembly2020 on Twitter and by following @EEPA_EU, or by heading over to Facebook and following the @PromotingEnterprise page. Other updates on the SME Assembly 2020 will also be posted right here on the News Portal.

We look forward to seeing you online on the 16th and 17th November for this exciting virtual version of SME Assembly 2020!

For any questions on this year’s SME Assembly 2020 please contact the SME Assembly Secretariat and don’t forget to register.

The Schumpeter Innovation in Enterprise lecture is one of the highlights of the SME Assembly and is given by a different guest lecturer each year. This year Professor Jan Fagerberg, from the University of Oslo gave a lecture on the current status of European innovation and how this is closely related to the issues of economic transformation and climate change.

CoCreativeFlow.com, Sabine Soeder

According to Professor Fagerberg, Europe is stuck in a partially self-inflicted stagnation and needs to transform accordingly. The European stagnation can be explained by globalisation, and the differing responses of European states, leading to a lack of homogeneity. The Euro in particular, meant that there was no specific need for policy coordination, which led to increased unemployment and different austerity policies. These outcomes mean that something must change, in order to rise out of stagnation, the economy must radically transform.

The need to transform the economy is particularly linked to climate change. European emissions are still at high levels, and must decline much faster than their current rates. This is where the link to renewable technology becomes relevant, both environmentally and economically speaking. Not only is it the answer to cutting down on emissions but due to: rapidly declining costs, unlimited availability, broad applicability and pervasive effects, it could arguably transform the current economy into a more sustainable model.

As both challenges are heavily influenced by each other, they require a coordinated policy response which should specifically have innovation policy at its heart. This entails innovation policy working across fields to promote, explore and provide opportunities in fields related to renewables. Through ICT and renewable technology there is a chance to not only transform the economy, but do so without causing further harm to the climate and possibly even remedy the current effects.

For photos from the lecture, please see the Flickr album.

For more information on his work and publications, please visit his website.