Looking back at GEOINNO2020

GEOINNO2020 Conference report

A conference is always a team effort, and it was no different with this year’s 5th Geographies of Innovation conference, GEOINNO2020, held this year in Stavanger 29th-31st January 2020.

This year was special in that we partnered not only with a research centre, the Centre for Innovation Research, but also a Ph.D. training network. For the last three years, the RUNIN Initial Training Network has been coordinating an advanced training programme with 14 researchers looking at the relationship between universities, innovation and regional development. These topics are absolutely at the core of the GEOINNO community’s interested, and therefore we invited these researchers cast their academic gaze on last week’s events, and to single out what most caught their eye and stimulated their creative juices.

• Conference reflections by Gerwin Evers, Aalborg University
• Conference reflections by David Fernandez Guerrero, Aalborg University
• Conference reflections by Saeed Moghadam Saman, University of Stavanger
• Conference reflections by Kwadwo Atta-Owusu, University of Stavanger
• Conference reflections by Sergio Manrique, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
• Conference reflections by Lisa Nieth, University of Twente
• Conference reflections by Huong Thu Nguyen, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
• Conference reflections by Maria Salomaa, University of Lincoln
• Conference reflections by Eloïse Germain, Linköping University
• Conference reflections by Rhoda Ahoba-Sam, University of Lincoln
• Conference reflections by Utku Ali Rıza Alpaydın, University of Stavanger
• Conference reflections by Ridvan Cinar, University of Aveiro
• Conference reflections by Liliana Fonseca, University of Aveiro

With over 400 delegates, GEOINNO2020 was a large conference with keynotes, speakers and delegates from all over Europe. It’s a truism of innovation that the best innovation happens at the margins and that was also true for our conferences; the most exciting papers that our Ph.D. researchers saw were those that were exploring an interesting new area, outside the mainstream of what economic geography tends to consider. Sessions around the dark side of innovation, Regional Responsible Research and Innovation, gender & inclusion suggested that there is an exciting future for the discipline with a new cohort of researchers picking up the baton and moving it forward. We hope you enjoyed our event, and we hope you enjoying what the next generation of the GEOINNO family thought of it.

See you in Milan in 2020!