National Productivity Week 27th January 2025 | Visit Website

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The Institute’s key research themes are led by ten academic partners spread across the UK.

Working closely with policymakers

We’re a UK-wide research organisation exploring what productivity means for business

Businesses are crucial to solving the UK’s productivity problems.

From Create to Innovate: A Pathway to Productive People, Firms, and Places

Alliance Manchester Business School

Booth Street West Manchester M15 6PB

This event features a lecture from worldwide expert on rapid-innovation-based industries, Professor Dan Breznitz, and a panel discussion about the meaning of ‘innovation’ within global business.

The panel will discuss how creation and innovation are different, and how continuous innovation can build on creativity. They’ll explore how a strong link between the two can bring about more productive businesses, people and places; and how it could or should make growth more inclusive.

Confirmed panellists

Peter Evans

Peter Evans, CEO of Orderly

Peter, who is 29, is CEO of rapidly expanding Derby-based business Orderly – a sustainability-focussed tech company. Orderly grows and implements order management, forecasting and inventory solutions for clients such as Starbucks, M&S, Eurogarages and Morrisons Supermarkets.

Dan Breznitz

Dan Breznitz

Dan Breznitz is a University Professor and Munk Chair of Innovation Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy with a cross-appointment in the Department of Political Science of the University of Toronto. At the University, he is also the Co-Director of the Innovation Policy Lab and a Senior Fellow of Massey College.

His latest book ‘Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World’ was chosen by the Financial Times as one of the best books of 2021. It’s the only book to have been awarded both major Canadian awards for Public Policy – the Balsillie prize for Public Policy given by the Writers’ Trust of Canada, and the Donner Prize for the Best Book on Public Policy.

Professor Breznitz is also a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advance Research (CIFAR), where he co-created and now serves as the Co-Director of the programme on Innovation, Equity and the Future of Prosperity (IEP). This is a radical multidisciplinary programme spanning the humanities, law, social science, and engineering – in a common aim to develop a new interdisciplinary sub-field.

Breznitz is known worldwide as an expert on rapid-innovation-based industries and their globalisation, as well as for his pioneering research on the distributional impact of innovation policies. He has been a member of several boards, and has served as an advisor on science, technology, and innovation policies to multinational corporations, governments, and international organisations.

He served his country as the Clifford Clarke Economist (the top external adviser) of the federal Canadian Department (Ministry) of Finance during 2021-22. Here, he was responsible for new economic thinking on the restructuring of the Canadian economy, including the creation of new agencies.

Before joining the Munk School, Breznitz spent eight years in Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) as a professor in the Scheller College of Business, the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, and the School of Public Policy. In an earlier life, he founded and served as a CEO of a small software company.

Vital Topics Global

Vital Topics is our series of prestigious business lectures, bringing powerful ideas and original thinking to audiences from the Manchester city-region and beyond.

AMBS has partnered with Manchester’s leading property developer, Renaker, to extend this to a global lecture series in four international centres: Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore.

Date(s)

  • 28 January 2025

Time(s)

  • 5:30 pm - 6:45 pm
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