Four bodies of work, one underlying question.
Across leadership, innovation, monitoring, and adjacent fields, the work converges on one inquiry: how do places build the structural capacity to learn, adapt, and improve over time?
Publications on leadership.
This research looks at what urban leadership does for a place: how it changes organisations, places and their ability to adapt.
Publications focus on the interconnectedness of leadership, governance systems, stakeholder engagement, and monitoring and evaluation — and how these factors influence a city's ability to become resilient in the face of social and environmental change.
How leadership changes places.
View leadership publications
Publications on innovation ecosystems.
Research focused on understanding the dynamics of innovation ecosystems — from their formation and measurement to their impact on urban and regional competitiveness. Using data analysis and case studies, it looks at what makes innovation districts and place-based innovation succeed.
The publications also examine the role of emerging technologies in shaping these ecosystems. It offers policymakers insight into how technology, policy and urban development interact — and how innovation can benefit the communities around it.
How innovation takes root in places.
View innovation publications
Publications on monitoring & evaluation.
Places can only improve what they can see. This research focuses on the development and evaluation of effective monitoring and evaluation systems for place-based research and innovation strategies.
By analysing real-world case studies, the work explores how these systems can support policy learning, inform future policy decisions, and contribute to achieving sustainable development goals — particularly in contexts where institutional capacity to learn from policy outcomes is itself the bottleneck.
How policy learns from its results.
Other publications.
A broader collection of publications across diverse fields — from artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, to identification of reference regions, university-industry connectivity, urban mobility, and regional cooperation.
They follow the connections between innovation, technology and place that don't fit neatly into a single field.
Innovation and beyond.
