Coming Events

AIE Conference: Call for Papers
 
The 6th Annual Conference of the Academy of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (AIE) will be co-hosted by the TMCD and Tsinghua University. The main theme this year is ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Inclusive and Sustainable Development’. Distinguished keynote speakers include: Anne Miroux (UNCTAD), Calestous Juma (Harvard University), Luc Soete (Maastricht University and United Nations University), Martin Bell (University of Sussex, Science and Technology Policy Research) and Xin Fang (Chinese Academy of Sciences). The Call for Papers is open until 30 April 2013.

China Policy Forum
 
The Oxford Chinese Economy Programme, the Technology and Management Centre for Development (TMCD) and the Oxford Forum on China and the World Economy will co-host the OXCEP China Policy Forum on 7 June. Speakers include Prof Xiaolan Fu, Prof Christine Wong, Prof Li Shi, Prof Zhao Yaohui, and Prof John Knight.

News Update
 
Diffusion of Innovation in Low Income Countries (DILIC) Project
 
The Technology and Management Centre for Development (TMCD), in collaboration with the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (CSIR-STEPRI), organised a workshop to introduce the objectives of the DILIC project on 5 March. Forty local policy makers, researchers, and entrepreneurs participated in the event. The first phase of fieldwork was concluded. This phase aimed to set the foundations for the DILIC project in Ghana and to collect information for the research project case studies.

Mobile Payment Innovations Improve Water Service Delivery in Tanzania
 
New research from Oxford University has found that mobile payments and related innovations are improving urban water service provision in East Africa by improving revenue collection and reducing corruption. Water service providers in Tanzania often struggle to provide satisfactory water supplies in its rapidly growing cities due to inadequate revenue collection and inefficient billing and payment systems. Mobile payment innovations are being used to improve public service delivery in East Africa by increasing the ease of payment for customers, expanding revenue collection for water utilities, and removing opportunities for theft, bribery, and collusion. The project examined the use of mobile money applications and wireless pay point networks for water bill payments in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Data include 1,000,000 water payments made using different payment methods, 1097 surveys of water users in the city, and over 40 interviews with water sector officials and representatives with the telecommunications industry. Personnel on the project include Aaron Krolikowski (School of Geography and the Environment), Prof Xiaolan Fu (Department of International Development), and Dr Robert Hope (School of Geography and the Environment).
 
British Academy Award: The Role of Internationalisation on Technological Capability-Upgrading in Developing Countries
 
This project explores how enterprises’ internationalisation influences technological capacities in developing countries. We argue that ventures will develop better technical capabilities not just in entering locales with more advanced technical capabilities but also in locales with less developed technical capabilities. We seek to empirically investigate both paths through an empirical analysis of Chinese firms entering Europe, where technical infrastructure is usually more advanced, and in Africa, where such infrastructure is usually less developed. This project is being developed by Prof Xiaolan Fu, Dr Jizhen Li (Tsinghua University) and Dr Zhongjuan Sun (Tsinghua University & Oxford University Research Visitor).
 
John Fell Fund Award on Mobile Technologies and Health

The John Fell OUP Research Fund has made an award of £28,068 to the project “Mobile Technologies and Health: A Pilot Study in India and China”, spearheaded by Dr Proochista Ariana and hosted by the Technology and Management Centre for Development (TMCD) . Five researchers from four departments and three divisions across Oxford University work on this interdisciplinary project: Dr Proochista Ariana (ODID and Department of Public Health), Prof Xiaolan Fu (ODID and TMCD), Dr Gari Clifford (Department of Engineering Science), Dr Felix Reed-Tsochas (Saïd Business School), and Mr Marco Haenssgen (DPhil Candidate at ODID). The project is a response to the increasing interest in mobile health technologies (“mhealth”). It explores and compares forms of mobile phone use and their implications for healthcare access in rural areas of India and China, and it assesses the phone’s facilitating or impeding role as a platform when deploying mhealth services. Methods involved in this investigation include a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques, social network analysis, and participatory agent-based modelling.