The first R&D Management Virtual Symposium was held on 4-5 August 2020. The event saw many CTM colleagues coming together to deliver a very successful event. The symposium was supported by the R&D management conference office (Letizia Mortara and Jo Griffiths) and was chaired by Prof Elicia Maine and Dr Sarah Lubik at Simon Fraser University’s Chang Institute for Entrepreneurship and the Beedie School of Business.
We discussed our research, experience and pedagogy on the theme of Invention to Innovation: Creating the Conditions for Impact. We currently don’t get enough scientific inventions out of universities to address global challenges such as climate change and curing disease. The event covered the challenges, and reasons behind this and some approaches to improve, organised in three in tracks:

• Some challenges have to do with innovation policy at the national, regional and university levels. The track was led by Prof Joseph Zhou (Tsinghua University)
• Some of them have to do with firm strategy. For instance, how open innovation practices promote or constrain science-based ventures and radical innovation. This track was led by Prof Riccardo Fini (University of Bologna)
• Some of the reasons have to do with the ways we educate and support students and faculty in such areas as opportunity creation, technology-market matching, and managing under uncertainty, to give them the best chance of creating successful and impactful science-based ventures. This track was led by Prof Alberto Di Minin (Scuola Sant’Anna, Pisa).

Over 300 attendees from around the world could hear from Prof Scott Stern (MIT, Sloan School of Management), Prof Ashish Arora (Duke University, Fuqua School of Business), Prof Einar Rasmussen (Nord University) and several panellists discussing how to build an entrepreneurial capacity. For insight on the best papers of the conference see https://www.rndtoday.co.uk/latest-news/best-papers-of-the-rd-management-symposium/.

More details will be published on the conference office website soon.