Program on Technology Leadership and US Competitiveness

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About the Program

The Program on Technology Leadership and US Competitiveness at the Berkeley Policy Institute (BPI) develops both institutional initiatives and research focused on technology leadership and US competitiveness. Much of this output has been driven though a collaboration between BPI and the Institute for Business Innovation (IBI) at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

In particular, a new center at IBI has been developed under the name Tusher Strategic Initiative for Technology Leadership (TSI) to drive this focus area in the coming years. Specifically, TSI has been built on the principles of this program, providing a trusted space for multi-stakeholder, interdisciplinary engagement from industry, academia, and policymakers at the strategy-policy interface, recognizing that firm and national competitiveness go hand-in-hand.


Key Focus Areas and Activities

  • Antitrust and Dynamic Competition

    • Dynamic Competition Initiative

      The Dynamic Competition Initiative (DCI) builds a collaboration with UC Berkeley and the European University Institute focused on creating new innovation-driven theories, operational tools, and practices for competition policy in a dynamic world.

      • Publications

      • Scholars and management team

      • Events

      • Videos

      • Dynamic Competition Policy Lab: An open, experimental environment to evaluate existing innovation strategies and
        policies and test the operationalization of new theoretical models and tools in collaboration with industry and policymakers.

      • Industry Leadership Roundtable and Visiting Scholar Program: A program of roundtable meetings among senior managers (chief economists, legal counsels, CIOs, etc.) from high technology firms to explore the disconnect between
        innovation practice and policy.

      • Young Scholars Academic Research and Internship Program: An interdisciplinary research program on innovation-based, dynamic competition to develop new, theoretical tools in collaboration with leading academics worldwide, with a particular focus on the development of young scholars in the field (i.e., PhD candidates, post-docs, and early-career academics).

  • Intangible Assets and Competitive Advantage

    • The following three interdisciplinary initiatives focus on intangible assets and competitive advantage:

      • Berkeley Deep Tech Innovation Lab (DTIL): A unique collaboration among the business, engineering, and law schools at UC-Berkeley. DTIL combines education and research to help bring cutting-edge technologies to the market and society. It features the only set of courses registered across all three of the above schools at UC-Berkeley and seeks to develop new tools and educate future leaders in deep tech commercialization at the intersection of technology, business, and intellectual property.

      • Berkeley Fellowship Program (BFP): A unique research collaboration between the Berkeley Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology focused on The Impact of IP Policy on Innovation, Economic Growth, and National Competitiveness. The program was launched in 2023 to establish a venue for objective, nuanced research on IP policy funded and supported by diverse US industry actors ranging from Big Tech, telecommunications, semiconductors, and pharma for the overall benefit of national competitiveness.

      • Berkeley Symposium on The Impact of the Patent System on Markets for Technology: A research collaboration among Berkeley Haas, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, and the NYU School of Law run in February 2023 resulting in the publication of nine articles in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal (Vol. 38) in November 2023. The forward by Robert Merges and the nine articles are available online here.

  • National Competitiveness and Security

    • A key focus of this program is to develop new frameworks for industry and government to address the new era of great power technology competition.

      • Geotech Policy Lab: The goal of this initiative is to bring together the Hill (government) and the Valley (industry) to build a new public-private dialogue adjusted to the context of global technology competition.

      • The Babbage Forum @ Berkeley: A collaboration between the University of Cambridge, UC-Berkeley, and the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society featuring a one-day roundtable of senior policymakers, industry executives, and academics focused on the effectiveness of US industrial policy and regulation on technology leadership and economic competitiveness.

      • Corporate Directors Forum: February 2024 session at the Director’s Summit 2024 on Geopolitics & the Supply Chain to engage the key corporate decision-makers that need to focus on geostrategic risk.

  • Diversity, Innovation, and Competitiveness

    • The following three key initiatives and activities have been conducted and developed in the area of diversity, innovation, and competitiveness:

      • Increasing Diversity in Innovation Conference: Joint event run with the USPTO at their facilities and in collaboration with US IP Alliance in August 2023.share insights on how to increase the amount of inventorship in the US starting with a special effort to better engage underrepresented inventors to increase firm and national competitiveness.

      • EUI ASPIRE PhD program: PhD scholarship program for underrepresented scholars established for Enabling Next Generation Scholars and New Paradigms for Competitiveness, Innovation, and Technology Policy.

      • Berkeley Deep Tech Innovation Lab (DTIL): Focused on engaging students from diverse fields and backgrounds to create T-shaped capabilities to address the complexity of innovation in the 21st century.

Research Fellows and Post-Docs

Updated: January 6, 2025

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