Event Itinerary
Day 1 Day 2 Meet the experts
Session 15
Wednesday 17 March, 10:50 AM
Bridging the productivity gap - the key to re-shoring and expanding UK production
Productivity is one of the most important factors in determining prosperity and improving living standards. If the UK’s growth in manufacturing lies in its ability to re-shore and produce more of what we design, then increasing productivity to increase efficiencies and output from our workforce is the summits that the manufacturing communities must collectively scale. This webinar will be led by the recently launched Productivity Institute which aims to support a step-change in research available in the UK that will directly inform government policies and business strategies to improve productivity.
Bart van Ark
Professor of Productivity Studies, University of Manchester & Managing Director of The Productivity Institute
Bart van Ark is a Professor of Productivity Studies at the Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) at the University of Manchester. He is also Managing Director and Principal Investigator of The Productivity Institute, a UK-wide organisation which aims to lay the foundations for an era of sustained and inclusive productivity growth by bringing together academic research, policy studies and business engagement.
Van Ark is an internationally acclaimed economist in the field of international comparative productivity measurement and analysis, innovation and technology, and digital transformation, and his research has cut across the areas of economic growth, development economics, economic history and international economics and business.
From 2008 to 2020, van Ark was Chief Economist and Head of the Economy, Strategy and Finance Center at The Conference Board, a global business research think tank headquartered in New York, where he oversaw the production of widely watched economic indicators and growth forecasts around the globe. Since 2020 he has continued as Senior Advisor with The Conference Board.
Bart is also an Honorary Professor in Economics at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), where he headed the Groningen Growth and Development Center, a research group working on long-term economic growth and productivity, from 2000 to 2008. During this period he also oversaw the EUKLEMS project, which represents the first Europe-wide effort to construct a growth and productivity database at industry level. Prior to 2000, van Ark was a lecturer in Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen, and from 1988-1990 he was a research office at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research where he continues to serve as a research fellow.
Bart has published extensively on the topic of productivity in leading national and international journals, including the Journal of Economic Perspectives, The Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, and Economic Policy. From 2004–2008 he was managing editor of the Review of Income and Wealth. He has also been widely featured in major international business media, including Bloomberg, CNBC, Fox Business, the Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
Nigel Driffield
Professor of International Business, Warwick Business School & Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick
Nigel Driffield is Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor for regional engagement and also Professor of International Business at Warwick Business School, having held a similar post at Aston Business School for 10 years which included a spell as the dean of the business school. He has a PhD from Reading University, and has published some 80 academic papers across a range of disciplines including international business, regional science, finance, and economics.
His main areas of interest are:
The links between firm internationalisation and firm performance
The impact of inward investment on host locations
International technology transfer
Policy responses to globalisation
He is the Midlands Lead for the ESRC Productivity Institute. He also holds a £1m investment from ESRC looking at productivity in the West Midlands, “From Productivity to Prosperity”. This is a collaboration with Birmingham Business School and WMG at Warwick focusses on how productivity growth through investment, skills and supply chain collaboration can be translated into inclusive growth. He is also part of a team holding a £650K ESRC grant looking at policies to deliver productivity and growth locally.
He recently held a Prestigious Leverhulme Fellowship, investigating the impact of internationally mobile capital on both home and source countries, particularly in terms of competitiveness and labour markets.
More generally, he is currently an advisor to the BEIS Select Committee, and the Department of International Trade, with a focus on inward investment. He has carried out research and consultancy projects for UNCTAD, World Bank, European Commission, OECD, and in the UK several Government Departments and local Regional Development bodies. Locally, he has worked with the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP since its inception, serving on the economics strategy board, chairing the academic advisory group, and on the executive steering committees for both the Heseltine Report and the Strategic Economic Plan.
More recently he was the academic lead and deputy chair of the West Midlands Productivity and Skills commission. He has written extensively on the prospects for inward investment post Brexit.
He was on the Business and Management Sub-panel for the recent Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) exercise, and has been re-appointed for 2021. He recently completed a term on ESRC grants panel. He is on the editorial review board of the Journal of International Business Studies, the “World Elite” journal in the area of international business, as well as the Journal of World Business and the Global Strategy Journal