Infrastructure is a critical component of contemporary life which provides the essential backdrop upon which our collective lives are led. Infrastructures include the systems which provide essential services such as water, energy and digital connection to people throughout the world. However, there are also social institutions and networks that aid community life.
It is with this knowledge that academics at Alliance Manchester Business School understand that infrastructure development is extremely important to address conversations about climate change and decarbonisation.
Here we examine some of that research undertaken about the role of infrastructure:
- The Government has just released its long-awaited Skills for Jobs white paper, which sets out ambitious plans for the future of technical and professional education in England. Academics at The Productivity Institute shared their take on England’s skills system and how reforms might impact productivity levels crucial to boosting the UK’s recovery.
- A study, Funded by the Alliance MBS Strategic Investment Fund, will look at the changing nature of work and the effects of digitalisation on innovation, while also exploring the effects of digital technologies on the dynamics of skills and employment, and how these changes are affecting innovation performance.
- Nuno Gil, Professor of New Infrastructure Development, addressed a major symposium online on infrastructure investment. The Symposium on Quality Infrastructure Investment was hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan and co-organised by the OECD and its Development Centre. The significance of quality infrastructure investment is widely recognised as a key to achieving sustainable, resilient and inclusive growth, and has a crucial role to play in supporting a sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.
- Alliance Manchester Business School hosted three events focused on productivity in the UK. The three events examined: productivity dynamics in times of crisis and recovery; productivity, public services and wellbeing and UK regional inequalities, levelling up and the post-COVID challenges.
- Markos Zachariadis, Professor of Financial Technology & Information Systems at Alliance MBS has co-authored a thought-provoking article for the World Economic Forum in which he says the pandemic has accelerated most banks' digitalisation initiatives. "If the 2008 recession caused a boost in financial technology innovation, appetite for experimentation, and a wave of fin-tech start-ups, then this time round it is more about delivering real change."
