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| Michael H. Best, Ph.D. Center for Industrial Competitiveness (CIC) University Professor Emeritus University of Massachusetts Lowell Michael_Best@UML.EDU UK address: 6 Boults Lane Old Marston, Oxford 01865 240 109 Michael Best is co-director of the Center for Industrial Competitiveness and University Professor emeritus, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Senior Associate in industrial organization, Judge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge. He lives and works in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Professor Best’s research focuses on industrial clusters, technology management, competitive advantage, and regional growth. His ‘capability and innovation’ perspective on industrial growth is developed and illustrated with enterprise and regional case studies in two books, The New Competitive Advantage: The Renewal of American Industry, Oxford University Press, 2001 and The New Competition: Institutions of Industrial Restructuring, Harvard University Press, 1990, and a series of articles (see publications). The Capabilities and Innovation perspective was simultaneously shaped by and applied in enterprise modernization, technology management, and cluster development projects he has led in various industrial settings including London, Slovenia, India, Cyprus, Jamaica, Honduras, Moldova, and Malaysia as well as in Massachusetts. Recent applications can be found in The Capabilities Perspective: Advancing Industrial Competitiveness in Northern Ireland, published by the Northern Ireland Economic Council, 2001 and Malaysian Electronics at the Crossroads (coauthored with Rajah Rasiah), conducted for the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister’s Office and published by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in 2003 (see publications for websites). Professor Best, with Professor and ex-Minister of Economy Tea Petrin, has worked for over 15 years on various production and technology modernization projects in Slovenia which is the subject of a forthcoming book. Professor Best recently completed a study of the rise and rapid growth of the medical devices industry in Massachusetts that deploys an historical dataset of high tech companies to characterize the forces that drive industrial transitions and the emergence of new clusters. Presently he is funded by a Marie Curie Fellowship to transfer the research methodology to the Centre for Innovation and Structural Change, National University of Ireland, Galway. Professor Best is on the advisory board of The Competitiveness Institute (http://www.competitiveness.org) and is an editorial board member of Massachusetts Benchmarks: The Quarterly Review of Economic News and Insight, jointly published by the University of Massachusetts and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He was the National Science Foundation evaluator for the Biodegradable Polymer Center, an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center and before that he was on the board of the New Product Development Corporation (a royalty based financial institution in Massachusetts), and on the staff of the Greater London Enterprise Board, a public sector venture capital agency. |
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