Keynote speakers

  Dr. Frank Neffke is a Senior Research Fellow at CID's Growth Lab (Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University). His research focuses on how economic actors diversify from one productive activity to another. Central in this research is that activities can be more or less similar in terms of the capabilities or skills they require. This similarity is shown to affect diversification processes throughout the economy, ranging from individuals' career paths and corporate diversification strategies, to structural change in regional and national economies. Before joining the CID, Frank Neffke worked as an assistant professor at the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He holds a Ph.D. in Economic Geography from Utrecht University and Master degrees in Econometrics and Philosophy from the University of Amsterdam.

  Dr. Torsten Heinrich is a Postdoctoral Researcher at INET (University of Oxford), where he works on agent-based modeling. His research interests also include economic complexity, industrial organization, evolutionary economics, and economic aspects of the information technology sector. Before joining the INET, Torsten Heinrich worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bremen until 2016. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from that latter university, with a thesis on technological change and growth patterns in the presence of network effects, and a Master degree from the Dresden University of Technology.