Building on the experience of its inaugural edition, the Globelics PhD Academy returned to Lisbon in 2005 as a space for advanced doctoral training and international academic exchange. The Academy continued the effort to strengthen research on innovation and economic development by connecting PhD students with scholars working at the frontier of innovation studies. Its approach was particularly relevant for researchers examining developing and transition economies, where institutions, knowledge networks and technological capabilities often evolve under very different conditions from those observed in highly industrialized countries.
The Academy was part of a broader Globelics objective to enhance the quality of innovation research through concepts such as innovation systems, interactive learning and competence building. At the doctoral level, this meant encouraging participants not only to develop stronger theoretical foundations but also to consider how established approaches could be adapted, questioned and expanded through evidence from different parts of the world. The Academy consequently became a meeting point between international innovation scholarship and research grounded in specific national and regional experiences.
Research associated with the 2005 Lisbon edition demonstrates this diversity. For example, work presented on Russia examined innovation strategies within an underdeveloped national innovation system, considering higher education institutions, research organizations, firms, government structures and the networks connecting them. The research addressed institutional weaknesses, incentives, technological strategies and the need for systemic approaches to innovation policy. Such contributions illustrate how the Academy encouraged doctoral researchers to connect broad innovation-system concepts with concrete institutional and policy problems.
The Lisbon Academies were jointly organized by the Centre for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research (IN+) at Instituto Superior Técnico and the Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão (ISEG), both within the Technical University of Lisbon. Rui Baptista and Manuel Mira Godinho were among those involved in local coordination, while Manuel Heitor served as co-director of the Globelics Academy during its early period.
By its second edition, the Academy was consolidating a distinctive form of doctoral education based on dialogue rather than one-way instruction. Students could confront their research questions with different perspectives, learn from researchers working in other institutional environments and establish relationships extending beyond the program itself. The 2005 Academy thus strengthened the foundations created a year earlier and reinforced Lisbon’s early role in the development of Globelics’ international doctoral training activities.