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This paper demonstrates how the innovative application of a Collective Intelligence approach enhanced Local Skills Improvement Planning information for employers, education and skills training organisations and regional economic policy organisations. This took place within a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between a Chamber of Commerce and a University. This aimed to develop and deploy regional business intelligence for enhanced policy and decision-making in enterprise and economic development. The project converged knowledge from several research centres including economics, entrepreneurship and innovation, data science, and Artificial Intelligence. The paper presents a project case study which provides two contributions to applied knowledge. Firstly, it demonstrates how a Collective Intelligence (CI) approach can be applied to achieve rapid results in resolving the real-world problem of local skills information availability. Useful real-time data was gathered from employers in three sectors on skills requirements, supply and training. This was analysed using Artificial Intelligence tools, then shared publicly via an automated Internet portal, providing a scalable model for wider use. Secondly, it explores and evaluates how the knowledge exchange (KE) process can function effectively and quickly in applying CI-based innovation in practical ways which create new value, within a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between a University and Chamber of Commerce.environment.

The quest for structural transformation has been a crucial challenge in Africa in spite of the huge amounts of aid disbursed, investments undertaken, policies implemented, etc. Notwithstanding several important reasons highlighted in the literature, they are insufficient because they focus on the role of financial resources but neglect non-financial issues and resources that are required to guarantee efficient mobilisation, utilisation and prudent management of public resources. Consequently, this paper examines these non-financial issues and resources through a systematic review of the relevant literature and analysis of their contents. The major finding was that most policy efforts at structurally transforming finance in Africa achieved little success because they were not rooted in the continent's cultures and traditions, which should be employed to enhance sound financial management and control systems.

As a practice and empirical observations show, the educational activity of economic agents forms a whole set of prospects for their development. It is due to stable positive or, on the contrary, negative expectations of prospective counterparts that interact with the economic agents, of the possibilities of their development in both the conjuncture and the institutional directions. In this regard, education is very important, and its study is becoming widespread in the research field. Meanwhile, it should be noted that the studies of the question posed in the space of scientific work and research mainly concentrate on the micro-level. That is, the vast majority of works are devoted to the study of the education of firms as one of the most important "representatives" of economic agents. At the same time, the study of educational capital and its influence on the development of regional/national economic systems is unfairly deprived of attention. It is necessary to state that in recent years, the attention of scientists began to focus more and more on the issues set earlier. However, the theory of the territories' educational economy has not yet received development and attention. This largely restrains the research paradigm based on the study of intangible factors of production in the system of socio-economic development of regions or national economic systems in general. In this regard, and to level this gap, the time course of the reputation capital index for the Republic of Tatarstan and the main components determining its level are built in this paper based on the developed methodological approaches to a formalized assessment of the reputation of a territory. This allowed us to assess the reputation impact on the investment activity of a region using the methods of econometric modelling. In particular, being guided by the principles and tools of regression analysis, as well as relying on the method of dummy variables, a high level of interconnection between the studied parameters was established by the authors due to the significant level of elasticity between the analyzed series found.

Ontario's Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) have established productive links with employers and the result is practical training that leads to rewarding work for graduates. This practical success is not being adequately recognized in a crucial debate that focuses on strategies for economic development. It is important for the CAATs to promote a greater awareness of the links between their programs and broader goals such as economic prosperity. In this paper, the authors discuss the current orientation of government economic strategies and its potential for supporting the CAATs. They argue that there are three measures of economic performance that are central to the role that CAATs play: (1) return on investment in education; (2) productivity; and (3) skill shortages. Using these measures, the CAATs can make a strong case for their role in the economic strategies. The authors also discuss the context of decision-making, measurement issues and opportunities for the colleges as they raise their profile.