Global Value Chains Workshop
A workshop on Global Values Chains was held at Duke University on November 9-10, 2006. The major source of funding for the workshop is from the Rockefeller Foundation's Global Value Chains Initiative grant to Duke University. Additional funding support is provided by the UNC Supply Chain Program and the National Science Foundation.
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Services Offshoring Working Group
The Services Offshoring Working Group, based at the Industrial Performance Center, has been led by Tim Sturgeon of MIT. The other members of the Group are Frank Levy, also of MIT (chair), Clair Brown  (Berkeley), Brad Jensen (IIE), and David Weil (Boston University &  Harvard). The report was jointly sponsored by the Rockefeller and Sloan Foundations. The topic it addresses -- the data used to characterize and measure services offshoring and its effects on the US economy -- is obviously of interest to many in the Industry Studies community. The report is a thoughtful and thorough assessment of this important subject.
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Globalization, Employment and Economic Development
The fourth workshop at the Global Value Chain Initiative was held on June 14-16 2004 in Rockport, Massachusetts. The aim of the workshop was to bring together two distinct networks of researchers - from the Global Value Chains Initiative and from the Sloan Industry Centres - to identify, develop and consolidate the conceptual and methodological state of the art regarding globalisation's effects on economic development and employment. (The Sloan Industry Centres website can be found at http://www.industry.sloan.org/) A few scholars from outside both networks with special insight into the methodological and measurement issues related to globalisation's effect on employment were also invited. Finally, we invited a handful of industry leaders, policy-makers and activists to round out the group.
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Global Value Chain Debate in Cancun
Peter Gibbon and Hubert Schmitz organised a half-day workshop at Cancun, Mexico on the 12th September 2003, on Power, Trade and Development Policies: Global Value Chain Analysis. This workshop was part of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) Cancun Trade and Development Symposium and coincided with the WTO Ministerial Meeting.
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There have been four major meetings associated with the GVC Initiative:

Global Value Chains: Industrial Upgrading, Employment, and Poverty Reduction
The third workshop of the Global Value Chain Initiative was held on April 8-11, 2003 at the Rockefeller Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. At this meeting we reviewed a prospectus for a book on GVCs, worked to further develop the theoretical framework in areas where it remained weak, explored better ways of applying GVC-based approaches to sustainable industrial upgrading and employment creation, compared the GVC perspective to other approaches that have been important for analyzing industrial upgrading, and reinforced our links with policy makers and practitioners.

The conference goals were all achieved, and in some cases the results surpassed expectations. The book proposal was discussed in depth, and the team leaders received excellent feedback. Five participants in the team residency (Gereffi, Humphrey, McFate, Schmitz, and Sturgeon) stayed at Bellagio for an extra day and developed a chapter outline for the book, and a timetable for completing the book by October 2003. Useful suggestions for the GVC website were also received. The two main substantive areas of the conference - industrial upgrading and poverty reduction - are also key areas that were addressed in the book proposal, and thus these sessions had the double benefit of providing feedback to the experts on these topics and the book authors as well.

Global Value Chains Workshop , Rockport, Massachusetts, April 2002. The second meeting of the GVC Initiative engaged 20 participants with diverse backgrounds, including academics, development practitioners, labor activists, policy advisors and members of international organisations, to discuss a draft framework paper written by the three co-organisers of the workshop (Gereffi, Humphrey, and Sturgeon). The framework paper was a take-off point to consider strategies for making the GVC perspective a more useful tool for policymakers and development-oriented organisations, and to identify new ways of working together with practitioners and activists. This meeting achieved the objective of enlarging the value chain network and establishing fruitful contacts with a variety of academics, policymakers and activists.

The feedback from both the participants at the Rockport meeting, including academics and policymakers not previously associated with the value chain perspective, was that the draft framework paper provided a solid intellectual grounding for value chain work and a means of systematising value chain studies. The group strongly recommended that the paper be revised and submitted for publication. The paper is currently under review at the Journal Review of International Political Economy. A draft of the framework paper is currently available on this web site.

The participants in the Rockport meeting also agreed that a revised framework paper should serve as an introduction to a book on global value chains, written in an accessible style and aimed at a broad audience. This book would combine some overviews of the value chain approach with the number of case studies. This book would help to broaden the visibility of the approach and be useful to policymakers, practitioners and teachers.

Globalisation and Value Chain Analysis
Rockefeller Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy, September 2000. At this initial meeting we worked on basic definitions and tried to identify important focus areas for the theory and policy work. The workshop brought together 14 international scholars for one week in an effort to develop a common framework for value-chain research through the establishment of a standard set of concepts and methods, and the isolation of the key theoretical variables upon which the analysis and comparison of global value chains turns. Considerable progress was made during a series of intense group discussions, break-out sessions and summary reports. The results of this meeting were published in a special issue of the IDS Bulletin 32(3) (July 2001).

Spreading the Gains from Globalisation , Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, UK, September 1999. This international conference brought together approximately 40 participants from the academic, corporate, policy and foundation communities to try to meet the challenge of defining a more robust intellectual paradigm and effective policy agenda to facilitate spreading the gains from globalisation. This event sought to integrate theories and empirical research that straddled different traditions, such as the industrial districts and global commodity chains perspectives, and marked the origins of what has become the Global Value Chains Initiative.