Jörg Meyer-Stamer was a German political scientist and economic development practitioner. He was passionate about developing economic development frameworks and methods that enabled stakeholders in developing countries to diagnose and improve their contexts. He developed methods and frameworks that enabled stakeholders to diagnose and improve local economic development, clusters, value chains and innovation systems. He also wrote several papers on structural change, technology, innovation and industrial policy.
He worked in many developing countries to build local capacity, support local economic development and advise governments and international development organisations like the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, International Labour Organization and Inter-American Development Bank. He was passionate about the industrial heritage and structural change programmes in Germany. He frequently hosted tour groups of decision-makers from developing countries in Germany to explore structural change, industrial heritage and local development issues.
He was born on 30 October 1958 in Germany and he died on 1 May 2009.
Early life and education
He was born as Jörg Meyer, but he changed his surname to Meyer-Stamer during his early adulthood.
He completed a masters degree (Diplom-Politologue) in Political Science at the University of Hamburg between 1979-1986. He completed a doctoral degree in 1995 at the University of Hamburg, Faculty of Social Sciences.
Jörg was fluent in German, English, Portuguese and Spanish.
Career
He started his career in 1987 with the Hamburg University Computer Science Department as a research officer studying the impact of office automation systems on white-collar workers. During this time he became a visiting fellow at the Institute of Latin American Research in Hamburg.
In 1988 he joined the German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE/GDI) in Berlin as a fellow. He worked on industrial competitiveness, technological change, and private sector development. He had several research projects focused on Latin America. During this time he co-developed the framework of Systemic Competitiveness with Klaus Esser, Wolfgang Hillebrand and Dirk Messner. During his time at DIE/GDI he had several visiting fellowship appointments at other institutes such as Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in Brighton (September to November 1994) and later at the Institut Arbeit und Technik, Gelsenkirchen, Germany (September to October 1996).
During his last two years at the DIE/GDI (1997 to 1998), Jörg was appointed as the head of teaching at the GDI/DIE with overall topical and organizational responsibility of the postgraduate course.
Following his death, the German Development Institute described Jörg as one of Germany's most creative and productive development researchers
In 1998, he joined the Institute for Development and Peace at the University of Duisburg. He led a project to assess and evaluate the overall performance of structural policy in North Rhine-Westphalia. During this time, he represented Germany on the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development. He worked on a project with the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex on the impact of global value chains on local clusters.
But Jörg felt constrained by the demands of the academic and research world, and in 2001 he ventured out as a freelance consultant. He maintained his links to his previous research networks but focused more on capacity building and method development in the developing world.
In 2003, he was a founding partner of the consultancy firm Mesopartner. Although he became a consultant, he continued to publish academic and research papers. As a consultant, his attention shifted more towards capacity building on experts and decision-makers in developing countries, especially on topics like local economic development, cluster promotion and innovation systems promotion.
Work
Jorg worked in many developing countries to build local capacity, support local economic development and to advise governments and international development organisations like the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, International Labour Organization and Inter-American Development Bank.