Regionally asymmetric knowledge capabilities and open innovation: Exploring ‘Globalisation 2’—A new model of industry organisation

This paper proposes to review and assess social scientific debate about the origins and nature of innovation in modern society. It focuses on three sub-sets of conceptualisation, critique and commentary that refer specifically to sub-national or regional innovation systems. Research in the latter field has grown enormously in recent years. Moreover, new perspectives from other disciplines than regional science have been promoted. One distinctive view of relevance in that it is focused on the role in innovation of specific ‘entrepreneurial universities’ in relation to industry and government is, of course, the ‘Triple Helix’ approach. This is reviewed and sympathetically critiqued. A second view, less sympathetically critiqued here, is one that itself attacks all so-called ‘new regionalism’ for stressing the importance of institutions, industry embeddedness and the micro-science of regional economic development. Dazzled by ‘Globalisation 1’ and the totalising power of ‘scale’ geographies, this rejection of the worth of spatial analysis at less than the global or national ‘scalar envelope’ is assessed for its potential insights into weaknesses of the regional innovation systems approach but found wanting in both technical accuracy and scholarly competence. Finally, the state of the art in regional innovation systems research is sketched by reference both to recent longitudinal findings and elaborations into specific technological fields, particularly but not only Bioregional Innovation Systems that help move us towards a newer theory of economic geography in the knowledge economy, based on ‘regional knowledge capabilities.’ The analysis conclusively proposes ‘Globalisation 2’, a ‘ground-up’ knowledge-driven evolution of the earlier ‘top-down’ multilateral trade institution and corporately driven ‘Globalisation 1.’     

Scholarly research and information practices: a domain analytic approach

This paper deals with information needs, seeking, searching, and uses within scholarly communities by introducing theory from the field of science and technology studies. In particular it contributes to the domain-analytic approach in information science by showing that Whitley’s theory of ‘mutual dependence’ and ‘task uncertainty’ can be used as an explanatory framework in understanding similarity and difference in information practices across intellectual fields. Based on qualitative case studies of three specialist scholarly communities across the physical sciences, applied sciences, social sciences and arts and humanities, this paper extends Whitley’s theory into the realm of information communication technologies. The paper adopts a holistic approach to information practices by recognising the interrelationship between the traditions of informal and formal scientific communication and how it shapes digital outcomes across intellectual fields. The findings show that communities inhabiting fields with a high degree of ‘mutual dependence’ coupled with a low degree of ‘task uncertainty’ are adept at coordinating and controlling channels of communication and will readily co-produce field-based digital information resources, whereas communities that inhabit fields characterised by the opposite cultural configuration, a low degree of ‘mutual dependence’ coupled with a high degree of ‘task uncertainty’, are less successful in commanding control over channels of communication and are less concerned with co-producing field-based digital resources and integrating them into their epistemic and social structures. These findings have implications for the culturally sensitive development and provision of academic digital resources such as digital libraries and web-based subject portals.     

Broadening out and opening up technology assessment: Approaches to enhance international development,co-ordination and democratisation

Technology assessment (TA) has a strong history of helping to identify priorities and improve environmental sustainability, cost-effectiveness and wider benefits in the technology policies and innovation strategies of nation-states. At international levels, TA has the potential to enhance the roles of science, technology and innovation towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, effectively implementing the UN Framework on Climate Change and fostering general global transitions to ‘green economies’. However, when effectively recommending single ostensibly ‘best’ technologies or strategies, TA practices can serve unjustifiably to ‘close down’ debate, failing adequately to address technical uncertainties and social ambiguities, reducing scope for democratic accountability and co-ordination across scales and contexts. This paper investigates ways in which contrasting processes ‘broadening out’ and ‘opening up’ TA can enhance both rigour and democratic accountability in technology policy, as well as facilitating social relevance and international cooperation. These methods allow TA to illuminate options, uncertainties and ambiguities and so inform wider political debates about how the contending questions, values and knowledges of different social interests often favour contrasting innovation pathways. In this way TA can foster both technical robustness and social legitimacy in subsequent policy-making. Drawing on three empirical case studies (at local, national and international levels), the paper discusses detailed cases and methods, where recent TA exercises have contributed to this ‘broadening out’ and ‘opening up’. It ends by exploring wider implications and challenges for national and international technology assessment processes that focus on global sustainable development challenges.     

The role of intermediation and absorptive capacity in facilitating university-industry linkages—An empirical study of TAMA in Japan

This paper analyzes two elements necessary for building an efficient regional technology-transfer system between universities and firms, namely, an intermediary organization and regional firms that have a developed ‘absorptive capacity’, touching in particular upon the tacit knowledge aspects. Based on an empirical study of the TAMA cluster project (in the western part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area), which is a model project of the ‘Industrial Cluster Plan’ in Japan, we examine the intermediation effect of the TAMA Association and the ‘absorptive capacity’ of various product-developing SMEs. These two elements are interrelated because the participation of the product-developing SMEs is a prerequisite for the effective functioning of an intermediary such as the TAMA Association. Our analysis also shows that university-industry linkages and inter-firm linkages lead to different outcomes.     

The structuration of socio-technical regimes—Conceptual foundations from institutional theory

In recent years, socio-technical transitions literature has gained importance in addressing long-term, transformative change in various industries. In order to account for the inertia and path-dependency experienced in these sectors, the concept of the socio-technical regime has been formulated. Socio-technical regimes denote the paradigmatic core of a sector, which results from the co-evolution of institutions and technologies over time. Despite its widespread acceptance, the regime concept has repeatedly been criticized for lacking a clear operationalization. As a consequence, empirical applications tend to depict regimes as too ‘monolithic’ and ‘homogenous’, not adequately considering persistent institutional tensions and contradictions. These are however crucial for assessing transition dynamics. In this paper, we revisit two concepts from institutional theory that enable an explicit identification of socio-technical regimes and more generally a specification of the ‘semi-coherence’ of socio-technical systems. First, we will show that ‘levels of structuration’ can be conceptualized as degrees of institutionalization, thereby treating institutionalization as a variable with different effects on actors, the stability of the system and thus the potential for change. Secondly, we draw on the institutional logics approach to characterize the content of various structural elements present in a system and to trace conflicts and contradictions between them. We illustrate this approach with an empirical in-depth analysis of the transformation of the Australian urban water sector since the 1970ies.     

Approaching the innovation frontier in Korea: the transition phase to leadership

As leading East Asian latecomer firms begin to compete on the basis of new product development and in-house research and development (R&D), they appear to confront a difficult strategic dilemma. Should they compete as R&D and brand leaders on the international stage or should they continue with their tried and tested formula of low cost catch up competitiveness? Most studies of East Asian firms focus on catch up innovation processes. By contrast, this paper focuses on the challenges facing latecomer firms in the transition phase from catch up to leadership status, in order to assess the ‘strategic dilemma’ argument and examine the nature of transition innovation. Based on in-depth interviews with leading Korean firms, the paper contends that the strategic dilemma argument is a misleading oversimplification of the main innovation challenges facing most Korean firms as they become more technologically advanced. Most of the major exporters (or chaebol) offer a portfolio of products, some of which are technologically advanced and others less advanced. Corporate innovation strategies tend to be executed in relation to the needs of specific products (or closely related product families) rather than ‘the firm’ in its entirety. In addition, many firms in many product areas have yet to reach the innovation frontier stage and even the leading chaebol continue to produce large volumes of products under sub-contracting and licensing agreements. Firm strategies tend to embody a mix of leadership, ‘followership’ and latecomer positions according to the product portfolio of the company in question. The study identifies various strategic options and difficulties facing Korean firms during the transition process and points to promising future research on latecomer transition.     

Articulating the ‘three-missions’ in Spanish universities

The present paper elaborates a critical reflection on the ‘one-size-fits-all’ model which conceptualizes universities as centres of excellence in education, research and third mission. It is argued that the shortcomings of this perspective are twofold: first, HEIs are treated as homogeneous institutions with equal capacity to perform and contribute to social engagement; and second, missions are undistinguishable from each other. Both features lead to mischaracterizations concerning the role of universities and their contribution to society. In the view proposed here missions are university strategies linked by complex relationship of compatibility, and the paper puts in perspective the persisting gap concerning the nature of and the relations across them.     

The bumpy road of technology partnerships: Understanding causes and consequences of partnership mal-functioning

Research on technological partnerships has traditionally sought explanation of their high failure rates in partner characteristics and relationship features. This study introduces the notion of a ‘bumpy road’ in technology partnerships which refers to undesired outcomes such as ‘partnership mal-functioning’ and ‘instability’ to the degree to which innovation activities are hampered. We explain how firm-level strategies can reduce the probability of a ‘bumpy road’ in partnerships. We also assess the impact of this ‘bumpy road’ on innovative performance. We find that firms that excel in diversification of external activities (in terms of different types of partners) perform best. Moreover, a persistent product oriented innovation strategy geared at developing new products, new markets, or higher product quality will yield more stable partnership outcomes. Our results confirm that engagement in partnerships is beneficial for innovative performance. However, firms that experienced a ‘bumpy road’ in their technological partnerships have to pay a price in terms of a negative effect on their innovative performance.     

Brave old world: Accounting for ‘high-tech’ knowledge in ‘low-tech’ industries

‘Lower-tech’ sectors are still commonly regarded as unusual suspects in the modern process of innovation and economic change. In this paper we try to understand better how organisations specialising in traditional businesses have been transformed by a period of paradigm-shift such as the one that characterised the final decades of the twentieth century. We focus on a population of nearly 500 of the world's largest innovative companies to assess the extent to which companies belonging to ‘old-economy’ sectors have been developing cutting-edge knowledge about clusters of new technologies such as ICT, new materials and biotechnology. We find that ‘non-high-tech’ corporations transformed their patent portfolios in a non-trivial way. Companies in mature trades contributed significantly to the development of technologies that are at the core of the so-called Third Industrial Revolution.     

Investigation of a novel perforation technique in petroleum wells—perforation by drilling

The objective of perforating the petroleum wells is to maximize well productivity. A good connectivity between the wellbore and formation can lead up to achieve that goal. However, the conventional method of perforation, which basically involves the use of explosive charges, rarely meets the expected well productivity. It is mainly because of the formation of a region of reduced permeability around the perforation tunnel. To offset such and several other shortcomings of present practices, a new technique is required, the highlight of this paper. Described as the ‘perforation by drilling’ (PD), this new technique is examined and compared for its performance with that of another technique, ‘Perforation by Shooting’ (PS). For this, the experimental and numerical results of the PS technique on cylindrical sand samples of varying amounts of strength and porosity are studied. Moreover, in order to achieve a so-called ‘perfect perforation’, results are compared with the ‘Casting technique’. Three different samples were selected for the measurement of fluid flow rate and differential pressure across the perforation using a ‘geotechnical digital system’ (GDS), which is a triaxial testing device. Profiles such as fluid flow rate with a change in differential pressure and pressure build-up data with time, signify that the PD technique can achieve maximum wellbore productivity when compared to the PS technique. Results also indicate that at a 100 kPa differential pressure, the PS, PD and Casting techniques can achieve 0.20, 0.65 and 1.00 mL/s fluid flow rates respectively across a sample. The paper also implements a 1-D time dependent porous media flow model to simulate flow across the perforated cylindrical samples created by the PS, PD and Casting techniques. Results show a good consistency between the experimental and numerical approaches.     

Why space matters in technological innovation systems—Mapping global knowledge dynamics of membrane bioreactor technology

Studies on technological innovation systems (TISs) often set spatial boundaries at the national level and treat supranational levels as a geographically undifferentiated and freely accessible global technological opportunity set. This article criticizes this conceptualization and proposes instead to analyze relevant actors, networks and processes in TIS from a relational perspective on space. It develops an analytical framework which allows investigating innovation processes (or ‘functions’) of a TIS at and across different spatial scales. Based on social network analysis of a co-publication dataset from membrane bioreactor technology, we illustrate how the spatial characteristics of collaborations in knowledge creation vary greatly over relatively short periods of time. This finding suggests that TIS studies should be more reflexive on system boundary setting both regarding the identification and analysis of core processes as well as in the formulation of policy advice.     

Exploring dynamics and strategies of niche protection

This paper focuses on the processes and strategies of advocates and opponents in creating, maintaining and/or contesting the protective spaces in which ‘urgently needed’ but ‘risky’ pharmaceutical innovations are managed. Drawing on transition literature and recent work on niche protection, this paper adds to the conceptualisation and empirical grounding of niche protection by studying the dynamics of protection, in particular the different phases of niche development. Moreover, the links between niche protection processes and protection strategies pursued by niche players are explored. Dynamics of niche protection are explored in two case studies: the monitoring of treatments for HIV and of a vaccination against pandemic influenza. We conclude that niche protection depends on interactions between network building, empowerment activities and the construction of a positive niche narrative vis-à-vis anti-narratives raised by actors outside the niche. Furthermore, the nature of learning within a niche and the niche's robustness are determined by whether the strategies are predominantly accommodating or restrictive.     

Agency in regime destabilization through the selection environment: The Finnish food system’s sustainability transition

The growing urgency of environmental threats combined with the slow pace of sustainability transitions has turned attention towards a better understanding of regime destabilization. Focusing excessively on niche innovations could be incumbent regimes’ diversion and resistance strategy and could reinforce the ‘business as usual’ mindset instead of contributing to system-wide changes. Historical cases of system transition have most often been used to understand the dynamics of regime destabilization. However, these insights have limitations when the focus is on ongoing transitions. Moreover, it is argued that more attention should be paid to agency and actors. Herein, regime destabilization is understood through an internally structured selection environment, implying that agency is assumed not only in variation at the niche level but also in the selection processes: (1) the selection environment is shaped by active and strategic actors and actor networks; (2) the selection environment is shaped by diverse discursive framings; and (3) the selection environment is shaped by various actors beyond the regime and even beyond the system in question. The argument is empirically tested in the case of the Finnish food system by constructing prevailing storylines in the sustainability transition. Four contrasting but partially overlapping storylines and their associated actor networks are identified. The empirical case supports the view that actors across all levels aim to influence the selection environment’s formulation with their framing of the problem and the strategic response. Thus, more attention must be paid to the content and diversity of different discursive framings in sustainability transitions.     

In search of a useful theory of the productive potential of intellectual property rights

Mainstream theory, which has informed the belief systems regarding the operation as well as the predicted social and economic effects of IPR systems, cannot explain why the IPR system generates different performance results and varying potential for growth across the firms, sectors and nations participating in the IPR system. This paper sketches a theory of the ‘productive potential of intellectual property rights’ which is able to do just that. Focusing on the ‘rules of the game’ embedded in the institutional IPR environment and the ‘play of the game’ within the alternative institutions of IPR governance, the paper emphasizes the importance of the nature or quality of the relationships among IPR stakeholders and the contribution of such relationships to the processes of financial and non-financial value creation and distribution from IPRs. The central role of cooperation, asymmetric relationships, and the effective resolution of conflicting interests amongst stakeholders is addressed. It is suggested that the proposed framework provides a better starting point for the design of IPR policy and management.     

Regulatory policy as innovation: Constructing rules of engagement for a technological zone of tissue engineering in the European Union

This paper addresses the question of the part that regulation plays in processes of innovation in sectors of technology. The politico-economic phenomenon of ‘Europe’ is partly constituted by regulatory regime-building, and new technologies are one of the major sites of regime-building. A constructionist social theory perspective shows that study of the conflictual processes of regulatory policymaking affords insights into the formation of the rules of engagement that constitute technology domains. Adopting the concept of emergent ‘technological zone’ in preference to industrial ‘sector’ or technoscientific network, the paper presents, using empirical research, a detailed account of the case of the debate and development of regulatory policy for therapeutic tissue engineering in the European Union's policy institutions and stakeholder networks. It describes how the jurisdiction of an emergent zone has been formed through such negotiations, providing a counter-example to the common view that regulation ‘lags behind’ innovation. The analysis takes account particularly of the part played by the malleability of the definition of the material technology itself in such constructive governance processes, and it also suggests various consequences for the array of producers of the technology, for market structuring and for the innovation pathways taken by tissue engineering technology. Concluding, the paper argues that there is conceptual advance to be made by bringing together constructionist social theory with innovation studies approaches that highlight the part played by non-firm, public institutions in shaping innovation ecologies.     

Email overload: Exploring the moderating role of the perception of email as a ‘business critical’ tool

The management of email remains a major challenge for organisations. In this article, we explore the extent of the perceptions of email as a business critical tool within an organisation and how the level of such perceptions may moderate the level of email overload experienced by individuals within the organisation. Data from a sample of 1100 employees of a multinational technology firm are analysed using multivariate techniques. The results suggest that without a clearly stated code of email practice within an organisation, there are likely to be large variations in what is perceived as ‘business-critical’ email and, as a result, a substantial amount of email generated within the organisation may not be ‘business-critical’, potentially increasing the level of ‘email-overload’ experienced by individuals within the organisation.     

Understanding life together: A brief history of collaboration in biology

The history of science shows a shift from single-investigator ‘little science’ to increasingly large, expensive, multinational, interdisciplinary and interdependent ‘big science’. In physics and allied fields this shift has been well documented, but the rise of collaboration in the life sciences and its effect on scientific work and knowledge has received little attention. Research in biology exhibits different historical trajectories and organisation of collaboration in field and laboratory – differences still visible in contemporary collaborations such as the Census of Marine Life and the Human Genome Project. We employ these case studies as strategic exemplars, supplemented with existing research on collaboration in biology, to expose the different motives, organisational forms and social dynamics underpinning contemporary large-scale collaborations in biology and their relations to historical patterns of collaboration in the life sciences. We find the interaction between research subject, research approach as well as research organisation influencing collaboration patterns and the work of scientists.     

Entrepreneurship: Exploring the knowledge base

Entrepreneurship research has a long tradition and since the 1980s the field has grown significantly. In this study we identify the ‘knowledge producers’ who have shaped the field over time and their core entrepreneurship research works. A unique database consisting of all references in twelve entrepreneurship ‘handbooks’ (or state-of-the-art books) has been developed. The chapters in these handbooks were written by experts within the field, and it can be assumed that the most frequently cited references represent ‘core knowledge’ with relevance to entrepreneurship research.From our analysis, it appears that entrepreneurship is a rather changeable field of research, closely linked to disciplines such as ‘management studies’ and ‘economics’. Over time, the field has become more formalized with its own core knowledge, research specialities and an increasing number of ‘insider works’. However, it is still based on some fairly old theoretical frameworks imported from mainstream disciplines, although during the last decade we have seen the emergence of a number of new field-specific concepts and theories. We argue that to successfully develop entrepreneurship research in the future, we need to relate new research opportunities to earlier knowledge within the field, which calls for a stronger ‘knowledge-based’ focus. We would also like to see greater integration between the fields of entrepreneurship and innovation studies in the future.