The Transfer of Embededness: Problems of Knowledge Transfer within the Information Society
Petra Ahrweiler, Guenter Kueppers and Rita Kuhlmann
Contemporary science and technology development in university-industry-government relations shows an acceleration of innovation cycles. The main ressources of these cicles is knowledge. One of the problems which arise witin this context is the problem of knowlegde transfer between different areas of knowledge-production. The main question is: is it possible to de-contextualize knowledge, to disconnect it from its original and to transfer it to arbitrary contexts? To answer these questions it is neccessary to consider, whether and how the transferability of knowledge depends on the location of its production. This is the topic of our paper. The leading ideas will be shortly introduced in the following.
To transfer knowledge successfully means in most cases to reproduce knowledge production and application in arbitrary contexts. Only the reliablity of this reproduction mode allows planning, prediction and choosing between alternatives of action. Experiencing the various problems of knowledge transfer it seems more and more doubtful, whether it is sufficient or even possible to simply rely on the reproduction mode any longer. This is indicated for example for industrial companies, which seems to be incapable to acquire and use relevant knowledge coming "from the outside" in spite of innovation pressure (shown for different examples in Aydalot/Keeble 1988, Hack 1988, Malsch 1987, Rammert 1988 etc.).
In laboratory studies (Knorr 1997), successful knowledge transfer means to transfer the context of knowledge production likewise. Here, the conditions for transfer are spelled out: everyone can reproduce laboratory knowledge everywhere, taking into account and calling again the underlying "laboratory mode". But this laboratory mode bears its own transfer problems: neither can it simply be implemented in industrial companies, nor is every knowledge "laboratory knowledge" concerning idealized, controllable and clearly defined variables. On the contrary: incoming knowledge has to be evaluated, interpreted and used for special purposes of the respective company. New knowledge is not to be adapted to existing structures, but to be integrated with an already defined environment.
To integrate new knowledge, is firstly a process of de-contextualization (cf. Knorr 1997, Latour 1995). Knowledge is declared as universal, as independent from the location of its production and as being at anybody's disposal. Secondly, the respective knowledge will undergo a new contextualization to be added to the structural corpus of its new application area. In performing these processes of de- and new-contextualization, all participating parts of the "Triple Helix" permanently re-define the contents, the limitations and the shape of knowledge. Transfer problems are not only working on an organizational level: they change our representations of knowledge and through that - the process of knowledge production, the research work. The paper starts with an analysis of the transferproblem taking into account the mentioned perspectives and shows how these different perspectives can be integrated within the theory of self-organization.
Innovationnetworks within the university-industry-government relations are be shown as the result of a new type of uncertainty connected with the problem of knowledgetransfer (cf. Kueppers 1997).
Bibliography
Aydalot, P.D., Keeble (ed.), High Technology Industry and Innovative Environments, Routledge, London/New York 1988. Hack, L.: Vor der Vollendung der Tatsachen. Die Rolle von Wissenschaft und Technologie in der dritten Phase der industriellen Revolution. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main 1988. Knorr-Cetina, K.: The Organization of Embeddedness: A Constructivist Approach To Micro-Macro relations. In: J. Szmatka (ed.): Varieties of Structural Approach. In: Sociology. Dordrecht (im Erscheinen). Kueppers, G.: Coping with Uncertainty: The Selforganization of Social Systems, to be published. Malsch, T.: Die Informatisierung des betrieblichen Erfahrungswissens und der "Imperialismus der instrumentellen Vernunft". In Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie 16, H.2, 1987. Rammert, W.: Das Innovationsdilemma. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1988.
THE TRIPLE HELIX AND THE HISPANOAMERICAN UNIVERSITY
The new set of relations between universities, firms and governments appears in Latin America with particular features. First of all, because the peripheric condition of our region generates a "triple helix" that is quite different from what one can see in the "central countries" [11]. Also, history and culture induce important differences between different regions of the peripherical world. But here we would like to stress the role of a more specific differentiating factor, related to the quite original evolution of the University in Spanish speaking Latin America during the twentieth century.
In this area, the so called "Movimiento de la Reforma Universitaria", the University Reform Movement (URM from now on), born in the first decades of this century, molded a university with unusual features, that became a relevant part of the Latin American political and cultural landscape [2]. In such a context, the emergence of the "triple helix", although rather delayed , may have even more disturbing effects than elsewhere. Several alternative futures appear to be possible, including some really new ones. In any case, important consequences will be registered in the realm of culture as well as in that of politics.
If the expansion of knowledge-based economy induces in the university a "second academic revolution" [7,8], this revolution may have very different consequences in Spanish speaking Latin America from those in Europe, not only because of the great contextual differences but also because the "first revolution" was quite different in one case and in the other: the emergence of the research university during the nineteenth century in Europe, the University Reform of the twentieth century in Latin America.
In the paper to be presented to the conference, the aim will be to develop, to illustrate and to justify the above assertions. As an introduction, we sketch here an explanation of why the rise of the "triple helix" may disturb Hispanoamerican universities even more than others.
It is well known that the new relations with firms and governments, fostered by the new economic role of knowledge, disturb the university; it may be asked if the ongoing changes are creating tensions that will result in radical transformations [5]. Those changes can be characterized as the emergence of a "new mode of production of knowledge" [6], such that universities will lose centrality as sites of creation of knowledge. In any case, the traditional academic way of life has changed ever so much that perhaps someone who had been absent for a couple of decades may not even recognize it [13]. And a great debate has intensified: "On the one side are those who argue that universities can and should play a larger and more direct role in assisting industry", while on the other side "many academics and others see these developments as a threat to the integrity of academic research. They despair that greater involvement with industry and commerce will corrupt academic research and teaching, divert attention from fundamental research, and potentially destroy the openess of communication among university scientists that is such an essential component of academic research." [10, p.323].
The resulting conflicts can be seen as consequences of a tension between, on one side, disciplinary logics, academic traditions, stable conditions of work and research carried out in a context of discovering, and on the other side, transdisciplinary logics, research carried out in a context of application, working by projects and the need for accountability. A similar but not identical approach shows the same problems as an outcome of the tension between the highly self-sufficient tradition of Western universities and the requirement of a strong external involvement. This requirement questions the tradition that says that norms and values that rule life at the universities are created mainly by the university itself, and that the fundamental tasks of the university are to be accomplished "inside" the institution. In fact, the "triple helix" generates relations of the university with external institutions and collective actors, in such a way that an important part of its main tasks are perfomed in the "outside world" , according to norms and values not always akin to university tradition.
Those problems can be seen also in our countries [12], although with differences that will not be considered here, because we intend to consider not the above mentioned tension between the internal university dynamics and a type of external involvement, but a second tension that complicates the first one in our part of the world. In fact, in the Spanish speaking Latin America the URM molded an institution that has its own "idea of University", in the same sense that one speaks of the "idea of University" in Germany, for example [3]. We see it as an original contribution to "the debate about the meaning of the 'ideal type' university." [5] . That institution, "the Latin American University" (see e.g. [9]), is characterized no only by an unusual way of self-government but also by an original external involvement, that has greatly influenced the action and the collective imaginary of several Latin American social and political groups. Thus, the second tension we wish to focus on is the one between two notions of external involvement of the public universities in Latin America, one consecrated by the tradition of the URM and the other one fostered by the rise of the "triple helix" in the "North".
In order to grasp that tension and its possible consequences, it is convenient to recall the main features of the University Reform. At the beginning of this century, Latin America was still ruled by the traditional oligarchies. Usually its universities did not care much about social problems or about the promotion of research in a modern sense. They formed the traditional professionals and received quite a small number of students; but that number started to grow in some countries where free public school expanded early and where the subsequent expansion of free public secondary teaching fostered the social progress of the middle-classes. That trend generated in such universities -scarcely open to society and to modernity- a student rebellion that found its "Marseillaise" in the 1918 Manifesto of the students of Cordoba and spread around Spanish speaking Latin America. In this way the URM was born; its aims were not only to consolidate the autonomy of public universities but also, and fundamentally, to achieve the direct participation of the student movement in the autonomous government of universities. That participation was regarded as a tool to avoid the tendency of the "university caste" to cloister itself in its own ivory tower , and rather to involve universities in the democratization of society, the extension of culture to the least favoured sectors of the population and the promotion of scientific research as a contribution to national development.
The relationship between those projects and reality has been complex during the agitated contemporary history of the continent. The URM hall-mark, autonomous government of universities by its students, teachers and graduates, has been obtained, lost and even reconquered in several cases. Those events favoured special relations of the URM with some collective actors -trade unions and left wing parties particularly- and lasting enmities with others, specially with the political power. That long history molded an original institution, the Latin American University, and a specific "idea of University". According to that idea, the University feels closely related with Society as a whole and particularly with the most deprived sectors, assumes that the University by itself must decide how to collaborate with national development, and asserts that such development must be oriented not by the market but by the search of public welfare. Of course, between that idea and reality, distances although not constant have never been short; that makes the irruption of projects inspired by the idea of the "triple helix" even more troublesome. Conflicts can be even worse when universities are confronted at the same time with new relations with firms and governments together with new restrictions of its autonomic self- rule, as is the case in some countries of South America.
In spite of many deficiencies, public universities are undisputedly the main actors of the scientific and technological research carried out in Latin America; its situation and possible transformations are being intensely discussed (see, e.g., [1] and [4]). Since the relations between universities, industry and governments have become so relevant, it may be said that the future of the tension between the tradition of the University Reform and the "triple helix" will have great influence in the economical and social use of knowledge in this continent, and consequently in the future of its inhabitants.
That Latin American "idea of University" is not a priori incompatible with projects aimed at consolidating the "triple helix". In fact, demmonstrating that compatibility is possible is the main purpose of the paper we are presenting here. But that compatibilization requires, at the same time, a deep transformation of the "triple helix" relations that are usually seen in our region and an "aggiornamiento" of the practices usually inspired by that "idea of University". If such a compatibilization is not feasible, we shall find ourselves locked again in the frustrating alternative between cristallized tradition and imported modernization that has fettered the human sustentable development of Latin America.
References
CRESALC-UNESCO: Hacia una nueva educación superior, Caracas, 1997. Cúneo, D. (ed.): La Reforma Universitaria, Biblioteca Ayacucho, Caracas, sin fecha.
Fichte, Schleiermacher, Humboldt, Nietzsche, Max Weber, Scheler, Jaspers : La idea de la Universidad en Alemania, Ed. Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 1959.
Garc¡a Guadilla, C." Situaci¢n y principales din micas de transformaci¢n de la educaci¢n superior en Am‚rica Latina, CRESALC-UNESCO, Caracas, 1996.
Geuna, A.: "European Research Universities", Book of Abstracts, Conference on Universities and the Global Knowledge Economy, Univ. of Amsterdam (1995), 40-42.
Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schartzman, S., & Trow, M.: The new production of knowledge. The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies, Sage, 1994.
Leydesdorff, L. and Etzkowitz, H.: "Emergence of a Triple Helix of university-industry-governement relations", Science and Public Policy 23.5 (1996), 279-286.
Idem: "The Triple Helix of University-Industry-Governement Relations", Book of Abstracts, Conference on Universities and the Global Knowledge Economy, Univ. of Amsterdam (1995), 159-164.
Ribeiro, Darcy: La Universidad latinoamericana, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, 1971.
Rosenberg, N. and Nelson, R.: "American universities and technical advance in industry", Research Policy 23 (1994), 323-348.
Sutz, Judith: "The new role of the University", in Leydesdorff, L. and Etzkowitz, H.(Eds.): Universities in the Global Knowledge Economy, forthcoming.
Vessuri, Hebe (comp.): La Academia va al mercado, FINTEC, Caracas, 1995 . Ziman, J.: Prometheus Bound. Science in a dynamic steady state, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are a computer-based technology dating back approximately 30 years (Coppock and Rhind, 1991). In the last decade or so, GIS has emerged as a major area of applications for many groups of interest coming from a broad range of public and private sector organisations as well as an increasing number of professional communities who handle geographic information world wide. However, Goodchild (1995) argues that GIS is still an ill-defined technology. From a social constructivistic viewpoint this hints that GIS might be translated in different countries or contexts according to an increasing number of different technological traditions of practice (Constant, 1987). Each of these traditions encompasses various networks of GIS system builders who come from different geographical locations, institutional settings and disciplinary backgrounds. Over time separate networks of GIS actors share and exchange information and other resources giving birth to a new GIS community of practice that is composed of individuals, groups and organisations who share a common interest and play complementary roles with respect to GIS innovations.
The overall thesis of this research is that the development of GIS technology in Greece can be studied through the emergence of a Greek GIS community (Assimakopoulos, 1997a, 1997b). Based on this assumption the following questions are addressed: *How can we use concepts and methods of network analysis to study GIS stakeholders and GIS linkages that make up a new technological community related to GIS in Greece? *What is the influence that different social constructs such as institutional and disciplinary groupings have on the formation of the Greek GIS community? *Is it possible to gain some understanding of the prominence or domination of relevant social groups related to GIS diffusion in Greece from a network analysis of a graph of the Greek GIS community?
With these questions in mind the paper will be divided into four sections. Firstly, the main concepts from two theoretical perspectives of diffusion of innovations and socio-technical change will be discussed. Secondly, the research methodology will be explained. Then, the analytical findings will be presented based on a graph of 51 small groups and 95 linkages. The groups are small teams of individuals who adopted and implemented GIS innovations in government - university- private sector organisations throughout Greece, from 1984 to 1994. The linkages are either obligatory / contractual in nature, or student - teacher relations, or social relations of awareness, friendship and support with respect to GIS adoption and implementation. They map the functional interdependencies between these actors. The heterogeneity of the Greek GIS community will be explored along four key dimensions, institutional setting, geographical location, disciplinary background and GIS software adopted.
The findings of network analysis suggest that teams based in Athens, who adopted ArcInfo GIS software, from a broad range of institutional settings and with a surveying engineering background form the dominant relevant social group that translates and redefines GIS in Greece, and influences the emerging GIS technological tradition of practice. Hence a large part of the related European Union funding is channeled to members of this group. The implications for scientometrics are also discussed with particular reference to the theoretical links between network analysis and the two theoretical models of diffusion of innovations and socio-technical change.
References
Assimakopoulos, D., 1997, GIS Diffusion in Greece: The Development of a Greek GIS Community, in Craglia, M. and Couclelis, H. (Eds.) Geographic Information Research: Bridging the Atlantic, London: Taylor & Francis, 111-128.
Assimakopoulos, D., 1997b, Social Networks and GIS Diffusion in Greece: Disciplinary Heterogeneity and Constructed Advantage within the Greek GIS Community, Chapter 8, in Capineri, C. and Rietveld (Eds.), Policy Aspects of Networks, Aldershot: Avebury, in press.
Constant, E., W, 1987, The Social Locus of Technological Practice: Community, System, or Organisation?, in Bijker, W., E., Hughes, T., P. and Pinch, T., J. (Eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 223-242.
Coppock, T. and Rhind, D. W., 1991, The History of GIS, in Maguire, D. J., Rhind, D. W. and Goodchild, M. F. (Eds.) Geographical Information Systems: Principles and Applications, 1, London: Longman, 21-43.
Goodchild, M., 1995, GIS and Geographic Research, in Pickles J.(Ed.) Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems, New York: Guilford, 31-50.
Teresa R. Behrens and Denis O. Gray
University scientists in some fields of physics, chemistry & biology have long been involved with commercial applications of their research, especially since the end of World War II. However, there has been little systematic evaluation or historical analysis of the effects of these experiences on the university, on the research environment, on the direction and quality of basic science or on the scientists themselves. (Weiner,1982, p. 88)
Research cooperation between industry and university has increased dramatically over the past few decades. Fueled by a number of social forces, including shrinking federal support for research, pressures from global competitiveness, and the increasing importance of science-based knowledge to the innovation process, and by a proactive public policy industry's share of academic research has more than doubled over the past two decades, from 3.1 percent in 1975 to 6.9 percent in 1995 (NSB, 1996).
Reactions to these developments have been mixed. Most observers have emphasized the benefits which can come from these partnerships including improved transfer of knowledge and technology, increased relevance of education, improved competitiveness and economic development. However, others have been less enthusiastic emphasizing the potential costs. Such concerns have a long track record. In the early 1980s hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives examined two issues (U.S. House of Representatives, 1981): (1) whether university-industry research relationships violated scientific and academic freedom and responsibilities, and (2) whether these relationships best served the interests of the American public.
One side of the coin was addressed by Dr. Lamont-Havers, Director of Research, Massachusetts General Hospital, in his remarks to the committee in 1981:
In many respects, I believe that the arguments which are going on now within academia, the soul searching, the concern of the impact [of] industry on academia, how this is going to destroy values is very reminiscent of the same type of arguments which went on 20 or 25 years ago when large amounts of Federal funds began to flow into the academic institutions (U.S. Congress, 1981, p. 90).
Derek Bok represented the other side of the issue in his remarks in a 1981 address at Harvard when he expressed:
an uneasy sense that programs to exploit commercial developments are likely to confuse the university's central commitment to the pursuit of knowledge and learning by introducing into the very heart of the academic enterprise a new and powerful motive -- the search for utility and commercial gain (Bok, 1981, p. 26).
Research on Outcomes of Industry University Cooperation
A great deal of research has been devoted to assessing the outcomes of cooperative research over the past two decades. While the quality the research is quite mixed, enough solid empirical research has been done on the benefits side of the equation to allow us to draw some reasonable if cautious conclusions. For instance, while he found little evidence of a direct and measurable impact on economic development, Feller (in press) concludes:
University-industry cooperative R&D programs have become the dominant form of industry support of academic R&D. Both industrial and university participants report a broad set of benefits for these centers, including patents and licenses, but extending well beyond these markers of technology transfer (p. 54).
Unfortunately, while the rhetorical and ideological debate about "negative consequences" has continued, the social science community has been much less active in addressing the costs side of the equation. Consistent with this view, Blevins and Ewer (1988) concluded: "Despite the plethora of literature on the subject of university/industry cooperative research which usually concludes with a critical opinion, very few, if any, in-depth studies exist on the subject." (p. 655). Commenting on this state of affairs, Feller (in press) argues: "The issues have not gone away. A review of technology transfer outputs and outcomes, other than highlighting continuing and building university engagement, is not itself an examination of these concerns or of whether universities have learned how to correctly balance multiple objectives and commitments" (p. 56).
While some may believe that this research vacuum exists because outcomes like autonomy, academic freedom and the like do not lend themselves to empirical examination, we do not agree. To illustrate our point, we describe a study which examines the impact of industry research sponsorship on perceived "climate for academic freedom" and other outcomes.
Study Objectives
While one should be concerned about the impact of cooperative research on the entire academic enterprise, there are reasons to be particularly concerned about the effects of I/U collaboration on graduate students. In many instances it is students rather than faculty who actually conduct the research; access to students trained in industrially research is one reason often given by firms for participating in cooperative research (Peters & Fusfeld, 1982). From a policy perspective, questions about the impact of I/U cooperation on students must be answered in order to make appropriate decisions about the support of cooperative programs.
The primary objective of the present study is to examine the influence of industry sponsorship on a number of graduate student outcomes including perceived "climate for academic freedom". Since the literature on industry-university cooperation suggests that outcomes will be influenced by variables operating at several levels of aggregation we will also examine the influence of university, departmental, and individual level variables.
Study Methodology This study was sponsored by the Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRC) Program, Engineering Directorate, National Science Foundation. The IUCRC Program has funded the development of over fifty cooperative research centers ("Centers") at various locations and in various technical areas.
The study was a mail survey of a purposive sample of graduate students. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used. Given the sponsorship of the study, the population was defined as all departments which participate in an IUCRC.
The first level of sampling was the university level. A sample was drawn of six universities which represent three different proportions of industry funding and have the same two departments (Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering) involved in the Centers. Respondents were all graduate students in these twelve departments (two departments at each of the six universities). Eight hundred twenty-four (out of 1939) usable completed questionnaires were returned, for an overall response rate of 42.5%.
The survey instrument included items designed to capture data in four domains: 1) student descriptors; 2) variables which describe how students interact with industry; 3) descriptors of the student's faculty advisor; and 4) outcomes, including traditional outcomes such as patents, publications, and career orientation, as well as "climate for academic freedom" and attitudes toward industry. Students answered questions about the primary project they had been involved in over the proceeding year.
The study incorporated the development of a scale to measure climate for academic freedom which included two subscales, "freedom in conducting research" and "freedom in communicating research". Psychometric evaluation demonstrated strong internal validity for this instrument.
Descriptive statistics, a variety of parametric and nonparametric statistics including multiple regression was used to assess research questions.
Findings
Results suggest that there is little difference between industry and government funding and the form of the partnership (e.g., consortial, contract) in terms of how research is conducted, the nature of the research, the climate for academic freedom, scientific publication rates or creation of intellectual property. Most significant differences were between sponsored (either government or industry) and unsponsored research. Exploratory analyses identified some significant differences between electrical and chemical engineering, and between citizens and noncitizens. A detailed summary of findings will be presented.
The current study demonstrates the feasibility and desirability of empirically examining questions which have tended to be the province of rhetorical and ideological debate. In addition, the utility of examining multiple levels of analysis was supported. The implications of our findings for the evolving "triple helix" of relationships between industry, university and government will be discussed.
References
National Science Board. (1993). Science and engineering indicators. Washington, D.C.: National Science Board.
Blevins, D.E. & Ewer, S.R. (1988). University research and development activities: Intrusion into areas untended? A review of recent developments and ethical issues raised. Journal of Business Ethics, 7, 645-656.
Bok, D. (1981). Business and academy. Harvard Magazine, 85, 23-35.
Feller, I (in press). Technology transfer from universities. In Higher education: Handbook of theory and practice.
Peters, L. & Fusfeld, H. (1982). Current university-industry research connections. In University-indusry research relationships: Selected studies. Washington, D.C. National Science Board.
U.S. House of Representatives (1981). Committee on Science and Technology. Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Commercialization of academic biomedical research. Hearings help June 8, 9, 1981.
Weiner, C. (1982). Relations of science, government and industry: The case of recombinant DNA. In A.H. Teich & R. Thorton, (eds.). Science, technology and the issues of the eighties: Policy outlook. Boulder, Co. Westview Press.
The Barcelona Science Park: A Triple Helix Model in the Catalan and Spanish Research System
The Barcelona Science Park is project promoted by the University of Barcelona, pointing out the evolution to more dynamic university models. The new dynamism of our universities can be specially detected analysing the research activities. Both in these un iversities and in the research institutes, there is a growing need to be well connected with the economic and social world (Bellavista et al. 1993). The Barcelona Science Park seems to take this need as the main target, and is trying to concentrate an imp ortant potential of research human capital, infrastructure, and scientific services in a high quality urban area in Barcelona -known as Pedralbes Area-. The promoters hope that concentration of potential will have an encouraging effect in the research dyn amics, and the results will rebound in the economy and the society through quality and market.
The specific location in Pedralbes obeys first to the existing availability of research potential in that area. For example, the University of Barcelona locates the mos active research personnel, and the most important research infrastructures and service s. The same can be observed in the Catalonia Polytechnic University, and in the CSIC Institutes in Barcelona. Likewise, that high standard location is used as an element to attract investment. The concentration of research potential in that area is unique within the Catalan geography, and is exposed as an important added value to develop research and innovation. In addition to the site provided by the University, the Catalan Autonomous Government and the Spanish Government have supported economically and politically the project since the beginning. Moreover, other economic support comes from the European Union through the European Fund for Regional Development, the Catalonia Savings Bank, and a University of Barcelona Foundation.
At present, systems integrated models, organization through networks, and sharing information, knowledge and experience, are considered very important. It seems a good strategy to integrate different actors, involved in the concept, use, and production of products and processes. There are specific models explaining dynamic innovation processes, continuous scientific and technological change, and competitiveness. Different actors participate in a very active way mantaining and developing the projects. Gibb ons et al. (1994) expose the "Mode 2" of knowledge production involving an heterogeneous group of practitioners, and institutionalised in an heterogeneous system.
The integration system involves universities, research institutes, goverments, private companies, research personnel, and infrastructures. Individuals and institutional actors are elements of the resulting network. The project anlysed tries to integrate a vailable elemnts and actors. Moreover, there is an integration system of public policies: a science development policy, a university policy, and an industrial policy. A process of integration of public, private, and academic spheres is observed too.
Stephen Hill (1992/1994) explains the role of scientists as full time players. Hill asserts that scientists cannot longer play the unique role of transfering knowledge. The whole process seems to be aknowlegded within network models, within a context of global knowledge and complex strategies. Innovation networks prevail, and the constant feature is a quality concept in a coordinated research work. From an initial situation of disconnection, a growing integration process appears, placing together actors and knowledge to solve specific problems within the development process of the project. Thus, the innovation model involved is netwoek model, trying to explain the complex relationship within the different levels of production, use of knowledge, and the d ifferent actors participating in this scenario. In this context, research centres for example, appear as structural entities breaking scientific boundaries, previously strongly mantained in departments and Faculties (Hill and Turpin 1993).
The process is also connected with the research systems promoted by different governments. The scientific character of the project fits within the priorities system established by the Catalan Government, the Spanish Government, and the European Union, pro viding financial opportunities for personnel, ideas, materials, and infrastructures, to become the Science Park. The public plans appear into the II Reseach and Technological Development of the Spanish Goverment, and the IV Framework Research Program of t he European Union.
A process of standarization and assimilation of discourses coming from the different actors involved is observed. The analysis of the process (e.g. agreelments, execution) reveals a model where the different actors try to become a cutting point within the network of stablished relationship (Latour 1986). Since the beginning of the project, the dynamics of the different actors is observed, following the concept of science in action, and not the part of the process already finished (Latour, 1987).
There is a common discourse of internationalization and standarization of science and technology. However, a discourse of local conditions and cultural aspects also appears in this process. Different actors from the governments.- State and Autonomous-, un iversities and private companies are interviewed. It specially appears the dichotomy between historic marginality of science in Spain, and the new modernization discourse of the eighties with a peak observed in 1992, the Barcelona Olympic Games year.
To conclude, the Barcelona Science Park is a good example to analyse the integration of relationship in the different levels of capitalization of knowledge (Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz 1997; Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 1997).
Bibliography
Bellavista J. et al.,(1993), Política Científica y Tecnológica. Barcelona: Publicacions de la UB.
Etzkowitz, H., and Leydesdorff, L. (Eds.) (1997) Universities in the Global Knowledge Economy: A Co-evolution of University Industry Government Relations.
Garret-Jones, S., Turpin, T. Bellavista, J., and Hill, S. (1995), Using Basic Research: Assessing Connections between Basic Research and National Socio-Economic Objectives. Commissioned Report no. 36, National Board of Employment, Education and Training. Canberra, Australia: Australian Goverment Publishing Service.
Gibbons, M. et al. (1994), The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. Londo: Sage.
Hill, S. (1994) " Small player advantage in a new game: Capturing opportunity as developing countries from the new globalism of technology", Address to the Workshop on Learning and Knowledge Transfer to Industry in Developing Countries, ORSTOM/UNESCO Conf erence "20th Century Science: Beyond the Metropolis", Paris, 19-23 September.
Hill, S. (1992) "Creativity and Capture: The Social Architecture of Technological Innovation in Australia", Invited Speech, House of Representatives, Commitee for Long Term strategies, Parliament House. Canberra, 5 May.
Hill, S. and Turpin, T. (1993) " The formation of research centres in the Australian Research Centres" Science and Technology Policy 6 (5): 7-13. Latour, Bruno (1987), Science in Action. Milton Keynes: The Open University.
Latour, Bruno (1986) " The powers of association", in J. Law (de.), Power, action, and belief: A new sociology of knowledge?, Sociological Review Monograph no. 32 (University Of keele). London: Routledfe and Kegan Paul.
Leydesdorff, L. And Etzkowitz, H. (1997) Introduction to special issue on science policy dimensions of the Triple Helix of university, industry, government relations" Science and Public Policy 24 (1): 2-5
Leydesdorff, L. And Etzkowitz, H. (1997) Emergence of a Triple Helix of University -Industry -Government Relations. Science and Public Policy 23 (5) 279-286.
Evolution of Academic-Industry Technology Transfer in the United States."
Louis P. Berneman and Kathleen Denis
The dramatic rise of activity and impact of academic-industry technology transfer in the United States led us to examine changes, trends, and recent developments of academic-industry technology transfer. We sought to examine a variety of issues related to the policies and awareness, personnel and nature of licensing.
We contacted and distributed 41 surveys in 1996 to colleagues at top-ranked academic technology licensing offices; 29 (71%) of the sampled institutions responded.
Technology Transfer Policies and Awareness
85% of respondent institutions have amended or modified at least one technology transfer related policy since 1992. These policy changes indicate a high level of recognition of the importance of technology transfer. In addition, the metrics used by institutions to judge productivity of technology licensing offices have changed dramatically in recent years. Of increasing importance are equity and value of equity in startups, local/regional economic development and industry sponsored research funding. The survey indicates that technology licensing offices continue to struggle with appropriately balancing the new emphasis on financial productivity with faculty research support service activities.
In addition, despite the increased emphasis on metrics, a majority of the United States technology licensing offices surveyed continue to report institutionally to academic, rather than financial administrators. With increased activity and productivity and the resultant financial returns expected from licensing, a variety of financial related policies will need to be addressed. One of these policies relates to the management and sale of equities from licensing.
Personnel
The evolving nature of academic-industry technology transfer can also be seen in the changing nature of technology transfer personnel. Our survey shows an increasing emphasis on hiring professionals with business/legal experience with a technical background, rather than the primarily academic/research/administration experience of technology transfer personnel in the past. These changes may be the result of increased complexity of academic-industry relationships, marketing orientation of offices, and general increased importance of financial productivity metrics.
Nature of Licensing
Academic institutions are also moving towards greater involvement with industry partners in moving the technology into the marketplace. Institutions are becoming increasingly sophisticated in valuing technology development opportunities, marketing, packaging and partnering with industry, rather than historical "dump and run" licensing strategies. Within this new partnering paradigm, institutions are recognizing that patents and licenses are tools which can be used in the short term to generate industry sponsored research support, and in the long term to generate income from fees, royalties and equity. Another trend identified in the survey is a shift towards licensing to small, technology based businesses.
Increasing licenses to startups (development stage organizations created to develop and commercialize licensed technologies) is a further indication of a movement towards partnering and small business relationships.
ITALIAN INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTS: AN EVOLUTIONARY AND INSTITUTIONALIST VIEW
Even if industrial districts (IDs) have not been theorized looking at current Italian industry, but rather in England a century ago by Marshall, in Italy they assumed a great growing relevance since second world war. In Italy they have been deeply studied and theorized, accumulating a huge literature during last 25 years. At the moment, some questions are common background: 1. IDs are diffused, in different degree, in many countries; 2. IDs are characterized by a large variety of structures and developments, even depending on different definitions of what is an ID; 3. IDs are a persistent phenomenon in industrial and economic activity, perhaps reinforced by possible future evolution of world capitalism; 4. IDs are understandable only by means of a strong rethinking of traditional concepts and theories.
The Italian case is particularly interesting because it shows extensively and intensively all these aspects, and because it stimulated a wide discussion about what Marshall called vaguely "industrial atmosphere". That concept, when empirically described and investigated, addresses not only the complex web interconnecting inter-firm relations, as is peculiar for IDs production structure. It addresses also social and institutional webs in which IDs firms are pervasively embedded. That is why the issue of IDs fit very well the topic of triple helix.
This paper will focus mainly on three questions: (1) what relevance have IDs in Italy; (2) how are they related with the role and development of small and medium firms; (3) what changes they imply in the theoretical ground of industrial organization; (4) how are they related with local and central institutions; (5) what is its current and future competitive capacity, in the perspective of global and post-fordist evolution of capitalism. In order to discuss such questions, we cope also with problems of definition and classification of IDs, with the history of Italian IDs and of related debate, and with differences in structure and evolution of IDs in two Italian regions.
1. Problems of Definition and Classification of IDs
There are several problems of definition and classification of IDs, because its boundaries do not coincide necessarily neither with precise juridical areas nor with single production processes, and because they evolve changing members, structures and products. The more homogeneous is the product de finition, the more intensive is the inter-firm coordination requested by each definition, the narrower is the definition of industrial district. Industrial districts can be classified in many ways: most useful ones are those in terms of degree of symmetry (parity) among firms (Storper, Harrison, 1991), and those in terms of absence or presence of local government intervention, respectively called Mark I and Mark II by Brusco (1990, pg.13).
2. Current Relevance of IDs in the Italian Industrial Structure
Industrial districts are now very important in Italian industrial structure, in terms of employment, number of firms and added value (Biggiero, 1997). Italian national statistical institution (ISTAT) fo r 1991 counted 200 industrial districts, structured by more than 500.000 firms, employing more than 2.2 million people. They represent both more than 15% of total firms and employees. Local work systems are 784, with 5.3 million people, which are one thir d of total employment. Only the 7% of districts are localized in the South, while most of them in the North-East (33%), and 30% both in the North-West and Center Italy. They are concentrated in textile and clothing industries (35%), fitting and fixtures (20%), mechanics (16%) a nd leather and footwear (14%).
3. Origins and Evolution of IDs and of Related Italian Debate
Economic origins are twofold: the 50's artisan tradition and the end-60's de-centering and sub-contracting strategies of large firms. The former was a consequence of Italian underdevelopment after second world war, destined to be canceled by mass producti on during the 60's. The latter resulted from large firm strategies addressed to several purposes: to reduce dramatic labor conflict of end-60's; to exploit fiscal advantages; to reduce risks emerging in proximity of the end of `Italian economic miracle'. These strategies renewed artisan tradition, transforming it by means of the introduction of new technology, and creating a seedbad of small and medium firms, sometimes partially coordinating each other.
However, until the mid-70's industrial districts are weak and few, and geographical concentration of small-medium firms are characterized by strong dependence as subcontractors from large firms. During mid 70's and 80's some of them evolve alongside many directions: a growing independence from large firms, a growing reciprocal trust, a growing ability to cooperate and to coordinate their activities, a growing innovating capacity. Besides the interest of trade unions and political parties, industrial districts receive attention from academic and public world with three seminal works by Becattini, Brusco and Bagnasco. The first one was done by Becattini (IRPET, 1969), concerning tex tile districts of Toscana. The second one was done by Brusco (1973), focused on home work and decentralization of production in Modena. The third was done by Bagnasco (1977), oriented to emphasize the role of social variables in creating and sustaining in dustrial districts. This author coined the expression `Third Italy', to say an economic area different from the first, the `industrial triangle' (Milan, Turin, Genoa) and the second, the backward South.
4. Interaction Between Research, Industry and Local Government Into Two Different Regions of IDs: Emilia-Romagna and Veneto
The evolution of two large regions characterized by several IDs is very interesting, because shows different patterns, evoking what Brusco (1990) called Mark I in the case of Emilia-Romagna and Mark II in the case of Veneto. In both cas es, as unfortunately in all Italy, university is nearly absent in the interaction with industry and also with local government. There are two main reasons for this `amputation' of the triple helix: the first one is the structural inertia and bureaucratization of Italian academic institutions; the second one is the still ideological opposition, among academicians and most public sector, to `pollute' university with involvement in industry.
In Emilia-Romagna local government created centers to support small firms with `real services', like industrial, technological and business information, or in the field of innovative technology, as well in evaluating and financing innovation or business p lans. These centers tried to cover lack of competitive capacity of small firms, to reinforce districtual identity of small firms, and finally to orient their development. Instead Veneto misses such a local government, and experienced a much more self-organizing and recent development. The comparison of these two areas can give many interesting suggestions about the role of local government and the capacity to be competitive in the near future.
5. Role of local Institutions: Church, Family, Trade Unions, Political Parties, Local Government and Cultural Values
After nearly 30 years of research on IDs, some questions appear clear: 1) these phenomena are very self-organizing ones, with strong synergetic effects; 2) they request the action of some catalyst factor; 3) family, church and political parties are loosing their importance as catalyst and sustaining factors; 4) much more important are cultural values oriented to prudent trust and cooperation, and most important is historical memory of firms' reciprocal past e xperience; 5) that can explain the scarce presence of industrial districts in southern Italy; 6) central governmental intervention discourage and hinder creation and trigger of self-organizing processes, and that can also contribute to explain the scarce presence of industrial districts in southern Italy.
6. Fordism, Pesudo- and Post-Fordism: Knowledge-Based Organization and IDs
According to Piore and Sabel (1984) flexible specialization marks the western removal from fordism, analogue to Japanese managerial approach. The interesting difference would be in a dispersed and partially spontaneous coordination in the former case and in a hierarchically planned coordination in the latter case. However both production systems place production flexibility and human resource motivation as core and distinctive issues. Moreover they share also the closeness of production cycle, which round s around a single giant firm in Japan or dividing labor and production stages in a circumscribed territory in Italian industrial districts. Production cycle remains close even in the latter case, where very few firms are open to external world, either for buying or for sales. I prefer to call it pseudo-fordism, rather than post- fordism, because the territorial and productive closeness and the material-manufacturing essence of industrial district and Japanese economic activity refer still to fordism rathe r than post-fordism orientation. This latter is featured by knowledge-based network organization, which implies trans-regional relationships, open production cycles and, mainly, evolution from learning by doing to learning by coordinating. Critical compet itive factors are no more higher productive machines or lower labor costs, rather human capital in the form of ability to exchange information, to create and explore new solutions and to be in coordination with other organizations, either economic or social institutions.
7. Capitalism as Networks of Networks: Globalism and Localism in Perspective
IDs should be regarded neither as a mythological phenomenon, nor as an Italian peculiarity nor as a residual form of capitalism. They show a new trend of capitalism, the capitalism of networks, at a regional scale. Since what did flexible specialization and industrial districts competitive is the growth of complexity -market uncertainty, product and firm differentiation, technological variability, etc., are nothing else than different forms of complexity-, and since the peculiar nature of industrial districts is that to be multi-dimensional (Burt, 1992) and multi-level networks (Albertini, Pilotti, 1996), it is likely that capitalism will develop yet more as networks of networks. Instead of disappearing, forms like industrial districts should transform themselves into trans-regional and knowledge-based organizations. Advantages of trust, due to repeated exchanges or to common values, play in favor of localism, while search for new knowledge, for wider control of uncertainty and for larger markets plays against localism. Probably different firms will compete on global or local perspective.
References:
Albertini S., Pilotti L. (1996) Reti di reti, Cedam, Padova
Bagnasco A. (1977) Tre Italie. La problematica territoriale dello sviluppo italiano, Il Mulino, Bologna Biggiero L., 1997, The Districtual Evolution of Italian Industry, forthcoming
Brusco S., 1973, Prime note per uno studio del lavoro a domicilio in Italia, Inchiesta, n.10, pp.33-49
Burt R.S., 1992, Structural Holes, Harvard U.P., Cambridge Mass.
IRPET, 1969, Lo sviluppo economico della Toscana: un'ipotesi di lavoro, Il Ponte, n.11
Piore M.J., Sabel C.F., 1984, The Second Industrial Divide, Basic Books, NY
Pyke, F. & Becattini, Giacomo & Sengenberger W. (Eds.) (1990) Industrial Districts and Inter-firm Co-operation in Italy. Geneva: ILO Pub.
Storper M., Harrison B., 1991, Flexibility, Hierarchy and Regional Development: The Changing Structure of Industrial Production Systems and their Forms of Governance in the 1990s, Research Policy, n.20, pp.407-422
Anthony Breitzman & Francis Narin
This paper presents a case study examining scientific journal articles authored by VA investigators. That is, scientists affiliated with or funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, a surprising major source of research support in Biomedicine and Clinical Medicine. In this paper we will look at Government-University-Industry cooperation by examining trends in coauthorship between VA and non-VA investigators for a set of nearly 50,000 VA papers published over 10 years, as well as trends in patents citing to those papers.
The great majority of the 50,000 VA papers are coauthored with non-VA scientists (the average paper in the set lists 3 distinct author institutions). Coauthorship is an example of intentional cooperation. In this case, VA sponsored investigators who may or may not be university scientists are coauthoring papers with other university scientists, government scientists, or industry scientists. One question is how often does cross-sector coauthorship occur among VA scientists? And, has it increased or decreased over the past 10 years?
Patent linkage is an example of unintentional cooperation. In this case, a VA scientist publishes an article related to some medical procedure, device, or problem and the article is subsequently cited in U.S. patents. In particular, VA authored papers are cited more than 1,000 times in 1993/94 U.S. Patents, the third highest citation rate of any publishing institution. This is a case of government-sponsored science acting as a foundation for medical innovation that is most likely created and sold by private industry. Thus VA scientists often unknowingly cooperate in spawning a new industry. In this portion of the paper we will examine patents that cite to VA papers. Who owns the patents? Are they being cited from all sectors? How has this changed over time? We also examine some cases of actual products that can be traced back to this unintentional cooperation.
In Pursuit of Prestige: Strategy and Competition in U.S. Higher Education
Dominic J. Brewer, Susan M. Gates, and Charles A. Goldman
Some colleges and universities resist chasing prestige, but the pursuit of prestige is a powerful attraction in the competitive higher education industry. The pursuit of prestige drives institutions to shift resources away from activities that respond to student and employer needs such as instructing undergraduate students and vocational curricula. They invest heavily in activites intended to enhance prestige, especially sponsored research and competitive sports teams. As they pursue prestige, these institutions face a challenging dilemma: how to target resources to prestige-enhancing activities while maintaining programs that keep attracting students, tuition revenue, and government funding.
Some institutions can balance the competing demands, but the pursuit of prestige endangers the financial health of many schools. The present conditions in government funding and student demand make the situation all the more perilous for these schools.
These insights grew out of a multi-year project by the RAND Institute on Education and Training to study higher education as an industry. From observation of colleges and universities across the United States, the RAND team developed a conceptual description of institutional strategic choices. The conceptual description places the pursuit of prestige in the context of the many choices facing institutions in today's challenging enviroment. Case studies selected from observations of 26 colleges and universities illustrate the concepts and analysis.
This work has been generously supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation with support from TIAA-CREF.
It is widely accepted, among scholars, that relations between science and society is a process of permanent change. It has also been documented that the unilineal way of producing knowldege and technology has been modified, and we are facing a new way of producing it (Gibbons, Limoges, et al, 1996). This new mode or mode 2 as Gibbons et al call it, is characterised by knowledge production as "...the outcome of a process in which supply and demand factors can be said to operate..." The new production of knowledge is characterised also by transdisciplinarity, heterogeneity and organisational diversity, social accountability and reflexibity and quality control. This new way of producing knowledge implies the participation of different actors or agents and the interaction between firms, R&D laboratories, universities, government institutes, etc. New relations and new ways of producing knowledge have given raise to the creation of networks, based upon formal and informal relations, that make possible the tr ansfer by means of codified or tacit knowledge. These new ways of interrelations are based upon collaborative or cooperative arrangements, in order to make possible the flow of knowledge.
In Latin America we are facing, since the late eighties different institutional initiatives and organisational experiments regarding university-government-industry collaboration, as it has been the case in other industrialised countries such as the United States (Nelson 1988: 326). Such experiments go from individual relations through networking and the establishement, in the long term, of strong networks, which could lead to innovation, and which are supported on science based research interactions. For ms of collaboration involve bilateral or tripartite interactions (with government , federal or local); other forms base interactions on different stages of technological development, or combining a three-fold aim: training, research and development and s ervices; other types of collaboration deal with basic research objectives or with novel subjects; forms of collaboration originate a mixed model that combines scientific and technological supply with specific demands from industry; collaboration is promoted by different institutional arrangements, in some cases by incubators (real or virtual) for the creation of new firms or give raise to spin-offs; some models of interaction have important impacts on regional development by means of processes or products using natural resources, and so on.
What is commmon in most part of collaborative experiments is the transfer of knowledge by means of human resources trained in universities, or the flow of tacit knowledge by means of mobility of researchers or students from university to industry or vice versa. So, one of the main elements in the current analysis of national innovation systems, is the evaluation of the flow of knowledge that takes place as a result of collaborative arrangements beween government, university and industry. Within this knowl edge transfer, "...codified knowledge is only capable of transmitting partial information... so the application of such information requires prersonal, face-to-face interaction, in order to transmit associated tacit knowledge and skills (Faulkner and Senker, 1995).
Tacit knowledge, embodied in the skills of academic researchers is one of the main components of university-industry cooperation in Latin America, as it is the case in other countries as England (Vithlani, 1996). The construction of scientific networks, formal and informal, seems to be a crucial element for the regional and national innovation systems.
All these stylised facts, observed by means of empirical research pursued before by different scholars in Latin America (Plonski ed., 1993 and 1995; Krotsch and Tenti, 1993; Sutz, 1994; Vessuri, 1995; Casas and Luna ed., 1997), support the following main arguments that will be documented in this chapter: a) collaboration between universities and industries is a long term learning and cumulative process; b) it implies the creation of networks, based mostly in individual and informal relations; c) university-industry cooperation gives place to knowledge transfer, by means of codified and most frequently tacit knowledge; d) universities in Latin America are becoming a more active agent in the interactions with industry and government, and are modifying the ir main goals; e) experiences of triple helix might be found within regions in specific Latin American countries; f) a regional approach for the building of innovation systems, based on triple-helix-, is gaining importance, both in government and firm policies.
Even though Latin American countries have been exploring new patterns of knowledge production, difussion and use, it must be said that the mark of this process is heterogeneous between countries and also within countries.
Which are the possible new places for research in Latin America? The multinational enterprises? Or perhaps national enterprises? Are they private or public? To what extent truly new places for exchanging demands and thoughts have been created? Finally, in the midst of weakly articulated National Systems of Innovation, what policy is required for enriching the "learning places" of the latinoamerican nations?
The aim of this chapter will be to present, from research pursued before by scholars within latinamerican countries, the relevant stylised facts that characterise the collaboration between government, academy and industry in Latin America. Some issues like the non lineal interplay between science and innovation, the networking, the collaboration as a learning process, the ongoing building of national innovaton systems, will be discussed in the chapter.
The chapter will be complemented by means of examples of university, government, industry collaborations in Latin America, making reference to the specific fields of knowledge which promote the collaborations.
References
Casas, R. and M. Luna, Ed. (1997b), Gobierno, Academia y Empresas en M‚xico. Hacia una nueva configuraci¢n de relaciones, IIS-UNAM/Plaza y Vald‚s Ed., M‚xico, (forthcoming). Faulkner, W. and and J. Senker (1995), Knowledge Frontiers: Public sector research and industrial innovation in Biotechnlogy, Engineerning Ceremics and Paralell Computing, Claredon Press, Oxford. Gibbons, M., C. Limoges, H. Nowotny, S. Schwartzman, P. Scott and M. Trow (1996), The New Production of Knowledge. The Dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies, Sage Publications, Third Edition, London, Thousabd Oaks, New Delhi. Krotsch, P and E. Tenti, (1993), "Universidad y sistemas productivos", in E. Tenti Fanfani (comp.), Universidad y Empresa, Colecci¢n Pol¡ticas P£blicas, Mi=F1o y D‚vila/Ciepp, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Nelson, Richard R (1988), "Institutions supporting technical change in the United States", in: G. Dosi, C. Freeman, R. Nelson, G. Silverberg and L. Soete (Ed.) Technical Change and Economic Theory, Pinter Publishers, London and New York, 221-238. Plonski, A. ed. (1993 ), Cooperaci¢n empresa-universidad en Iberoam‚rica, Programa Iberoamericano de Ciencia y Tecnolog¡a para el Desarrollo (CYTED), Sao Paulo, Brazil. Plonski, A. ed. (1995), Cooperaci¢n empresa-universidad en Iberoam‚rica: Avances recientes, Programa Iberoamericano de Ciencia y Tecnolog¡a para el Desarrollo (CYTED), Sao Paulo, Brazil Sutz, J. (1994), Universidad y Sectores productivos, Colecci¢n Los Fundamentos de las Ciencias del Hombre, Centro Editor de Am‚rica Latina, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Vessuri, H. (1995), La Academia va al Mercado. Relaciones de Cient¡ficos Acad‚micos con Clientes Externos., Fobdo Editorial FINTEC, Caracas, Venezuela. Vithlani, Hema (1996), An empirical study of the UK innovation system, prepared by the Department of Trade And Industry, Technology and Standards Division, London.
THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF KNOWLEDGE IN NEW TECHNOLOGY FIELDS IN MEXICO
Rosalba Casas, Rebeca De Gortari, and Ma. Josefa Santos
Science based research is mainly concentrated in higher education institutions and research centers in Mexico. This system of institutions is very heterogeneous (autonomous universities, public and private universities, public and private technological in stitutes, SEP-CONACYT research centers), and located in different regions within the country. Given this fact different forms of interactions between university, government and industry might be found. Different institutional missions might have as a result different forms of relations and different ways of solving interaction problems, especially those related with technology transfer and intellectual property. Those differences might as well promote or prevent successful or failure stories of interacti ons. Accumulated research experience in universities and research centers seems to be one of the key elements in successful relations but not necessarily the determinant one.
Universities, mainly those with research activities, have been recognized as important institutions contributing to national innovation systems and, in fact, forming part of it (Nelson and Rosenberg, 1993:11; Nelson 1993:512; Edquist and Ludvall, 1993:269; Johnson y Ludvall 1994:696).
University-industry relations are not new in Mexico. However, new strategies and policies and new institutional arrangements have been applied since the mid eighties, the main changes being the introduction of formal and deliberate relations, coexisting w ith individual and informal ones. In fact, the last decade in Mexico can be identified as a period of transition, characterized by the search for the equilibrium, stabilization and normalization of relations among government, academia and the private sect or, through a scheme of institutional relations and compatible values (Casas and Luna, 1997).
The interactions between university, industry and government suppose the flow of knowledge, a process that has lead to a new way of producing it (Gibbons, et al, 1994), supported in new characteristics documented by these authors such as transdisciplina rity, organizational diversity, social accountability and reflexivity . The flow of knowledge adopts different forms, sometimes being codified, but in others it is transferred in a tacit way. The flow of knowledge adopts very different forms, from human resource training, services, technical assistance, through the development of research and the transfer of technology. The building of networks, as a result of these interactions, are given at different levels within a country: the local, the state, the re gional, the national or the international. We assume that the local or regional favors the possibilities of a better flow of knowledge, as it is stimulated by social and economic demands and regional development goals.
The existence of research capabilities, that imply the accumulation of knowledge, support the networking. Research centers in Mexico represent a relevant environment for the building of networks, particularly in specific regions and fields related with new technologies, such as biotechnology, new materials and telecommunications.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the process of networking between research and support centers, industry and government in three institutions devoted to biotechnology, new materials and telecommunications. The paper will explore the idea that collaboration is a long term learning and cumulative process, it is based upon formal and informal interactions and it is acquiring importance in local cities within the country, becoming significant in the creation of innovation environments at a regional level.
The analysis of interactions and the flow of knowledge in each institution will consider the following approach:
1) The structure and dynamics of the networking: This level of the analysis will consider a history of collaborations in specific fields of knowledge related to specific economic sectors. A characterization of the interactions will be done considering the nature of relations, if they are formal or informal, promoted individually or institutionally. The actors participating in collaborations will allow to identify bilateral or Triple helix interactions, and the way that government mechanisms are being used to support the networking.
2) The nature of the flow of knowledge: By means of the three case studies it will be identify the origin of the collaboration: if it is originated by the supply knowledge from research centers, the demand of industry, stimulated by a governmental, or if the strategies change from region to region. The way knowledge is shared will be analyzed. This will consider if it is transferred by means of codified or tacit knowledge. Personnel mobility from research centers to industry and viceversa, joint publications and patents will be analyzed as a way of sharing tacit knowledge. Experience and training of entrepreneurs participating in the network, will be treated as an element facilitating collaborations.
3) The efficiency of shared or transferred knowledge. We assume that the benefits of interactions adopt very different forms. some of them could adopt the form of new products or processes, but some others could lead to new methodologies, new instruments, use of laboratories, information, etc. So all these possibilities will be documented to be able to evaluate the efficiency of interactions.
The paper will consider three case-studies: a) The Center for Biological Research, located in La Paz, Baja California Sur, pursuing research in biotechnology related to the aquaculture sector; b) The Mexican Corporation for Research in Materials, located
in Saltillo, Coahuila, pursuing research in new materials, and c) The National Center of Long Distance, located in Quer‚taro, Quer‚taro, pursuing activities in telecommunications. Two of the aforementioned research centers are located in the Northwest region of the country and the other one in the central region.
A comparative analysis of location of research and triple helix experiences will be done, considering as well the different economic sectors related to their research activities. The role that these centers are having in regional development will be discussed as well.
References
Casas, R. and M. Luna (1997), "Government, academia and the private sector in Mexico: Towards a new configuration", Science and Public Policy, Vol. 24, Num. 1, February, England
Edquist, Ch. and B.Lundvall (1993), "Comparing the Danish and Swedish systems of innovation", in: R. Nelson, (Ed.), National Innovation Systems. A comparative Analysis, Oxford University Press, New York-Oxford, 265-298.
Johnson, B. and B. Lundvall (1994), "Sistemas nacionales de innovaci¡n y aprendizaje institucional", Comercio Exterior, Vol. 44, Num. 8, 695-704.
Nelson, R. (Ed.), National Innovation Systems. A comparative Analysis, Oxford University Press, New York-Oxford, 265-298.
Nelson, R. and N. Rosenberg (1993), "Technical Innovation and National Systems", in: R. Nelson, (Ed.), op. cit, 3-22.
REGIONAL INNOVATION SYSTEMS- THE ANALYSIS OF THE PORTUGUESE CASE BASED ON THE TRIPLE HELIX CONCEPT
Eduardo Anselmo de Castro, Carlos Jos‚ Rodrigues, Fernando Nogueira, and Artur da Rosa Pires
Portugal has a long standing centralist tradition, and its administrative structure is based on a strong central government and on municipal governments with a relatively high degree of autonomy. Regional governments are non-elected delegations of central state and regional specialised departments are, in general, simple extensions of central departments mainly dedicated to bureaucratic tasks and with very limited capacities to undertake autonomous strategies.
This administrative structure has a pervasive influence on the institutional basis of support of economic activities, influencing negatively the innovative capacity of the country and the speed of the catching-up process. Policies undertaken by the central government are generally sectorial, paying little attention to the specificities of territorially based economic systems and disregarding the synergetic processes generated by horizontal integration of economic activities. In other words, central policies present difficulties to promote the coherence of economic fabrics and to thicken the local networks, linking industrial firms, services supporting productive activities, research and training institutions. These networks are essential for the exchange of information and for the pooling of specialised knowledge, which are the raw materials of innovation and of the capacity to absorb exogenous technical progress.
According to several authors, the limitations of central policies can be overcome by the action of regional innovation systems. The main functions of these systems are the horizontal co-ordination of activities, in particular the broadening of the interface between the creators and the users of technology, the promotion of co-operative behaviour directed to the exploitation of local synergies, the diffusion of information and the definition of development strategies, adapting the broader national policies to the specific characteristics and interests of the regional productive fabric.
The weakness of the Portuguese regional innovation systems, rooted in the lack of strong regional powers and in the characteristics of the Portuguese socio-economic structure, has been confirmed by the detailed empirical study developed by the authors under the scope of EU project REGIS which is analysing the regional innovation systems of several European countries. In this paper, some of the results obtained by REGIS will be presented and it will be argued, using the example of the University of Aveiro that the weakness of Portuguese regional innovation systems can be at least partially compensated by the combined action of municipal authorities and Universities.
Universities, endowed with a broader scope and with a wider range of contacts, can play a pervasive role helping local government to define development strategies and collaborating in their implementation, for instance through the development of R&D projects tailored to the local needs. On the other hand, municipalities privilege the use of micro-economic instruments to promote socio-economic development, particularly through the planning, creation and improvement of physical infrastructures.
The synergies resulting from the combination of the missions of universities and local government will be illustrated exploring the particular case of the development of advanced telecommunication networks, considered as a basic precondition for the efficiency of social and productive systems. Among the number of co-operative initiatives which are being carried out in this field, this paper will stress three specific projects aiming, respectively, the elaboration of a regional master- plan of telecommunications, to be implemented by local authorities in partnership with other public and private institutions, the creation and deployment of Internet based applications targetted to SMEþs development needs and the establishment of a regional innovation support centre.
The Emerging Paradigm for Technology Learning
This paper intend do discuss the role of the Technological Incubators organization in transition from the industrial society to the knowledge society. The centrality of the knowledge as competitive base has forced changes in the productive sector face the academic research. This culture assume that the learning attitude is essencial to became the technological innovation routine. The bilateral flux of knowledge and information tech-scientific beween entrepreneurs and university labs must be very intesive.
It is possible observe in the Technological Incubators a new organizative form which fuctions as a mechanism for this technological learning perspective. This incubators incentive the tenants companies to participate in a innovation network thar include University, Industry Governmental Agencies and Non Government Agencies. This network contribute to learnin process definitively.
Our question is if that science based companies that developed in the Technological Incubators had contributed to a new entreprenerial mentality. It is possible the start up companies after leaving the incubator mantain the partnership network and amplified it? What is happening with this star up companies? How the learning perspective going on? Are the Academic Institution prepeared to support this knowledge flux? How about the changes in universitie’s curricula?
Since the beginning of the eighties we are witnessing a broad recognition amongst economists and policy makers of the importance of knowledge accummulation for economic growth. This context explains the reinforcement of knowledge, technology and innovation centrality in the researchers agenda as well as in the design of the economic policy.
Considerable literature has developed for the last ten years and a fundamental break has occurred. Less attention is being drawn to the linear vision and the studies carried out at the regional and local level stress the importance of a systemic approach, underlining the relevance of organisational capacities, networks of innovation and feed-backs between the different stages of the innovative process.
University-industry-government relations are the core of the relevant developed approaches. A knowledge-based economy results on the development of this complex network driven by a dialectic and interactive basis occured into each sphere and between their different levels.
The operationalisation of the systemic models is complex and its development and applicability require specific methodological and tool responses concering the economies on technological frontier or economies that arent near the state-of-the-art.
We think that the contextual conditions of less favoured regions involves a reconfiguration of institutional structure and the methods of evaluating the innovative potential. More attention should be drawn to the strategic role of university (missions, teaching activities, research activities, new organisational forms, the relations between the organisation of the university and its environment, ...) the design of the public policy ( financial suport, demand-side policy, support to technological development and technological advice and guidance of local firms, regionalisation of technological policy, ...) and to the evaluation methodologies for the innovative process.
The aim of the paper is to discuss the theoretical and methodological challenge related with the systemic approach. The paper involves an inventory and critical analysis of relevant studies on measurement and evaluation of the potential of regional system of innovation. We make a critical review of the state-of-the-art of existing methodologies to understand better the functioning of innovative process at the regional level, as a key dimension of the economic regional competitiviness.
In policy making, a considerable effort has to be put into the design and acceptance of a policy theory. Responsibilities, modes of conduct, interests and financial schemes of large numbers of actors are being shaped and defined in the course of acceptance.
Innovation of a already entrenched policy theory is not only an intellectual debate, but also a highly political, organizational and financial matter. The linear innovation model is a famous and well documented example in the field of research and innovation policy. Although it presents a model with very limited scope viz-a-viz innovation it has been used extensively, and still belongs to the collective memory of numerous decision makers. Now that even the most stubborn vested interests cannot re-animate the linear innovation model anymore, new concepts have a chance to be discussed, weighed, and checked if they comply with our rule of thumb for "intermediary" policy theory: it should at least be elegant, applicable, symbolic and understandable in a wider social and cultural context.
The Triple Helix model enables to discuss implications of alternative policy theories. It permits to develop generalizations from practical experiences in a language that does not suffer from the linear model paradigm. In the paper a few cases of policy design will be discussed in the dimensions of the Triple Helix model. the examples are chosen in such a way that they illustrate the attempts to replace ´old thinking´ within the university, industry and government policy. Examples are drawn from experiences of the Dutch Academy of Engineering and Technological Sciences with developing and applying intermediary policy theory to various cases of policy making.
2. Developing intermediary policy theory
We wish to suggest anything but that our efforts to formulate a policy framework already meet the standards for intermediary policy theory. The various elements of the framework are still under construction and has been already revised and adapted to various specific situations frequently.
At the conceptual level we declare a few pre-conditions:
- cyclic approach of knowledge and innovation
A stylized systems approach is presented of two parallel and coupled cyclic processes, the knowledge generation cycle and the innovation cycle. In between the two cycles complex (human) interactions take place. This co-development model serves to illustrate the need to combine (‘integrate') knowledge from various scientific sources (‘disciplines'), and technologies (integration and co-development for product development).
- the increasing significance of alliances
Stressing the significance of alliances within and in between firms and alliances with others, to bring together complementary knowledge (implicit and explicit) and experiences. Also the dynamics of technological developments, which imply less significance for the physical and geographical location of research, development, product engineering and marketing functions, and stress the communication along these chains.
- the definition of research-activities in a two by two matrix
An elegant 2x2 matrix should offer a way out of the confusion to define fundamental and applied research. In the last version of the matrix, the one dimension defines the level op disciplinary v. system-orientation of the research, and the other one defines the extent to which the research questions are originating from scientific v. economic and wider social actors. The history of just the phrasing of the two dimensions is an instructive case in itself of the learning process of the authors of the theory and the actors involved. In the paper this will be elaborated.
3. Applications of intermediary policy theory
Case 1. The process to select initiatives for a recent scheme op co-operative research centres in the Netherlands ("Technological Top Institutes")
In the Netherlands recently (1995-1997) the government has developed a scheme of university-industry co-operative research centres, comparable to the NSF scheme but adapted to the local situation. When preparing proposals, unprecedented strong alliances developed in between companies and between companies an research organisations.
In this case, selection was done under direct governmental (ministerial) regime, which offers an excellent opportunity to see the discrepancies between ‘old thinking' of government, and the practice developing between firms and research organisations, regarding the definition and criteria, and the location and organisation of these centres.
Case 2. Elements for a policy advancing personal mobility of knowledge workers
In this case a specific phenomenon of the labor market has been addressed. It is the paradox between the growing importance of alliances in a ever more knowledge-intensive economy and the rigidity of the upper part of the employment pyramid in which usually knowledge workers are located. Furthermore, in the usual concept of technology transfer implicit knowledge incorporated in people is underestimated. Policy measures have been proposed from a communications perspective on this human resources issues of knowledge intensive innovation processes. Special policy initiatives have been proposed to enable co-development by intensifying mutual (often temporary) transfer of people between public research organizations and innovating companies.
Case 3. Improving national technology policy
This case addresses the general role of government in its relation to industry, university and other public research organizations most explicitly. First, a short introduction is given on the the state of the art of the political debate on science and technology policy in the Netherlands. Then, we give an assessment of various "intermediary" policy theories that have been developed so far, by our organizations and by others.
4. Discussion
The first two cases illustrate the development of new formats for bi-lateral and tri-lateral communications and add to the discussion of internal transformations of the institutional spheres. The three cases together provide a way to discuss recursive effects in more generalized terms.
Changes in the Post-Soviet Researech Systems: Painful Adjustment to New Realities
For many Years the Soviet Union has been considered as the main competitor of the United States in military, economic and R&D spheres. As to R&D, formally, it was possible to compare the values of some key indicators. The USSR and Eastern block (FSU and EE) countries had high rates of R&D expenses ( as a share of GNP), a large number of researchers and enginers, different research facilities( observatories, reactors, research vessels) and so on.
From the other hand, output indicators ( number of publications, patents and so on) look not so impressive. There are a number of reasons for such difference: regime of sicrecy, military orientation of R&D, low attantion to journals from the region. But we could mention two extra reasons of this situation:
1) organizational difference from the Western research system, that opened the way for serious overestimations of the real R&D potential in the region. It have led to misuse of scientists and engineers , especially in 'branch' scientific institutes that comprised more than 70% of R&D personnel.
2) concentration of the substantial part of R&D personnel on reverse engineering, that could not be reflected correctly in many output indicators. In addition to it, a high share of specialists was concentrated in traditional sectors with relatively lower innovative potential, such as coal mining or heavy engineering industry. Electronics and biotechnology were proclaimed as priorities, but they had no adequate support for their development.
I propose to consider positions of FSU and EE states in the graf in 'input-output' coordinate system. This illustration helps to understand that transformation of reserch systems in these coumtries could have two main direction to approach more balanced parameters of Western countries: a) decrease the number of R&D personnel ( and institutions), b) more effective use of existed potential to gain Western output standards.
Unfortunately, if consider macroeconomic dimension of the situation, it becomes clear that the second variant is difficult to implement. It means that the process of decline of R&D is more or less 'natural' one. But the problem for these countries is how to use existed resources of scientists and engineers more efectively in the situation of economic crisis and low demand on R&D results from the side of industry.
Structural changes are needed , and in some countries they are under way already. It helped to transfer a lot of qualified specialists to the other sectors of the economy, and to create better conditions for those who remain in R&D institutes and the universities.
So, for example, Hungary has preserved it's level of patenting and has increased it's number of citations , despite substantial decline in the number of reserchers and the size of financial support. In Russia and other FSU, these processes of transformation are not so active,as in EE, and some output indicators are far from even their pre- reform levels. Main direction of this transformation has to be diffusion of R&D specialists into companies, that had less than 7% of total R&D personnel in Soviet times. and creation of small hihg -tech companies that could work both for internal and external markets. Effective utilization of this potential is still important problem after years of erosion in R&D capabilities of the post- Soviet societies. In accordance with World Bank latest report, these countries stll have the highest levels of scientists and engineers per capita in the world (Ukraine is the leader with more than 6700 per 1000000 of population). Universities were relatively weak, and, probably, they will play only subordinate role in the transformation processes.
Dynamics of changes in R&D potential in leading EE and FSU countries will be considered ( balance between industry, higher education and state institutes in input and output indicators). Special attantion will be paid to comparative analysis of the situation and trends in Russia, Ukraine and Poland. Impact of the changes in the East of Europe and the Former Soviet Union on the processes in world science ( emigration, growing competition in some narrow spheres and so on) will be also envisiged.
Japan has a long history of cooperation in research between industry, academia and government. Indeed, Japan has set up many cooperative research projects that have involved a multiplicity of competing companies. The results of such cooperative research projects have undoubtedly helped to promote the economic development of Japan effectively in the past.
More recently, though, the level of technology in Japan has become equal to that of Western countries. As a result, the technological level of Japanese companies has improved to such an extent, that it has now become both possible and necessary for Japan to develop its own technologies. The significance to the economy of cooperative research between industry, academia and government is therefore changing rapidly.
In this paper, with a view to utilizing more efficiently the results of cooperative research between industry, academia and government, we consider the issue of the effectiveness of the existing cooperative research system and the possibility of constructing a new and more effective cooperative research system to bring together industry, academia and government, taking full account of the needs of the present day.
Method
We selected 14 cooperative research projects, representing 8 systems under the auspices of 5 different ministries and 1 local government authority. One person from an administrative department and one research group leader were interviewed in respect of each project examined. Every interview covered (1) the organization of the cooperative research system, (2) the coordination of the research project, (3) the promotion of the research project, and (4) the method employed to bring the cooperative research project to an end.
Analysis
All the above cooperative research systems and projects were analyzed and classified by type. The classification was based on the number of participating companies and the stage of research.
a) Type 1: Product development supported by academia or government
Cooperative research projects for product development supported by academia for the benefit of companies usually involves only bilateral cooperative research. Nowadays, the level of technology in companies having attained the same level as in academia and the national laboratories, this variety of cooperative research project is becoming less common. None the less, local government authorities are increasingly supporting cooperative research programs in order to promote regional development.
b) Type 2: Cooperative research projects for product development
Two or more companies participate in this type of research project in order to develop products jointly with academia or government. However, the number of projects that include competing companies as members as, for example, in the "Large Scale Project" program supported by MITI, is diminishing. This is because, as the level of technology in a company rises, the company will often take steps to protect its commercial secrets that tend to make it more difficult for competing companies to join in cooperative research projects.
Quite recently, though, a new type of cooperative research system for product development has spontaneously come into being. In this type of cooperative research project, the participating members are leading companies that operate in different industries. The companies therefore do not feel constrained by the need to compete with each other in the market place. These cooperative research projects are decidedly not "catch-up" projects but are, almost invariably, "technology fusion" projects. That would appear to be the key to success in this type of cooperative research activity.
c) Type 3: Basic research supported by companies
In this third type of cooperative research, companies support a research project that is promoted by a researcher in a university or national laboratory. Such cooperative research projects are currently increasing in number. There are three reasons for this increase. The first reason is that companies are moving away from a donation system towards a system of cooperative research because a cooperative research system enables companies to access academia or governmental research results much more quickly and easily. The second reason is that, at a time of sluggish economic growth, companies have found it necessary to reduce their research budgets, This has often been done by outsourcing their basic research requirements to the public sector.
The third reason, which is especially important, is that many university researchers have changed their previously negative attitude to cooperative research with industry.
d) Type 4: Cooperative research projects in basic research
The last type of cooperative research projects identified is undertaken in basic research with the participation of many different companies. This type of cooperative research project is rare in Japan: because the results of the research are published openly as papers in the scientific press, many companies see little or no commercial benefit in joining this type of research project.
The "ERATO" program supported by JST (formerly known as JRDC) was the first Japanese system to promote cooperative research project between industry, academia and government in basic areas of science and technology. The principal characteristic of an ERATO project is that the research leader has tremendous authority. Nowadays, the main issue in any cooperative research project is not the precise theme of the cooperative research but the selection and recruitment of suitable researchers.
A new type of co-operative research
We have found the necessity function for a new type of cooperative research.
1) A flexible research system for a moving target
Under the existing Japanese cooperative research systems, the research goals and the duration of cooperative research projects are decided at the start of each project. The evaluation of each project is then based on measuring the deviations from research plans that were originally laid down much earlier. But today, social circumstances are changing continuously and rapidly. It is therefore necessary to propose a more flexible approach to the preparation of research plans so that they can more readily be changed in order to follow what is, in effect, a "moving target".
2) Emphasis on researchers
As previously stated, social circumstances are continuously changing in Japan and globally. It is therefore virtually impossible in most cases to decide upon a fixed long-term research plan at the start of a cooperative research project. In this uncertain environment, bringing to bear the personal skills of individual researchers can help considerably in the management of research projects. In addition, because so much research is now multidisciplinary, the main skills required of a project leader are those of coordination. The recruitment of a project leader with a broad scientific background, sound in judgement and strong in management skills, yet possessing imagination and a deep understanding of the importance of the role of cooperative research projects for society as well as for industry, in other words a true "knowledge-coordinator", is particularly important to the success of cooperative research projects.
3) Member companies
For cooperative research projects involving many different companies, the selection of those companies is crucial to their success or failure. In future, such cooperative research projects will almost always be technology fusion projects. All member companies should therefore be drawn from different industries so that they will not spend their time and energies in fruitless competition with each other. Furthermore, it will be best to select as partners in a project the top company of each industry represented, so that all the participating companies will find it easier to gain the sense of trust and confidence in each other that is an important requirement for success in a cooperative research.
4) Include a government official as a policy adviser
At the time when a new technology developed within a cooperative research project is ready to be marketed, inappropriate regulations can easily hinder the diffusion of that technology. An experienced government official should therefore be included in each new cooperative research project in order to provide advice on relevant aspects of government policy: as an example, it is self evident that environmental technology can be diffused more easily if it is compatible with government policies.
The emerging landscape of research: dynamics of trust and cooperation
Fabrizio Ferraro and Mario Borroi
The transfer of knowledge and technology from universities to private firms plays an increasingly relevant role in boosting the innovation rate and competitiveness of individual firms as well as economic systems. New organizational and contractual arrangements are being developed to manage the complex issues involved in the interaction between government, university and industry. The social division of labor in the production and diffusion of knowledge is evolving. Technology Transfer Offices, Cooperative Research Centers and University Technology Business Incubators are becoming widespread in the research landscape.
In recent years several contributions addressed different aspects of this phenomenon emphasizing policy, economic, management and organizational issues. In particular an interesting stream of research has evolved on the nature of the university-industry relationship and its various organizational and contractual arrangements. Understanding the characteristics of these relations is essential to identify new roles for the actors involved and assess the effectiveness of the emerging locations of research.
This paper is a first attempt to develop a theoretical framework on the role of trust in promoting university- industry cooperation.
The transfer of knowledge occurring in a university-industry relationship is characterized by high uncertainty. The development and enforcement of a complete contract are therefore very problematic, requiring a high degree of mutual trust. The literature on the role of trust in social systems provides conceptual tools that enhance our understanding of the different mechanisms employed to govern these agreements. Trust can be placed in people (interpersonal trust) and in abstract systems of rules (system trust). According to the nature of the exchange people rely more on one or the other, but in the long run both are essential to foster cooperation. In the case of university-industry relationships, conflicting interests and cultural barriers make the development of trust relationships very difficult and the different organizational and contractual arrangements used affect both system and personal trust. Trusting behaviors have been proved to be essential in facilitating knowledge exchange and cooperative creative efforts. Therefore, the success of these new arrangements governing the production and diffusion of knowledge will depend on their ability to promote trusting behavior among the parties.
This paper is based on the findings of research carried out by the authors in Italy. Contracts developed to govern university-industry relationships were analyzed. Interviews were conducted with university scientists, technology transfer managers, and executives involved in these relationships. By merging the analysis of the contractual arrangements and the insights from the interviews we elaborate a framework on the interaction between the organizational structures, the contracts, and the level of trust. The differences in the degree of trust found in the relationships are then interpreted in relation to the various organizational and contractual arrangements.
Furthermore, the process by which trust was established and maintained is described and implications are derived from the discussion of these preliminary results. Bridging the research on university-industry relation with the literature on trust appear to be a promising path for future research on the effectiveness of the new locations of research. At the same time practitioners might benefit from the use of the framework provided in designing the organizational and the contractual arrangements which can facilitate the production and the diffusion of knowledge and technology.
Industry-Academe Linkage: Innovation in Philippine Science and Engineering Education
Industry-academe linkage is a potent tool in enhancing an institution's research capability. Thus, closer ties should be developed between the industry and the academic sectors. With today's industrial innovations particularly in the manufacturing sector, there is a need for relevant and meaningful training and understanding of scientific discoveries that will equip manpower resource base with skills that the industry requires. The Science Community, hence, gives all-out support to science and engineering education and manpower. Philippine universities have a fairly large source of manpower which can be tapped to help the industry and vice-versa.
It was in the early 80's when engineering faculty and students were noted to have inadequate exposure in the manufacturing industry. This observation led to the establishment of the University of the Philippines (UP-College of Engineering) Manufacturing Linkage Program (UP-MLP).
The program was institutionalized in 1986 and was replicated in Cebu in 1990. The program has established a pool of industrial firms in the region that prepared developmental programs with the University of San Carlos-College of Engineering. In the recent past, leading engineering universities in the country like Adamson and Xavier initiated the same program.
The Philippine Council for Industry and Energy Research and Development (PCIERD) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) initiated and sustained the program so that teaching and research in the academe can be geared towards industry requirements. Closer ties between technological institutions and industry will enable these institutions to produce graduates that conform to the manpower needs of industry in terms of quality and quantity. A salient feature of this academe-industry Linkage Program is the active participation of the industry in the teaching-learning process. Selected formal courses are taught partly by engineering practitioners. Work projects that have direct industry relevance are assigned to students to work on. Students are also provided with on-the-job training.
The program is aimed at uplifting the quality of engineering education and increasing the number of highly trained engineers needed in industrial, educational and research institutions. Also, the program aims to enhance the competence in the manufacturing sector and encourage engineers to go into production or manufacturing. The Manpower Development Programs in Science and Engineering of the DOST complemented the efforts of the MLP towards creating a pool of top calibre engineers and upgrading the status of the manufacturing practice.
A significant offshoot of the MLP was the Manufacturing Industry Roundtable (MIR) that is primarily designed to help strengthen the industry through a meaningful cooperation among various sectors. The MIR was formed to serve as a forum that aims to strengthen the Philippine manufacturing industry by functioning as a clearinghouse of experiences and problems, and synthesizer and disseminator of solutions.
The MIR coordinates with the academe and with the key technology agencies of the government in carrying out relevant industry studies and research work. Industry facilities will function as laboratory for various research and prototyping activities.
The DOST, in close coordination with PCIERD, has organized networks to respond to relevant problems of the industry and the academe. These existing networks are the Coconut R&D Network, Sucro R&D Network, Food R&D Network, Metals Network thru the Design and Engineering Center Foundation, Inc. (DECFI), Energy Network through the Energy Development and Utilization Foundation, Inc. (EDUFI) and Plastics Research and Development Center thru the Philippine Plastics Industries Association and Industrial Technology Development Institute (ITDI).
Statistical modeling of the Triple Helix Using Complex System Theory
Koen Frenken, Loet Leydesdorff, Paolo P. Saviotti
Innovation is dependent upon a variety of factors. Among them are technology-push, demand-pull and political factors referring to developments in research, markets, and governance levels, respectively. As such, an innovation system can be conceptualized as a complex system that consist of the research system, the market system, and the political system as its social subsystems. The complexity of the system is a consequence of the interrelatedness between its subsystems. The state of one subsytem affects the functioning of other subsytems. Thus, the functioning of the whole cannot be analyzed as the aggregate of its parts.
Importantly, innovation is not expected to arise from within one subsystem: modern technologies develop at the interface of social subsystems within a network arrangement between their representative institutional actors (Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz 1996). Recurrent interactions between subsystems are expected to lock-in into technological trajectories through knowledge accumulation within the network, i.e. at the interfaces (cf. Arthur 1989).
Using simulation models of complex systems consisting of interacting subsystems, it has been shown that different initial conditions may lead to different states of lock-in (Kauffman 1993). In other words, complex systems consist of multiple basins of attraction. Therefore, triple-helices as localized within national or regional environments are expected to be many-sided. Some countries specialize in specific sciences and specific markets using specific governance structures.
Using information theory (Theil 1972), a statistical framework is developed in which triple-helix configurations can be studied as countriesþ specialization patterns in R&D-programs and markets. Each innovation is taken to be an event in three parallel operating subsystems. As such, it changes the distribution of innovations among R&D-programs, among markets, and among countries at the same time. Given the interelatedness between subsystems within the network configuration, the covariation between the states of subsystems is expected to be rising: evolutionary forces remove triple combinations that are not are competitive at the world scale.
Using data on 900 innovations in aircraft, we observe that the prediction holds: in the course of time, the degree of specialization of countries in R&D-programs and markets has risen substantially after the second world war. Successful countries specialized on a specific R&D-program as to develop products for a specific market (e.g., Brazil, Canada). Some countries that followed multiple trajectories at the same time have been facing substantial difficulties (e.g., The Netherlands, United Kingdom). Equally, the statistical model can be used to analyze simulation data of complex systems as to compare empirical results with model results. Extensions of the statistical model as well as implications for future modeling exercises are discussed.
Arthur, W.B. (1989) þCompeting technologies, increasing returns, and lock-in by historical eventsþ, Economic Journal 99, pp. 116-131. Kauffman, S.A. (1993) The Origins of Order. Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press). Leydesdorff, L., Etzkowitz, H. (1996) þEmergence of a triple helix of university-industry-government relationsþ, Science and Public Policy 23 (5), pp. 279-86. Theil, H. (1972) Statistical Decomposition Anaysis (Amsterdam & London: North-Holland Publishing Company).
1. Introduction
In consideration of future location of research; the institutional approach (structural approach), that is, role-allocation among institution is very common, however, the present study mainly focus on the characteristics of knowledge production process of each section. First, the typical knowledge production in academic sector is delineated using "journal system" theory, that is using "publication" as a component of the system, applying system theory to scientific knowledge.(Fujigaki, 1998) From this application, as the results of system*s operation (i.e., publishing), the "validation boundary", that is, the knowledge criteria for scientific activity will be focused. Using this validation boundary concept, we can discuss the difference and relationship of knowledge production between academic and public sectors. Then, we will discuss the relationship between these knowledge and that of private sectors, using "linear model" based on distinction of basic/applied research. Finally, a network model, that is a learning process with recursive interaction within three sections is discussed referencing the Triple-Helix Model.
2. The Characteristics of Knowledge Production in Academic Sector
Publishing in scientific journals is essential for the production of original scientific knowledge, for the accumulation of their knowledge, and for the education of scientists. Therefore, the continuation of "publishing" in scientific journals is considered as unity of knowledge production mainly in academic sector (University). If we take an original paper as a component of the "journal system", we can make that component (a paper) the basis for the production of the next component (another paper). This forms a network with the production process involving the production of one component (a paper) through interaction among other components. Consequently, this system operates continuously.
This continuous system operation (i.e., publishing) builds its own walls -e.g. the boundary between science and non-science, or the boundaries of the disciplines as a results of its operation. Each journal system has its own "validation boundary", reflecting the validation of papers as the consequences of whole judgments of reviewers.
3. Difference in Validation Boundary between Academic Sector and Public Sector
The validation boundary of academic sector, that is, the judgment of reviewers reflecting the validation of a paper is not the same as the validation of boundary that is required in public. For example, in area of medicine, problematic papers having undergone rigorous testing are essential for communication among scientists; however, more rigorous testing and strictly controlled studies are needed for communication among clinicians, who encounter the public everyday. In other cases, for purpose of answering to the public needs, the validation criteria such as needed in scientific communication in journal system is not necessary required. Moreover, the "synthesis" for public needs is different from "analysis" in scientific community (Fujigaki, 1996). These differences of validation boundaries between communication among scientists and that of public can be shown as Figure 1. In this figure, the validation-1 (V.B.1) reflects the validation boundary of knowledge production of scientific journal system, whereas, the validation-2 (V.B.2) reflects knowledge production at the boundaries of science and society. In a discussion of mode-distinction proposed by Gibbons, et. al.(1994), Mode-1 (i.e., scientific activity in a traditional communication structure) corresponds to the V.B. 1 in Figure 1, whereas Mode-2 (network science at the interface) corresponds to the communication that emerges at the boundaries of the journal system (V.B.2).
If we consider the traditional differentiation of sectors, Figure 1 is considered to show the relationship between knowledge production of academic sector(V.B.1) and that of public-needs-oriented knowledge production (public sector) (V.B.2). From the point of view of operation of journal system, each operation of the journal system determines the interior and exterior of the journal system through its operation. It constantly redefines the boundary between the self and the environment. The self is "science" and the environment is "society." If there is a goal that has always existed outside of system operation, it will be considered as an "outside goal" (or social goal, public needs). However, if the system's operation redraws its boundaries through its operation, the above goal is no longer an outside goal. Thus, the boundary between science and society is determined by the system's operation, and does not exist independently of it. In this way, the validation boundary problem in section 2 is considered to be always varying by re-drawing of knowledge productions itself.
4. Linear Model vs. Network Model
Let us consider next the knowledge production at Industry (private sector). The traditional "linear-model", that is, the basic research leads to the application research and technology, represent that the knowledge production at V.B. 1 in University is applied to knowledge production in Industry. However, there is some criticism to this simple linear model today (Mayer-Kramer, 1997) and network-model has been proposed (Laredo, 1997). Whereas the linear model has a sequential process like relay course where ideas in basic research are transformed to the applied research, the network model represent not such sequential process, but a recursive process where loops in trial and error exist before an object or a process could be stabilized, and in these loops of learning process, the idea has been enriched. In the knowledge production in network model, that is represent the real innovation process, requires coordination, delegation, and contract system. In this contract model, however, how these knowledge production will be controlled in their quality? Kobayashi (1998) proposed the audition system applying performing to keep the knowledge quality, the evaluation is conducted in agenda-setting, audition-process, and in market reaction to these agenda.
5. Applying Autopoiesis System Theory to Network Model
Let us consider above "network model" in the frame of Journal System, that is application of Autopoiesis System Theory. There, components of system are; "publications", "papers", "patents", "records of meeting", "proceedings" and "reports". The operation of the system is producing these components, and this system operates continuously with this repetitive operation. Furthermore, some of the system operation specialized to (differentiated to ) "scientific publication" of Journal System (academic sector), others specialized to "products" or "patents" in private sectors, and another will specialized to recommendation for policies. This process is; in other words, the knowledge production in network model begins from dimension 3 (interaction of three sectors) and dim.4 (recursive interaction) in Triple Helix Model (Leydesdorff 1996), and then specialized to dim.1 or 2 of that model, not developing step by step from dim.1 to dim 4. Moreover, also in the process that knowledge production in dim.3,4 to dim.1, the re-drawing of the system boundary mentioned in above section 3 will be done by system operation.
6. Discussion
If we consider the traditional functional and institutional differentiation among three sectors from the point of view of validation boundary, the knowledge production in academic sector (University) is concerning the V.B.l that support the persistence of Journal System, public sector (Government) is concerning the V.B. that provide a public needs, whereas the private sector (industry) depend on the V.B. that is controlled by economic market. If we consider the network model, the quality control and knowledge criteria will be conducted by agenda, and it is considered that their knowledge production in network model can be specialized to V.B. of each sector. The present study make it clear that is said on the knowledge differentiation and integration in three sectors, focusing on the V.B. point of view.
References
Fujigaki, Y. (1996) Theoretical Analysis on Interdisciplinary Collaboration as a Base of UnIG collaboration: Knowledge Based Analysis, [Proceedings of the] International Conference Technology Management. 206-211.
Fujigaki, Y. (1998) Filling the Gap Between Discussions on Science and Scientists' Everyday Activities: Applying the Autopoiesis System Theory to Scientific Knowledge, Social Science Information, Vol.34, No.1 ( in press).
Gibbons, M., et al. (1994). The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage.
Kobayashi, S., Wen J.(1998) A New Configuration of R&D Collaboration both in Public and Private Sectors: Applying Audition System in Performing Art, prepared for this conference.
Laredo, P. (1997) The French S&T Policy in Transition: from "National" to "Multi-Level" Policy Making, Handout papers for the NISTEP International Workshop *97; Strategic Models for the Advancement of National R&D Management.
Leydesdorff, L. and Etzkowitz, H. (1996) The Future Location of Research: The Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government relations II, EASST Review, Vol 15, No.4, 20-25.
Mayer-Kramer, F.(1997) Science, Technology and Innovation in Germany, Handout papers for the NISTEP International Workshop *97; Strategic Models for the Advancement of National R&D Management.
Yuko Fujigaki and Akiya Nagata
The concept which leads the Science and Technology Policy in each nation has been evolving every year, reflecting the domestic needs of public as well as the international trends. The "key-concept", the representative concept in the times, reflects the potential needs for the policy and characteristics of the age, therefore, these concepts are utilized by policy-makers for coordinating several confronting interests among different stakeholders. It also reflects the desirable relationship between University, Industry, and Government in the times.
The objective of this study is to analyze the time-serious of policy concept that verbalized in the publications and to capture the history of S&T policy as the dynamic evaluation process, that is, validating process, spreading process, and establishing process of these concepts.
We conducted full text analysis on the science-technology reports by CST (Council for Science and Technology) in Japan responded to the government's requests for advice for last thirty years (1960-96). Time series of emergence of key-concepts is analyzed through words frequency analysis and co-word analysis. There shown the process of change in relationship among University, Industry, and Government through the concept evolution process concerning basic policies for each sectors using mappings of relating words.
Asia is taking a hard look University - foreign company relations in China
Industrial activity in export markets is not limited to transnational companies, but is increasingly essential for the survival of small and middle-sized enterprises (SME). Whereas larger companies from the US, Western Germany and Japan have already been active in opening up new international markets and develop a specific support structure in Chinese regions, the situation of SME is to be seen with a critical eye. Studies have shown that, although new competitive products are being manufactured, efficient export and marketing strategies, in many cases, cannot being pursued. One of the bottlenecks is the qualification of personnel in the home market and abroad. Neither in Germany nor in China the educational structure (universities, and other institutions) matches the needs of the companies. Qualified personnel with sales and marketing experience, who might be able to solve the logistical problems associated with involvement in export markets, are also seldomly to be seen in the companies in question. SME depend entirely on in-house training because recruiting qualified personnel outside the firm is difficult due to the costs involved.
Big companies more and more recruit graduates from Chinese universities to substitute the expensive German managers in the Joint venture firm or in wholly foreign owned companies simoultaneously laying off the existing work force on the shop floor. Many of the Chinese employees on the regional labour market with job experiences have been trained for the socialistic system and show a strong tecnical background and lack skills in accounting, sales and management. Empirical research in Shanghai and Guangzhou gave evidence that the so called global players conceive this as a major problem. Therefore their strategy is to attract qualified Geman managers who can function as general managers of the Chinese plant for a short while. At the same time companies start a major attempt in setting up commonly financed recruitment centers for Chineses managers and workers in the region. That strategy takes the dimension of a design of a new educational system in China. It also shapes the feature of industrial districts in the so called special economic zones and in the big cities.
This activity goes on in China while big companies give up their continued education schemes, sacrify the dual system and lifelong learning in Germany. Multinational companies develop close ties to universities in China while they cut back university support in research in Germany. Interestingly, they engage themselves in systematically building up an improved version of the German dual system abroad. Further, they set up an elaborate internship scheme for students which is similar to the American model but which they never took up in Germany in the same way. Chinese employees praise the educational possibilities German companies like Siemens, Braun, Bosch and others provide for them. Thus programmes turn out to be highly effective. Participants in the company programmes qualify for promotion or for a better paid job in another company. Building up the locality in this way the MNC shape the region according to their needs and increase the gap between themselves and the SME in the long run. Skilled labour desperately sought after is increasingly an exclusive domain of the MNC.
Dialectics of Strategy Transition of a Government Scientific Policy in Russia
One of the key directions of a government scientific policy transition in Russia is a change in the relations between government, fundamental science and industry.
In the historical aspect it meant the struggle between government and scientific community for the priority of science or industry. The government was aimed to make a science to become a direct productive force by organizing ministry of a science, branch scientific institutes, research-production associations. The science, in its turn, tried to strengthen its independence from industry, developing the structure with self-reproduction scientific methodology and staff, branching from state scientific structures, independently realizing the scientific results in practice.
The changes in a government scientific policy in the late period is reflected in a number of documents - such as the Concept and the Law on a Science and Technological Policy. The documents indicate the transition from controlling to creating an organizational-economic gear for science regulation and support in a combination with an innovational policy. The precondition for certain harmonization of the relations between a government, science and industry is created.
In our opinion, a new helix in a spiral (using the successful expression H. Etzkowitz ) development of a scientific-innovational system should take place in the meantime challenging the government scientific policy. There are objective processes revealing this new helix.
The imperative for the a country and regions development is the transition to new technological structure by means of steady development of innovational base, innovational methods are predominating in all spheres of activity intensifying the knowledge transfer. The means for realization of this process (and probably the high aim), especially in view of specific character of Russia, are the formation of innovational society. One of the attributes of such a society is the organic connection between the innovational and cultural potential of the population, innovational culture growing. Major components of such culture are mass innovational activity, innovational traditions and science. The role played by science as the key factor , industry, and culture could not be overestimated.
There are the old contradictions in science functioning, there is the discrepancy between science potential and organizational structure and the targets of the society and cities development, the dynamic development of their needs. It is necessary to reorganize the scientific system pyramid in order to adapt it to new requirements and use it as a system of opportunities to solve arising problem (similar to an American scientific system). Besides, the potential of a scientific system should be reconstructed to be more competitive.
Pursuant to the designated objective tendencies and in view of the conducted analysis the contours of changes in the government scientific policy can be scheduled.
One of the directions of the government scientific policy is the development of measures increasing the sensitivity of a society to innovations, the prestige of a science, as well as the registration the reaction of a society to innovations (the method of such feedback measurement is available). On the other hand, the fundamental science should pay more attention to the popularization of its achievement and traditions.
The other direction is the creation of conditions for involving a fundamental science in innovational process and development of scientific business on the basis of scientific schools. It is necessary to strengthen a government regional policy to develop scientific and innovational infrastructure, as far as the region is the main keeper of scientific and cultural traditions of national schools.
The development of venture business can be recognized as the important direction of the accelerated transformation of a scientific system. On the other hand, it is required to raise the industrial marketing to a deep long-term strategic level. Stimulating innovational sensitivity of the enterprises the government scientific policy should offer the measures strengthening the venture demand, the market of venture investments.
The presented directions of changes in a government scientific policy and series of developed measures define a new features of the relations between a state, fundamental science and industry. However, it would be necessary to emphasize, that on a new helix of the spiral of scientific policy changes the mentioned above subjects and society should be involved in a number of relations regulated by the policy.
Managing Intellectual Capital Commercialization: A Case Study from the Software Industry.
Charles Grantham and Michael J. Nowak
In a knowledge-based economy, the creation of wealth becomes synonymous with creating products and services with large software content. However, despite a few major players, the software industry as a whole is fragmented and consists mainly of small, niche market entrepreneurial ventures. The authors use a case study of the California software industry to illustrate these points.
The fundamental shift of software technology to a component-based development paradigm now occurring will not only fuel a third party component-based economy but will also reinforce the industry's fragmented nature. The lack of the industry's ability to see collaboration as a high leverage business strategy continues this tradition, coupled with a move to more off-shore development which further isolates small and medium sized firms.
A key role government, in partnership with academia can play in fostering the continued leadership of the US in software is to facilitate the building of social networks of core competencies linking technology and business centers of excellence. Only now are we seeing the academic world respond to this need for more exploration of knowledge management across old traditional disciplinary lines.
The authors propose the creation of an intellectual infrastructure to facilitate network formation and connectivity through a methodology for the identification of strategic opportunities, the management of intellectual capital, and the creation of strategic alliances around sustainable competitive advantage. They propose a value adding business model which builds on an emerging "venture catalyst" model.
Incentive chain model: Policy formation to support the development of "public technology"
Takayuki Hayashi and Ryo Hirasawa
1. Introduction
At present R&D expenditures in nations both by government and by companies is reaching a huge amount, however there is a question whether these investments are really utilized effectively for the social needs. Although numerous products brought by high technology exists in houses or companies, we cannot say that many technologies in society which should meet the social needs has developed enough. How can we create a policy to enhance the development of these technologies that meet social needs? In this study we will propose an autopoietic model ("incentive chain model") to create the policy to support the development of these technology ("public technology"), and we will explain this model in detail using the case study of electric vehicles in Japan.
2. Social shaping of technology
Our study is based on the concept of "the social shaping of technology (SST)". This concept has some intellectual origins, for example, social construction of technology (SCOT) and actor-network theories in the context of history of technology, as well as Freeman's "techno-economic paradigm" and evolutionary model of innovation in the context of economics of technological change.(Williams and Edge 1996) In general, SST is the concept which criticizes the technological determinism or linear model of innovation. We adopt this SST perspective in our study and we deny the clear boundary between technology and society. In all stages technologies are shaped or selected not only by technological factors but also by social factors such as economic, political or geographic factors. At the same time, technological changes also bring about the changes of selection environments. Our study aims to apply this SST perspective to the technology policy.
3. "Public technology"
In the present study, we focused on "public technology" which should be considered in terms of the interaction between technology and society. We define "public technology" as technology which satisfy at least one of the following necessary conditions of "public" . Upon this characteristics, its development cannot be relied on autonomous dynamics of the market, so the government should support its development and diffusion.
The necessary conditions of "public" are divided into two categories. One is related to the economic inefficiency, and the other is related to the roll that government should play even though under economically-efficient condition.
The former is called as "market failure". It can be divided into several types, for example, public goods, externality, natural monopoly, incomplete market of complementary technologies, insufficient information of technology. The latter necessary conditions are divided into two part: an idea of equality and impartiality on distribution and merit goods.
4. Incentive chain model
To create the policy to support the development of these "public technologies", we propose an autopoietic model that we call "incentive chain model". This model consists of some actors who are involved in the system of the development and diffusion of certain technology. We analyze whether an output of one actor's operation becomes an input (incentive) of another actor's operation. If this chains of incentives consist of a closed loop, the technology can develop autonomously. But if not, that is, if incentive chain is cut off or the loop has the disincentives inside, the technology needs government support to reinforce the incentives or to eliminate these disincentives. So we make the policy options through above process, and policy maker selects the policy from these options with considering the consistency of system.
5. The case study of electronic vehicle in Japan
We will explain above "incentive chain model" more precisely using the case study of electronic vehicle (EV) in Japan. EV is one of the alternative technology to solve the environmental problems. But in 1996 Japan has only 2,400 EVs, and has no the central policy. So we will consider to formulate policy by using incentive chain model. We think four sector, that is government, industry, society(general public) and university. These sectors has functions to play in EV system. Fig. 1 shows the ideal state that makes the closed loop. But the actual situation is Fig. 2. That has disincentives inside such as industry's tendency to maintain the gasoline vehicles paradigm, too high price for public people to purchase and the unestablished market. Besides, some incentives are not strong sufficiently. So we should consider the policy option corresponding to each disincentive and weak incentive. For example, the regulation which is strict and fixed over a long period of time is considered to solve the first disincentive. By this regulation industry change their object of R&D from the past paradigm to EV paradigm, and a market of early promise is created. To reinforce the incentive, for example from public people to government, we should introduce the new actors as the amplifier, such as the mass media or a local public body. Through this process, we can give some policy options systematically using the "incentive chain model".
References
Williams R. and Edge D.(1996), The social shaping of technology, Research Policy, Vol.25, pp.865-899
Schot J., Hoogma R. and Elzen B.(1994), Strategies for Shifting Technological Systems, Futures, Vol.26, pp.1060-1076
Kawamoto H.(1995), Autopoiesis, Seidosya (Japan)
Hirasawa R. (1997), Discussion Framework and Autopoietic Paradigm for Policy Creation, Handout papers for the NISTEP International Workshop '97; Strategic Models for the Advancement of National R&D Management.
Hirasawa R., Fujigaki, Y., Tomizawa, H., and Kakizaki F.
In developed countries, the effectiveness of R&D investment for economic growth has been decreasing. In 1996, the Japanese Government responded to this trend by adopting the Basic Plan for Science and Technology, which calls for a dramatic increase in the national R&D budget. Considering this situation, it is critical that R&D expenses should be utilized more effectively. In most cases, science and technology policies are focused not solely on the development of science and technology, but on other goals such as economic growth and environmental preservation as well. However, the relationship between science and technology and such ultimate goals is so complex that a variety of devices and schemes must be incorporated at the policymaking stage to ensure that such goals are attained.
The Workshop considered the policies for developing such goals. Moreover, it have taken up the globally relevant issue of devising the most desirable system for effectively promoting science and technology from the perspective of "strategic models" - the aforementioned devices and schemes required to meet the needs of policy with the fruits of science and technology. In other words, the Workshop aimed to deal not only with national research institutes, but with national R&D systems in general. It then proposed system models from the viewpoint of fundamental R&D principles and analyzed such models by comparing them with the reality-based models of other countries, thereby developing a grand design for such models. In so doing, the Workshop have taken up the challenge of "technical management" - a strategy developed by industry - as another object of comparison, so that the discussion better reflects current realities.
The Workshop spanned one and one-half days, comprised in three parts. There were 8 invited speakers from aboard, and 2 speakers from Japan. In the first part, we will define strategic models and establish a basis for discussion while presenting the idea of the "autopoietic paradigm," a new approach to policy-making. In the second part, reports by representatives of participating countries formed the basis for an analysis of the current situation and new principles in a number of countries. Proposals for effective systems and mechanisms as well as opinions on the new paradigm followed. The third part was devoted to a concluding discussion focused mainly on technical management and was based on comments related to the foregoing report presentations and to proposals made from a fresh perspective.
More precisely, in session 1, Hirasawa, R. Director-in-research, NISTEP, Japan, presented "Discussion Framework and Autopoietic Paradigm for Policy Creation". There, the model on the role of science and technology and incentive chain model to enhance the activity of science and technology development were proposed applying the autopoiesis model. In this model, R & D activities are categorized into three parts; Category A: Increasing Knowledge based on internal logic of S & T community, Category B: Exploration which leads to needs-driven research in the future, and Category C: R & D for specific needs.
In the following session 2-1, Mr. Ad Geelhoed, Secretary General, Ministry of Economic Affairs (EZ), The Netherlands (who was planned as one of the speakers, but could not come by emergent problem. In his place, Mr, Huijts, the Director of Technology Policy Bureau) presented on "The Industrial Competitiveness of Europe, esp. The Netherlands, Compared to the U.S. and Japan: an Analysis and Consequences for Innovation Policies". Next, there was a presentation by Mr. Lennart Stenberg, Head of Department, Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development (NUTEK), Sweden, had presented on the "Challenge and Opportunities for Swedish Research and Innovation Policy".
In session-2, Prof. Dr. Frieder Meyer-Krahmer, Director General, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (FhG-ISI), Germany, presented on "Science, technology, and Innovation in Germany - Change and Challenges in the 1990s" and Prof. Philippe Laredo, Professor of Ecole Nationale Sup‚rieure des Mines de Paris, France, presented "The French S&T Policy in Transition : from "National" to "Multi-Level" Policy Making". Prof. Dr. Meyer-Kramer criticized that "liner model"-i.e., basic research leads to application research and technology-based on original data taken in his Institute, and Prof. Laredo developed "network model" in its place.
In session 2-3, there were three presentations by Gerald Hane, Special Assistant for Policy and Plans, Office of Science and Technology Policy(OSTP), United States, named "Weaving a New Web: Post Cold War Science and Technology Policy", by Richard Brook, Chief Executive, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), United Kingdom, named "Setting of National Research Priorities" and by Masayasu Miyabayashi, Director General, NISTEP, Japan, named "Present Status and Future Trends of the National R&D System of Japan". These 7 presentaions in session-2 enable us to compare the characteristics of National R&D system among these 7 countries.
In session 3, there were 2 presentations applying MOT (Management of Technology) to the National R&D Systems, by Prof. Thomas Durand, Professor, Ecole Centrale Paris, France, on "Priorities for the National R&D System from the Perspective of the Management of Technology and Innovation in Firms" and by Prof. D.C. Mowery, University of California at Berkeley, United States, on " The U.S. National Innovation Systems: Recent Developments in Structure and Knowledge Flow".
Based on these presentations, discussions were developed on strategic national model for R & D, alternative models in the place of linear model, new policy dealing with changing role of university, and on relationship between science and society. There, the discussion on the role of University, Industry, and Government was deeply developed for the future location of research.
References
Brooks, R. Physics: The Explotation of the International Dimensions, Background paper for the NISTEP International Workshop '97.
Durand, T. Priorities for the National R&D System from the Perspective of the Management of Technology and Innovation in Firms, Handout paper for the NISTEP International Workshop '97.
Geelhoed, A. The Industrial Competitiveness of Europe, esp. The Netherlands, Compared to the U.S. and Japan: an Analysis and Consequences for Innovation Policies., Handout paper for the NISTEP International Workshop '97.
Hane, G. Weaving a New Web: Post Cold War Science and Technology Policy, Handout paper for the NISTEP International Workshop '97.
Hirasawa, R. Discussion Framework and Autopoietic Paradigm for Policy Creation, Handout paper for the NISTEP International Workshop '97.
Laredo, P. (1997) The French S&T Policy in Transition: from "National" to "Multi-Level" Policy Making, Handout papers for the NISTEP International Workshop '97.
Meyer-Kramer, F.(1997) Science, Technology and Innovation in Germany, Handout papers for the NISTEP International Workshop '97.
Miyabayashi, M. Present Status and Future Trends of the National R&D System of Japan. Handout papers for the NISTEP International Workshop '97.
Mowery, D.C. The U.S. National Innovation Systems: Recent Developments in Structure and Knowledge Flow, Background paper for the NISTEP International Workshop '97.
Stenberg, L. Challenge and Opportunities for Swedish Research and Innovation Policy, Handout papers for the NISTEP International Workshop '97.
Figure Various partners in CID
Alain dþIribarne and Martine Gadille
Of all the areas of science, that of nuclear physics, and particularly corpuscular theory, is of particular interest to researchers, since it represents the model of þbig scienceþ which is accused of dominating all other scientific activities. According to this model, the organisation of scientific activities is þindustrially structuredþ around large-scale, targeted programmes within which technological innovations and their incorporation into instruments and apparatus are playing an increasingly important role in the advancement of scientific knowledge.
Among the large national institutes in France whose task it is to provide leadership in this area of science, IN2P3, which is part of the French þnational system of science and technologyþ, derives its unique character from the specificity of the general organisation of scientific research in France and its particular place in that system, since it is both a division of the CNRS (roughly the equivalent of the National Sc 9/20/97þþ_þ in the experimental physical sciences, by virtue both of its presence in the major European research organisations, such as CERN, and through its own accelerators. The strength of this presence is evidenced both by the involvement of French scientists in the international bodies that manage the major scientific installations and in the number of publications in scientific journals.
However, IN2P3 goes far beyond this standard role: it is involved, on the one hand, in university education through its þassociated laboratoriesþ and, on the other, in the development of technological innovations through its own engineers and technicians, who are engaged in the design and development of new equipment, and through the þapparatusþ it has at its disposal, which enables it to explore new applications.
The proposed paper will attempt to show, on the basis of empirical investigations of the organisation and functioning of IN2P3, how a particular scientific institution, operating in an area that bridges the gap between science and technology, tries to manage a combination of scientific competences, training resources and scientific innovations likely to be taken up and developed by firms, in accordance with the þtriple helixþ principle adopted as the conference theme.
It will show that, over the 25 years of the Instituteþs existence, management of this area of scientific endeavour has become highly centralised and strengthened under the pressure of the enormous budgets required for the development and construction of successive generations of the energy sources and detection instruments that are necessary to explore the þstructure of matterþ. Thus what has emerged is a single central structure that þmanagesþ all the laboratories engaged in basic research, whatever their status, and which, above all, schedules the investment in new equipment, using capital from financial consortiums that are increasingly international in character.
Accelerators are being moved from traditional laboratories and university campuses into dedicated facilities that constitute independent data production establishments. As a result, a triangular structure is emerging in this area, the three points of which are large-scale programmes, independent laboratories and large-scale instruments and apparatus and the central objective of which is the co-production of technological innovation and scientific knowledge. To this end, this triangular structure maintains close, if tense relations with, on the one hand, the university system, which is the source of its human resources and of theoretical knowledge and, on the other, industry, which is playing an increasingly indispensable role in the development and exploitation of increasingly costly technologies.
The paper will attempt to show that, from these starting points and with varying degrees of success from case to case, the management of IN2P3 has managed to move policy onwards, albeit within the constraints placed on it by the societal constructs specific to France. These constructs affect the statutes of the teaching and research institutions and the status of their staff, the þhierarchy of knowledgeþ and the status of þknowledge as a public goodþ. They structure the principles by which institutions function, the organisation of þindustrial spacesþ and the production of þoccupational spacesþ, which makes it possible to explain these strengths and weaknesses of those institutions and spaces when faced with demands for changes in scientific practices. These demands are linked for the most part to changes in the economic, technological and social requirements drawn up for scientists by scientists themselves, who are trying to retain control over the directions taken by their þscientific systemþ. However, they are being challenged by þpoliticians representing societyþ, who are demanding increasingly detailed explanations from scientists of the consideration they are giving to þsocial expectationsþ, such as the environment and health, for example.
In practice, the management of IN2P3 and þscientists as a collectively organised groupþ - researchers and engineers - are engaged in the construction of subtly shifting alliances within the numerous þregulatoryþ institutions that exist at a variety of different levels. These alliances involve actors outside the institutions as well insiders and, depending on the circumstances, can be played out in the traditional way on the national and international levels or on the regional level, which is a new phenomenon in France. These þvariable geometryþ arrangements, which are increasingly turning the national level into a þstrategic coordination centreþ, provide scientists with þaction spacesþ within þlocal scientific and technological systemsþ organised around laboratories and large-scale apparatus. In particular, they allow them to construct þlocal/international policiesþ relatively independently of the þnational systemþ.
The balances that result have to date allowed experimental physicists in France to retain their pre-eminent position in French science and to maintain an enviable position in their international scientific community. Nevertheless, in the light of the proliferating number of structural changes now being introduced, the þsocietalþ difficulties encountered in the þacademicþ sphere in articulating research and training and theoretical and experimental physics constitute a handicap that may well become serious in the long term. The same applies to the difficulties encountered in articulating laboratories, large-scale apparatus and industrialists around technological innovations, with the aim of finding forms of organising and managing human resources likely to encourage a four-fold process of production, accumulation, transmission and exploitation of the technological knowledge embodied in scientific equipment. In both cases, the structures and criteria for evaluating researchers and engineers, and the way they are managed, are a fundamental issue, the contradictions of which remain to be resolved.
Tasks for Science, Industry and Government in the Process of Integrating Poland's R&D with Europe
In this context, Poland faces at least two challenges posed here in the form of questions:
Despite improvements in the methodology for the evaluation of R&D programmes -especially EC-activities within the framework of the MONITOR-programme have been helpful in this respect- the precise effects of R&D programmes are difficult to measure. The environment of such programmes is complex and often blurs their outcomes. Therefore, the reported results of such programmes should be assessed with great care. In the present study, I will undertake such an asessment, focusing on networking building goals en management of a Dutch R&D stimulation programme in the field of agricultural biotechnology.
In the Netherlands, intensifying the relationships in the research infrastructure between science and industry has become an important element of techno-economic policy-making. Since more than a decade, innovation stimulation programmes have been functioning in which fostering of these relationships is one of he goals. In this paper I will report outcomes of Dutch innovation policy and its implementation in the field of biotechnology. In doing this I will concentrate on a major type of Dutch innovation stimulation programmes (IOPs, especially taking the IOPb on Agricultiural biotechnology as a case), the use of which has generated already a body of experience. Evaluation of outcomes of this type of programme in biotechnology will enable me to tenta- tively establish some factors of relevance for the success of the policy instrument applied, especially with respect to the formation of networks between science and industry. These lessons, which I summarize below, may be of value for similar attemps to build networks in the R&D infrastructure elsewhere.
Different logics at different loci are neglected by programme managers R&D stimulation programmes, and their managers, are not the only coordinators in a field of technology. Such programmes are implemented into an existing field of relationships, with their own loci of coordination. Within these loci different logics of action exist and are followed. A programme which neglects these logics has limited chances for success. In other words, a successful programme tries to operate on these logics for its own purpose. An important locus of coordination which a programme should recognize is the research institute. The IOPb-evaluation has made clear that the policy of their institutes was judged by researchers as being much more influential on their decisions and choices than the actions of the programme committee managing the IOPLb. Some of our findings in the case of the IOP-Lb point in the same direction. We found that a positive appreciation of the IOP-Lb by project leaders and research managers was connected with a fruitfull integration of the IOP-Lb projects in the research programme of an institute. This especially applied to the TNO and some of the DLO institutes. In these cases, the IOP-project had been embedded in the institute's larger programmes. In other words, if it fits in the local logic, the programme is appreciated in thsi quality. This logic is the following. TNO (and increasingly also DLO) institutes, in contrast to universities, have to raise the majority of their funding in the market. Thus they depend strongly on commercial sponsors which are not prepared to support fundamental research. TNO-mangers stressed that, to remain interesting for such sponsors, the TNO institutes had to be at the front of science in at least a number of domains. Moreover, they had to keep there (best) researchers satisfied (as one DLO researcher made clear: "we do not want to develop the one vaccin after the other, we also want to do new things"). For those reasons, these managers maintained a research portfolio around a number of scientific "spearheads" having good perspectives for commercialization. Development of these spearheads was realized as a part of "multi-client programmes", in which IOP-projects, EC funding and funds from commercial sponsors were integrated around the financing of research. Within this setting, IOP-funding was welcomed to cover the fundamental part of the research. This way of integration implicates, however, that the effects of IOP- projects in the sense of steering the research programme of these institutes are limited. It may also explain why the programme built so few new network bonds.
"Re-orientation" may be a questionable programme goal Like many R&D stimulation programmes, IOP's have a re- orientation goal. That is, the programme must bring about a re-orientation of the R&D infrastructure in the public domain towards the needs of industry. If this goal reflects the expectation of policy-makers that R&D programmes will urge academic researchers to give up their "hobbies" in favour of working for the common cause, or can be forced to do so, we must qualify this expectation as naive. Researchers do not change their interests only to please policy-makers and to earn a little money. The IOP-Lb experience clearly shows that coordination which is forced upon the research field does not work. Successful cooperation must satisfy certain conditions, which have to do with logics of action of which we have already revealed a few examples. Thinking in terms of re-orientation suggests also that influencing public research in the direction of the market is a one-way process, i.e. that industry -knowing the market- can guide academic research on the basis of crystal-clear needs. Our data point in another direction. Academic researchers, and also those at the DLO and TNO institutes, told us that the needs of industry are often diffuse. It is not uncommon that firms approach researchers in public institutes asking to tell them which products to develop. In many other cases, it was clear that supply and demand from both sides become articulated and structured in a process in which all kinds of options are explored.
Clear implementation strategies are needed Programme managers can follow different strategies in implementing R&D stimulation programmes. For the success of the programme, it is important that they make clear choices at the start of their job which one to follow. Here we mention two contrasting types of strategy, accomodation versus orchestration. An accomodation strategy aims at committing the existing field to the programme. That certain key-actors participate is seen as more important than realization of goals concerning content of the programme, if such goals are specified at all. In order to involve important parts of the field, room must be left for local research interests. If cooperation is desirable, the research units must be left free to select their own partners. In an orchestration strategy, the realization of goals with respect to content of the programme has priority over commitment of the existing field.
THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACADEMIC- INDUSTRY LINKS - THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Dylan Jones-Evans and Magnus Klofsten
The frequent and intermittent need for new scientific knowledge has resulted in an increasing focus on links between industry and academic institutions. This has been particularly pronounced in the flows of knowledge between the two partners, which may lead to considerable diffusion of scientific and technical knowledge, particularly into the small firm sector. As a result, universities have become increasingly important for local economic development in generating new and applied knowledge which can be used by local high-technology industry, creating both direct and indirect employment opportunities in the surrounding region, attracting technology-based firms to relocate and acting as a source of technical expertise and knowledge for local firms.
Whilst there have been a number of studies which have examined the contribution of the university to the technological development of industry from the viewpoint of the recipient firm, there has been very little detailed examination of the proactive role that the university itself can play in developing strong linkages with industry and the strategies and policies that are undertaken to increase the process of technology transfer from academia into local indigenous business, especially through mechanisms such as industrial liaison offices (ILOs)
Therefore, this paper will examine the role that universities play in the regional economic development in a number of peripheral countries of Europe, including Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. Drawing on interviews with key individuals in the processes of technology transfer between academia and industry (including ILOs), as well as secondary data, it will examine:
* the general role and function of the industrial liaison office and how has this changed * the involvement of the university in different types of industrial links * the main opportunities and barriers to the development of links between university and industry *the benefits to the university from industrial links and the perception of industryþs assessment of the relationship with universities
The research will provide valuable the role of universities in developing innovation and entrepreneurship within the peripheral regions of Europe and will determine whether these universities are undertaking a proactive role in encouraging the growth of innovative indigenous industry, which may have significant policy implications, especially with regard to the development of regional programmes to encourage academic-based entrepreneurship.
This research is funded by the European Commissionþs Targeted Socio-Economic Research Programme.
General theoretical treatments of university-industry-government relations have implicitly assumed that basic university-industry-government relationships around basic and applied research are fairly similar across nations and that "national systems of innovation" (Nelson, 1993) can be treated as if they were relatively autonomous entities. However, there are a number of reasons to believe that these assumptions mask some characteristics of university-industry-government relationships that are important to the global development of the triple helix. For example, Ostry and Nelson (1995) draw attention to the competing dynamics of what they term techno-nationalism and techno-globalism. Though they do not focus explicitly on the role of universities (or basic research) in these competing dynamical systems, it is clear that their analysis has profound implications for the place of universities both in national systems of innovation and in a more internationally shared system of innovation. Furthermore, though traditionally most authors have relied on the underlying "rationality" and "unity" of science and technology to link communities homogeneously across the globe, more recent work has argued that science and technology are more heterogeneous in practice than is commonly supposed (Law, 1994; Galison and Stump, 1996) and that macrocivilizations such as those found in Western Europe and North America, in the Near East, and in East Asia have a more important influence on the nature of the economic and technological order in different parts of the globe than is commonly appreciated (Hamilton, 1994; Huntington, 1996). Taken together, these arguments suggest that both individual national triple helixes and an emerging global triple helix may be importantly influenced by increasingly global interaction among the different sectors of the helix, by the heterogeneity of scientific and technological practice, and by the traditional linkages between the governmental, commercial, and educational sectors in different civilizations.
In my paper, I propose to explore these issues by focusing on some aspects of university-industry research relationships that touch on these areas. I begin my paper by discussing two particular cases taken from my field research at a technology transfer office at a major American research university. One of these cases involves negotiations around a technology transfer "deal" between the university and a Korean firm that ran into difficulties. The other case involves the difficulties which an entrepreneurially inclined Korean born and Korean educated professor at this university had in selling the value of his "applied" research to the university. In particular, I focus on the career expectations that he brought with him from Korea and how these had to be negotiated in an American university environment. Having introduced these cases, I discuss some of the "civilizational" differences between relationships between educational, governmental, and commercial sectors in Korea (as a representative East Asian civilization) and the United States (as a representative Western civilization) and the sorts of difficulties that these differences are likely to create for cross-cultural/cross-national research relationships between the different sectors involved in the triple helix. In the final section of the paper, I draw on the two cases to highlight some of the particular implications of these cross-cultural differences for the future location of research in a global triple helix.
Galison, Peter and David J. Stump. (1996). The Disunity of Science. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Gulbrandsen, Magnus. (1997). "Universities and Industrial Competitive Advantage" in Universities and the Global Knowledge Economy edited by L. Leydesdorff and H. Etzkowitz. London: Pinter.
Hamilton, Gary G. (1994). "Civilizations and the Organization of Economies" in The Handbook of Economic Sociology edited by N.J. Smelser and R. Swedborg. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Laredo, Philippe. (1997). "Technological Programs in the European Union" in Universities and the Global Knowledge Economy edited by L. Leydesdorff and H. Etzkowitz. London: Pinter.
Law, John. (1994). Organizing Modernity. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Low, Morris. (1997). "Japan: From Technology to Science Policy" in Universities and the Global Knowledge Economy edited by L. Leydesdorff and H. Etzkowitz. London: Pinter.
Nelson, Richard R., Editor (1993) National Systems of Innovation: A Comparative Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ostry, Sylvia and Richard R. Nelson. (1995) Techno-nationalism and Techno-globalism: Conflict and Cooperation. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution.
INNOVATION DYNAMICS IN SPACE: LOCAL ACTORS AND LOCAL FACTORS
Aki Kangasharju and Peter Nijkamp
This paper addresses the issue of technogenesis and its geographical pattern. It aims to offer both a general analysis framework and a test on innovation data from several European cities. This framework is mainly built on the product life-cycle and the incubation approach. On the basis of this framework, it is argued that the phases of an industrial life-cycle have several firm-specific effects. First, these phases influence innovativeness and thus profit levels, output and employment of firms in a spatially distinct way. Second, the phases of the life-cycle mirror the importance of local factors for innovations, and third, they affect strategic decisions of firms, inter alia by influencing the source of the competitive edge. Furthermore, this paper also aims to model effects of relevant local factors on innovativeness by means of logit analysis, subsequent to a qualitative impact approach based on the recently developed rough set analysis. Our empirical results from various European cities show that the successive phases of the industrial life-cycle tend to create spatially recognizable impacts on innovativeness of firms. Accordingly, the evolution of the importance of local factors for innovations is also found to reflect a distinct time path. Among more than 20 local factors, the interviewed firms appear to consider support measures for skills training particularly important for innovations. Accordingly, the results of our logit models reveal that in particular skills training links with a local university contribute significantly to the propensity to innovate.
Keywords: innovativeness, life-cycle, incubation, logit model, rough set analysis
Growing a Technopole: A Longitudinal Study of Entrepreneurship and Industrial Development
Magnus Klofsten and Dylan Jones-Evans
In the context of examples of successful regional high technology development in Sweden, the Link”ping region is often named. Situated in the county of ™sterg”tland, Link”ping is the fifth biggest city in Sweden and has about 130,000 inhabitants. It is strategically situated between the conurbations of Stockholm and Malm” and has modern road and railway communication systems, as well as an international airport. Whilst maintaining a historical reputation for culture and learning, Link”ping has developed, during the last thirty years, as a major centre within Sweden for technological growth, especially in the creation and development of new technology-based firms. These firms, which operate in a diversity of employ more than 13,000 people and have a combined turnover of more than 11.6 billion Skr (US$1.7 Billion), and include large firms such as Saabþs Aircraft Division and Ericsson Radio as well as over a hundred small technology-based firms. In addition, the high technology environment is further enhanced by the presence of a number of public sector research establishments such as FFV (F”renade Fabriksverken) - a government research laboratory specialising in military and aircraft technology - and the Swedish Defence Research Establishment. The development which has taken place in Link”ping during the last 30-year period can be likened to the spiral where success begets success. Important criteria for success which should be mentioned in this context are:
The development which has taken place in Linkoping during the last 30-year period can be likened to the spiral where success begets success. Important criteria for success which should be mentioned in this context are:
*an early investment in a high-technology industry, especially in the cases of Saab and Luxor which later led to the founding of Link”ping University *the positive development of computer and electronic industries in Link”ping and the surrounding region which has meant, among other things, increased access to a qualified working force, making Link”ping an attractive place. The establishment of Ericsson in the beginning of the 1990s contributed further to increase Link”pingþs image as a desirable place for industrial establishment *the researchers, university students, and people from other high-tech milieu who have diligently been starting their own firms. It is estimated that there are about 400 small computer companies in the Link”ping area *the formation of effective and progressive support organisations for technology-based firms. Main actors include Mj„rdevi Science Park, The Foundation for Small Business Development (SMIL), and The Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurs (CIE)
The purpose of the paper is to describe and analyse the successful growth and development of the Link”pingþs þmilieuþ, which could be characterised as a Technopole. There, a mixture of small- and large-scale R&D industries which co-operate with the University, research institutes, and government agencies can be found. The preliminary results show that these industrial and institutional actors in combination with important decisions from a group of few people has a major impact on the growth and development of the region. It will therefore concentrate on describing the main actors in the region and, more importantly, the formal and informal links that have been developed between the actors during the last thirty years which has led to the phenomenal growth of high technology industries within the city of Link”ping.
With globalization and international competition university - industry symbiosis has gained importance particularly in India and China. Both these countries have established a strong research base in terms of institutional infrastructure and manpower which are comparable with the best research institutions in the world. However these countries lack capacity to translate innovations in terms of economic gains. On the other hand R&D capabilities of the firms are also wanting to fully exploit the indigenous research base. Industry mainly depends on import of technologies for its survival. In India while the need for strengthening such linkage was felt almost 35 years ago (Thacker Committee, 1961) but little has been achieved. Similarly, the Chinese institutions of higher education had been severely affected by the political events in the recent past which made them to work in isolation from the industry. Since late 1980's and beginning of 1990's both China and India respectively have been pursuing their science and technology policy reforms in strengthening this symbiotic relationship.
How these linkages can be strengthened? What are different forms and methods to make it more effective ? What lessons can be drawn from the experiences of India and China ? What are the prospects for regional cooperation in terms of globalization ? In the present day context these questions call for a detailed review of the nature of these linkages. This may help in obtaining some insight for strengthening this most sought after symbiotic relationship. In this scenario the author surveys the efforts done by these countries to overcome the problem of linking the knowledge base with industry and proposes some measures to face the onslaught of multinational giants in this globalized world. The present study is divided in three parts. Part I throws light on the research base in these countries; Part II reviews the existing linkages and problems; and Part III deals with policy options to improve the linkages and conclusions.
Shin-ichi Kobayashi and Jiang Wen
Our major concern is what accomplishes the higher performance of the collaborative R&D. Mode 2 knowledge production was featured in the book "The New Production of Knowledge" by M. Gibbons et al. Though the diverse and heterogeneous dimensions of quality control in Mode 2 were discussed in their book, the devices that make Mode 2 knowledge production in higher performance were not described.
A model is proposed, through our investigating for making process of modern dance in order to identify a mechanism that makes collaboration in dance work more efficiently.
According to our observations, we found that the key factor during the making process of modern dance, is the Audition System, which realizes preconditions for collaboration, such as ensuring heterogeneity of participants' backgrounds.
In dance-producing process, a producer is responsible for the agenda setting. He/She proposes the agenda to the candidates of dancers, musicians, stage artists etc., and the sponsors for the funding as well. Participants and sponsors will evaluate the proposed agenda thereafter. They will participate or fund the project, if they recognize the proposal. This is the typical Audition process, which is corresponding to the functions such as agenda setting, ex ante evaluation, funding and organization of participants. Simultaneously, it also serves as the device of quality control for enterprises. The producer acts as a broker of the project. The ex post evaluation is made when dance is performed in front of the audience.
Such dance processes inspire us a model for configuring the collaborative R&D. We, herewith, can consider the following three types of R&D configurations.
Type 1 is corresponding to a traditional research grant system in basic sciences. At first, a research agenda is proposed by scientists, and then, it is evaluated by the funding agency with peer-review mechanism. Finally, decisions are made whether the research project should be funded or not. The researchers are required to present research outputs to academic societies after the research process, where ex post evaluation will be made in peer-review basis.
Type 2 is the typical procedure in the case of organization of in-house research. An in-house research effort is established in a laboratory, a research division, and so on, by a sponsor or a client, and then is entrusted for necessary research processes with hired researchers. In this way of configuration, a sponsor or a client proposes the research agenda and provide the research funds. Ex ante evaluation is made by a sponsor or a client during its decision-making process. Interim and ex post evaluations are made by a sponsor or a client when research reaches suitable stages.
Type 3 is an Audition System. A producer proposes research agenda. The ex ante evaluations are made by the candidates of participants and the sponsors. If the proposal is approved to be a proper one, the producer will gather the participants and put up funds. At the same time, through this process, the producer secures the heterogeneity and diversity of participants to perform the collaboration.
We consider that Type 3 is the middle-up-and-down configuration in contrast with the bottom-up configuration of Type 1 and the top-down configuration of Type 2. And, it is important for us to notice that Type 3 configuration is overlaid on the basis of Type 1 and Type 2 configurations.
In addition, in order to make clear such typology, we have to consider many elements of R&D configuration, for instances, sponsor, client, producer, researcher and audience as players, and the processes of agenda setting, ex ante evaluation, ex post evaluation, selection, funding as functions. Also, environmental and market conditions have to be taken into account, such as monopolistic or competitive features among sponsors and researchers, characteristics of audience who are expected to receive the research outputs, and so on. Details will be presented at the upcoming conference.
We conclude that Type 3 configuration, Audition System, is one of the important quality control devices in Mode 2. Also, we point out that Type 3 configuration rules a new scheme of government research funding mechanisms, which was recently introduced to R&D system in Japan.
R&D, Publishing and Patenting among Scientists and Engineers: Who? Where? How Much?"
This paper presents new data on R&D activities and productivity from the 1995 NSF national surveys of scientists and engineers. These surveys are statistically representative of app. 7 million Bachelors level, 3 million Masters degree level, and 700,000 Doctoral degree level scientists and engineers in the U.S. Data will be analyzed on demographic (age, sex, race, country of origin), educational (level abd field of degree) and employment (sector, occupation, work activities, salary) characteristics, as they relate to scientific publication, patenting and licensing activity, and participation in selected "critical" technologies.
Synergetic Modelling of a Knowledge-based Economy: Growth, Innovation, Management.
Mikhail Kuzmin & Alexey A. Korennoy STEP-Centre, Kiev.
There are proposed a synergetic model elaborated to clarify the role of information production in social system dynamics on different levels, viz., in global and in local. In global information production is a part of general production activity of society. The model is based on nonlinear (hypercyclic) links of all production aspects with logistic growth functions. The specific role of knowledge-based sector is modelled by means of the lack of a renewable resource (carrying capacity) and by means of supporting influence of the information product upon other aspects (positive feedbacks). The model demonstrates a lot of nontrivial results: diversification, bifurcation transitions, structure mutations of the system in the course of its development. It is due to knowledge production that the economic niches are extended, system connectivity is increased, and, thus, a possibility of unlimited growth exists. As a result, Bell's and Toffler's ideas have found a new - model - life.
In local, distribution of innovative information (knowledge) are considered taking into account a psychological individual constituent (confirmation, flexibility, acceptability, etc.). Innovation process essentially depends on personal characteristics modelled by virtue of time-delays. There are periods in a social system dynamics relatively acceptable or unacceptable in respect to the novelty. The strategy on promotion of a new product can be evaluated on the catastrophe-like surface.
The optimal management policy of decision makers is analysed on macro and micro level. As far as innovation is treated as highly synergistic process the natural question arises about stiring by it. It is obvious that self-organization is not conradicted with the procedure of control. We show how to create innovation, to grow it up, and to manage of its development.
University, Industry, Government Relations in Canadian Access to Megascience Research Environments
Cooper H. Langford and Martha Whitney Langford
We have argued elsewhere that the "Triple Helix" of University , Government, Industry interaction in science and the in the evolution of technological innovation is not an entirely novel phenomenon (Langford, Langford, and Burch, 1997). There is evidence in the Canadian context that tripartite collaboration was a well developed element of the advance of science and technology throughout most of the twentieth century which was interrupted by the almost pathologically rapid growth of the universities and the scientific establishment in the post World War II period. The rapid growth ruptured the networking among the players essential to the triple helix. One might venture to say that the helix was "denatured". A recovery of the essential networking is associated with the approach of the scientific establishment toward a steady state (Ziman, 1994) and this may not be an accidental conjunction.
If we turn attention to the question of where science is done, one of the most interesting issues is that of "megascience": the enterprise based on facilities or networks which strain the resources of any but the wealthiest patrons. Since megascience is frequently forced to turn to government as one such wealthy patron and since the large scale of activity presents an opportunity to industry (or at least commerce), tripartite collaboration may be found to have a long history in megascience. It is certainly clear from the contemporary arguments of regional economic advantage that megascience now has close ties to industry; the existence of an OECD "Megascience Forum" signals megascience as an issue for governments which is large enough to demand international coordination; and of course, the majority of the scientists associated with publications from, for example, CERN, the (US) National Synchrotron Light Source, and the Ocean Drilling Program have university affiliations.
Megascience been defined by Canadian agencies (Ahluwalia, 1994). The definition includes those projects which are undertaken primarily for the production of knowledge and which require both formal management structures and resources which cannot be supplied by a single patron (agency) without unacceptable distortion of the budget of that patron (agency). Our paper will examine the experience of Canadian scientists with respect to access to megascience facilities and programs; that is, it addresses the question of where they have done their science. We find a pre-World War II situation where megascience, with some exceptions in astronomy, depended upon intersectoral relationships linked to þproblem orientedþ motivations. In contrast, the period of rapid expansion of the scientific enterprise in the post war period allowed the emergence to prominence of a "trickle down" theory of the social benefits of research which made "academic science" (Ziman, 1996) the controlling influence, de-emphasizing tripartite partnerships. As limits are approached, research is becoming more strongly influenced by Mode II (Gibbons, et al, 1994) concerns and newer Triple Helix relationships are becoming very prominent.
The humble origins of big science in Canada (ca. 1839) can be identified with imperial participation in a worldwide network of research on terrestrial magnetism and meteorology influenced by Humboldt and Gauss, but pursued on a large scale with the aid of, and in support of, the military (Zeller, 1987). Astronomy was probably the first of the physical sciences to increase in sophistication of experimentation such that instrument building and exploitation, which had previously been work of a single investigator or small school, evolved into big science. Early observatories were built by governments in Canada to support navigation, chronometry, meteorology, and surveying. From the Quebec observatory of 1850, they were able to add a discipline oriented scientific program. (Jarrell, 1988).
In the modern context, the rules of access to observatories are the earliest formalization of patterns of access to megascience tools. Major observatories were built by particular facility communities and the astronomers associated with the community were able to pursue both discipline and problem oriented questions. However, the facility was available to others with important discipline based problems, but only on the margin. Ten to fifteen percent of observing time was available. We find no evidence that an astronomer, in a university for example, could rely on the quality of a discipline driven scientific question to assure access to an appropriate telescope. This is especially important to astronomers from a smaller country such as Canada.
In the immediate post world war II period, the United States was the main jurisdiction with resources to build megascience facilities. As well, the experience of the Manhattan Project had fostered an appreciation of the power of physics and created a climate ripe for a þtrickle downþ theory of the benefits of research. The þendless frontierþ metaphor (Bush, 1945) imagined that internally directed (disciplinary) science created ideas and opportunities that would naturally be taken up for economic development. As well, a heroic image of science focused on individual accomplishment dominated. This climate led to building of large government supported physics facilities with budgets too large for the emerging major science sponsoring agencies such as NSF, especially in the domain of sub-atomic physics. These facilities were nominally managed by university consortia, and the rules for access which have recently been formalized in the IUPAP rules evolved here. These state that the criteria to be used in selecting experiments are: a) scientific merit, b) technical feasibility, c) capability of the experimental group, and d) availability of the resources required. No mention is made of application potential of results or the ownership of and investment in the facility. Canadian scientists benefited from this approach and have developed something of a reputation as þfreeloadersþ. It is only recently that the question of which governments contribute to capital costs of facilities has become an issue for access. As well, experience with the US SSC illustrated the degree to which the wish to control technologies with commercial spin off potential could influence the admission of partners. Access by Canadian scientists to cutting edge activity is becoming more restricted.
Physics facilities for study of the structure of matter provide a very interesting case of the more recent approach to megascience. In the earlier phase, neutron scattering was often an offshoot of sub-atomic physics facilities and earliest synchrotron radiation facilities were small enough to operate in universities with NSF financing. As the technology has evolved, a transition parallel to that which occurred early in astronomy influenced the situation. The scale, scope and sophistication of facilities increased so that the cost rose by several orders of magnitude. Canadian infrastructure for synchrotron radiation was initially obtained by addition of a beam line to the US-NSF sponsored facility at the University of Wisconsin. Funding came entirely from the Canadian NSERC within the normal budgets. Throughout the operation of the Canadian beam lines in Wisconsin, the host facility has provided significant subsidies to the Canadian operations. Current debate in Canada centres on the choice between building a Canadian Light Source and becoming a partner in a large scale American project. It is no longer clear that the second option is cheaper. All major projects seek substantial capital contribution from countries whose scientists expect to be systematic users. Casual access is available only by means of collaboration with a scientist from the host country or institutions. It is interesting that synchrotrons are possible projects in a period of government fiscal restraint. The argument for the facility is couched in the language of mode II research (Gibbons et al, 1994). Explicit industrial interests are seen as a requirement for participation by governments in a facility which will be used mainly by academic scientists.
The paper will argue that a transition from a climate of academic science to one of Mode II research has accompanied the approach to limits in resources for science identified by Ziman (1994). This has changed the rules of access to bring new factors to the fore. In the particular case of Canadian science, it is limiting opportunities. However, it will be argued that the approach to limits is a significant driver of the redevelopment of networking among university, industry, and government interests which is especially apparent in the resource intensive domain of megascience.
Health Care Industry has to provide ever improving health status, measured by longevity, mobility and the quality of life. Health care industry differs from the regular market based industry, in that most of its products is a Public Good. That is the customer (the self managed customer) buys a service that fraction of its cost, or the whole cost is paid by the government or the employer or both. But non of the above entities pay directly for the service to the provider. The payment has been done by a third actor: some type of insurance company (The Powerful Health Purchaser). The health care industry is a vertically integrated system of care combining hospitals (specialized care), physicians (routinized, primary, general care), and insurance functions (Powerful Purchaser) into one organization that provides services to the community.
The specialized health-service : Mostly given by the Hospitals. The routinized general health-service: Mostly given by the primary care agents (physicians). Mass Customized Health Service:(the goal is providing low-cost specialized care) is a mix of primary care and specialized care, and is an up-coming service form.
The Academic Health-Care Provider has more tasks than a regular health care provider, it tasks includes: primary care, specialized care, research and teaching. Thus an Academic Health Care provider is a two faced entity. On one side its task is to provide high level research (a task of an University), and on the other side is to provide Health Service (a task of a Service Industry). Until recently the two tasks were perceived as if they were þone þ important task, as a public service. Because of that the State (Government) financed most of the Academic Health Care Providerþs activities. In that way that institute Health Service was as if þcross subsidizedþ (On one hand subsidized by the State, and on the other hand was reimbursed by the Powerful Purchaser). The Academic Health industry today is going under a re- structuring process that as I see it will lead to the following þorganizationþ structure: Key Health Care provider does the marketing, organizing/coordination and research. It markets the researchþs fruit to the Connector and to the Mass Provider. The Connector operates a mass customized service that includes the mix of general service and the specialized service. The connector buys (with the help of some type of market mechanism) the fruit of the research from the Key Health Care Provider, and utilizes it in its specialized services. The mass provider buys the fruit of the older research (with the help of some type of market mechanism) from the Key Provider and utilize it in its general service.
At the moment there is no sophisticated market mechanism that allows to the Key Provider (An Academic Health care provider) to enjoy the pre-compensation of the fruit of its research, (not the Connectors nor the Mass Providers can pre-pay for the research). The reason for that The Powerful Health Purchaser is stingy with the money, when paying for general (primary) health care and specialized health care. So does the Self- Managed-Customer. The State run-off tax-creation ideas.
The big question is who can pre-pay for the academic research?
As I see there can be a scenario according to that both Powerful Health Purchaser and Self-Managed-Customer will be willing to pay at the time of delivery for such a researchþ fruit that enhance care choice (that is the choice is visible for the customers). The State in order to enhance society well being will continue to finance (pre-pay) really major breakthrough research (but the Academic Health Care provider has to prove to the State that it is doing such type of research). The state in order to reduce health care budget will finance (pre-pay) such type of researchþ fruits that eventually reduces health care budget.
At present, examples of Case Studies show that Academic Health Care Providers recently re-structured themselves so that with their current activity can cover a large part of their own research cost. Academic Health Care providers re-structured themselves into three types of formation: a) mass routinized service provider ; b) very specialized service provider; c) mixed service provider . If the Academic Health Care providers retain the present structure, that it seems to me that : a) the mass routinized service provider will interested in research of cost-reducing technology; b) very specialized service provider will interested in research of prestigious breakthrough technology; b) mixed service provider will interested in research of somewhat cost-reducing technology and in somewhat prestigious breakthrough technology.
Though the Academy Health Care provider maintained its two faced entity (University and Service Industry) the content of its activity has changed. We can suppose that as the activity formation of the Academic Health Care Provider changed so does changed the scope of their research. Moreover, we can suppose too, that if the scope of the research changed of the Academic Health Care Provider, so does change the location of its research.
Reference
"Organizations of the equalizing economy: Key Companies, Coordinators, Behind the line companies", Copyright þ Jehoshua & Koty Lapid , SoftBlock, 1995
From "quasi firms" to "quasi governments": the rise of new thematic "collective authorities".
What I would like to discuss is the rise of "quasi" governments to take the image of Etzkowitz "quasi-firms".
We all have discussed in research policies the demultiplication of the notion of government with the rise of both regional and pan-national (i.e. European) governments. What these new forms share is the limited range of activities they focus on, and, this is at least empirically proved in Europe, the strong effect they have had on the subjects on which they intervene.
But besides this spatial redefinition of democracy and government, there is a growing thematic redefinition, at least around health issues.We have been working at CSI on patient associations for now over two years and we have studied their overwhelming role in the few research areas on which they have concentrated : it is commonplace to speak of Cohen, his gene map and genethon, but all of this has been made against government priorities, with the sole support of a patient association. The same was true for years for gene therapy, another example which shows the role such associations can play in the redefinition of what is now considered as a "national"priority.
Our hypothesis is that they exemplify a new type of democratic representation enaled through media and another type of vote, materialized by the support hundred of thousands of individuals not directly concerned choose to support them. In the case of neuromuscular deceases, they are even millions and interviews made about the reasons people support the association bear very much about the fact they do not trust the state any longer to be capable to handle any matter that is specific (and thus near to the people). Thus the movement which drove towards more and more responsibilities at the "regional" level (the equivalent of the state level in the US and which has been visible all over Europe except in the UK) is doubled by another drive towards a "thematic" approach to democracy and representation.
Before making the point on "democracy", it is important to analyze in detail the role of these new "research policy makers", the way in which they differ from foundations such as cancer type ones, their impact upon research activities,... I would do it using the work we have been doing on a smaller association dealing with cystic fibrosis.
These transformations even enlarge the triple helix model not so much through the addition of another dimension but through a renewed understanding of 'collective action' and their 'operators': the implicit association between the former and national government no longer stands. Not only do research places multiply, not only are research work and collaborations transformed, but also our notions of "collective" or "public" action and thus our approaches of "government" and "democracy" are transformed in these new relations [it also puts on the forefront another question: is "government" the best terminology to pinpoint to those who are in charge of collective actions delegated through the democratic process. "public authorities" would already, at least for European ears, sound better... and with another small jump to "collective authorities" we would also include this notion of thematic democracy besides geographic one].
The Clinton Administrationþs Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP) 1994-97 introduced new partnering paradigms to foster dual-use (commercial and military) research and development of new technologies, new commercially viable products and new manufacturing processes (including spin-off and spin-on applications). The TRP was funded through the Department of Defense, Advanced Research Project Administration (ARPA). Project selection and oversight was a joint federal agency effort which included the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Commerce (through NIST), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Space and Aeronautics Administration (NASA).
The TRPs encompassed three competition areas: Technology Development, Regional Technology Alliances, and Manufacturing Education and Training, with similar but somewhat different requisite teaming elements. The Technology Development area partnered at least two industrial firms with universities or federal laboratories. Regional Technology Alliances (RTA) were created within a defined region of a state. The typical RTA teamed: a state university, a defense laboratory, several electronics components manufacturers, and 12 firms that use the component in commercial and defense markets. The purpose of Manufacturing Education And Training (MET) grants, including the one awarded to Northeastern University, was that cross sector partnerships be engaged to upgrade the technical skills of the U.S. workforce.
Requisite to MET teaming was a university serving as team leader in partnership with several industrial organizations. Industry was an integral member of each type of TRP team. In all case, the federal government partner contributed less than half of the total project cost. Federal government dollars were used to spark the team. All partners shared technology reinvestment risks.
The Technology Reinvestment Project at Northeastern University enabled the formation of the Consortium for Electromagnetics Research Applications (CEMRA), as an adjunct to an existing Industry/University Collaborative Research Center, the Center for Electromagnetics Research (CER).
The CER was already embarked on a dual-use technology strategy when the TRP establishing CEMRA was awarded in 1994. In the climate of defense down-building and corporate down-sizing, CER directors tried to help their partners, then mostly traditional defense contractors, learn to develop commercial products for diversified markets. CEMRA enabled CER to move forward into the research and development of dual-use technologies to fulfill its dual-use mission. The CER broadened into significant commercial sector work and at the same time strengthened defense capabilities in niche areas.
CEMRA seeded seven new industry-university partnerships within the three-year grant period. Each partnership involved one or more Northeastern University research scientists with one or more industrial counterparts, as þfellowsþ or þpartners.þ Each partnership is a variation on the dual-use theme. The CEMRA partnerships are best-practice models for industry-university collaboration. In some cases, results are the development of new prototypes leading to new products. In other cases, joint proposals for large-scale buildup were generated. Some of these have been funded, and others are in process. Sometimes the thrust toward product development and manufacturing education led back to fostering fundamental research.
Results of the several CEMRA partnerships are discussed in detail. The CEMRA case history shows how relatively small amounts of government funding can be leveraged to stimulate significant research, generate new products and technologies, and even lead to regional sector job creation. In a broader sense, the dramatic results of this TRP help us understand the importance of a single national technological capability for both defense needs and commercial markets.
The sociology of institutional collaboration is informed by the industry-university partnering lessons learned during the CEMRA grant period.
1. Partnerships between companies and universities take time to develop (years not months) and must be multi-layered. CEMRAþs first three collaborations focused on senior engineers as þfellowsþ and university researchers. It was found that stronger management level involvement was needed to secure resources and internal company visibility. During CEMRAþs second phase, the corporate level þpartnerþ was the focus of the collaboration, as well as university based researchers.
2. The expectation of personnel changes, organizational re- structuring and corporate ownership shifts must be considered seriously when building partnerships. It is essential to multi-layer each partnership. Universities must cultivate champions in corporate management, among division managers, project directors and research engineers.
3. Small companies can be an important ingredient in a partnership mix. The university research agenda is usually too far removed from near term production for easy collaboration with small companies. CEMRA was successful because CEMRA sub- contracted to Bay State Skills Corporation and one of their business development specialists spent two years cultivating small and middle-sized company contacts.
4. Universities must learn how to be efficient and flexible when negotiating intellectual property rights with commercial enterprises. Universities tend to have experience with government agency grants and contracts, and with corporation contributions. Conflicts over the division of patent rights can become problematic. Universities need to acquire fluency in patent and license negotiations because in addition to financial considerations, faculty researchers need access to the data that industry can provide to test the applicability of their algorithms.
5. Strong partnerships can be initiated at the research level. They can be initialed at the top beginning with senior management. They can begin through the liaison work of an agency such as the Bay State Skills Corporation.
6. What it takes for continuity of the partnership, despite possible mergers or personnel changes, are solid matches between industry and university researchers, and between industry and university managers. If the research match is solid, and the chemistry between people at worker-bee levels, and management levels are strong, then company divisions can be bought and sold, people can come and go and the partnership will continue to benefit the key players and their employer organizations.
The Innovative Dynamics of a Triple Helix
Why is it so difficult to capture the dynamics of a triple helix of university-industry-government relations? While a double helix is expected to lock into an observable co- evolution (Arthur 1988), a complex and potentially unstable regime emerges when three dynamics interact. Using this model therefore implies an extension of the evolutionary metaphor: the social system is, by definition, in transition. Communicative integration reinforces differentiation, yet using reflexively translated codes of communication.
Using the double helix metaphor, a technological trajectory can be considered as locked into a specific selection environment (Nelson & Winter 1977 and 1982) and a technology can co-evolve with an institutional setting (Nelson 1994; McKelvey 1997). A third helix is expected to select independently on the two other and their observable interactions, yet again in a distributed way. This selection generates variation in another dimension, and thus disturbs ongoing codification in co-evolutions among "double helices."
Since all three helices may mutually co-evolve, "selection" and "variation" are then declared as sub-dynamics of the complex system. What is considered as "variation" and what as "selection" depends on one's perspective. The interactions between the helices can have different meanings for the interacting units. By providing the interactions with meaning, each helix codifies its operation in a self-referential update.
Innovation is based on recombination from among different codes into a new code. Disturbance is not a sufficient condition; the disturbance has to be codified. A recombination among codes can be considered as a change of meaning or a translation. Translation systems build upon codes of different systems. For example, a research result can be translated into a product by a firm, or a market demand can be made relevant for a research programme by a funding agency. In a social system, recursive translation among codes is the medium of communication that is able to carry innovation.
The communicating units codify the translation by providing the interactions with meaning from their own perspectives. These communicative interactions among them are the units of analysis for innovation studies. Institutional dynamics can be directly observed, but the dynamics of communications are studied by using methods from non-linear dynamics. First, interactions are communications in the mathematical sense of creating uncertainty (Shannon 1948). Second, inter-human communications are reflexive, imparting a degree of meaningfulness to each exchange. Meaning refers to the code of a system of expectations. Meanings can also be communicated. Thus, the communicative operation is recursive: one is able to communicate about communications. The meaning of a communication can be revised by further communications.
From this perspective, institutions can be considered as first-order (`natural') stabilizations of code in the communication. Institutions have served the reproduction of communications hitherto; institutionalization is a retention mechanism for social communication. Social roles are defined at this level. Note that the question of the future location of research can be addressed from the perspective of creating social roles by taking the institutions as units of analysis and/or from the perspective of creating new functions by taking the communications as units of analysis. The institutional focus, however, is `conservative', since the focus is eventually on retention and control. The communication theoretical perspective allows for evaluation of communication in terms of innovative capacity, and for adjustments in institutional arrangements with hindsight.
Communication is inherently uncertain, but inter-human communication is reflexive. Opportunities for innovation are provided by making new combinations available. However, this variation has to be selected and to be appreciated by the institutions using the prevailing codes. Innovations disturb the stabilized institutions by providing translations of codes, but the institutions can adapt by providing niches for further exploration.
The change of the unit of analysis from observable institutions to elusive communications has consequences for research design (Leydesdorff 1995). Institutional dynamics are expected to be different from the dynamics of communication (Luhmann 1984/1995), while the latter are not directly observable. Positive theories attempt to explain what happens in terms of operationalizable variables and geometrical metaphors, and second-order dynamics relates what has happened to an abstract phase space of what could have happened. Observations then are meaningful only in the light of expectations. Using algorithmic simulations, the variables (e.g., x) are replaced with fluxes (dx/dt). The second-order results of the simulation can be appreciated from a variety of first-order perspectives. In other words, positive theories specify "genotypes" of the complex system (Langton 1989). The "phenotypes" develop along trajectories that have served the system's further development hitherto. Both the observable institutions, that is, the instantiations at each moment in time, and the trajectories over time, can be considered as fingerprints of an emerging regime of translations between codes. Although this regime cannot directly be observed, it can reflexively be hypothesized as a distribution containing an uncertainty. The specification of this Triple Helix provides a frame of reference for the interpretation of the observable events.
Because the emerging system is informed by the specific events that happened, the distribution of expectations is far from random. This non-equilibrium state of the complex system is organized along different axes that tend to be nearly orthogonal (Simon 1969). In other words, the differentiation `unweaves' the triple helix, while translations pressure the system for reorganization. Each integration reproduces the differentiation. Transitions may be specifiable in terms of their likelihood: how can the relevant dimensions be translated so that new options are gained? However, recurrent selections tend to create insurmountable barriers in the communication. Reflexive theories serve us by translating positive observables into negative selections and constraints.
The recursive selections lead to the pronounced distributions that reproduce the non-equilibrium state. The discursive reflections of such systems manifest the pronounced distributions as a next-order layer using different perspectives. Therefore, they are highly context-sensitive: an economist looks at different dimensions and uses a code different from that of the political analyst (Spender 1997). More general insights into the complex dynamics are formal. Non-linear dynamics consequently cannot provide a single encompassing and `interdisciplinary' theory. It provides us with formal heuristics for improving the quality of our observations and for the specification of further research questions.
The specification of expectations induces an asymmetrical update in the appreciation by all discursive systems of expectations to which these expectations can be communicated as meaningful. In a knowledge-based economy, the mutual enrichment of the codified discourses drives further development. This social system of mutual expectations, however, remains ephemeral; it should not be reified by using a biological or an engineering metaphor. These metaphors are misleading since they misrepresent the operational character of the reflection. Society is neither a living nor an artificial system. While it is not designed, it enables us to organize innovations reflexively. However, innovations are not organized with reference to human intentions, but as a result of their communicative interactions (e.g., Nelson 1982).
Innovations emerge on the basis of codifications in translations. Thus, the communications exhibit a non-linear dynamics of their own that one is able to provide with an interpretation (Leydesdorff 1997). In the paper, I shall summarize the contributions of non-linear dynamics to the study of this triple helix of communications among universities, industries, and governments. For this purpose, I further develop the analytical framework in terms of evolutionary mechanisms. I shall illustrate my points by reviewing various studies from non-linear dynamics and by using simulations. In a final section, I reflect on the contribution of these suggestions and specify expectations about the future location of research.
References
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Langton, Christopher G. (Ed.) (1989). Artificial Life. Redwood City, CA: Addison Wesley.
Leydesdorff, Loet (1995). The Challenge of Scientometrics: the development, measurement, and self-organization of scientific communications. Leiden: DSWO Press, Leiden University.
Leydesdorff, Loet (1997). `The Non-linear Dynamics of Sociological Reflections.' International Sociology, vol. 12, pp. 25-45.
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Simon, Herbert A. (1969). The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, MA/ London: MIT Press.
Spender, J-C. (1997). `Publicly supported non-defense R&D: the USA's Advanced Technology Program.' Science and Public Policy, vol. 24, pp. 45-52.
UNIVERSITY R&D PERFORMANCE INDICATORS: THE CASE OF THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MEXICO (UNAM)
Roberto E. L¢pez-Mart¡nez & Alma Rocha-Lackiz
The assessment of the activities aimed at the generation and expansion of knowledge, carried out at higher education institutions (HEI's) and research centres is frequently hampered by the ambivalence of the concept of research. The classic division between basic and applied research and experimental development seems to have lost its effectiveness towards the end of the century. This separation has been particularly useful for the generation of indicators relevant to economic purposes, i.e. the allocation of resources for scientific activities. However, when we are interested in the evaluation of research from a cognitive perspective, several problems emerge specially related to the non-economic results derived from applied research and development performed at HEI's. Linked to these problems we cannot neglect the old but never resolved debate about the differences, similarities and relationships between science and technology.
The variety of definitions and interpretations of concepts such as applied research, development and innovation turns into an even more complex issue when it is explicitly recognized that universities should increase their collaboration relationships with the productive sector. In developing countries like Mexico, this phenomenon has been evolving during the last fifteen years, and presently, important institutions like the National University consider technology development as a legitimate activity among the university functions. Despite this validation of research oriented to exploitable results and innovation, neither the UNAM nor the Mexican science and technology policy institutions (STPI) have devoted enough efforts to conceptually clarify these technological activities and effectively legitimate and counterbalance them with traditional scientific research.
This paper reports the results of a study carried out at the UNAM to analyse the experience and practice of different research centres and institutes concerning the evaluation of applied research and development activities. This study included: the analysis of international experiences reported in the literature; the analysis of documents elaborated by Mexican scientists and task forces responding to STPI's commissions and structured interviews with several UNAM's applied researchers and General Directors of research institutes characterized by important technological activities.
Our results attempt to define and clarify the following issues in the particular case of the National University of Mexico: (i) The network of interactions between scientific and technological research and the resulting characteristics and scope of technology development efforts performed at the university. (ii) The role of university R&D within the national system of innovation of a developing country. (iii) The different types of technology development activities performed at the UNAM. (iv) The analysis of alternatives and recommendations to evaluate UNAM's academic R&D oriented to technological innovation.
The new role of universities and business associations in local development in Mexico
Matilde Luna and Ricardo Tirado
The Mexican private sector has traditionally spent very small amounts of money on research activities. A very long time protected economy was not a stimulus to invest in this field. In these conditions almost all research was done in public universities and, generally, disconnected from industry.
But in the midst of a very deep economic crisis during the 1980s, the Mexican government shifted dramatically the direction of its economic policies. This change had the support of the most important corporations. In their view, regaining economic stability and growth depended on curbing spending, privatizing public enterprises, deregulating markets, lifting controls on foreign capital and reorienting investment toward the export of manufactured goods. Matching deeds to intention, the government began to
open up the economy to trade at the end of 1985; and in 1986, after joining the General Agreement on Trade and Taxes (GATT), it immediately lifted the tariff barriers protecting Mexico's products in a proportion that went beyond the terms agreed upon. During the 1990s this policy continued and reached its highest point with the firm of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993.
All these facts contributed to open the mind of entrepreneurs on the convenience of competitiveness to survive, and the necessity of investing in research which can improve the quality and prices of their products. Since then and in an analogous manner, Mexican universities and other research centers tried to come closer to industry. Of course the government also showed a new disposition to include itself on actions and programs to reinforce cooperation between the parts. It was also remarkable the activation of other actors -collective actors- like business, technician and professional associations.
The aim of this paper is to discuss the future location of research in a double sense: in that of the institutional actors that should lead the process of research (e.g. government, industry or academic institutions), and in the sense of the territorial unity that should be considered in order to organize research.
The main idea is that although these problems are relevant, the central question -in a triple-helix era- is to find out how significant relations among different actors are produced, and which is the role of learning and the flow of knowledge in collaboration arrangements. In order to explore these questions, the new role of the actors involved in research activities and local development are analyzed in this paper. The main objectives are the following:
a) to explore the nature, the scope, the forms and the functions of specific collaborative agreements that have recently occurred in Mexico at local level,
b) to identify institutional innovations and cultural changes as inputs or outputs of collaborative arrangements,
c) to analyze the negotiation and learning processes involved in collaboration.
It is assumed that the academia, the industry and even the government are not monolithic actors. There are informal and formal power groups acting at the three levels of government and different governmental agencies and enterprises, that not necessarily have the same goals and interests. Also there are public and private universities and different types of research centers. Finally, on the side of the private sector, there are enterprises of different sizes acting in distinct sectors and different kind of business associations. Given these facts, different forms of interaction between university and industry might be found.
The unity of analysis are selected specific complex networks that involve the participation of several actors, and that combine disciplines, economic sectors and territorial dimensions, and that represent paradigmatic cases of forms of collaboration. Great attention will be paid on two type of actors: universities and business associations. These because it is supposed that a lot of small and medium enterprises don't have any other form of relationship with research activities than through their associations.
In order to go back to the problem of the future location of research, the contingent character and the structural dimension of collaborations are evaluated.
The construction of 'mutual accepted expectations' and success of industrial R&D programmes
In this paper we will argue that 'dynamics of expectations' need to be addressed in order to understand why industrial R&D programmes happen to fail or succeed into technological imple- mentation. Although Harro van Lente has already pointed at the importance of 'dynamics of expectations' in 1993, there is not made much progress in how to operationalize this statement for scientific analysis.
Field work in industrial research institutes has given rise to the hypothesis that a decisive factor for success of indus- trial R&D programmes is whether relevant parties succeed to come to 'mutual agreed expectations'. All groups that consider themselves as 'being affected' appear to try to influence each other as much as possible by exchanging and matching expectations. This seems to be a continuously process of interpretating, adapting, accentuating, highlighting and con- trasting expectations.
This mutual 'influencing' happens to take place during all the phases of technological innovation: from the generation of new ideas into research programmes to the introduction of the new technological products or processes into the market. Mostly, parties effectuate their influence according to their position within a process of establishing durable alignments. But the interaction is not always sought and in direct contact with all parties; it can become part of a more general debate as well.
In the paper, we will elaborate how the notion of 'the con- struction of mutual agreed expectations' can be conceptualized and be used to understand a lot of the processes involved. We will defend a broad definition of expectations. Wishes, possi- bilities, needs, prognoses, estimations of risks, predictions, scenarios or visions of the future should all be taken in, because these all can be considered as 'expressions of own expectations and/or of attempts to influence the expectations of others'. For instance, when a company board announces a big investment, their argument for its relevance includes their views and expectations. In going public, they do not only con- tribute to the establishment of internal harmony on this point, but also create the opportunity for a debate about the correctness of their views.
The effect of 'constructing' a dialogue in this way, where mutual accepted terms and procedure are agreed upon and in which all relevant groups with opposite or different views are participating, will be clarified with reference to the translation theory of Bruno Latour. The translation of in- terests and keeping the interested groups in line are the cen- tral activities in his "Science in action". Our argument is that 'the construction of mutual accepted expectations' lays a solid basis to take following decisions that will be accepted by many participants. We will defend the hypothesis that (a) by continuously adapting expectations the relevant groups manage to influence each other so that mutual shared expectations are effectuated but (b) this will be exactly and above all occur on the level of implicit formulated expecta- tions, where boundaries between groups with different cogni- tive, normative and social perspectives happens to be more easily exceeded. In this way the construction of 'mutual shared expectations' fulfils the function of an interface between different scientific disciplines and different social and political groups.
To stress our point, we will compare the development of two different research programmes within Shell Research: the re- search history of CARILON (a new industrial plastic) and the environmental problem of the reduction of CO2. The central focus of these reconstructions will be on the dynamics of ex- pectations.
The first one is an example of a technological innovation that was originated within Shell Research. This example of a pure technology driven project started by accident in a laboratory in 1983, The market introduction took place last year. In 1983, the generally accepted expectation was that no new industrial plastic could be introduced on a commercially successful base. At that time, Shell seemed to have good rea- sons for this view. We will address what happened between 1983 and 1996 and how the research department convinced the com- mercial managers and changed their expectations. In terms of Latour: how researchers and research managers translated their interests into those of the general management. We will show how the researchers succeeded in reshuffling the interests and goals of the commercial management to get the needed budget to transform their technological claims into a matter of fact. Then, how they managed to keep this all in line with the expectations of interested groups - researchers, sponsors, potential clients, will be dealt with as well.
The second illustration is an example of R&D that did not develop from an isolated discovery in a laboratory, but was a result of taking over an important issue in the environmental discussions all over the world. But also the generally and broadly acknowledged need to reduce CO2 required adequate translation into feasible and practicable research programmes. We will illustrate what views of the future and prognoses suc- ceeded in convincing Shell that Shell had to play an important role in developing the solution of this real or perceived environmental problem. In other words: how this general issue was translated into a research problem for Shell and how Shell responded.
CHANGES IN PUBLIC R&D INSTITUTIONS MANAGEMENT: THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CASE-STUDY
Anne-Marie Maculan and Deborah Moraes Zouain
A NEW CONTEXT FOR THE PUBLIC RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS
Since the second half of the 80's, Brazil's S&T policy has been submitted to deep changes and reforms. Serious concerns have risen for a more intense and effective diffusion of research activities results in various industrial sectors. This is in the aim of modernizing and enhancing the competitiveness of Brazil's economy. However, implementing this policy is not only a question of reorienting but of defining new forms of planning and organizing scientific and technological research activities.
Many of these changes are bringing out fears in the research community particularly because of the demands for research results applicability. Distinguishing various types of research is not a simple task nor is ensuring the survival of basic research. Furthermore, there is a lack of understanding the characteristics of the knowledge transfer process throughout the industrial sector as well as the decision making process of corporate investments.
There are uncertainties surrounding new ways of organizing research activities and consequences on the researchers' practices. Public research institutions are effectively changing their traditional organizing and funding activities. These past years, they have become accustomed to competing for public grants, no longer being able to count on institutional funding like FNDCT (National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development). They are forced to rethink commercializing research results, to diversify funding sources and increase partnerships with other organizations or institutions.
This study examines the impacts of the above transformations based on the INT case. One can note that the readjustments of S&T policies are not specific to Brazil but are part of an international wave of changes related to the issue of capitalization of knowledge (Webster & Etzkowitz 1991). These changes entail methods of management control similar to corporate management. They introduce research quality and efficiency parameters and impose acquiring new management skills.
According to Ruivo (1994), the S&T policies adopted by the OECD countries are linked to a new paradigm which sets up a different way to use and regulate the public research system. Each paradigm means a specific approach to organizing and managing research activities, as well as verifying and evaluating its inputs and outputs. The various available political instruments are used to reach the regulation's objectives. The participation of the various institutional actors determines the utilization objectives.
A CRUCIAL ISSUE: CAPITALIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE
Webster and Etzkowitz do not refer to the concept of paradigm but affirm there is a gradual change in S&T policies: the growing preeminence of knowledge capitalization. According to the authors, the economic growth depends not only on a new cycle of innovation but on a new structure for innovation, which tightly intertwines basic research with applied research. The evolution of the productive system is based on a constant incorporation of new knowledge and on the ability to generate and manage technological changes. Both of these involve competitiveness. Hence, it is a key issue to promote the diffusion of research results throughout industry and an important way of giving value to research activities.
The new management system's goals for public research institutions are:
* defining commercial strategies, * prioritizing projects, * determining funding allocation criteria, * training human resources.
These goals contradict the former management model. The new organizational paradigm forces public research institutions to enter networks, evaluate research results, collaborate with industries and diversify funding sources as well as financing terms.
Research and innovation programs look to promote and establish tight links between research institutions and industries. Often the research institutions are brought to develop new relationships with firms in order to improve the efficiency of inter-organizational information and knowledge channels. Thus, institutions must diversify their competencies particularly at a management level.
RECENT BRAZILIAN TRENDS IN R&D MANAGEMENT
The Ministry of Science and Technology's (MST) creation in 1985 was a turning point in Brazil's S&T policy. Despite its institutional instability, the MST is gradually introducing new rules for research activities in order for R&D management to become more professional. In a context of scarce financing, the MST is dictating a pattern of practices for the research community. On the other hand, the MST is searching for a new dynamic of technical and scientific knowledge accumulation in order to face the requirements of industrial competitiveness. Hence, the Brazilian government is striving to include firms as essential actors in this dynamic. This whole process would lead to enhancing the national system of innovation. All these changes mean a new role for the State in promoting research and innovation, as well as in creating knowledge.
The Brazilian research institutions have been brought to develop new patterns of linkages with industries. They are setting their priorities on economic criteria of performance and applied research. Furthermore, they are organizing the knowledge transfer process in a new, more formal way. Concepts of productivity are more and more applied to research. Links with industries lead to market strategies and property rights. Searching for funding entails competing among R&D institutions. To ensure the previously mentioned changes, these institutions are generating new specific internal structures. We can come to the conclusion that Brazil, as well, is on its way to capitalizing knowledge.
In 1990, the INT initiated an important redefinition of its own management. The implemented changes clearly illustrate the above new concepts. These changes are related to funding sources, ways of prioritizing projects, research products classification and inter-organizational relationships. The present study aims to explain INT's difficulties and results in adapting to this new pattern.
Innovative support for traditional agro-industry: an experience from Southern Italy
A. Maffei , R. D'Amario, A. Anconitano, S. Algeri, G. de Gaetano
From theory...
Closed in dark laboratories, research did represent for a long time the willingness of man to know his world (KNOWLEDGE). Subsequently, the industry viewed research as a means to be more competitive towards other companies and to develop more rapidly (COMPETITIVENESS). Then governments started to utilise research as an instrument to improve the economies of specific areas/regions (DEVELOPMENT).
Finally, alongside with various examples of collaboration among these three types of organisations (laboratory-industry- government), the importance of research for SOCIETY, and for its welfare, has become crucial.
What we know is that research, and mainly its results, depends on funds, infrastructure/facilities, training, management. Yet, research is primarily a methodology, an attitude, a "way- of-life" and anyone is a potential researcher.
"Find the researcher in yourself" should be the slogan of the future, since the future location of research is anywhere you want it to be. The natural curiosity of children should be stimulated and preserved in the adult population. Furthermore the researcher should bear in mind that he/she doesn't know what he/she will find: presumably her/his research will bring her/him towards new and unexpected results.
The experience of the RESTPOR III conference, organised in Bruxelles by the European Commission on September '96, has been an occasion for several RTD actors to discuss concrete examples of projects/programs performed at local level but with a global vision. One of the main lessons gained was that a general recipe for development in less favoured regions does not exist.
... through facts ...
The CISTAI (Centre for Scientific and Technical Innovation of the Agro-Industry Sector) has recently been established within a biomedical research centre located in the Abruzzo region, in Italy. This region, characterised primarily by an agricultural economy, has developed quite well in these last decades. Thus, at the end of 1996, the region has come out from assistance of the Structural Funds of the European Union (so called Objective 1 funds) and is starting now to move with its own "feet". In spite of these improvements, the analysis of socio-economic statistical indicators (ISTAT and Eurostat) shows that there are still structural problems in Abruzzo in respect to more developed regions in the Centre and the North of Italy. The unemployment rate of young people, an inadequate training system, infrastructures deficiency, poverty of the bank system and the fragility of SMEs are recognised as the main problems.
The manufacturing industry, which has contributed to improve the economy in the region in the last two decades, is mainly a big industry devoted to production within the areas and has established poor connections with the territory.
The agro-industry sector is characterised by cereal, grapes and olives cultures, zoo-farms. Also important are pasta firms, world-wide known. But in general the agro-industry sector is too fragmented with a huge number of small and micro enterprises (less than 10 employees) not enough competitive for the international market.
The CISTAI operates within the "Patto territoriale Sangro- Aventino" (Territory pact), an agreement among authorities, big and small industries, banks, research and technology centres for developing the territory. The "Patto" does constitute an example of integrated utilisation of the local actors for a bottom-up development and has been selected by the European commission among a number of similar initiatives launched all over Italy.
The CISTAI, then, intends to transfer its know-how with the collaboration of local RTD centres, like the Centre for Irrigation Techniques (CO.T.IR.), in the field of food, human health and agronomic research. It focuses its activities on two main directions:
1) to study the role of traditional food and its components (olive oil, wine, vegetables) in general human health (development of diseases and disorders, the optimal delivery of nutrients and cellular mechanisms of absorption within human body); the aim of these studies are to increase the quality standards of traditional products and to produce new agro-food products enriched with nutrients which contribute to optimum human health.
2) to study innovative applications of added-value compounds deriving from local agricultural products, also deriving from plant and animal waste (fibres, carbohydrates, oils, proteins etc.) that are chemically useful in making industrial products (for the food, medical, pharmaceutical, plastic, paper, chemical and cosmetic industries).
The CISTAI is a reference centre for the agro-industry sector of the area, in relation to the best practises and to a better utilisation of the environmental resource, in addition to a qualified training experience in the field.
... to future developments
The CISTAI's main goal at the present time, is to potentiate within the "Patto" the local SMEs, while the attraction of foreign and national companies will be considered in the next few years. In fact, the CISTAI's activities develop integrated projects and networks which will bring together agricultural firms, especially small ones, in cooperation with research centres and local authorities, taking into account their needs in innovation, technology and know-how. The local enterprises, which are small and very fragmented in the territory, will have the opportunity to utilise the services - RTD results, informatics support, human resources - provided by the centre.
On the basis of a previous experience with the high schools in the area, the CISTAI might be able to create a computer network with all those SMEs which have a minimum informatics support. This will be an essential step towards an opening onto the global market.
The CISTAI by one side will preserve its peculiarities in the fields of health and agriculture, by the other will develop new expertise on the basis of specific requests coming from the territory. The governments, at the level of region, province and municipalities, which are already included in the "Patto", will be actively involved into decision processes regarding collaboration between the CISTAI and SMEs.
The CISTAI will exploit the know-how in basic and applied research of the Mario Negri Sud Institute Research Centre. This Institute was mentioned by Nature (ref. Europe seeks to rally regional research, A. Abbot, 1997, Vol. 385/16:192-193) as an example of a good investment by European structural funds.
Future Locations of R&D: Go Where The Trade Goes?
Globally, we are experiencing the rapid development of two activities that are constantly interacting together, directly and indirectly. The two activities are, namely, international trade and international S&T. There are numerous evidences that international S&T collaborations are concentrated within the trade triad (Europe-US-Japan). Similarly, and perhaps as a result of that, international flows of patents applications are concentrated within the same triad. The studies of international patents flows have registered an enormous growth of such flows, especially between Europe and the US (Schmoch, 1996).
A study of the extent these two activities affect each other, specifically, in terms of geographical and sectoral convergences becomes thus important. It is interesting to see how the relationship between trade and S&T co-operation on the global level is affected by the emergence of a different relationship between academia, industry, and government on the national level.
The situation is thus interesting, not only on a policy level, but rather on a theoretical level as well. We have two different types of relationships, or more precisely, two inter-active affairs; international trade, and international co-operation in S&T. The first type, international trade, is a regulated activity characterised by formalities and "top-down" procedures and initiatives, whereas, the second type of activity is characterised by informality, decentralisation, and "bottom- up" initiatives. The latter could be, more or less, described as a self- driven chaotic process. The question raised is, how do these two different types of processes influence the directions of each other?
Elaboration
There are inclinations among several European science and technology (S&T) policy- makers to pursue more politically active policies towards international S&T activities. The affinity is to launch more "top-down" initiatives for international co-operation in S&T, based upon prioritised sectors and regions, such as with South East Asia and the US. This is particularly true in governmental organisations where revisions of international activities have been launched and special units have been set up to manage these new directions. Such governmental efforts could be a reflection of the increase in the interaction between trade and research activities. It is a move towards subduing the one activity to the other, therefore, homogenising their natures.
Even though other motivations lie too behind targeting certain countries and sectors in various countries, commercial and trade-related goals are most prevalent in certain governmental departments. This is particularly true in ministries for trade, industry, and economics. The assumption that underlies the new policy is that international S&T activities should support national economies not only at home, but also abroad. This is by, for example, supporting exports, or by attracting home foreign companies to locate or to make investments.
A study of international research cooperation on the level of inter-firm research, conducted by Hagedoorn and Schakenraad (1992), showed that access to others' markets has been among main motivations for co-operation on the level of firms too. Therefore, it is not surprising, for instance, to find the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in Japan to be the main agency responsible for co-ordinating the country's S&T activities. This could also be explained by the fact that trade in high-technology products constitutes a growing share of global trade in manufactured goods, reaching in 1987 33% of Japan's manufactured exports and 42% of the USA's (Tyson, 1993). The link between technological R&D overall, and R&D collaboration in particular, and trade is, so, an issue of high policy relevance. In fact, this assumed relationship between R&D collaboration and industrial activities, especially, trade activities, has provoked a political debate in the US on whether to continue providing access to Japanese firms to the American academic research scene (Skolnikoff, 1993). Japanese access to American academic basic research has been perceived as a factor behind Japan's trade surplus with the US in high-tech products (ibid). A study of the European links within the triad is missing, in this paper, I have been trying to highlight the need for such study.
Furthermore, the growing collaboration between industry and academia on the national level is expected to be reflected internationally as well. The two types of actors are expected, as a result of that, to be converging in terms of areas and fields of priority on the global level. This is particularly true in international frontiers of knowledge, where universities frequently do research which feeds into the R&D activities of industry. Fransman & Tanaka, for instance, showed that Japanese companies have often close links with foreign universities (Fransman & Tanaka, 1995), which draws our attention to the growing convergence between academia and industry on the global level as well.
Empirical evidence is still needed to follow up and support the tendencies of the relationship between international trade and international R&D. Once such empiri have been established, entropy statistical measures will assist in drawing scenarios for future R&D locations (see Leydesdorff, 1995). This is of course based upon the condition that the empiri are supportive to my claim of that international R&D has become more influenced by trade activities.
In evolutionary terms, international trade and international S&T co-operation reflect the process of technological development on a global level. They reflect the development of technological regimes and selection environments globally. The concentration of R&D activities and trade flows around a set of selected sectors in a confined geographical region is a clear embodiment of so-called "techno- economic" paradigms (Freeman & Carlota, 1988).
Accordingly, the setting for international S&T activities is expected to change with the rise and fall of new "techno-economic paradigms". Consequently, future trade between countries could be detected by launching technology foresight programmes of broad scope to include technological developments in various countries, and by applying entropy statistical measures (as it was implied earlier). A careful study of the interaction between these two activities will help us to identify the sort of institutional set-ups that have emerged on a global level to accommodate change. Such institutional set-ups would be International Property Rights (IPR), bilateral trade, or research agreements etc.
The changes on the global level have spurred the emergence of intermediate agencies (e.g. multilateral research programmes) between the national state and the international arena. These intermediate agencies are being used by governments as tools to influence international activities.
Summary
Briefly, three main assumptions have been made in this paper:
Firstly, that international research in S&T is expected to be heavily influenced by trade relations.
Secondly, international S&T relations of industry and academia are converging in terms of areas and fields of priority on the global level.
Thirdly, that various institutional set-ups have emerged on a global level designated to accommodate the changes on that level.
These three points can be further illustrated by the use of a table produced by Archibugi and Michie (1995).
References
D. Archibugi & J. Michie. (1995) The Globalisation of Technology. A New Taxonomy. Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 121-140.
G. Duysters & J. Hagedoorn (1996) Internationalisation of Corporate Technology Through Strategic Partnering: An Empirical Investigation, Research Policy 25 (1-12).
M. Fransman & S. Tanaka (1995) Government, Globalisation, and Universities in Japanese Biotechnology, Research Policy 24 (13-49).
Hagedoorn and Schakenraad (1992) Learning Companies and network of Strategic Alliances in Information Technologies, Research Policy 21 (163-190).
L. Leydesdorff (1995) The Challenge of Scientometrics: The Development, Measurement, And Self-Organisation of Scientific Communication, DSWO Press, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
Ulrich Schmoch (1996) "International Patenting Strategies of Multinationals Concerns: The Example of Telecommunications Manufactures" in an OECD publication entitled Innovation, Patents And Technological Strategies.
Eugene B. Skolnikoff (1993) New International Trends Affecting Science And Technology, Science And Public Policy Vol. 20, pp. 115-125.
Laura D' Andrea Tyson (1992) Who's Bashing Whom? Trade Conflict in High-Technology Industries, Institute For International Economics, Washington DC.
Research infrastructures as focal points for innovation networks
Major research infrastructures, which increasingly provide essential services to the research community in a large variety of disciplines, play an important role in the interaction between basic research and technological innovation because of their intrinsic scientific and technical complexity and interdisciplinarity. Quite often, major technological challenges that need to be met in the development phase or in the subsequent operation of large research facilities can be faced and solved by having recourse to in-house skills and know-how, thereby generating material as well as immaterial innovation.
However, the need to focus on the specific scientific tasks for which infrastructures are created can act as a strong disincentive to pursue hi-tech innovations per se and to further exploit them or simply diffuse them. In Europe, in particular, research infrastructures are often characterized by inadequate pooling of resources for researching new generations of techniques, much duplication and lack of complementarity and heavy limitations on the mobility of transnational users.
The European Commission (EC) has been engaged for several years in promoting the optimal use and exploitation of Europeþs research infrastructures. The primary goal of the EC, through its Access to Large-Scale Facilities (LSF) activity has been to stimulate opportunities for the transnational access of researchers to those large research installations to which they would not normally have access while, at the same time, catalysing self-coordination and promoting complementarity and interoperability of large research facilities.
In managing the LSF activity, the Commission has been organizing thematic networks that bring together large-scale national facilities of the same type and representatives of their users, including users from industry where relevant. These so-called Round-Tables have already had a significant impact on the coordination of activities in the various facilities concerned and have also attracted the participation of major international facilities.
In general the objective of these networks is to catalyse self-coordination and pooling of resources between infrastructure operators and end-users. In particular, by promoting joint scientific and technological activities among their members, Round-Tables are intended to promote the coordination, diffusion and joint exploitation of technologies coming from different research actors in each grouping. In this way, these networks can also assist in the transition from laboratory to large-scale realization or in the standardization at the European level.
Moreover, the Round-Tables can help support conceptual studies of new techniques, instrumentation, technologies, as well as new concepts for next generation infrastructures. Such new technologies and innovative concepts can thus be tested on an ad-hoc basis, e.g. through workshops or small feasibility studies, by the Round-Tables acting as distributed "incubators".
The paper will examine several examples of innovative research stemming from such infrastructure cooperation networks. Such case studies can hopefully shed light on a paradigm for technological co-development based on the transnational and transdisciplinary mobility, at the European level, of researchers and technology suppliers acting as vehicles of new ideas. Examples will be examined where such cooperation has led to the generation of critical mass for the development of new techniques, to the promotion of complementarity and interoperability of infrastructures, to the creation of distributed þvirtualþ facilities, more generally to the creation of a new culture of cooperation.
THE EASTERN EUROPEAN TRANSITION
The transformation of scientific and technological (sub)system in Central and Eastern Europe is a complicated and multidimensional historical and social process. My contribution will also be based on this main assumption. Although special attention will be given to the relation between university, industry and government in post-communist countries in transition, I will not (and I cannot) avoid more general problems of recent scientific, technological and economic transition in the world as a whole. The reason that I will follow both levels of analysis is the following: my first goal will be to give an explanation of very complicated and (sometimes) controversal processes of transition in Central and Eastern Europe in the context of more general paradigms of the so-called new mode of knowledge production and triple helix. This will be underlined with statements of leading authors in this area (among others: M.Gibbons, H.Etzkowitz, L.Leydesdorff, W.Faulkner, etc.) who didn't exclude, from their more general treatment, the problems which regard the establishment of new forms of cooperation between university, industry and government in post-communist countries. Only when some common points between these global and regional processes will be found, a deeper analysis of the role of academic science (and its connection with industry) in post-communist countries will follow.
I'm aware that the countries of Central and East-European regions are in different stages of the scientific-technological and socio- economical transformation process. The reason is not only in the fact, that even during the communist period pronounced differences existed in regard to some aspects of science and technology (for instance: the extent to which research and development was integrated into industrial enterprises or even universities was very different from country to country). The reason is much more in the fact, that in current transition processes these countries do not follow the same patterns of restructuring of institutional structure of R&D (let me mention only two cases which are significant for the understanding of university autonomy: the way of nomination of members of different scientific councils and agencies and way of operating of grant systems).
I do not intend to stress too strongly the stylised picture of RTD in Central and East-European region. Therefore I will take into regard also local political and cultural circumstances in my explanation; not only because of different stages of processes of scientific-technological transformations, but also because of the structural differences which originate from the size of single states.
Nevertheless, there are lot of common problems, which are shared by all countries of Central and East Europe. All these countries have to solve comparable dilemmas. I will focus on this topic. What are the most important barriers, which evidently hamper the transition? I will show that their origins must be found in the past and in the present.
(1) Firstly, I will show in my contribution that the heritage of the past is still strong. It is still present in the thinking of industrial managers, academic scientists and decision-makers. In that sense we can speak about the "cohabitation" of the elements of the new and of the old order. Let me number some of these problems, which should be discussed in my contribution: the concentration of high-qualified R&D staff outside industry, separation between teaching and research at the university, the relying of industrial managers and academic scientists upon the linear model of innovation, etc. I will analyse, how the formal and hierarchical structures in the science and technology complex from the past hamper the creation of informal network between university and industry, tacit knowledge, etc. In the new mode of knowledge production all these components are critical for the efficiency of direct knowledge transfer from university to industry.
(2) Secondly, the biggest obstacles for reforms of a more recent date will be presented in the paper. They decrease the role of the university as an important factor of transformation of societies in this part of Europe. Therefore I will present some concrete constrains occuring in the exchange of knowledge between the university and industry. Among these obstacles is the absence of long-term strategic university policy, the emergence of - if I use the words of D.A.Dyker - the pattern of "preemptive lobbying", which is particularly damaging in the science and technology sector, the lack of capitalization of academic knowledge, the deficiency of young dynamic academic scientists, the absence of socio-economic priorities to which R&D priorities have to correspond, the conflicts between different sectoral and disciplinary lobbies within the academic communities, the lack of reliable mechanisms for evaluating achivements in education and research, etc. I know that some of these elements are hardly reformable, especially if not all parts of societies in transition are interested in reforms.
Although the size of academic science in terms of labour and finance has shrunk significantly in all countries in transition, I will not follow the thesis that this is the major problem of science in the countries of transition. The same or an even greater (long-term) issue is how to make academic research more "efficient", "relevant" and "accountable". In that sense I will accept the assumption of Henry Etzkowitz and Leot Leydessdorf that the budget cuts for R&D (in all post-communist countries public funding of academic science prevails) do not necessarily indicate decline, since the system is in transition.
(3) Finally, I will give a tentative answer to the question, how successful and effective were, until now, the processes of transformation of R&D in post-communist countries. There are namely not only hindrances and negative heritage, but also positive results of these transitional processes. Many social actors in Central and East Europe see the importance of putting the university on a sound footing and much has already been accomplished in that direction. Therefore the succint evaluation of recent governmental policy instruments to improve the cooperation between university and industry is especially important. I will use different sort of criteria to assess the quality of changes, but always keeping in mind, that transition is a painful, difficult and prolonged social process.
The contribution will be based on different types of sources, however, with very different levels of theoretical and empirical argumentation. (I will also use some practical cases, which prove the assumption that the model of new corporativism between university, industry and government has not been realised yet in post-socialist countries.) For that reason, this text is more an attempt at a general survey of problems than a comprehensive comparative study, an account of where things stand now, not of what they will be in the future.
The Triple Helix is a term which summarises an important set of relationships in the emerging 'learning economy', those between universities, governments and business. These relationships have been the subject of a now substantial body of work, greatly increased in depth and in range by the papers presented to the last Triple Helix conference in Amsterdam. Many of those papers indicated, however, that the term needs a good deal of refinement when it is applied to particular empirical situations. In particular, all three notions - universities, government and business - need to be futher analysed so that the functions of each can be seen clearly. Government, for example, needs to be seen in its diverse policy functions which may include facilitative, prohibitative, exhortatory or encouragement intentions.
The nature of the relationships between government and business may also vary, between countries, between areas of activity and over time, as the aims of any given policy evolve and are modified. Some relationships between government and business, for example, may be direct, such as those involved in government purchasing. Others may involve indirect links. such as the decision by governments to fund new research arrangements which require business participation as a condition of public funding. Further, the nature of the university aspect of the relationship also needs further analysis. The differences between faculties as locations for research are clearly enormous. Moreover, some relationships between universities and business are direct and some indirect in the same ways as those between government and business and indeed between governments and universities. Again, these are likely to vary over time and to affect the nature of the intellectual activities undertaken as well as the outcomes in terms of entry of results to the public arena. Some links between the players may involve a series of both direct and indirect relationships between the three sets of central actors.
The paper concerns such a set of complex relationships as they are evolving in the biomedical sphere in Australia. It thus concerns the relationships between public sector medical system funding policies and organisational practices, companies involved in the medical device industry, publicly funded hospitals which are also research institutions, government industry-development policies and university medical departments. The latter are especially important as they train the medical specialists who are frequently the researchers and inventors on whom the industry and ultimately in many cases, the medical system, depend.
The paper presents the results of a study of innovation in the biomedical sector in Australia carried out in 1996-97. The study indicates the importance of understanding innovative capability in the biomedical field as a product of 'fragmented networks' which include individual professionals, individual firms and public and private sector organisations linked together in diverse ways within a broader system. The functioning of the networks must be understood, the study makes clear, in the broader context of public policies which do not have innovation as their primary focus and of competition both between the private individuals and companies concerned and between organisations within the sector and regulating the sector. For this reason, the study suggests, understanding specific firm activities must include examination not only of the networks themselves but also of public policies which give the major organisations different overall agendas but create the frameworks within which the innovation networks are enmeshed. The paper further stresses the importance for understanding both the 'shape' and 'functioning' of biomedical networks of taking account of the institutional context (hospitals and universities) and the bargains made between the players which form both the immediate environment and the broader framework of a country's national system of innovation. The study discussed here also indicates how actor-centred networks ebb and flow over time as the institutional and competitive/collaborative context, as between government, business and reseazrch institutions, is altered by the broader rules of the competition game.
The now voluminous international literature on networks indicates both the diversity of 'networks' located in empirical studies and the diversity of the theoretical approaches used to analyse their activities. The analytical approaches range from those closest to transaction cost economics to those which focus on actor-centred bargaining and look more closely at institutional form (Riemens 1996 provides a good summary). This literature now includes empirical studies of diverse private and public sector, formal and informal networks. Increasing interest by governments in driving greater economic growth through leveraging university research and translating it into commercial activity has meant that some kinds of networks have been deliberately created by governments as instruments of economic policy. These include policies which link private firms and public researchers into centres such as the Cooperative Research Centres in Australia and affect the funds available to researchers in the biomedical field.
Such Centres are one instance of collaboration between private and public sector partners. The notions lying behind their creation rely, however, on rather limited theories about the role in innovation of other important players and neglect many dimensions of interaction between the four sets of players - users, producers, researchers and government regulators - which critically affect the outcomes of network innovative activities and which link players into 'innovation complexes'. Including these four sets of players is particularly relevant to understanding innovative activity in the biomedical sector in countries with strong public health systems.
The importance of considering all four sets of players is clear from a broader range of innovation literature which relates to the biomedical and scientific instrument industries. The study reported here uses insights from specific work carried out in the UK, the USA and Denmark. This work emphasises the importance for innovation in these industries of users (von Hippel, 1976 and 1989 and Riggs and von Hippel, 1994 and Roberts, 1988) and the influence of individuals in clinical or medical settings. Shaw in the UK equally found that more than half of the biomedical innovations he studied were developed through multiple and continuous interaction between users and suppliers (1986). Recent work by Lotz in Denmark found a similar pattern but one where user input relied especially on the high level science generated in the user's environment, thus bringing in extra players. The more high tech the product the more innovation depends on the interaction between medical centre, universities and firms (de Vet and Scott, 1992).
The more innovation takes place, however, the more public regulators are involved in the biomedical field but there are few studies of their influence as it is applied in conjunction with users and producers (for instance, Hauptman and Roberts' [1987] study was only of the impact of regulation on young firms in the biomedical field). Moreover, the adoption and use of the devices and instruments created depends on the functioning of major organisational systems, whether public or private health systems. The nature of the networks involved and their success depend greatly on the skill with which they can manage these intra- and inter-organisational players. Since the major users are in the public sector in many OECD countries the interaction between players must also take account of broader policies with different goals. These aspects of the functioning of networks are too often neglected in studies of networks; their importance, however, is clear as the present resarch shows.
The study reported here examines some innovation-related networks which link companies, hospitals, universities and government regulators together into innovation complexes. The example is Australia but the research suggests that the nature of the relationships is likely to be similar in most OECD nations. The study reports on interviews with 40 companies in the biomedical industry in Australia, with surgeons and other specialists and technology administrators in the public hospital sector, with university departments in the biomedical and bioengineering fields and with government regulators and standards agencies. The focus is on the generation of product ideas and the functioning of the networks which bring these ideas into commercial production and use in the health market.
The project's results indicate the complexity of the interactions involved and the need for both analysts and public policy promoters of closer links between diverse players in the public and private sectors into innovation networks to understand both the nature of the productive/user/researcher/regulator links involved and the impact of broader policies for the field, in this case notably payments systems for hospitals. Recent work by Hicks and her colleagues has indicated that the medical area constitutes a separate part of the British science system. It seems likely that this is so in other countries. The study reported here suggests that one of the major reasons for such separation lies in the institutional and competitive/collaborative networks operating in the knowledge-producing and product-generating environment of biomedicine. The especial importance of both individuals and organisational users to private firm innovation in the biomedical field shown by the studies referred to above gives greater power here than in other fields to the policies of the users in generating particular outcomes to network activity. The user organisations which dominate networks unite them into a total system through bargains based on the strategic use of their funding. These bargains are in turn dominated in most OECD countries by the governments which supply the funding for health purposes more encompassing than innovation alone. This means that the operation of the networks is shaped by the bargains which their members are able to make both individually and collectively. For this reason the paper argues that both the nature and operation of the innovation networks and the nature and outcomes of the innovative activity generated can only be understood in the broader organisational and policy/political context. Not understanding this is a critical reason why many policies for research commercialisation are less than successful.
References
Hauptman, O. and E. Roberts, 1987 'FDA regulation of product risk and its impact on young biomedical firms', Research Policy 14: 138-148 Hippel, E. von, 1976 'The dominant role of users in the scientific instrument innovation process', Resesarch Policy, 5: 212-239 Hippel, E. von 1978 'Successful industrial products from customer ideas', Research Technology Management 32(3): 24-27 Lotz, P. 1991 Demand side effects on product innovation: the case of medical devices, Copenhagen Business School, Institute of Industrial Research Riemens, W. 1996 Innovation Networks and Public Policy, Doctoral thesis, Australian National University, Canberra Riggs, W and E. von Hippel 1994 'Incentives to innovate and the sources of innovation: the case of scientific instruments', Research Policy 23: 459-469 Roberts, E. 1988 'Technological Innovation and medical devices' in K.Ekelman (ed.) New Medical Devices and Use, Washington: National Academy Press Shaw, B. 1994 'User-supplier links in innovation' in M. Dodgson and R.Rothwell (eds) The Handbook of Industrial Innovation, Aldershot: Edward Elgar pp275-284
Selecting Knowledge for Commercialization: Swedish Policy for Biotechnology Process Technology
Maureen McKelvey and Bo Persson
One crucial issue for the future location of research is how and why certain aspects of scientific research become commercializedþand others not. This paper will analyze these questions of þhow and why commericalizationþ in terms of selection environments, meaning we will study incentives for and institutions supporting such knowledge-seeking activities. These concepts have previously been developed in relation to evolutionary theory in McKelvey (1997 and forthcoming); defining selection processes is one of the greatest challenges facing use of evolutionary theorizing for socio-economic processes (Nelson 1987).
This paper will further develop this line of research by analyzing selection of knowledge generating processes at different levels, namely firstly at the level of government policy implementation and secondly at the level of how firms select what university-based research to commercialize either through direct use or through incorporation into the firm. Thus, rather than study scientific (engineering) knowledge production per se, we wish to examine selection in relation to policy making and in relation to firms.
As little work has been done to specify how such selection processes work, we will use the example of Swedish government policy for Biotechnology Process Technology to generate some hypotheses and ways of interpreting the complex issues of research interactions. This policy is interesting in the context of the Triple Helix idea in that it was explicitly designed to support industrially relevant research and also to explicitly bring together university researchers and industrial researchers through combined government and firm financing (Nutek 1997).
Furthermore, this is an interesting empirical area due to related aspects involving current research policy trends and for firms. The funding agency, the Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development (Nutek), has also supported a þcompetence centerþ at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, to consolidate the long term development of a critical mass of researchers in the area (see also Persson 1997 on consortias in New Materials). Ten companies in pharmaceuticals and food have been involved in þindustry contact groupsþ and put 0,4 Mkr into research compared to Nutekþs 7,5 Mkr over a 6 year period (Nutek 1997). Thus, this policy seems to be an interesting nexus of relations and interactions among knowledge production for different uses and motives.
The paper will begin with conceptual and theoretical considerations of selection as an element of evolutionary processes of knowledge production. For our two levels of analysisþpolicy implementation and firm involvement, we intend to discuss issues such as the level at which selection occurs, what is selected, what criteria are used by different types of actors and how make choices related to different purposes, etc. Based on this analysis, the paper will draw some conclusions about the possibilities and limits of government policy in relation to a reconceptualization of the public vs. private goods dimension of knowledge.
Factors Influencing the Future Location of Research
The Triple Helix model offers a good framework with which to consider the diverse changes occurring in research in interaction with each other. This also applies to the relationships between organization and content structures in research and their changes. This presentation will examine two relevant aspects of these relationships - based upon analyses in Germany.
1. Institutional and Cognitive Research Structures
Every research system faces the problem of differentiation and integration, or the division of labor and cooperation between various research activities.
In the former German Democratic Republic, politics demanded that science and production be closely connected: The strong political pressure exerted on the Academy of Sciences (AoS) resulted in its institutes developing a partially successful integration of basic and applied research. As a broadly based and detailed analysis has shown (Gl„ser/Meske 1996), the specific research policy in the GDR had two essential effects. Firstly, it led to a stronger application orientation in research in general, which lead to a tendency to reduce capacities for basic research. Secondly, within the individual disciplines in the AoS, it resulted in basic research focusing on a specific 'sector', which we termed "integratable basic research". This is a preference for basic research topics that at least latently allow future possibilities for application to be discerned regarding the object of study, the methods used, etc. Other areas of research, in which such connections were not discernible, were increasingly excluded.
As the discussion of the conditions of integration of basic and applied research showed, on the one hand, both of these effects and processes are characteristic of the AoS of the GDR. But, on the other hand, they are not necessarily bound to state socialist science systems. They were caused by a specific relationship between external demands and research institutes' internal interests. This can also arise in societies with functionally completely differentiated science systems.
Our analyses of newly established research institutes in East Germany have shown that a strong orientation towards the application of the research has continued. This has less to do with political pressure than with significant financial pressure (consideration of the interests of the funding bodies). The increasingly strong involvement of the academic sector (both universities and publicly funded institutes) in applied research means that a continuing shift in the spectrum of research topics dealt with must also be reckoned with here. This will have a long-term impact on the cognitive profile of the research. This tendency is strengthened by the short-term framework of the research projects and contracts. In contrast, larger projects, based on many years of study, are increasingly being pushed into the background.
What impact this move away from curiosity oriented topics will have on the research landscape remains an open question.
2. Institutional and Geographic Location of Research
There are obviously very diverse relationships between the contents and objectives of research on the one hand and the relevant environments on the other hand. While primarily discipline oriented basic research tends to show global dimensions with a specialized scientific community, applied research and development, with more of an innovation orientation and for the most part interdisciplinary, is much more dependent on regional networks that also include innovative firms. This is the case in particular because of the significance of tacit knowledge in the initial phase of an innovation (Audretsch/Feldmann 1995). Especially for the countries undergoing transformation in Central and Eastern Europe, this results in difficult orientation problems. The former networks both of the scientific communities in the CMEA region and of the innovative activities in the respective countries are undergoing radical change. Basic research within disciplines must meet an international standard but often lacks the necessary facilities and other preconditions to do so. On the other hand, the partners in industry required for more innovation oriented activities are no longer present. This raises questions about the structure and future of national research in many countries or regions in Eastern Europe. This question is closely linked to the relationship between globalization and regionalization of research landscapes and the ensuing perspectives for research's future structure, including its geographic structure, on a European and world scale. The question of the future location of research refers not only to the character of the institutions but also to their geographic distribution. (This aspect will be further clarified in a NATO workshop in August 1997 in Budapest.)
References
Audretsch, David B. /Feldmann, Maryann P.: Innovative Clusters and the Industry Life Cycle, Discussion Paper FS IV 95-7, WZB, Berlin 1995
Gl„ser, Jochen /Meske, Werner:Anwendungsorientierung von Grundlagenforschung? Erfahrungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR, Schriften des Max-Plank-Instituts fr Gesellschaftsforschung, Cologne, Band 25, Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag 1996
The model of the triple helix of government, industry and academic relationships proposed by Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz creates a comprehensive framework for the study of their internal changes, interactions, cross-linkages, and the cumulative and recursive effects of change. The motivation for such changes is the realisation of economic gain through innovation and the exploitation of knowledge. In this, governments have often been prime movers. The present paper seeks to explore how other government aims and responsibilities, which are social rather than economic, may get drawn into this change process, and discusses the implications for the future of these functions and the further evolution of the triple helix.
Left hand; right hand The area selected for study is biomedical research - an area with outstanding potential for exploitation for commercial gain via the development of medicines and new biological technologies. Government, industry and university relationships have evolved rapidly, and generally very positively, though with continuing strains in the government/university relationship. There is general acceptance that involvement of the the commercial sector is an effective, indeed an essential, step in assuring that the results of biomedical research reach the public in the form of health care products and treatments.
With regard to development of medicines, though, government has a separate, central role which is quite distinct from its mission to further economic advancement - that of protector of the public health against unsafe products. A similar duality exists in relation to other industries which have impact on public health and safety, or on the environment. How far does this left hand know what the right hand is doing?
The regulatory function for biological medicines is a useful tool for exploring these issues because, being closely science-based, it relies, just as does the innovatory framework, on the exploitation and harnessing to practical purposes of scientific knowledge and industrial expertise. The cross-sectoral linkages that have evolved for regulatory purposes now find themselves in a relationship - and possibly in conflict - with new alignments and new structures for cooperative working.
In this paper the regulation of biological medicines is used to explore these tensions in the system and to derive messages about: * the interdependence of innovation and regulation * the problems of infrastructure and sustainablility under the new system * the place for social accountability in the working of the triple helix.
Present alignments The paper sets out the relevant background on medicines regulation and the nature of biologicals, and discusses the structures that have grown up, both for innovative R&D and regulation, and the division of labour commonly found between government (including public sector research establishments), industry, and academia. Although reference is primarily to the UK, the principles (though not the institutional details) are common to the European Union, North America and most advanced countries. With regard to regulatory control, the coordinating role of WHO and other bodies is also considered.
The predominant pattern is one of strong research activity for new developments generally in both industrial and academic laboratories, while R&D relating to medicines control has been the province of industrial laboratories and public sector research establishments especially, with little university involvement.
Forces for change The relative ease of the transition, in the biomedical field, to a new model of government;industry/academia working in support of innovation is in contrast with the greater potential instabilities in science-based medicines control. Among the issues arising are: * lack of structures to enable the control function to keep pace with innovation * future location of research currently undertaken within public sector establishments * sustainablility of specialist expertise * the transfer of functions previously undertaken by government to the private sector * public confidence These are discussed through reference to published work and responses to a questionnaire directed at relevant industry, and the public health and research communities (publication in preparation). Adaptations may be needed to the development of the triple helix model predicated on innovation, to take account of these concerns.
Industrial Science in the Evolutionary Perspective
The aim of the paper is to assess the institutional changes of the industrial science capacities with respect to their embedding into the specific socio-cultural context (of Middle Europe), and their dis-embedding effects and re-embedding efforts mobilized by the recent radicalized modernization drive, which has been setting through in the course of the transformation of the Central and East European (CEE) countries. The Middle European institutional context of industrial science is noted by the formation of in-house research laboratories being challenged by the firm`s strategies and market environments on one hand, and on the other hand by the corporate research establishments (like Fraunhofer Society in Germany) being shaped by the associative capacities of the industries, the interactive capacities between the private and public sectors and shaping the forms of the governmental (state) involvement into industrial science. Moreover, these corporate and etatistic arrangements were playing an important role in the formation of linkages between the academic and industrial sciences. The traditional forms of this sort of academy-industry- government (A-I-G) setting in the Middle European context have been re-shaped by the socialist etatization: the industrial science capacities were re-distributed closer to corporate and state levels, the environments of code sharing re-shaped from horizontal and interactive communicative regimes to the vertical and hierarchical ones. Such radicalized institutional change of the A-I-G setting has had two crucial social implications for the industrial science: (i) split of the industrial science (technological) community by new institutional pattern as well as the formation of confrontation-oriented boundaries between new institutional forms (of the governmental and enterprise levels), and (ii) the growth of the diffused informal communication networks. In the evolutionary perspective the intermediary role of the industrial science (between public/private, government/industry, science/technology, research/development etc.) has been weakened while the competitive capacities of the whole A-I-G setting have been declining.
The next stage of the evolutionary change of the A-I-G setting in the CEE countries seems to be emerging in the course of the transformations in the CEE countries. The concluding part of the paper is oriented to the analysis of the dis-embedding and re-embedding routes & effects in the sphere of the industrial science in the Czech Republic (CR) which have been studied within the wider framework of the three year project1. Due to the radical de-etatization of the regulatory regimes in the CR, and the following privatization of the industrial science institutions, the evolutionary pattern of the traditional institutional setting has been challenged: the industrial R&D organizations have been mobilized to search for growth within the private competitive environments only without any traditional associative and public environments have been available (contrary to the developments e.g. in Hungary and Poland). Such situation has essentially influenced the relationship of the industrial science to the public science (academic science and government`s S&T efforts and policies). It has also mobilized wide range of the adaptive efforts within the industrial science institutions.
These forms will be assessed and classified by their functional (knowledge producing), communicative and organizational features. The typical adaptive responses of the industrial science to the changing (widely liberalized and globalizing) environment will be suggested. The specific attention will be paid to the re-emerging interfaces within the national A-I-G setting. It will be examined to what extent these interfaces are indicating niches of the effective responses to the new selective environments and the reliable forms of reflective practices.
Notes:
1. Research project "Recovery of the Innovation Potential of the Czech Industries in the Environment of the Economic Reform" funded by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic
Partnerships configurations and dynamics in the creation/development of SMEs by researchers
The work conducted (see recent paper in SPP) showed that companies which developed faster were those who started having already established an effective network encompassing both investors and funding bodies, lead users, research partnerships and other industrial partners (turned from sub- to co-contractors).
In the coming presentation, I propose to examin the different types of partnership configurations focusing on the geographical extension of networks. One of the hypothesis I shall test can be phrased as follows: Local connections are crucial for the starting period while changing scale lies in the capability in enlarging (and in great part renewing) the sphere of major partners.
Differences between types of partnerships (research labs, lead users, venture capital or production/distribution partners) will be examined. The follow-up of 200 companies will also enable to bring light to the on-going debate emphasizing sectoral patterns.
In September 1987, the Montreal protocol was signed, phasing out the use of chlorofluorocarbon-gas (CFC) based refrigerants. As is well known, CFC-based refrigerants were identified as destroyers of the ozone-layer, which leads to higher doses of UV-radiation coming through to the ground, causing skin-cancer and damage to crops.
Heat-pumps, as refrigerators and air-conditioners, are one of the technologies dependent of refrigerants. The heat-pumping cycle uses a refrigerant as working-fluid. The working-fluid transports heat from the cold side to the hot side in the cycle. The properties of the working-fluid is of great importance for both the design of the heat-pump and its economic feasibility. Unlike refrigerators, whose energy-efficiency is an non-theme, a heat-pump has to compete with other alternatives in energy-supply systems, which makes efficiency of crucial importance for implementation.
Also, the growing focus on climatic change the last decades, with a climax at the Rio-conference in 1992, has brought alternative, and more energy-efficient energy-supplies to attention.
The paper sets out to explore how the change in environmental regimes, especially the banning of CFC, has influenced the field of heat-pumping technologies.
This is done first by assessing the ozone-depletion regime and the climate-change regime, thereby trying to locate and define distinct breaks where the regimes have changed.
Second, a quantitative material is used for analysis of the field. The material consist of some 6.700 publications in the heat-pump area for the period 1986 to 1996. The publications is of varying types, including journal-articles, patents, reports and books. Using the breaks in regimes, the material is ordered in periods and analysed for each period. Keywords are used as indicators in the analysis, but also publication type are used. It is often pointed out that patents are a good indicator of industrial involvement [Schmoch]
Last, the results are discussed, comparing an systems theory approach [Leydesdorff & vd. Besselaar, Luhmann], with a discourse analytic approach [Gilbert & Mulkay, Foucault].
Knowledge Production in Transition: Merging together Scientific and Technological cultures?
The paper focuses on the analysis of collaboration between universities and industry as a mechanism of knowledge production and knowledge transfer. It particularly focuses on the changing nature of the academic research culture in the transformation of knowledge production. From a theoretical point of view, the paper sets out to explore the concept of 'new knowledge production'. It questions the existence of unified cultures, scientific and technological. Assuming their existence, it will study how they meet in research practice. The scientific culture refers to the norms, criteria of relevance and quality and the professional ideology of the scientists and the technological culture to those of the technological community (scientists and engineers in companies involved in R&D). The theoretical starting point discussed in this paper is provided by the approaches based on the transformation of science and technology which have been raised by Gibbons et al. (1994) and Ziman (1994). They suggest that key features in modern science include increasing research project management, networking, collaboration, internationalization, transdisciplinarity, social reflexitivity and the changing evaluation criteria in science. These observations provide tools for analysing and conceptualizing the production of new knowledge as a concrete activity such as research collaboration.
In recent years, interaction between industrial and public sector research, especially academic research, has increased. This trend is to a great extent due to societal and economic demands and to an ever more severe competition of research funding. This ongoing phenomenon has increased the heterogeneity of research practices. Traditional categories such as 'basic' and 'applied' research have lost their analytical usefulness as conceptual tools for describing the nature of scientific activity.
There has also been a growing body of policy research examining the linkages between industrial and public sector research, especially academic research. In spite of an intensive research interest, the focus has tended to be mainly on structural and institutional mechanisms of the interaction between public sector research and industry. Little attention has been paid to the processes of knowledge production and to the dynamics of knowledge transfer. In particular, few researchers appear to have studied the actual hindrances to successful collaboration between industrial and public sector research? Little attention has been given to identifying differences in the academic and industrial research cultures. However, analyses of cultural differencies between actors should prove to be a promising alternative to the analyses that operate only at the institutional level.
The paper presents data of research collaboration between different types of institutions such as private enterprises, universities and government research institutes. It uses preliminary results of an ongoing research project on impacts of Finnish participation in European research programmes. Data have been collected by questionnaires returned by 359 participants and semi-structured interviews with 47 Finnish participants in EU research programmes.
The study will examine the cultural differences between objectives, problems of collaboration and knowledge utilization among industrial, academic or other public research institute participants working on joint projects. The analysis will cover questions such as the motives and goals of actors on each side. How do the academic researchers meet industrial needs? What do academic researchers gain from collaboration with private enterprises? According to the premilinary results, academic researchers were more satisfied with the collaboration than their industrial partners. This raises the question of the criteria for success or failure of research projects in the different institution.
Innovation in Japan and the Universities
After an introductory remark in Section 1 on the emergence of heated discussion and policy recommendations in Japan to emphasize the need to promote research and development, particularly in basic research, the paper discusses three issues. Section 2 re-assesses Japan's R&D performance with particular emphasis on the number and quality of scientific papers and on the link between science and technology. Section 3 discusses university-industry research collaborations in Japan. It is difficult to understand fully the impact of these collaborations because many of them are apparently made in informal manners and few of them apply for patents jointly. Although they seem to be increasing, the inflexibility in national university administration, the lack of support in patent management, and the shortage of research supporting staff are handicapping university researchers. Section 4 discusses the so-called 'science-shy' phenomenon, namely, the decrease in applications to science and engineering departments relatively to those in humanities and social science departments. It is suggested that this phenomenon was partly caused by an economic factor, that is, a lower expected income after graduation from science and engineering departments, and a supply factor, that is, the government policy that depended on private universities, which preferred to expand less costly humanities and social science departments, to achieve the increased enrollment.
INDUSTRY-UNIVERSITY COOPERATION IN LATIN AMERICA: OLD DILEMMAS AND NEW CHALLENGES
Exactly thirty years ago, in 1967, S bato and Botana proposed a model to use science and technology (S&T) to overcome Latin Americaþs state of underdevelopment. Known as S batoþs Triangle, this normative model prescribed establishing strong interrelations among three players in a given nation, namely its S&T infra-structure (universities, public and private R&D centers), the productive structure, and government policies - each one being represented by a vertix in the triangle. Dramatic changes in regional politics and economics were necessary before their recommendations could enter the agendas of the three actors, almost a quarter of a century later. This has been especially true with regard to the interaction between the S&T infrastructure and the productive sector -- the two elements that constitute the base of S batoþs Triangle.
The 1990þs are indeed witnessing major conceptual, attitudinal, and environmental transformations, which result in a steep increase in the intensity and quality of the relations between industry and academia in Latin America. One of the changes is that the more advanced concept of cooperation is replacing the traditional linear innovation idea of expanding the commercial transactions between university and industry (measured in terms of R&D services sold) as the ultimate goal to be attained. This goes along with Piagetþs notion of advanced learning (by confluencing mental operations rather than just by working together, i.e., þcollaboratingþ), and allows ingenious approaches to the development of interesting forms of joint ventures. For instance, a new location for research was established as a consequence of an agreement between an oil company and a federal public university to jointly develop and export inventive process technology solutions to oil companies in other countries.
Political stereotypes ingrained during the decades of the military regimes which prevailed in Latin America -- when universities were seen as leftist revolutionary nests and privately owned firms, as ruthless capitalist exploiters -- are being replaced by more benign images. If they do not always justify a true partnership, at least they make it acceptable for them to be þstrange bedfellowsþ. Economic and legal frames are being worked out by governments to induce the cooperation -- mainly tax incentives for R&D; soft financing for contracted or cooperative R&D projects; state and private venture capital firms; stimulus for incubators, tech parks and technopoles; and an update in the intellectual property rights laws to include sensitive areas such as food and health products, and genetically engineered forms of life. These are having powerful effects: for instance, the US$ 1.9 billion in R&D programs committed by industries and agriculture during the last four years in Brazil under the tax incentive Law 8661 brought about many opportunities for creative forms of cooperation. One example is Poema (þpoemþ in Portuguese), an acronym for an R&D cooperation project between the Mercedes Benz local subsidiary, the Federal University of Par , and organizations of small producers of babassu (a Brazilian palm tree) and other natural products, which are now being used to þtropicalizeþ auto-parts. However, old dilemmas still exist. From the perspective of the university, they include issues such as: a) strategy: how to imbalance blue sky research, contracted research, and joint developments; b) structure: how to professionalize interfacing structures that respect the academic ethos of each university; c) institutional: how to comprehend university- industry cooperation in career and department evaluation; and d) negotiation: how to change from a cost to an added value approach. The paper provides a synopsis of the recent evolution of industry-university relations in Latin America, based on a study coordinated by the author that covered eleven countries in the region (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela), and on three doctoral dissertations under his supervision, concluded in 1997.
Using both S batoþs Triangle and the Etzkowitz and Leydesdorffþs Triple Helix model as conceptual references, the article analyzes the forces that shape the systems of innovation in the region. Several recent initiatives to promote integration in the region are highlighted. Some result from diplomatic plans, such as the creation of Mercosur. Others result from NGO efforts, such as the creation of CIRAA - Council of Industrial Research Associations in the Americas, which will probably have a major impact in the process of internationalization of R&D. New challenges for industry-university cooperation in the region are presented, and policy recommendations are made, taking into account John W. Kingdonþs observation that patterns of public policy are determined by what gets on the agenda.
The role of the public research system in the national wealth creation through innovations
Sponsored Research Support Program: A Model of University-Industry-Government Collaboration*
This paper presents the historical development, structure and activities carried out during implementation of the Sponsored Research and Development (SPREAD) program, a successful ongoing technology support program of the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI), an Indian developmental financial institution. This program, implemented by the ICICI on behalf of the Government of India and sponsored by the World Bank, is meant specifically for supporting technology institution - industrial firm joint research and development (R&D) projects in India. More than a hundred successful joint R&D projects have been supported by the program so far and this has resulted in more funds being diverted to this program than initially envisaged. The paper presents the context for, and initiation of, the SPREAD program, its structure and the nature of financing provided under it, the program implementation process at the ICICI, the program implementation team at ICICI, the benefits seen by the firm, initial project selection by the ICICI, detailed project proposal requirements from the firm, project appraisal by the ICICI, its sanction process, its selection criteria, its post sanction activities, and assistance given by the ICICI to the firm. The paper finally presents a model of successful university-industry-government interaction and collaboration drawn from this program.
Reference
Prabhu, G.N. (1996) "Joint R&D Projects of Industrial Firms and Technology Institutions with Developmental Financial Institutional Support: A Strategy Process Study" Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ahmedabad: Indian Institute of Management.
THE INTERNET IN BRAZIL : HELICES AT WORK
The Internet is one of the main loci where the Triple Helix of universities- industry-governments relations is shaped. At the same time, it is an example of the Triple Helix at work, in as much it is the result of interactions between the three types of social actors above mentioned. This is certainly the case for advanced countries . But, what about developing countries?
Since the late sixties the Latin American literature on scientific and technological development has pointed out the relationships established between academia, industry and governments as a differentia specifica of the region, as compared with the advanced countries (e.g. Sabato and Botana, 1968; Biato et al. 1971). Specifically, it was shown that the local universities and industry had only very weak interactions and that much stronger relationships existed between the local blades of the helix and their international counterparts. Since then local Governments have tried to foster local interactions, becoming a third helix. Brazil was the country which carried this process further in the region. However the results have been limited, as indicated by recent assessments of scientific and technological development of the country (Schwartzman et al. 1995).
The paper shall be composed by four Sections. The first part will present a description of the evolution of Internet in Brazil, in terms of numbers and types of users, providers and services. The second part will discuss the role played by the academia, private enterprises and Government up to the present. The third part will present some conjectures about how the new regulation framework for telecommunications, recently approved by Congress may affect the development of Internet in Brazil and the role played by the three types of actors. The last Section will address the issue of the specificity of scientific and technological development in less developed countries with reference to the Internet case in Brazil.
References
Biato, F et al. (1971) - Potencial de Pesquisa Tecnol¢gica no Brasil, IPEA, Rio de Janeiro. Sabato, J. and Botana, N. (1968) - La Ciencia y la Tecnologia en el Desarrollo Futuro de America Latina , INTAL, Buenos Aires. Schwartzman et al. (1995) - Science and Technology in Brazil - A New Policy for a Global World, Funda=E7=E3o Getulio Vargas Editora, Rio de Janeiro.
This article discusses the National Software Export Program, SOFTEX - 2.000, the Brazilian industrial policy implemented in 1992. SOFTEX-2.000 is an imaginative answer to new international and national economic conditions, more strongly felt in Brazil since the final years of the last decade. Internationally relevant for the conception of this program were the tendency for economic globalization and the increasing software relevance among information technologies. In Brazil, this program was influenced by the progressive opening of the internal market to international commerce flows and by the failure of the former National Informatic Policy.
SOFTEX-2.000 is a initiative owed to the Brazilian academic computer science community. In fact, it was planned and it is coordinated by outstanding members of this community. The program focal point is the National Research Council (CNPq), an entity of the Ministry of Science and Technology which supports scientific development (teaching and post-graduate research) instead of the technological development supporting entities or the Industry and Commerce Ministry.
As a consequence, similarities may be noticed between the organization and conduction of this program and the usually favored University work methods (team work, peer review, flat structure etc.).
The main activity in the program first phase, ended in 1996, was the establishment of 18 development centers in different Brazilian cities and three offices abroad (Florida/US, Germany and China). The centers aim to stimulate the creation of new firms and to articulate local software firms among themselves and to the program. Participation in SOFTEX-2.000 requires, from each city, through partnership among its institutions (government, entrepreneurial associations, large foruns etc.) a resource contribution equal to that offered by the federal government.
Activities in the centers may be classified in three groups: (1) common activities (the same to all centers) with the support of the program administration (implantation of software development laboratories in order to lower the high cost of their associates investment in new products, in connecting firms and centers to the National Research Network etc.), (ii) complementary activities (partly undertaken by each center, for the benefit of all) - offices maintenance in the exterior, studies, seminars and business rounds, program administration etc. and (iii) specific activities related to their regional realities - agreements with Universities, incubators, programs concerning particular market niches etc.
In order to participate in the program activities, firms submit project proposals to their centers. These are autonomous to choose, among their associates projects, those to make part of the center's plan.
Selection is undertaken by a comission composed by local government representatives, teaching and research institutions and entrepreneurs. The centers, in turn, submit their plans to the program. When approved, the projects are followed by the CNPq. Tasks undertaken by the centers also are yearly evaluated by SOFTEX - 2000. But the program, as a whole, has not been evaluated.
Offices in the exterior support Brazilian software commercialization. These offices have differente working philosophies, derived both from different planning criteria and from prevailing conditions in each country. This kind of operational logic was made possible due to the flexibility prevailing in the program management.
Thus, SOFTEX-2.000 organization is based in decentralization of tasks and decisions and in the cooperation among participants - an example of "network" developed tasks.
In spite of the advantages of this organizational structure, the program main objective will not probably be reached. This objective, stated in the start of SOFTEX - 2000 activities, is a 1% international market participation estimated at the time in two billion dollars.
Among considered causes, are Brazilian software firms small size and insufficient technical dynamism, a resource scarcity for program development (the first phase budget reached 60 million dollars), a choice of exports as the aim of SOFTEX - 2000 and an excessive optimism in determining the export level to be reached. Given economic conditions of the program and of enterprises and the large size of Brazilian internal market, a greater preference for the latter would have mean a greater SOFTEX - 2000 success.
Thus, our main and perhaps rather unusual conclusion is that in the case of SOFTEX - 2000 it is simoultaneously convenient to keep the built structure and reformulate program objectives.
It is also observed in the conclusions, that, in spite of the network design of the program and of many cooperation initiatives, technological activities were relatively less emphasized. The same causes leading to failure in reaching export goals are also valid for this question. To these, the relatively lesser importance attributed by the programe to the encouragement of technological activities may be added.
Technology, Appropriation and Regulation: The Product Space of Plant Varieties
Introduction: The Concept of Product Space
A widely recognised theme in the literature on innovation, appropriation and technology paradigms is that of the specificity of sectoral patterns of evolution of technology. Each sector demonstrates a variation in the trajectory of technological development, the direction of innovation and the patterns and instruments of appropriation. Another substantial theme in this literature, based on the array of empirical studies, is the significant role of technology paradigms in establishing the trajectory of technological development and the preferred mode of appropriation. Here technology paradigms are understood as the context of scientific development, the scientific principles used which are derived from the relevant field of natural science, the material technology used, the rules, heuristics and the organisational strategies used to safeguard `newþ knowledge.
The objective of the paper is to contribute to this discipline by developing the notion of the product space by studying the process of commodification. The notion of product space is based on the three domains of technology, appropriation and regulation. The notion is built on the observation that technologies along with their `productsþ have characteristics that substantially demarcate them along sectoral lines. Appropriation is substantially contingent on the prevailing technology and its material manifestation through the commercialisation of products. The degree and method of appropriation is contingent on the level of control inventors possess and exercise. Control is based on the prevailing regulations that aim to govern the actualisation of the technology - the scope of protection, patent laws, anti-trust legislation, global harmonisation of property rights, safety and health regulations, etc.
The notion of the product space is an attempt to delineate the regularities and patterns in the process of commodification of `knowledgeþ that characterise each technological sector. This process is based on the relationship between technological paradigms, the innovation strategies of firms and the system of regulations that are aimed at controlling production and appropriation in the sector. The paper proceeds to develop this for a particular activity, plant breeding, so as to identify the commodification of seeds.
Characterising Seeds and Plant Breeding
The first task in instrumentalising the notion is to identify the characteristics of the sector (plant breeding) and its particular product (plant varieties/seeds). This starting point is based on the presumption that it is properties of the product/technology that substantially determine the technological materialisation of a science and the route adopted to enable appropriation/commodification.
At a general level, plant breeding is peculiarly confronted by the fact that its object (plant variety) is a living organism and also an item of (physiological) consumption. In many instances the seed is not only a means of production (seed) but also the means of consumption (grain). This has raised a number of ethical problems in establishing legal property rights as well as in the materialisation of specific strategies of appropriation and directions of innovation. Reflective of these tensions are found in the nature of the property rights that have been established for plant breeders - plant breedersþ rights (PBRs) are a `softþ form of patents and incorporate exemptions for researchers and consumers (farmers) unlike patent law.
Apart from the above ethical dimension to the problem of appropriation and property rights, it is worth noting that plant breeding faces an obstacle in demarcating invention from discovery. Further, some of the results achieved by breeders are not easily disclosed; in a patent law sense, the invention is inadequately disclosed making its replication by another reasonably skilled in the art difficult. It was only for asexually propagated species that substantially stability of the variety and sufficient description were possible. These have been some of the problems associated with plant breeding concerned with the issue of introducing property rights.
The seed itself displays a number of attributes that have made the formation of a stable and substantial market for appropriation a problem. These problems have then impinged on the route to commodification and the direction of research adopted. The paper identifies four specific attributes: (a) duality of properties, (b) inheritance and ease of (re)production, (c) limited adaptation and (d) durability of genetic information. The paper present each of these characteristics of the seed and relates them to the strategies of appropriation adopted, the patterns of technological development pursued and the nature of property rights provided.
The Product Space of Plant Varieties
For analytical reasons the paper presents the analysis in this section along two themes; (a) the technological space of plant varieties and (b) the commercial space of plant varieties. It is acknowledged that substantial interplay exists and occurs between the factors identified under each theme.
Discussion on the technological space of plant varieties identifies three tensions and tendencies: (a) the discontinuous coverage of PBRs such that a limited set of species are protected by legislation, (b) the problematic stabilisation of a legal definition of plant varieties and (c) the erection of sui generis conditions of grant of protection that in themselves form barriers to entry into the seed market. These tendencies reflect that characteristics of the activity of plant breeding as well as the peculiarities of its product, the seed.
Discussion of the commercial dimensions to the product space take note of the strategies of innovation and the routes to appropriate a greater share of the value of inventions. Here attention is focussed on the attempts to circumvent some of the obstacles to establishing the commodity status of seeds that were noted earlier.
The tendencies discussed are: (a) the gradual expansion of the legal scope of protection so as to incorporate a wider range of transactions and activities related to seeds and derived products, (b) the use of international conventions to harmonise regimes of protection so as to widen the geographical scope of the right (i.e., its economic arena) and (c) the use of allied regulations to control the competition in the seed market. These tendencies and trajectories are related to the strategies of innovation and appropriation such as the evolution of a social division of labour between public and private research in plant breeding. This division of labour has enabled the expropriation of public research. Another important route has been the development of a shared research domain between seeds and chemicals; this is materially manifested in the merger/acquisition of seed companies by petrochemical companies. A number of empirical observations are made to provide support for the tendencies that have been identified.
Conclusion
The paper concludes by discussing the relevance of the notion of `product spaceþ for research on the interface between science-technology and society. A particular feature of the notion is emphasised which relates to its recognition of the role of regulation in impinging appropriation and technological development.
Uma Bala Rallabhandi** Ancient History Consultant, Hyderabad, India.
Rajyalakshmi Karumanchi Contemporary Political Scientist, Lisbon, Portugal.
Intermediary bodies as engines of the future location of research in postmodern research systems
Emanuela Reale and Anna Maria Scarda
Studies carried out by the main international organizations (Oecd-EU) about strategies on science and technology and resources devoted to often used the expression `research system' to describe changes that in different countries affect this field, such as modifications in incentive organizations and instruments, missions and resources of the different actors, their policies and links, the impact of new technologies for the access to information and the dissemination of knowledge. The dynamic of the system is so high and the boundaries between actors are so fluxing that very often policy-makers (considered as principal) are not able to manage changements by imposing their own goals both to researchers and institutions (considered as agents).
A new approach in definition of modern (national) research system was elaborated by Rip A.and van der Meulen J.R. (1996) in which the conceptualization of the systemic character "is predicated on the collective character of the scientific endeavour, and on the role of modern state which has created the `national' character of these systems".
Following this approach the institutional landscape of modern research systems and their functioning can be characterised along two dimensions: the steering dimension and the aggregation dimension. The first one focuses its analysis on the attempts of the state to have scientists that pursuit its goal: the aim of this feature is to describe the capability of the research system to respond to steering impulses; the second dimension refers to processes of agenda-building and the actors of this process, both organizations and researchers. The focus of this second dimension is on the existence of infrastructures that can support that process: the intermediary bodies can play an important function in establish the agenda-building process within institutions.
The first part of our work is devoted to map the italian research system by using this analytic framework: in this way we can compare the characteristics of our country with the other countries examined by Rip A. and van der Meulen J.R. (1996). The results of this exercise show a system in which both the dimensions of steering and aggregation are low, but this two systemic features, steering and aggregation, are susceptible to evolve from this level to a more intermediate one.
In the second part of the paper we will discuss the usefulness of this map to understand the university-government-industry relationships as described by the triple helix model; analysis carried out by using both those approaches could help policy- makers in reading the evolutionary process affecting scientific research. In our work we concentrated on the policy of the National Council of Research (NCR), which operate as intermediary body between the three institutional spheres involved in the process.
The examen of its influence in two of the four dimensions to the development of the triple helix - the influence of one helix upon another and the creation of trilateral networks and organizations from the interactions among the three helices - is crucial for the comprehension of both the principal and agents strategies and to operationalize the synthesis scores of the aggregation and steering dimensions in mapping national research system.
The NCR policy and its relationships with other components (both institutions and researchers) of the scientific context is examined through its funding activities, its research network and its measures to overcome regional imbalances (economic, social and cultural imbalances). Within the measures which attain to both organization and scientific activity, NCR located its research bodies in 18 research areas throughout Italy to integrate internal skills and competences with other scientific, technological, industrial organizations and to promote the local development, expecially in less developed regions.
References
Cozzens S.E., Healey P., Rip A., Ziman J.(1990), The Research System in Transition, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht van der Meulen B.J.R., Rip A.(1994) Research Institutes in Transition, Eburon, Delft
Gibbons et al.(1994), The New Production of Knowledge, Sage, London Rip A., van der Meulen B.J.R.(1996), The post-modern research system, Science and Public Policy, Vol. 23, No.6
Nevill Reeve & Sally Davenport
The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and impact of radical changes to the structure of public sector funded research science and technology in New Zealand. This has involved the dismantling of existing structures, the creation of new institutions, new mechanisms for research allocation and prioritisation and clearer definition of the role and purpose for public sector research. The focus will be on the public sector since this traditionally has been the largest component of New Zealandþs research performing system although as will be shown, one major aspect of the reforming agenda has been the need to better define and develop the link between public and private sector activity.
New Zealand has been in the vanguard of radical changes to the role and structure of the public sector which many countries have implemented since the beginning of the 1980s. In the particular case of New Zealand some have argued that the trigger was the effects of massive turbulence in the currency markets and downward pressure on the value of the New Zealand dollar. Also important was a change in political leadership which brought a new government. As has been pointed out by others however, the genesis of the changes probably occurred many years before, as the former system of protected markets, industrial subsidy and widespread state intervention in most areas of economic and social life came to be increasingly inappropriate in the face of enormous developments to the world economy. A further factor undoubtedly was the influence of free-market thinking coming from other countries. The election of governments with similar reforming agendas in the USA, UK and to some lesser extent Germany provided enormous leverage for the New Zealand approach.
A guiding principle for the changes to government institutional structures has been the separation between the funding of services, the provision of services and the development of relevant policy advice. This separation can be seen nowhere more clearly than with the new structure which has been applied to public sector scientific research.
Before the þchangesþ, New Zealand had a sophisticated although highly centralised system of public sector research based mainly on the operation of key departments. These included the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), a specialist multidisciplinary science organisation, as well as, amongst others, Agriculture and Forestry which had science divisions. The DSIR model was borrowed from Britain, itself having a DSIR until the early 1960s, and was similar to bodies found in other countries such as Australia, India and South Africa. Funding was by a block grant with the DSIR managing its own affairs through a complex network of research establishments. Scientific research priorities were set according to the excellence of the science and its relevance to New Zealand.
Several new bodies were created as part of the reform process. 1989 saw the establishment of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology (MoRST) to manage the development of policy and to set the strategic direction, and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology (FRST) to manage the process of allocating funding. In 1992, the passing of the Crown Research Institutes Act transformed the research performed in government departments to a series of ten (now nine) Crown Research Institutes (CRIs). While empowered with a great many of the freedoms of private sector companies such as the ability to borrow funds and form joint ventures, CRIs were also required to act in a manner which was to the benefit of New Zealand.
The effect of the changes to science has been to synthesise a market for research. The government in the form of the Minister of Research, Science and Technology is the purchaser. Strategic direction is developed by MoRST, including the system of research priorities, and presented as advice to government for it to adopt. The government then issues a statement of priorities which FRST applies to create programmes of research to be performed by so-called science providers. A key feature of this reform has been to introduce contestability to the purchasing process. Thus, CRIs must compete for research programmes, not only amongst themselves but also with universities and all other credible science providers including firms.
Accompanying the institutional changes to the New Zealand science system was the recognition that a new approach was required for the development of national research priorities. The key issues were clarity in the allocation of funding including an external review of programmes with regard to both excellence and relevance, and increased accountability in performance. Also crucial was the need to link priorities more closely to the strategic issues affecting New Zealandþs economy, society and environment. So far there have been two þpriority setting exercisesþ, the first in 1992 and the second in 1995. A revised statement will be issued in 1998. With a planned three year life for each set of priorities, the results of the next exercise are due to be applied from the middle of 2000. A common feature of the processes has been the use of a series of key factors to guide discussions and decision making. These are as follows:
Strategic Importance (the potential contribution of the output achieving the Governmentþs economic, environmental and social goals) Potential of science in each output (the likelihood that research will achieve results) Potential of users to capture benefits (the extent to which users of research in the output will capture its benefit, and their timeliness in dong so) Research capacity (the quantity and quality of resources available in New Zealand to support current and future research) Research intensity (the extent to which the sector is investing in research for its success) Appropriateness of PGSF funding (the extent to which research in the output should be funded from the public sources compared to other sources)
Even though it is now around five years since most of the major structural changes were completed its still not possible to say what the real effects have been. Certainly the new system is more rational, contestable, consultative, transparent and overall more rigorous. It is apparent however that most of the attempts to quantify the success of the new structure and mechanisms have focused on issues of process-how many projects are completed on time, the delivery of research outputs, the income and profitability of the CRIs. Interestingly, the tendency towards mechanistic auditing of process rather than demonstration of real beneficial effects as the basis for assessment has been acknowledged as one area in which the larger New Zealand reform process has been at its weakest. It is important also to note that there have been areas where success has been less apparent and the paper will examine some of these points.
Above all there would seem to be two issues which dominate thoughts for evolving the system. The first of these concerns the relationship between private and publicly funded research. In the past, concerns about appropriability and the possibility of public sector research displacing private sector activity have caused, it is fair to say, some difficulties. At worst, science providers have found difficulty interpreting government statements which on the one hand have sought economic outcomes from science while at the same time have been perceived as failing to give clear guidance on the role of science providers in this process. Recently issued government instructions have addressed this particular issue. Yet there remains still a clear problem in that research in New Zealand continues to be dominated by the public sector. Government policy has made it a priority to encourage higher levels of private sector funded research and at the same time greater alignment and linkage between the two areas.
A second matter of concern is that the strategic element of the research prioritisation process must take a longer and more far-sighted view. There is a need to build priorities on the basis of a collective vision of what the future might look like and what sort of economy environment and society we are to have.
In attempting to address both of the above concerns it is now proposed to broaden the scope of the priority setting process to include a significant Foresighting element. This will attempt to establish a wide consensus among key stakeholders including industry, government and the research community on the future of science and technology research in New Zealand. The aim is to think beyond short-term successes and recognise that Foresight is part of a longer-term process which will shape abilities to deliver results and, ultimately, help to realise a collective vision of New Zealandþs economy and society. The planning for this new Foresighting exercise is currently in progress with the expectation that the exercise will roll-out in the Autumn of 1997.
Research, Technology and Development
The analysis of the interaction Technology and Development must be seen in its spatial, sectorial and temporal dimensions. The spatial dimension must enhance, by one side, the differences of performance in research, technological development and entrepreneurship competitiviness in different zones of the Globe and, by the other side, the influence that the local has, with their values, history and culture: in resume its performance through the cycle, research-technological innovation-entrepreneurial competitiviness-economic development.
Concerning to the sectorial dimension, two kinds of approach are pertinent: the themetic areas where the technological progress is concentrated and sectors to where the progress is guided and, the proper sectores productors of technology without neglecting the interface with the usable sectors. The University perform an increasing task in technological production. It is important that its interface with the entrepreneurial environment be reinforced in such a way that ensures the increasing engagement as a whole, in the innovative process and in the entrepreneurial competitiviness. The temporal dimension, beyond to carry the research and technological progress, the innovation and the entrepreneurial competitiviness, allows to integrate research and development on a hybrid model, in which, although, in the starting point, the equipments of R&D and the technology be given, at a long term, they take into endogenous factors to the process of development.
Innovation as a concretization of a new idea is a cyclic process that through history, has accompanied the cycles of economic grwoth. In simple terms , innovation seems to be the result of a process more or less diffuse of research, scientific advancement and technological progress, developed in an appropriated environment - the innovative environment - and presented by a set of outputs such as products, improvement of existing ones, new ways of packaging, new methods of management and organisation, new ways of penetration into new markets, etc. It would not be difficult to find sime narrow relations between new ideas, new ways of organisation among populations and new productive methods, the discovery of new food products, etc. and social evolution.
It is the aim of this work to develop the concepts of research, the relations of research/development, the concepts of innovation, innovative environment and innovation process by a systemic and naturally integrated and interrelated approach.
THE FUNCTION OF PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT IN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION POLICY
A. R”rsch, A. P. Verkaik, H. Rutten
The interactions of knowledge, innovation and the marketing of new products, is usually presented in a linear scheme of supply and demand. In industry such a scheme was used for many decades, in order to make a distinction between Research and Development. (R&D). Today, however, it is well recognized that knowledge, as a result of research, is not so much directly the base for development, but rather the technologies which are available. To make this clear, we will present and discuss a more elaborate scheme of interactions than the one presented below.
In terms of the forces 'supply', (which act from left to right) and 'demand', (which acts from right to left), R&D policymakers initially made a rather strong distinction in respectively technology push and market pull. It is clear from the history of R&D that many innovations resulted from techno- logy push. More recently the growing influence of sales mana- gers, who pay attention to consumers' wishes, has given much more influence on the reverse force, the market pull.
In an ideal, but non-existing, economic situation, supply matches demand, without overproduction. From the continuing discussions over decades on R&D governmental policies it can be deduced that no country has been able to approach the ideal equilibrium and here we suggest that this equilibrium cannot be reached by definition. The linear presentation of interactions in figure 1 is an oversimplification. We expect the processes to be nonlinear and according to the laws of complexity theory on nonlinear dynamics, to be in a chaotic or oscillatory state, rather than in a static equilibrium.
Therefore the model in figure 1 is replaced by the more com- plex model presented in figure 2 below.
Knowledge production by scientific research is in itself a cyclic process. New knowledge is the base for new scientific research. Next to new knowledge, new insights accumulate, and these are the base for choices in which directions new re- search will be pursued.
New knowledge is also the base for the designer of new techno- logies. Experience with new technologies, will lead to impro- ved technologies and with additional new knowledge to new technologies. Therefore we consider technology design also as a cyclic process, that is nested in the research cycle.
New technologies are also the base for the development of new products and services. The market experience with new products gives insight in the behaviour of the market. This market insight will induce choices for new products to be developed and also a request for new technologies to be designed.
For several reasons (among them just 'tradition') we can expect that each of the cycles (Research, Technology design and Innovation) runs in a separate domain, and that each domain each develops its own momentum. Depending on differences between the momentums of each cycle, the system as a whole may be characterized as being dominated by technology push or market pull. In attempts to adjust the cycles, e.g. in order to improve the efficiency of the use of new knowledge for the development of new marketable products, the functions indicated in the scheme as 'programmers' play a crucial role.
The progress of research, technology and innovation, is influ- enced by many factors, (e.g. investment, teaching, competence, culture) and among these especially pure chance. The products of research, design and innovation cannot be delivered on order. The products arise by trial and error; one approach has a higher risk than another. The programmers who have to make the choices in each domain or cycle will spread risk by pur- suing a spectrum, or portfolio, of approaches (or projects). Since the process as a whole, - the translation of new know- ledge into marketable products contains an accumulation of three risktakings, it will inevitably jerk like a rattling wheel-work.
To reduce jerking, the programmer in the innovation cycle, with market insight, will signal his demands to the preceding programmers (or portfolio managers) in the other cycles. Those, especially the one active in the research cycle, may not neccesarily respond by making a fortfolio of projects, all with low risk. It might well be that the more daring approach will reduce jerking over a time interval more effectively than the risk-avoiding approach. Thus portfolio compiling is not restricted to the collection of a number of approaches of low risk; it also comprises a spread of projects over approaches with low and high risk, keeping an eye on continuity in addition to paying lip service to todays' market demands.
We observe that over the last decade, industrial R&D depart- ments have reduced their in-house activity in fundamental research and went more and more shopping in universities for exploitable knowledge. This is due to the extraordinary high risk of research. It is, however, questionable, whether the universities, in their increasing cooperation with industry, serve best by compiling portfolios of overall low risk, with respect to direct applicability of results in the fields which industry demands. This may turn out to be a misjudgment of the very nature of science at the frontier of our knowledge, a violation of a fundamental law, like the second in thermody- namics or the theory of biological evolution.
Therefore the construction of a stable triple helix, the adjustment of governmental, industrial and academic R&D policy might turn out to be an illusion.
R&D departments of industry value their technologal capability very highly. We see the technology design cycle as an intermediate between the research and the innovation cycle. We believe that governmental R&D policy should focus on the portfolio of technology design (and its management), with an eye on the innovation cycle and less on the academic research cycle. This also for the reason that the design of new tech- nologies seldom relies exclusively on a single new discovery, but on the combination of knowledge gathered over a long time interval, from many different sources, with the result that the interaction of the research cycle and the technology design cycle will always be jerking. The more profitable reduction of jerking is expected by the strive for adjustment of the technology design and the innovation cycle by adjust- ment of their portfolios.
Artur da Rosa Pires, Carlos Jos‚ Rodrigues, and Eduardo Anselmo de Castro
It is commonly accepted that universities are increasingly extending their functions beyond teaching and research, assuming also the role of agents of cultural, social and economic development. This changing environment requires new management practices and significant changes in the academia traditional way of thinking and acting, a debate which is leading to the search and exploitation of new forms of interaction with society.
The role of universities as a promoter of socio-economic development acquires a striking importance in the context of peripheral regions, where the predominant characteristics of the productive system, based largely on traditionally run small and medium enterprises, combined with the lack of R&D investment, the low learning capacity (Lundvall, 1994, and Morgan, 1996) and the weakness of the institutional support system, highlights the role that universities can play as a factor of socio-economic development.
The co-operation between Government, Universities and Society is gradually coming into the political and policy agenda in Portugal, one of the less developed economies of the European Union. Universities are developing strategies promoting specific initiatives to strengthen the links with the þoutside worldþ (Charles, 1997). Although only a few of them have so far a consolidated and coherent policy, most of them have already some sort of initiatives, even if in a tentative basis, clearly directed to co-operation outside the þivory towerþ.
This paper will look into the experience of three rather different Portuguese universities, highlighting the existing broad policy framework and analysing in detail the characteristics of specific initiatives in each one of them. It will be argued that the different historical, cultural and organisational characteristics of each University, together with the main traits of the regions where they are located, lead to different modus operandi in what concerns the development of Government-Universities-Society co-operation.
The analysis is based on the conclusions drawn from the case- studies carried out in the framework of an European research project in which the University of Aveiro is participating.
GLOBALISATION AND U-I-G INTEGRATION IN DEVELOPING AND NEWLY BORN COUNTRIES
1. Anjaneyulu, V., and Bhaskara Rao, A., 1997. Child Universe- Cities. Project presented to...Bank.
3. Bhaskara Rao, A., 1997. Science and sex of Angels. Raoþs Ideas Bank. Project. 15.
4. Roy, R., 1997. Science and Industry. Current Sci., 72:5:293-294
In the development of university research, and its connection to economic and political steering and social practice, the role of institutional orders regulating research performance is central. The development of such institutional orders of university research, for instance the norms system, has, however, not been studied in much detail during the last decades. In innovation research, university research is viewed as an important component of techno-economic progress. The norms of university research therefore tend to analysed in relation to utility criteria. To caricature this perspective, the more responsive to industrial needs the university organization and the norms system are, the more efficient they are. Many researchers themselves tend, on the other hand, to perceive all forms of "external" steering and impulses as threats to the self-organizing scientific community (Russell 1993). From this perspective, the university system must be isolated from the rest of society to secure the (supposed) historically stable norms regulating university research, such as reputational control. Our ambition is to move beyond these two perspectives, and instead highlight the dynamic evolution (reproduction and change) of the academic norms system þ as an institutional order guiding academic research þ within a changing relationship between the university, government and industry, to understand how academic norms structure research and how these norms can be reproduced and changed.
Our perspective on university research thus focuses on its institutional regulation. University research is guided by institutional orders (cf. Scott 1995). For research, one such institutional order is the norms system. Like all institutional orders, the norms for academic research performance þ such as peer review, universialism, communalism þ has been reproduced during a rather long period. Nevertheless, like all institutional orders, the norms system of research can be changed. Research funding can, it has been argued (Elzinga 1985), be one impetus to changes in the norms system. Some funding agencies struggle to develop hybrid communities (e.g. the mission-oriented agencies), where the assessment of research is broader than in the collegial model, whereas others basically reproduce the existing structures of reputational control (e.g. the research councils). Thus, the existing institutional order (the norms system) of university research is contested and is, some have claimed, going through a "paradigm shift" (Gibbons et al 1994).
To illustrate our argument on institutional reproduction and change, we analyze the public financing of technical research in Sweden. This is an arena where two different funding agencies, with different targets for the evolution of academic research, "compete": the Research Council for Engineering Sciences (TFR) and the National Board for Technical and Industrial Development (NUTEK). To simplify the argument, the former represents an attempt to reproduce (and in some areas create) a system of reputational control through peer review, whereas the latter attempts to build networks between researchers and industry with transepistemic criteria for quality assessment (Benner & Sandstr”m 1996 and Sandstr”m et al 1997).
We study how these agencies structure their research support, how they develop criteria for the evaluation of research, and how they build alliances within and outside the academic system to reproduce the different institutional orders.
References
Benner, M & Sandstr”m, U (1996)The Co-ordination of technbical Research in Sweden. Stockholm, Ministry of Education/Fritzes. (SOU 1996:20) Elzinga, A (1985) "Research, Bureacracy and the Drift of Epistemic Criteria" in Wittrock, B & Elzinga, A, eds The University Research System. Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell. Gibbons, M et al (1994) The New Production of Knowledge. London, SAGE. Russel, C (1993) Academic Freedom. London, Routledge. Sandstrþm et al (1997) The Swedish Research Council for Engineering Sciences. Evaluation Report. TFR Evaluation Programme Vol 4. Stockholm, TFR 1997. Scott, W R (1995) Institutions in Society. Thousand Oaks, SAGE.
New Technological Developments and Institutional Environments in Romania.
The objective of the paper is to point out the initial struggles of establishment of new institution within the innovation system in Romania, but also their strategies for renewal and survival, as making them sustainable seems to be as challenging as formulating the original designs.
At the macro level, both policymaking and policy analysis offer an array of new concepts and regulatory options for active state involvement. Parliament are debating a new low of R&D and Innovation incentives and Ministry of Research and Technology, Ministry of Education and Romanian Academy of Sciences are experimenting with new ways of making their system more effective and responsive.
Leaders of scientists are more divided on various strategies of expansion and /or restriction, calling for more elite institutions or programs, or for building more diversified structures of institutions involving in R&D policies, funding, training .
Although the challenge and attraction of renewing research programs and organisations is clear, potential innovators face dilemmas and obstacles. The building of new institutions at a time when the sponsorship for public services is even more limited, or the building of new or re-building of old academic tradition without solid foundation in the present, are path þbreaking acts. They call for evaluation, better understanding and support once they prove to be innovative.
The economic environment is critical for innovators,in terms of providing stimuli, competition and sources of support as well as constraints. Institutional leaders argue that these factors are important in their decisions to establish new programs, or institutions,, either in response to stimuli in the external environment or from shortcomings that they experienced within their own academic systems.
In the field of industrial research and development, success in innovative practice depends on whether a creative or inventive activity reaches at application stage but, as the some authors shows, the successful innovation is associated not only with market pressure, but with effective communication and networking . Innovative institutions in Romania need to develop a solid professional and economic demand for their educational and research provisions as well as to serve emerging needs. On the research side, external expectations which arise in our society in transition can orient the pursuit of new knowledge towards satisfying short- term demands through applied research without being ready to underwrite or absorb basic research, which require long-term planning.
Innovative leaders are pressured to integrate their new academic institutions into rigid and hierarchical national academic structures. They must identify themselves as non- threatening to established institutions whilst claiming exclusivity in the competition for sponsorship, and accessibility in a fluid labour market. In order to be considered as an innovative development, changes in institutional strategy or structures also need to be accessible for other institutions-even competing ones. Innovators need to show that their practice or model offers feasible solutions for change at other institutions and possibly to became a standard in teaching, research, or management.
The financing of innovative institutions seems to be a highly sensitive issue, bound up with legal regulations, political positioning and entrepreneurial inclinations. They are often impeded by rigid financial regulation and limited resources, the overall financial conditions of institutions depend on the position of institutional leaders and academic staff both within and outside of the academic arena. Often, innovative institutions are forced to adapt their structures to the available resources, risking either sustainability or compromising their original innovative design. In looking at new sources of support at many institutions their is an observable desire to integrate an international perspective into their programs, although in some cases this was due more to the availability of financial and professional resources than as part of a coherent institutional strategy.
In the last years scholars have called our attention to some elements in the transformation of the research activities in modern societies that have been announced as "a new mode of production". In a changing environment, in production and utilisation of knowledge some already existing tendencies have gained relevance; for example, while some firms started to develop links and co-operation with academic research, some others continue the in-house accumulation of the S&T competencies; however no matter the concrete strategies followed by single firms, what is clear is that scientific and technical knowledge had become one of the elements (in some sectors the central element) that shape the strategies of firms. But also some of the dynamics that emerge could appear as new ones. Firms adapt or die and new firms are born, however the academic research centres appears to be more stable. In most of the countries these institutions have either a public status or big public support. They have heavily institutionalised their own set of rules, norms and procedures. Researchers in these institutions react to specific incentives set up at local level -the concrete set of rules that reproduce the position in those centres-, but also are affected by the dynamics of competition in science. Most of the arguments on the "new mode of production" state that the different institutional spheres (academy, industry and government) will enter into closer relationship with each other. The three spheres have been always, with different balances and labels, the bases for understanding the dynamics of R&D activities; but to what extent the evidence on the tendencies show us some radical new developments?. Behind the argument there is a divide: Could we accurate describe the situation as "three actors in a single system" or as "three systems with independent dynamics" that will change their ways (and sometimes increase) of interaction.
There are some important elements for explaining the situation; understanding to what extent research actors that work under different organisational arrangements, with diverse patterns of behaviour, have incentives to develop systematic co-operation together?; under what kind of arrangements or rules this type of collaboration could be best organised?: formal vs. implicit contracts, market vs. hierarchies, etc.; what kind of the mechanisms are established to deal with the conflicts between the partners?: legal vs. trust; what incentives and what constraints face the actors in any of the spheres?.
Arguments on the radical transformation are built on theoretical insights, and usually their evidence is partial, based in single case studies and with lack of a comparative framework. From some of the evidence do not clearly appears that the dynamics of the process and the evolution of the elements are affected by irreversible transformations. Specially because some of the tendencies that appears to be new in some countries are not so new in others. In a more globalised world it is clear that there is a lot of policy transfer between countries. I will approach the three institutional spheres and their interactions trying to understand their own functioning logic and their dynamic of development. But because the increased interactions, we will observe to what extent there are elements of co-evolution between the three different spheres.
The general arguments about the incentives for stable co-operation between different sets of actors in different institutional spheres and the tensions and conflicts that emerge in the relationships between them, specially in the domain of public policy, will be addressed through the exploration of some dimensions of the problem in the Spanish S&T system, specifically at least of three different domains associated to the dynamic of transformation:
First I will examine the evolution of the Spanish national R&D policy in the last years and, more in detail, the formation, development and implementation of a specific policy to support R&D collaboration between academia and industries. In Spain the first schemes and actions to support collaboration or, in ancient terminology, the use of public scientific and technical resources for the socio-economic needs, were born simultaneously with the science and technology policies, however it has been in the last years when the action had take modern forms.
Second, I will describe the evolution of contract research between academy and industry, that is the segment of collaboration that is market driven and based in a priced services and competencies exchange, where is payments by industry to university. The enlargement of this market and the increase of this type of activities requires an adaptation or transformation of the type of incentives and organisational situations than academic researchers confront. I will assess the big institutional changes introduced in the mid eighties when the legal framework for the universities and research was updated.
A third dimension relates with the growth of organisations and centres specialised in promoting, supporting and helping academia and industry to cooperate; the general term used to describe the different variety of those organisations is "technology transfer interfaces". This type of non-firm organisations specialised in technology transfer have bloomed in the nineties in Spain, but they have big internal variety -some are new governmental initiatives, some R&D operator initiative and also users initiative-. I will analyse to what extent the creation of this specialised knowledge transformation institutions creates more room for the continuation of the academic research under the present institutional arrangements.
From the analysis done of these dimensions we will observe that pressures for stronger collaboration between actors are big, but still much of the research activity continue to be developed under independent models: inter-firm collaboration playing a bigger role than academic-industry collaboration, academic research regulated mostly by internal rules of action and traditional reproductive process, while the "strategic or priority collaborative R&D" is still playing a small role in the S&T policy.
STATE UNIVERSITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO: AN EXERCISE IN PROACTIVE EVALUATION AT THE UNIVERSITY
L£cia Schmidt de Andrade Lima and N dia Lima Caruso
Among the functions of management that constitute the organizational structure of the University, we can assure that it is credited to the pro active evaluation the most relevant role. As, it is intrinsically linked to the end activity of the University, this process is able to confer degree of quality, efficiency and efficacy to the achieved results. The dimension of the academic human resources, when acting through the mechanisms that consider the quality achieved through different institutional segments, represents an important step of the process of pro active evaluation This work has as its aim to cite the experience of the State University of Rio de Janeiro in the implementation of its system of follow up and evaluation of the academic activity, from this it is processed the continuum redimensioning of the academic personnel in this University. The work also presents the historical evolution of the performance indicators of the academic personnel of the university, through which it is possible to evaluate the impact of actions of administration progressively implemented. It should be highlighted that the procedures implemented take in account the context of the third academic revolution (ETZKOWITZ, 1995), in which the University has the role of the institution which creates technology for the Market and social benefits, besides the roles of personnel capacitation and scientific investigation, traditionally attributed to the University.
HISTORY OF THE INSTITUTION
The State University of Guanabara was founded as an institution of academic teaching linked to the late Guanabara State, from the fusion and incorporation to the State of isolated educational units. In 1975, with the political fusion between the States of Guanabara and Rio de Janeiro, the university became known as State University of Rio de Janeiro. - UERJ, with juridical personality of State Foundation. During some years, variations and evolutions in the professional market created demands that induced the University to incorporate to its organizational structure new academic units, so as to conform to the necessities in the creation of specialized human resources, mainly in the State of Rio de Janeiro. Nowadays, UERJ embrace 26 academic teams, having an academic body of around 2.100 teachers, acting in the formation of a student body of around 18.000 students.
In relation to the distribution of the academic body, UERJ, for a long time, had some connatural characteristics. Representing the product of the merging of isolated units, the teaching jobs in the University were treated as properties of these Unities, not having a definite policy to the dimension of its teaching group regarding the project of work and the degree of efficiency and productivity presented for each segment.
The first important action for the incorporation of the pro active evaluation as subsidy to the process of dimension of the teaching group of the University took place in 1988, when two interventions in the politic of management may be considered as decisive in the course of the process: - Creation of a single balance of vacancies and available hours of human academic resources that transferred to the University the appropriation of disponible human resources, allowing the inside reallocation of vacancies not filled; - Creation of the Permanent Commission of Human Academic Resources (COPAD), as deliberative instance where its attribution was to coordinate the plan of human academic resources in the University.
The COPAD, according to the Resolution 03/91, accumulates the executive functions of Academic Body Evaluation System,, accentuating among its competencies: elaboration of norms that guide the distribution of the academic hours among the different activities of the professorate; coordination of the attribution of the human academic resources among the organizational segments (departments/ Academic Units), from the results of evaluation of performance in each of the foreseen activities.
DIMENSION OF THE ACADEMIC TEAM IN UERJ: A CONTINUUM PROCESS
The process of continuum dimensioning of the teaching team implemented in UERJ in 1991 is being perfected and systematized. The methods adopted in the redimensioning of the academic group from the results of evaluation of performance is based on two basic principles in reference to the performance of COPAD.
The first principle is about the management decentralization policy, considered as goals for the subsequent university management, which presuppose the academic department as cell unit in the operationalization of activities related, and emerging from this the planning and execution of the activities that are pertinent to it. In this context of decentralized management, it is to the COPAD the actions in the strategic level, which involves the planning of allocation of academic resources, the control of academic hours distribution among the different activities and the definition of performance evaluation criteria for the academic team in the University.
The second principle refers to the non intervening action of COPAD. In this sense, the mechanisms implemented for the distribution of resources and dimensioning of academic team allow that each of these modalities of work and production maintain its intrinsic characteristics. Sto, there is not any interference of administrative incuse introducing limitations to creativity characteristic of the end activities of the University. The methodology adopted for the evaluation of the academic group for the permanent redimensioning encompass an integrated system of data bank, in which the indicators and principles of pertinent evaluation for each kind of activity are preserved through the adoption of the results of the qualitative evaluations processed by the sub rectories related, as input for the system of quantitative evaluation operationalized by COPAD. In the operationalization of the process, the academic hours allocated by the organizational units to the different academic activities (teaching, research and extension) receive the agreement of the sub rectories related, from the results presented, considering the indicators pertinent for each activity.
The third principle establishes that the criteria for allocation of academic resource by COPAD are established aiming to give to each organizational segment the human resources compatible with its work project, favoring in the process of evaluation, more than the intentions, the results presented.
The complete work has as its aim to detail the procedures implemented in the institution and the indicators considered, as well as proceed to a critical analysis of the whole process by the authors, as coordinators of the teams of development, implementation and operation of the mentioned system of follow up and evaluation.
Commercializing Russian R&D: Towards a Social Network Approach
The current state of the Russian R&D sector is shrouded in conflicting images and prescriptions for change. On the one hand, the specter of uncontrolled disintegration of military research institutes has prompted some to extol their demise in favor of the small and more nimbler new firms which result (Sabel, 1996). From this perspective, the same institutional characteristics of specialized, stand alone organizations which constrained Soviet research in the past should now give Russia a distinctly competitive advantage in new markets (Sabel, 1994; Best, 1990). On the other hand, less sanguine observers note the opposite tendency of organizational entrenchment and consolidation. Some argue against this integration as emblematic of renewed efforts to increase Russia's military presence in the region and the world (Blank, 1995). In contrast, others applaud integration as more efficient and secure control over the military sector and its dangerous materials (Marten-Zisk, 1994; von Hippel, 1995; Schweitzer, 1996). Few studies, however, have systematically investigated how a national R&D sector commericializes in the absence of strong institutional controls such as those which contrain commodification and entrepreneurship in US labs.
With this proposed paper, the commericialization of Russian science and technology will be presented as contingent on the organizational and interpersonal ties of the R&D managers involved. By using on a sociological approach rooted in organizational theory and network analysis, this research presents a new analytic trajectory in the study of public science and its relation to the private sector. By viewing industrial re-structuring as socially embedded, our organizational framework stands in stark contrast to the traditional approaches of neoclassical economics or political economy. In these models, the motivation for privatizing is pre-determined and largely imperious to the influence of individual perception. Instead, we problematize the reaction of individuals to market signals and material incentives by arguing that social structure mediates the way in which they are perceived (Dougherty, 1992; Briggart, 1991; Granovetter, 1985). From this perspective, the ruptures in the social and institutional fabric of post-Communist societies becomes an unprecedented opportunity for studying how new meanings and structures evolve from those of the previous system (Buroway, 1996). In this spirit, our proposed research will address link the process of privatizing national science to inter- organizational resources flows as mediated by the social and professional networks of R&D managers. We consider the factors which might account for the variation in commercialization outcomes by including alternative explanations to our own.
What influences commercialization of public science in transtional economies? The dominant literatures on commericializing university and public research focus on materials incentives and economizing goals. In contrast, this paper argues that rent- seeking activities are structurally mediated by the particular constraints and benefits of strong social ties. for example, Sedaitis (1996) found that the stronger ties among managers of spin-offs facilitated trust and institution building but constrained the development of new managerial practices in favor of former norms and organizational routines. Similarly, a network study of privatization in Slovakia suggests that more " insider" versus "outsider" ownership forms were related to the overlap of ties among firm managers as perceived by the enterprise director. Further, outsider ownership schemes were more radical to the extent that the overlap of perceived ties among outsider constituencies was also minimal (Rus, 1996). Thus, the social embedding of R&D directors will be pursued as a key source of explanation for the current organizational form of their enterprises.
Alternative explanations will be pursued as well by drawing from the huge literature that credits material and economizing interests for shaping organizational form (Best, 1990; Robertson & Langlois, 1995; Florida & Kenney, 1990). The best, most nuanced treatments focus on the nature and scope of technological change across different industries. Robertson & Langlois (1995), for instance, argue that firms who are able to appropriate the returns on innovation themselves will be less likely to seek integration, as will firms in industries with less scope or variation in their product cycle. Thus, the effect of network measures will be controlled for by industry specific characteristics. Whereas these characteristics are presented as congealed, objective facts by competing literatures, however, we plan to show how the history of social contacts of enterprise directors help mediate the perception of these "facts" and influence the value directors place on their innovative capabilities.
Sample & Method
Our sample will be a random stratified sample of 75 private firms drawn from the list of firms of a closed universe of former scientific institutes in the Russian State Military Production Committee (Goskomoboronprom) . The list of total firms included has been procured by our Russian collaborators. We plan to include a proportion of science institutes (NIIs), design bureaus (KBs), scientific enterprises (NPO) and experimental factories (OZs) roughly proportionally to those in the Moscow area from which we will draw our sample.
Methods of Measurement- In order to access the social network of enterprise or institute directors, we will complete a network matrix (for sample matrix, see Appendix 2). We will proceed in the standard manner of asking respondents to think of key people in response to typical probes such as, who do you go to for advice before you make any major change or managerial decision? The network matrix is then completed by assessing whether his network members also contact one another. Unlike the standard process, whereby actual names are solicited, however, we have devised a more anonymous process for completing the matrix. The data will be coded in a network matrix for analysis using Ucinet IV , which will also generate key network measures such as density and centrality (Borgatti and Everett, 1996). Diversity will be measured using Blau's measure of heterogeneity. Some of the expected relationships include:
ø greater organizational integration where managerial social networks show greater perceived overlap of ties (high density) and a higher percentage of state administrative interests represented among their external constituency.
ømore fragmentation where managerial social networks have sparse overlap (high ego centrality) and more diverse social ties which include more international and administrative contacts than managerial networks where satellite creation is less prominent.
In order to test alternative theories of explanation we will include measures of key industry and enterprise variables. Economistic arguments focus on organizational ties as solutions to two problems: the flow of information and the barriers to control (Robertson & Langlois, 1995). As such, key aspects of the scope and nature of research will be assessed, including the number of competitors looking for the same solutions, the ease of imitating the innovations, and the specificity and radicalness of their potential application. Secondly, we have re-defined our industry breakdown to include over seven categories that our further dissaggregated in to sub-categories along the lines of the R&D sensitive classificatory schemes used in the CATI database at the University of Limburg and the Corporate Technology Information Services Directory.
The Relationship Between Publicly Funded Basic Research and Economic Performance
This paper is based on a review of the academic literature conducted by SPRU for the British Treasury. It considers the effect of publicly funded basic research on productivity, the impact on specific industries, the availability of research skills and their influence on the location of industrial R&D, UK companies' awareness of publicly funded basic research, whether explicit criteria are used overseas to determine the level of funding for basis research, and the benefits foreign governments expect from publicly funded basic research.
The paper will review the two main views on the nature of the economic benefits from basic research: the 'public goods' argument and the view that scientific knowledge is embedded in individuals and organisations and flows through training and networks. Thus public funding is needed to provide training and maintain access to international networks. It will also present a critical review of the academic literature for the three main approaches to measuring the economic benefits from basic research: (i) econometric studies (e.g. of rates of return); (ii) surveys (e.g. of the views of industrial R&D managers); and (iii) case studies (e.g. tracing the research inputs to innovation).
The paper concludes that traditional justifications for public funding of basic research require expansion and will offer a preliminary view of some of the new components which need to be included.
Applying The Science Park Concept in the Context of Transition: The Case of Bulgaria
Belarusian Science and Technology Transformation
The relationship between universities and industry is a theme of growing interest, due to its significant potential to support technological development and the innovation capability of firms. These relations can take different forms, from an individual consulting contract between a professor and a company, to the establishment of special complex structures, like science parks.
University-industry relations represent a very important and effective channel for the enhancement of Brazilian firmsþ competitiveness, which are now facing the situation of a completely open market, opposite to the comfortable previous position of a protected national market.
Brazilian industrial development was based on the strategy of þimport substitutionþ, which promoted a fast and wide growth of several industrial sectors. But this process involved basically the transfer of foreign technologies, and did not demand any substantial effort from the scientific community, which developed quite independently from industry. And now the government is deeply concerned with this situation and is launching a series of initiatives to foster private investments in industrial R&D and a stronger collaboration between universities and companies.
In the present study, we examine a specific organizational arrangement for industry-university interaction: the Cooperative Research Centers (CRCs), which are autonomous structures, established at universities, and whose operation is supported by the government and several enterprises, belonging to one industrial sector or to related sectors. The main activities of the CRCs include pre-competitive research, of general interest, and postgraduate courses.
Two Cooperative Research Centers Programs were studied - in the United States and Australia, with the purpose of knowing their history, operation, results and success factors. The American case was selected because it was the first one, created by the National Science Foundation in 1973, and inspired many countries, which copied or adapted its model (England, France, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia). The Australian experience is quite recent (1990) and we chose it because this country has many economic and technological features that resemble very much those of Brazil.
The two programs examined have several characteristics in common and some distinct aspects; these are basically related to the social, economic, cultural, scientific and technological reality of the two countries, and the study points out a series of factors which are responsible for the success of these programs.
Our research hypothesis is that, in Brazil, there already exists a certain level of maturity in university-industry cooperation, which is demonstrated along the study. This situation allows us to consider as feasible the establishment of such a program in our country, with the necessary adjustments to the S&T environment. At the end, some suggestions are presented, regarding its creation.
TECHNOSCIENCE AND THE EVOLUTION OF DESIGN SPACES
The present day technology is rapidly outgrowing the capabilities of the existing R&D infrastructures. This is reflected among other things in the problems affecting the organization and financing of long term technical or strategic research. It is unclear who should do it or how it should be done? We are not even sure precisely what it is. These difficulties arise in part from the erosion of the post W.W.II institutional systems of S&T brought about by a variety of political and economic forces. But the causes of the trouble are deeper: they are largely conceptual in nature and have to do with the changing character of technology itself.
One reoccurring theme in the recent writings on S&T is the apparent merging of science and technology. This is reflected in the currency of such concepts as "Mode II research", the "seamless web of science and technology", and of course "technoscience". Indeed, it has been claimed that there is no cognitive distinction between science and technology any more and that the only important demarcation is that between the private and public domains of knowledge production.
These concepts do illuminate various important aspects of the current science-technology interaction, yet somehow they fail to provide a coherent framework for a comprehensive analysis of these interaction. What precisely is "techno-science" ? In the absence of a new theory we tend to slide back into the supposedly "dead" linear model of innovation. At the root of the trouble is our failure to develop a model of technology as a cognitive system in its own right.
The putative collapse of the linear model of innovation in the late sixties has not led to the emergence of a coherent theory of technology as an autonomous cognitive system. Instead the linear model was replaced by what might be called an "economic model" of technology. In it, the notion of "technology-as-applied-science" was replaced by the concept of technology as a "knowledge pool" or a "knowledge base" of innovation, an amorphous, ill defined entity. In the model, the cognitive agenda of technology was construed as generated by economic forces and the institutional structure of technology came to be viewed as tightly correlated to the economic structure.
The inadequacy of the economic model soon became apparent. There is much more to technology than short term technological entrepreneurship. The concepts of the linear model begun therefore to appear again under a variety of new guises: "finalized science", "technological paradigms", "strategic science", "transfer science". However, a throw back to the linear model can hardly be expected to generate viable solutions for the problems of today's R&D systems.
By far the most promising of the approaches to technology-as-knowledge mentioned above has been that of "technological paradigms". Unfortunately, despite its great success at the rhetorical level, the theory of techno-paradigms failed to develop as an analytical tool. To begin with it was far too closely linked to the linear model of innovation. Moreover, many of its shortcomings, troublesome in the context of science, are quite unacceptable in the context of technology.
In this paper I will propose a way of looking at technological growth as the evolution of "design spaces" and the associated "design languages". The approach is meant to retain some of the useful features of the theory of "technological paradigms" while avoiding its more obvious problems and weaknesses.
Design spaces are generated by sets of "operands". The latter are defined as technological "primitives. The spaces undergo change in two main ways: (i) through the expansion and transformation of the set of operands; and (ii) through internal structuring and articulation, i.e. evolution of "design languages". Design spaces are largely self-organizing. Over time they evolve complex structures and generate "research agendas" of their own. These agendas consist of strategic problems the solution of which enhance the overall power of the design spaces, by increasing the efficiency of technological problem solving processes. Much of technology development today, whether in biotechnology, molecular engineering (nanotechnology) or information technologies are concerned with the developments of the design spaces and associated design languages rather than with specific applications. These agendas are structurally similar to those generated by science but yet quite distinct from them.
Science has always played an important role in the evolution of technology, particularly by helping to produce enlarged and more finely grained design spaces. Technology in its turn influenced science by providing the instrumentalities which generate the data of science and the information processing capabilities. There is nothing new about these linkages. There is, however, a fundamental difference between a situation where technology is viewed as "applied science" and one in which science is viewed as "reverse engineering" of nature. And this is precisely what is happening in an increasing number of fields, explicitly or implicitly. The problem today is that the design space of technology have reached the level of sophistication where its research agendas begin to offer intellectual challenge of the same order of magnitude or greater than that of traditional science. It is that reversal of the roles of science and technology which creates today's "techno-science". We have not yet fully grasp the institutional implications of these changes.
Much of the basic or long term research in technology has in the past been executed under the guise of science, without seriously threatening the integrity of the latter. Science profited by, as it were, incorporating technology since it enhanced the flow of funds. Now the old patterns of symbiosis may no longer be mutually beneficial. The institutional requirements of technology are progressively diverging from those of science. And this is by no means limited to the economic dimension, important as the latter may be. Technological communities have different composition and structure than scientific communities. They require interfaces of entirely different nature than the traditional sciences. And they also need instrumental infrastructures of different orders of magnitude.
Precisely because of their close linkage, the cognitive systems of science and technology need an institutional framework which, while facilitating fruitful interaction and synergy, is capable of mitigating the conflicts. The existing institutional patterns have become badly strained. There is at present a considerable discrepancy between the form and content of our R&D systems.
It is doubtful that the necessary institutional innovations are likely to succeed without a deeper understanding of the cognitive dynamics of technologies. Fortunately, in recent years, there has been a remarkable revival of interest in technology as a cognitive system. The theory of design spaces advocated here is a contribution to that tradition.
The Role of Government in Innovation: A Diagnostic Study of the State of Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Branca Regina Cantisano Terra, Henry Etzkowitz, and Jose Manoel C. Mello
The relationship between the academic sphere and the productive sector has become an important economic development issue during the past few decades in Brazil. Formerly limited to interaction between universities and industries, government has recently become an important actor in this process.
To analyze this trend in the State of Rio de Janeiro, we have studied policy changes in the administrations of the following governors of the State of Rio de Janeiro: Leonel de Moura Brisola (1984-1987 and 1992-1995), Wellington Moreira Franco (1988-1991) and Marcello Allencar (1996-1999). This paper reports the results of interviews conducted with members of these administrations, as well as with academics, industrialists and knowledgeable observers of the development of academic-productive sector-government relations during this period. In addition, the science and technology plans of these administrations were analyzed to trace the evolution of public policy goals.
Rio de Janeiro is a strategic research site to analyze the effect of geopolitical changes on state S&T policy. Although, Rio de Janeiro had lost its status of federal capital during 1970's, after the creation of the new capital - Bras¡lia - a strong influence of the federal government remained: several Public Research Institutes and also Research Centers of federal state industries are installed in this city, there are five big federal universities and many programs of post graduation and research. They were investments in S&T oriented to attend national priorities, not properly State of Rio de Janeiro necessities. The military government, with its focus on autocthonous development, also played an important role in encouraging the development of S&T infrastructure.
Since 90's, within the context of globalization and internationalization of the economy and markets, the federal government is developing a program of privatisation of the state industries and at the same time reducing its role in the others spheres besides the social one. In consequence, the state government of Rio de Janeiro which was in a secondary role in terms of S&T, increased its actions and at the same time gave them a local flavor, with priority for actions in S&T directed the social and economic local development.
A common thread in various science and technology policy initiatives has been the issue of how to expand Brazil's scientific and technological resources and utilize them for political and economic de velopment. Whether the state should be the dominant partner as in Sabato's "triangle" thesis or equal participant in a "triple helix" is a critical issue in university-industry-government relations. When the basic elements of the triangle, such as production and research, were part of the state, it was expected that government policy could exert a determining influence. The failure of government led import substitution policies has brought other sectors, and the relationships among them, to the fore.
We analyze the effect of these new conditions with respect to the State University of Rio de Janeiro, the North Fluminense State University and the industrial sectors with which they interact. We also observed the effect of these changes on the goals of FAPERJ -Support Fund for Technological Development in Rio de Janeiro.
The Science-Trained Professional: A New Breed for the New Century
For too long professors of mathematics and science have singled out only future researchers for encouragement and further training. There are, however, many different ways of serving society by way of mathematics and science, of which "discovery" is only one. Applications to a variety of problems not research-related on the surface, such as technology transfer, management and management consulting, patent and regulatory affairs, teaching, public understanding, and a concern with the ethics of science and technology also matter. In my address, I will lay out some new principles of education and training intended to enlarge the recruitment to university mathematics and science of non-research oriented students. I will conclude by demonstrating, at least theoretically, how increasing the SUPPLY of able non-research professionals can provide an independent stimulant of DEMAND for theoretical and practical research.
Local research systems in centralised Nation states and a global economy: the case of France
During the 1980s as competition globalized and became more innovation-intensive, OECD governments became increasingly convinced of the need to promote closer links between research and development [R&D] activities and the productive sector. In this context, decentralization was viewed as a critical component of the new competitiveness. This paper deals with efforts by the French government to adopt and implement this new economic development strategy and the multiple contradictions that this generated for researchers in the public research sector. France, it will be remembered, is a highly centralized state. More than half of all public sector research and over 60 % of industrial R&D were concentrated in the Ile de France, i.e. the greater Paris region, while the rest was distributed in a very unequal fashion across France's other 21 regions. If closer links between R&D and industry were to be promoted and a focus on regions as development sites were to be adopted, clearly a change in the distribution of R&D across the country would be required . In 1982, the French government adopted its loi d'orientation et de programmation de la recherche et de d‚veloppement which entrusted the regions with a new role in stimulating technological developpment in small and medium industries. This would be achieved, inter alia, by launching research programmes and linking universities and public research laboratories in the region to local industry. In the same year, the government's loi relative aux droits et libert‚s des communes, des d‚partements et des r‚gions, decentralized the responsibilibty for economic planning to the regions. But, if the regions now had competence in matters relating to their economic development, they did not receive a complement of resources needed to fulfill their new mandate.This was notably the case with regard to the decentralization of R&D resources. Worse still, the hierarchical nature of the R&D [CNRS, INSERM etc.] and university systems left decisional authority over matters such as curriculum or the hiring of researchers and university lectures in the hands of those at the Center. After more than ten years of implementation, the results of decentralisation are considered very modest, even by central authorities. For the regions, building an economic development strategy and demonstrating results was all the more important after 1986 when regional authorities became accountable to their electorates. One area for direct intervention lay in the strengthening of local R&D capacities through the allocation of financial resources to these activities . A second, was in using these local R&D resources, to attract multinational firms [MNCs] to the region. A third was to encourage local researchers to become partners in European R&D programmes. In the 1970s local researchers had depended entirely on central authorities for finance, career advancement and the orientation of their research through instruments such as the 'Action Thematique Programme'. By the mid-1980s they had moved from a situation of a single 'patron' with its strongly 'national' interests , to that of four 'patrons' each with its own agenda. The paper discusses the tensions and contradictions created for scientific researchers in France's regions as a consequence of the multiple new roles they were now expected to play vis-a-vis regional authorities, European authorities and their MNC partners. It offers a theoretical explanation for the institutional basis of these contradictions and argues that further institutional change will be necessary to overcome them.
Jiang Wen and Shin-ichi Kobayashi
The contribution of the research papers, from the Japanese private sectors, has increased rapidly over the past decades. It seems that R&D activities in Japanese firms are more active in academic research work, and are shifting toward more academic. Otherwise, does this fact also imply other changes in the national R&D system?
Our study consists of two parts:
1. Focusing on the shift of academic research, happening in Japanese private sectors, by using bibliometric analysis on research articles by private sectors authors, listed in the beneath mentioned major engineering publications in Japan between 1980 -1995;
2. Focusing on the changes of R&D outsourcing activities in Japanese firms for the past decades, based on the official statistical survey of R&D.
1. Japanese university-industry activities in R&D collaboration
Collaborative research work among researchers in Japanese universities, industry, and the government laboratories is increasingly advocated in the globally competitive marketplace. However, reliable and meaningful measures of such collaboration have been sparse.
This paper takes the position that an important indicator of inter-organizational collaboration is the co-authorship of research articles across the organizational boundaries, and uses a bibliometric search of published, co-authored research papers to analyze collaborative patterns among universities, industry participants and government laboratories in Japan. The input comprises empirical data on collaborative research publications, based on the samples of papers taken from journals of The Electrical/Electronic Engineering Society of Japan and The Mechanical Engineering Society of Japan.
According to our study, the collaborative research activities in Japan have been substantially increased over the past decades. The percentage of the research papers, with the co-authorship from the private sectors, has increased to 44.5% in 1995 from 24.9% in 1980 in the field of electrical/electronic engineering, while it has increased to 40.0% in 1995 from 31.9% in the field of mechanical engineering respectively. In addition, the results provide an overview that almost all of the increased papers are from the co-authorship between private sectors and other sectors in both fields, although they are not as remarkable in mechanical engineering field as in electrical/electronic engineering field.
The data indicate that, in terms of a defined population of published research articles, industry researchers have collaborated currently more frequently with universities than ever in Japan. We also found that the collaboration between university and industry is the most active among the collaborations of university-industry-government in Japan.
2. Changes of R&D outsourcing activities in Japanese Firms
This paper also represents findings of our study that R&D outsourcing in Japan has changed sharply over the past decades.
The total external expenditure for outsourcing in Japan increased to 9.4% in 1993 from 4.1% in 1974. The total external expenditure increased, in all, although some fluctuations were recorded due to the Second Oil Shock and Strong Yen Depression. Our study also identifies that external outsourcing expenditure grew when business was brisk, and went down when business was dull, during the Bubble Economic Period. It can be also expected that the external outsourcing expenditure differs by industry. The total of the received research fund, however, compared with the external outsourcing expenditure, showed no notable changes. Universities have been established as the biggest public fund receivers.
Conclusion:
R&D activities in Japanese firms are really changing. The focus of R&D in Japanese firms has been shifting from the in-house-oriented R&D toward the collaborative R&D with universities, although it seems that R&D in Japanese firms is shifting toward more academic researches.
The Construction of Techno-Economic Networks
Vivien Walsh (1), Ken Green (1), Richard ">Hull (1 & 2), and Andy McMeekin (2)
(1) Centre for Research on Organisations, Management and Technical Change, Manchester School of Management, UMIST
(2) ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition, Manchester University and UMIST
This paper reviews a variety of literature that broadly address the theme of þTechno-Economic Networksþ (TENs). The concept of þTechno-Economic Networkþ was originally proposed by Callon (1991). However, we will be covering a broader spectrum of work than that which follows from Callonþs original formulation. For instance, we will also look at the literature on þTechno-Economic Paradigmsþ (TEPs) (Perez, 1983). What is common with these two apparently very different bodies of work, as implied in their shared use of þTechno- Economicþ, is that the object of study is neither the technology on its own, nor economic variables on their own, but particular combinations of both technological and socio- economic features. The object of study in both cases is some form of combination and/or relationship, and this forms the central focus for this paper. Whilst we acknowledge that there have traditionally been a variety and a mix of disciplinary perspectives applied to the þtechno-economicþ, we intend in this paper to step aside debates within and between disciplines. What is additionally of pragmatic interest is that the two ways of utilising þtechno-economicþ - TENs and TEPs - constitute different ends of a spectrum regarding the formulation of policy and research issues.
One of the characteristics of the theoretical basis of Callonþs (1991) formulation is that, to a certain extent it challenges traditional disciplinary and theoretical boundaries. Consequently, as we review the variety of literatures we will not structure the review around a priori classifications of the theoretical/disciplinary approaches adopted in each case. Instead, this review is structured broadly around the scale of the object of study. Thus we will review work on:- case studies of specific technological innovations; specific firms and/or markets; specific industries; regional and national þsystems of innovationþ; and finally pervasive and long-term technologies and techno- economic arrangements. We then proceed to some discussion of a number of theoretical issues, research issues and policy recommendations.
Work on TENs and TEPs, and the various formulations that lie within the spectrum, all draw on particular streams within both economics and sociology. They draw on some or all of the following:- (a) the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK), in particular some epistemological debates which have then transferred to sociological and historical studies of technology; (b) the convergence of a number of bodies of work within economics - evolutionary theories of the firm, evolutionary theories of technological change, macro-economic studies of long waves of growth, and developments within political economy; (c) innovation studies, which have over the last 35 years made various attempts to bring together economic and sociological approaches to technological innovation.
Callon (1991) presents TENs as a solution for the linking of sociology and economics. That is, he brings together economic writing about the circulation of intermediaries such as money, contracts, etc., and sociological notions about how actors are defined through their relationships. Thus, the study of TENs involves the examination and description of the dynamic relationships amongst the various actors and intermediaries required for the success of an innovation. Of particular significance is the þsymmetricalþ treatment of human and non- human actors, removing the underlying determinism implicit in many other approaches. By refusing to privilege þthe socialþ, the TEN approach is a serious challenge to traditional sociology.
Perez (1983) and Freeman (1987) discuss long term fluctuations in economic growth by introducing the notion of þtechno- economic paradigmsþ (TEPs). These long term fluctuations are explained in terms of the periods of match and mismatch between major new generic technologies and the institutional arrangements which accompany their take-off. Thus, boom periods occur when there is mutual reinforcement between the technological and institutional changes, and these stable configurations of particular pervasive and generic technologies, and the accompanying social and institutional changes, are labelled as `techno-economic paradigmsþ.
Thus, whilst the literature on TENs has focused mainly on describing the emergence and stabilisation of specific technological innovations, the literature on TEPs has focused more on the issues and problems arising from the diffusion of the particular generic technologies which have far-reaching implications. Both approaches explicitly treat the þtechno- economicþ as their object of study. It is our contention, however, that there is a large body of literature which addresses what we might call þmeso-levelþ objects of study, and which does so in a manner broadly similar to work on TENs and TEPs, but without explicitly describing the object of study as þtechno-economicþ.
In discussing the various bodies of literature we will also focus on four particular issues which tend to be raised.
** Social/economic determinism vs. þnaturalþ/technological determinism.
* The þepistemological chickenþ debate (i.e. how far are we willing to run into epistemological uncertainty).
* Malleability vs. embeddedness: where does structure come from?
* Where does agency lie?
It is precisely these four issues which have recently been thrown into sharp relief by the work on TENs. From this discussion, we conclude with a consideration of how the various approaches differ in terms of their contribution to research issues and policy issues.
An Approach Towards the Commercialisation of Science: Beyond the Public and Private Divide.
This paper examines the regimes of governance and appropriation that shape the commercialisation of university science, specifically as this is undertaken via university spin-off firms: the main question asked is how are knowledge and innovation - inherently uncertain and random - stabilised and translated into commodified, economically valuable products. The notions of simplification and delocalisation of knowledge, building in part on the ideas of MacKenzie and Leigh Star play important roles in the analysis which is based on current empirical research being undertaken in the UK. Where regimes of appropriation and governance are in tension with each other, the possibilities for successful commercialisation are much reduced. This is true for both public and private sector science, suggesting that there are common problems faced by both sectors when they engage in the process of commercialising knowledge.