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ItemScience Gone Wrong: Understanding scientific work by examining "failures" across productions, consumptions, and careers in science(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-08-01) Woo, Seokkyun JoshuaThis dissertation examines “failures” across three different dimensions of the production of science (production of data, impacts, careers) to further expand our understanding of scientific work, thereby providing effective implications for science policy. The first study (Chapter 2) involves ethnographic observation of the work of bench scientists at material science labs to understand the problem-solving activities involving frequent interruptions in producing experimental data. The second study (Chapter 3) expands our understanding of citation practice in scholarly communication. In doing so, I examine citations to retracted references to test existing theories and propose an additional mechanism for how scientists embed other scientists’ works into their papers. The last study (Chapter 4) addresses the long-standing issue of gender inequality in scientific careers. In doing so, I ask how the increasingly bifurcated production role in science may shape career longevity and how this relationship may differ between women and men scientists. Together, these studies use a sociology of work perspective to better understand various components of the production of science in order to develop a deeper understanding of the science of science as well as to inform policy debates and other initiatives designed to improve the production of science.
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ItemThe co-construction of court-made patent policy and firm strategy(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-07-30) Sung, Elie J.The need to accommodate new technologies at an increasingly fast pace has led the judicial branch to become a key source of changes in patent policy in the United States. This dissertation examines the co-construction of patent policy and innovation strategy in the judicial branch of government. Its main contributions are to the economics of innovation literature and to the policy process literature. A long-lasting debate on the relation between patent and innovation has led to a multitude of studies supporting each side of the debate about the desirability of strong patents, as well as a lack of conclusive empirical evidence, mainly due to methodological challenges in estimating the impact of a change in patent strength. Leveraging a shock created by the US Supreme Court, I show that the common belief that weaker patents lead to fewer innovations is wrong (for a specific aspect of patent), while accounting for the heterogeneous patent-related strategies. Using mixed-methodology (interviews, court documents and census data), I find that the arguments made in court mirror the debate in the academic literature and I show that impact on innovation is contingent on firms’ characteristics and innovation strategies. Motivated by the heterogeneous impact of patent policy, stakeholders attempt to influence the US Supreme Court decisions. Therefore, taking advantage of this setting, I address a gap in the policy process literature, which has neglected the judicial branch of government. This dissertation builds on perspectives from the legal and political science literatures, examining policymaking processes in the US Supreme Court to incorporate the judicial branch of government in the corpus of policy process literature. Focusing on the role of stakeholders and how they use information strategically, I find evidence of influence of different types of information at the two phases of the policy process, a distinction unobserved in settings considered in the existing policy process literature.
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ItemExpanding understanding of the innovation process: R&D and non-R&D innovation(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-07-01) Lee, You NaInnovation is widely recognized as a key to economic growth. Most research on the innovation process has focused on the results of R&D projects. The positive relation between R&D intensity as an input and innovative performance as an output has become the canonical image for research on innovation. While R&D is an important input to innovation, there is growing evidence that a significant share of innovation is not born from R&D. Much of this non-R&D innovation consists of incremental improvements to existing products, or process innovations, although non-R&D innovation is not limited to these kinds of improvements. Non-R&D innovations can also come from problem solving activities or pursuit of new product ideas outside of a formal R&D project. Such activities would be missed in innovation accounts based on regular, formal R&D. Given the importance of innovation for the sociology and economics of science, and the central role of innovation in policy debates, this study expands the study of innovation to include non-R&D innovations and analyzes the drivers and outcomes of non-R&D compared to R&D-based innovations, with the goal of improving science and innovation policy by: examining the concept of innovation from different theoretical perspectives (Chapter 2), creating new measures and improving understanding of existing measures (Chapter 3), developing new models of the innovation process based on knowledge and learning that expand beyond the existing emphasis on R&D inputs (Chapter 4), and different participation of R&D and non-R&D innovations in markets for technology (Chapter 5). The main results show that the relative effectiveness of learning by R&D and non-R&D for innovation is contingent on nature of knowledge, characterized by generality (i.e., high mobility/transferability) and visibility (i.e., tighter links between actions and outcomes), and that non-R&D inventions are less likely to engage in the licensing market, but are more likely to have exclusivity clauses than R&D inventions. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for management of innovation and innovation policy.
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ItemInventor motives, collaboration and creativity(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-11-18) No, Yeon JiThis study examines the relationship between an inventor’s motives and creativity, invention commercialization, and collaboration pattern. Special emphasis is placed on the educational background of inventors when examining the effect of inventor motive on invention commercialization. The data are based in a unique survey of patent inventors in the United States, and archival data. The GT/RIETI 2007 Inventor Survey includes information on commercialization for patented inventions and measures of inventor motives. Archival data based on Lai et al. (2011) was the basis for the collection of creativity measures based on U.S. patent technology subclasses. The results indicate that inventors’ motives differentiate the outcome of innovative activities. We found a firm motive has a positive effect on creating new combinations, commercialization of patents, and collaboration with coworkers. The results also suggest that the recognition motive negatively affects the creation of new combinations, and that there is no effect on the commercialization of the patent. As for collaboration pattern, the results show that individual differences in motives are associated with different patterns in collaboration. For example, task-oriented inventors are less likely to collaborate with others outside of the firm entity, whereas inventors with recognition motives are more likely to have a larger collaborative network with other professionals in the same field. This paper suggests that policy-makers should consider individual heterogeneity in innovative performance, knowledge creation, and patterns of collaboration. Based on the findings, future research and policy implications are discussed.
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ItemOne size does not fit all: regional ecology, firm size, and innovation performance(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012-11-14) Huang, Hsin-IThis dissertation aims to answer the main question of "How does regional ecology (few or many small innovative firms in a region) enhance or limit innovation?" Put differently, how vital is the mix of small and large firms for regional innovation performance? From the policy perspective, the results of this study shed some light for policy maker to assess the "knowledge searching" strategies of firms when choosing locations. The research design combines a unique survey of patent inventors in the United States and archival data. Georgia Tech inventor survey data contains commercialization measures for patented inventions and information on firm characteristics. Using this archival data, data has been collected on regional innovation measures, regional-level attributes and project-level measures. The results indicate that the agglomeration of specialized firms is positively associated with regional innovation activities, as the Marshall-Arrow-Romer model proposed. In addition to traditional regional measures, small firm dominated ecology is a strong factor explaining regional commercialization activities, even though the role is not very significant when explaining the regional patenting activities. It is suggested that the organizational ecological perspective is complementary to understand information flow mechanisms in innovative regions. One mechanism of SME dominated ecologies is partially through the increase of skilled labor mobility. Furthermore, when the regional ecology moves towards being dominated by small firms, large firms benefit more from the presence of many innovative small firms than SMEs. By contrast, the concentration of innovative small firms does not add much value for SMEs. I suggest the focus of policies should be on understanding the heterogeneous ability of accessing localized knowledge resources between large and small firms. Deriving from the findings, policy implications and future research are discussed.
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ItemUses and nonuses of patented inventions(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-05-18) Jung, TaehyunInnovation comprises the processes of invention and commercialization. While the importance of innovation, especially commercialization, has been widely recognized, existing studies have largely overlooked the commercialization process. By examining the determinants of uses and nonuses of patented inventions from firms at the levels of technology, organization, and project/invention, this study attempts to help fill a critical gap in the literature. In doing so, it enriches theoretical understandings of innovation and, in particular, builds on the evolutionary explanation of technology development, the Teecian framework on profiting from innovation, Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), the Knowledge-Based View (KBV), and open innovation and innovation network perspectives. It also reveals an empirical reality of commercial use and strategic nonuse of patents. The study is based on a novel dataset constructed from multiple sources: inventor surveys, the United States Patent and Trademark Office online database, and COMPUSTAT, among others. After examining the factors affecting overall propensity to commercialize patented inventions, this study explores the factors that affect the organizational paths of commercialization. The empirical estimation indicates that technological uncertainty and a strong internal position of complementary assets raise the propensity for internal commercialization. The study argues that openness of innovation processes and network relationships should affect the choice of commercialization paths. Consistent with the hypotheses, empirical estimations show that external industrial knowledge increases the propensity of internal commercialization. The study also indicates that collaboration has diverging effects on the choice of commercialization paths. While collaboration with firms in vertical relationships tends to favor internal commercialization, collaboration with firms in horizontal relationships tends to favor external commercialization (licensing, start-up). Finally, the study reports findings on the strategic use of patents and then tests hypotheses about the factors driving strategic nonuse. It concludes that a significant portion of U.S. patents are indeed filed for strategic reasons. It also finds that characteristics of technology and firms are significantly associated with different strategies. In particular, firms are more likely to use a patent for strategic defensive purposes when they have larger amounts of assets. The study concludes with discussing managerial and policy implications.