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ItemThe Globalization of Innovation in Nanotechnology: Some Empirical Evidence for U.S., Japanese and European Firms(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Fernández-Ribas, Andrea ; Shapira, PhilipGlobalization of science and technology has long been a topic of interest to academics and policy makers. Despite extensive research, we know little about how and what firms globalize. Some recent studies suggest that the geographic distribution of inventive activities remain highly concentrated in industrialized countries. Arora and Yoon (2007) find that inventive activity in software remains concentrated in locations within the United States and among U.S. firms. MacHer, Mowery and Di Minin (2007) find similar results for the semiconductor industry. In a previous study, Fernandez-Ribas and Shapira (2009) show that the most technologically active U.S. corporations in nanotechnology develop an increasing number of inventions abroad. However, our results also indicate that the surge of new inventive locations outside the U.S. has not substituted the inventive activities developed at home. In fact, we find that nanotechnology inventions developed at home more than doubles the number of inventions developed abroad. By contrast, other studies suggest that R&D and innovation are moving to emerging markets. For example, Wadhwa et al. (2008) find that western pharmaceutical companies are shifting substantial preclinical and clinical-trial work to India and China. Several field studies show that indeed the globalization of knowledge, technology and capital is rapidly changing the way companies compete in the market. Increasingly companies appear to develop competitive advantages through intellectual property (Rivette and Kline 2000), open innovation approaches (Chesbrough 2003), global exploitation of technology (Archibugi and Iammarino 2002), and complex global value-chain relationships. These parallel processes suggests that globalization of innovation takes different forms, ranging from international research cooperation, international exploitation of technologies or global markets of technology, and has encouraged the emergence of new business relations. In this paper, we seek to contribute to this area by better understanding strategies of innovation by large businesses in new domains of technology characterized by rapid globalization. We focus on the emerging field of nanotechnology and study innovation strategies of the most active U.S., European and Japanese companies. We expand our previous work about the geographic distribution of inventive activities of U.S. firms (Fernandez-Ribas and Shapira, 2009), and investigate similarities and differences across companies. In addition, we investigate other characteristics of the inventive and innovation processes of nanotechnologies, including university-industry linkages, and the international exploitation of technologies. Our database is the nanotechnology publication and patent database developed by the Program in Research and Innovation Systems Assessment (CNS-ASU Center for Nanotechnology in Society) at Georgia Tech, complemented with WIPO PCT national phase reports and companies' profiles. Overall our sample consists of 60+ large multinational corporations and their subsidiaries. References Archibugi, D. and Iammarino, S. (2002) The globalization of technological innovation: definition and evidence, Review of International Political Economy. Arora, Ashish, Chris Forman, and Jiwoong Yoon (2007) Globalization of Software Innovation, Sloan Industry Studies Working Papers, 2007 Number WP-2007-2. Fernandez-Ribas, Andrea and Shapira, Philip (2009) Technological diversity, scientific excellence and the location of inventive activities abroad: the case of nanotechnology, The Journal of Technology Transfer, vol. 34/3, pp. 286-303. Jeffrey T. MacHer, David C. Mowery, Alberto Di Minin (2007) "Non-Globalization" of Innovation in the Semiconductor Industry, California Management Review, Vol. 50 (1) Chesbrough, H. W. (2003) Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press. Rivette, K.G and Kline, D. (2000) Discovering new value in Intellectual Property, Harvard Business Review January-February 2000: 54-66. Wadhwa, Vivek, Rissing, Ben, Gereffi, Gary, Trumpbour , John and Engardio, Pete (2008) The Globalization of Innovation: Pharmaceuticals: Can India and China Cure the Global Pharmaceutical Market.
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ItemHow Important is U.S. Location for Research in Science?(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Kahn, Shulamit ; MacGarvie, Megan J.The United States has the largest concentration of cutting-edge research scientists in the world, attracts more foreign graduate students than any other country, and is home to a disproportionate share of top scientists (Zucker and Darby 2007, Bound, Turner and Walsh 2006). If, as many papers suggest, knowledge diffusion and collaboration are enhanced by geographic proximity, then these facts alone will mean that the productivity of U.S.-based scientists will be elevated relative to those in other countries. Adding to this advantage is the ability of well-funded American universities and research institutes to devote considerable financial resources to increasingly expensive research laboratories and equipment. There are several countervailing forces that might erase the advantages enjoyed by U.S. researchers. Other countries are attracting more star scientists. Other governments are making the development of stronger research capabilities a national priority, while the U.S. government has made some controversial policy choices that may have deterred some scientific explorations. At the same time, advances in communications technology and reductions in the cost of international travel have reduced geographic barriers to knowledge diffusion and to long-distance collaboration in science. This paper asks whether scientists who received U.S. doctorates but located outside the U.S. have in recent years been at a disadvantage when it comes to research productivity, collaboration, and knowledge diffusion. A first look at the data from our sample of 446 foreigners who received U.S. science Ph.D.'s during the 1990's and early 2000's summarized in Figures 1 and 2 suggests the answer to this question is a resounding yes. Compared to those located outside the U.S., the U.S.-located U.S.-educated foreign Ph.D. scientists in our sample produce more knowledge each year, as measured by their average journal publications, and this knowledge is diffused more broadly, as measured by forward (i.e. later) citations to these articles. Furthermore, U.S.-educated Ph.D. scientists located abroad conduct research that is less likely to draw on the most recent scientific advances. However, comparisons of scientists inside the U.S. with those outside are plagued by unobserved heterogeneity among scientists and endogeneity of their location choices. Those scientists located in the U.S. and those outside are likely to differ widely in their inherent research ability and proclivity. Better researchers may be more likely to receive U.S. job offer. and/or those most interested in research may be more likely to remain in the U.S. This paper makes use of a new dataset that follows the post-Ph.D. careers of foreign scientists who came to the U.S. for their doctorate. It is unique in being the only data set of which we are aware that tracks the career progression of individual U.S.-trained Ph.D. scientists, whether they leave the U.S. or not.[2] Our sample has been carefully crafted to exploit exogenous variation in post-Ph.D. location induced by visa status. It does this by comparing foreign-born Ph.D. recipients who were required by law to leave the U.S. upon the completion of their studies with similar Ph.D. recipients who were allowed to remain in the U.S. We examine their research output in terms of the number and prestige of publications and the individuals' contribution to these publications as measured by first and last authorship. We measure these publications' impact on science by their number of forward citations, the scientists' connection to cutting-edge science by the median lag of publications' backward citations (i.e. articles cited in the publication), and their links to the American scientific community by co-authorship with Ph.D. advisors and others in the U.S. In all regressions, we control for scientists' pre-graduation research output, which we believe to be a good proxy for inherent research potential. Instrumenting for location using visa status and allowing richer and poorer countries to have different impacts, we find that the negative relationship between non-U.S. location and research output is present and large for poorer countries but completely eliminated when the researcher is located in a richer country, with two exceptions. Even for those located in the richest countries, foreign location negatively impacts both last authorship and collaboration with Americans. Further, allowing for heterogeneity in the treatment effect of foreign location on research output on these same countries, we find that the negative effect on publications of being abroad is largest for those with the lowest estimated propensity of being abroad, those who -- given their observable characteristics -- would be expected to remain in the US. [1] This research is supported by the National Science Foundation. [2] One can obtain information on foreign-born scienstists who remain in the U.S. from the NSF's SESTAT database. Also, Michael G. Finn's research provides valuable information on the stay rates of Ph.D.s. of foreign origin.
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ItemThe Concept of 'Sociotechnology' and Funding Agencies Dedicated to Science and Technology for Society(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Tahara, Keiichiro ; Yarime, Masaru ; Yoshizawa, GoNote: This is part of the panel presentation "Knowledge Use and Exchange for Policy and Society in Japan: Concepts and Practices." Research Question Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX) in Japan has a unique funding agency dedicated to research projects on "sociotechnology". One question is what is meant by "sociotechnology" and what are similar concepts and practices comparable to this term. Another question concerns in what sense this organization is unique compared to other agencies in the world. For the research on the concept and similar terms of sociotechnology, a mind map software and a qualitative data analysis (QDA) software are employed to visually and constructively arrange text data collected from a vast range of documents including books, articles and manuscripts in English and Japanese. For the research on foreign agencies comparable to RISTEX, web research, document analysis and e-mail interviews are basic tools. Preliminary Results The umbrella term "sociotechnology" includes technology for, as, with, and by society. Technology for society refers to practical activities aiming to solve tangible but often intractable problems. It is more than applied technology. Technology as society was known as social control and is now developed under the name of social engineering. This somewhat Popperian concept (Popper 1936, 1945) covers social activities and structures as a technological system. Technology with society has often been used as a popular adjective "socio-technical" (Emery & Trist 1960), the concept of which now refers to a balanced way of seeing technology and society and particularly focuses on the often complicated interactions and networks of technological and social actors - actors include data, figures, objects, architects, as well as humans in a Latourian sense (Latour 1987). Technology by society may be the most understandable in its first appearance, but probably this concept includes more than usually imagined by the term like collaboration, multiplicity of perspectives etc. Lastly, technology for society is more straightforward - technology oriented to problem-solving in the policy process and the social practice. From a preliminary research we identified three key functions of sociotechnology. The first is oriented to problem-solving. The corresponding disciplines, frameworks and approaches include policy science, finalization of science, knowledge use and exchange, problem-oriented learning and utilization-focused evaluation. The second is extensiveness, comprising of comprehensiveness and interrelatedness. The related keywords are, for instance, STS, evolutionary economics, social engineering, management studies, socio-technical system, network theory, soft systems methodology, creative holism, transition management, problem structuring, and systematic review. The third is collaboration and trans-disciplinarity. These are similar in the sense that both appreciate the collection and diversity of perspectives, drawn from actors in the former and disciplines in the latter. Regional sociology, communication studies, social intelligence, empowerment, appreciative inquiry, participatory technology assessment, regional foresight, and upstream engagement can perform the function of this kind. In this way terms comparable to "sociotechnology" so far we enumerate are mode-2 science, constructive/real-time technology assessment, soft science and technology, participatory action research, and collaborative problem-solving. These will be organized and distributed in a schematic map with the help of the computer applications. Rarely can we find organizations dedicated to the promotion of science and technology for society. Some possible organizations include NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) in the UK, and STW (Dutch Technology Foundation) in the Netherlands.
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ItemDistributive Paths and Channels of Emerging Technologies in Developing Countries: What Can We Learn from Biotechnology and ICTs in Argentina and Costa Rica?(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Bortagaray, Isabel ; Cozzens, Susan E.This paper analyzes the paths of emerging technologies in developing countries, particularly considering its distributive dimension along the chain of functions, from knowledge production, to the technology's production/provision, its incorporation into the productive system, and to its more generalized access and use. Two contrasting countries, Argentina and Costa Rica, set the context of study of these paths, the different conditions through which they make their way across sectors and actors, their functions and roles, and the type of distributive channels involved. The analysis of the distributive patterns of emerging technologies must include at least two intertwined levels: at the level of knowledge production, diffusion and access, and the second related to technology's diffusion-commercialization, access and use. The twofold analysis involve a common emphasis on the identification and analysis of who produces/gets what, how and when, and on the channels of distribution that contribute (or not) to the breadth and depth of the technology. More in particularly, it considers those policies, organizations and/or institutions that substantially influence/shape the way in which the technology penetrates society. In some cases these have to do with providing channels for bridging the knowledge production and use, while in others they contribute with the expansion of technological access and appropriation. It also looks at the different roles of policies along each phase of the technology. This paper argues that at the level of knowledge production, public research organizations (national and/or international) are fundamental for catalyzing the expansion of the distributive path, in spite of differences and peculiarities of the technologies. Yet at the level of the distribution of the technology, this role is not always embraced by a specific actor or by policies, in which cases distributive paths are interrupted, and pockets of population remain outside from the technology's path. This study directly results from a large research project, RESULTAR , oriented to study the distributive consequences of emerging technologies in five countries of the Americas (Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica and United States), and concentrated on two sets of emerging technologies: biotechnologies (GM, tissue culture, and recombinant insulin) and ICTs (Open source software and Mobile Phones). Moreover, RESULTAR attempts to: "(1) describe the dynamics that link emerging technologies to patterns of inequality; (2) identify the roles of public interventions in those dynamics; and (3) develop a framework that policy actors can use prospectively to analyze the distributional valence of a specific new technology in a particular national context." This paper in particular draws on 40 in-depth interviews conducted to a wide range of actors, including researchers, policy-makers, technology users, NGOs, and productive actors related to the five technologies in the two countries.
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ItemWhat Drives States to Restrict Stem Cell Research? An Event-History Analysis(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Hearn, James C. ; Lacy, T. Austin ; Levine, Aaron D.Since human embryonic stem cells were first isolated in 1998, stem cell science has rapidly emerged on the policy agenda both at the national and state levels. This policy activity reflects the contentious nature of this research. Supporters of human embryonic stem cell research point to the ability of these cells to give rise to any cell type in the human body and suggest that this science will usher in a new era of regenerative medicine. Detractors argue not about the potential of this research, but about its ethics. Specifically, they argue that the destruction of human embryos required by human embryonic stem cell research and the potential use of cloning technology to create patient-matched human embryonic stem cells make this technology immoral. Policymakers around the world have balanced these competing views in different manners. As a result, a heterogeneous patchwork of policies has emerged where some jurisdictions actively support research in this field while others deliberately restrict it (Knowles, 2004). This patchwork is particularly evident at the state level within the United States. Ten states have adopted policies that support human embryonic stem cell research, and eight states have acted to restrict research in this field. Supportive policies typically legalize human embryonic stem cell research and related technologies or provide state funding to support this research, while restrictive policies outlaw specific research practices or place limits on the use of state funding to support this field. Despite this atypically heterogeneous policy environment, the factors that influence adoption of state stem cell policies have not been systematically explored and remain poorly understood. This paper seeks to address this gap in the literature and offer insight into the factors that influence states to adopt stem cell policies. We focus on restrictive stem cell (RSC) policies and, building on insights from previous studies of state policy adoption, ask how state-level characteristics, such as the strength of its economy and the political make-up of its government, influence the adoption of these policies. In addition, we test a diffusion model of policy adoption, asking how the adoption of RSC policies is influenced by the adoption of stem cell policies in neighboring states. In this analysis, time is measured discretely as the calendar year in which a state first adopted such a policy. Our data set begins in 1998, when Michigan adopted an RSC policy, and continues until 2007, by which time a total of 8 states had adopted a policy of this kind. Our method utilizes a type of Event History Analysis (EHA) known as the Cox Proportional Hazards Model (CPH). The CPH focuses on the relationship in panel data between the event outcome and the covariates of theoretical interest, without the need for specifying a functional form of the duration dependence (Box-Steffensmeier and Jones, 2004). The dependent variable expresses the duration of time in years (t) until a state (i) adopts a policy. CPH calculates a survival function, representing the probability that a unit will "survive" (or fail to experience the event) longer than time t (Box-Steffensmeier and Jones, 2004; Box-Steffensmeier and Bradford, 2004; Singer and Willett, 2003). Next, the hazard function, our primary dependent variable of interest, is calculated. The hazard function represents the instantaneous rate of change in the probability of experiencing an event at time t, conditional upon "survival" up to the specified period of time. For our analysis, the hazard function indicates the probability that a state without a RSC policy will adopt one in a particular year, given its values of the independent variables that are hypothesized to influence change. Maximum partial likelihood estimation is used to calculate the parameter estimates. An advantage of CPH is its superior capability of dealing with the "right-censoring" problem, that is, the likelihood of event occurrence after the time period for which data are available. Our findings suggest that, in the context of a variety of control factors, states having a republican governor, a low unemployment rate, a conservative citizen ideology, and a higher number of contiguous states previously enacting any type of stem cell legislation were more likely to adopt these policies. An interaction effect between citizen ideology and the number of contiguous states previously adopting a policy reveals that conservative states and liberal states respond to the diffusion of stem cell policies differently. That is, partisan politics, a state's ideological characteristics, and interstate diffusion all contribute to the decision to adopt a prohibitive stem cell policy in both straightforward and dynamic manners. Future models on this project will update the analytic dataset to incorporate the adoption of a PSC by additional states in 2008 and will incorporate variables related to electoral timing and states' religious preferences. Prior studies have examined the adoption of morality policies, such as restrictions on access to abortion or capital punishment, as well as, to a lesser extent, economic development policies. The case of stem cell policy examined here extends the policy adoption literature by illuminating the factors that drive policy adoption when lawmakers are forced to balance ethical concerns with potential health benefits and economic development opportunities. References Box-Steffensmeier, J.M., & Jones, B.S. (2004). Event history modeling: A guide for social scientists. Cambridge: New York: Cambridge University Press. Box-Steffensmeier, J.M., & Bradford, S.J. (2004). Timing and political change: Event history modeling in political science. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Knowles, L. P. (2004). "A Regulatory Patchwork - Human ES Cell Research Oversight." Nature Biotechnology 22(2): 157-73) Singer, J. D., & Willett, J. B. (2003). Applied longitudinal data analysis: Modeling change and event occurrence. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
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ItemDeterminants of Promotion and Scientific Productivity: A Study on Italian and French Academic Physicists(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Lissoni, Francesco ; Mairesse, Jacques ; Montobbio, Fabio ; Pezzoni, MicheleBoth the sociology and the economics of science have dedicated many research efforts to explaining the determinants of academic scientists' careers and productivity. Most of the available evidence, however, is based upon US data, while cross-country studies are virtually absent; this is especially true of quantitative studies (Long, 1978; Allison and Long, 1990; Levin and Stephan, 1991; Lee and Bozeman, 2005). Such a gap in the literature stands in contrast with the need to explore the many differences between the US academic system and those of other countries, as well as the differences to be found in large regions, such as Europe, whose countries have for long pursued separate national higher education and science policies. The most important differences are related to the degree of autonomy of universities, the relative balance (in size and prestige) of universities vs. other public research organizations, and the size and flexibility of the academic job market. In this paper we study the determinants of promotions and scientific productivity of physicists in French and Italian universities. These two countries are characterized by political and scientific competition between universities and top public research organizations (especially CNRS in France, and CNR in Italy) and by quite a rigid institutional system. Almost all French and Italian universities are public, with limited financial and managerial autonomy; their professors are State employees, whose wages and duties are set according to tight ministerial rules and not subject to local negotiations; promotions and mobility across universities are administered by disciplines, that is by elective bodies that represent all tenured staff in specific scientific fields and exercise a great degree of control over We follow the existing literature in exploring the impact of age, gender, and social capital on the quality and quantity of academic scientists' publications on careers, and of all such variables on the same scientists' career advancements. In addition, we consider some institutional specificities of the French and Italian systems. In particular we observe that in both countries the recruitment process has been characterized by frequent stops-and-goes imposed by political events, which may have introduced noticeable cohort effects, as discussed by Stephan (1996). Both in France and Italy, in fact, the early 1980s saw a sudden peak in recruitment (respectively, in 1984 and 1980), which was meant to re-establish a satisfactory staff-to-student ratio after years of growth in the student population, but which was followed by a long dry spell during which many less new scientists got a tenured position. At the present stage, the paper uses a newly created panel of 3633 academic physicists of the matter in France and Italy active in 2004-05. Productivity is measured through the number of publications on 363 high impact journals and quality is measured using the five-year impact factor of the journals where the scientist's articles are published. We run different regressions for the different academic ranks established by law in the two countries, namely: Ricercatore (RU), Professore Associato (PA) and Professore Ordinario (PO) for Italy and Maitre de conference (MCF) and Professeur (PR) for France. We address the issue of endogeneity of promotion estimating five different models, one for each rank, accounting for the scientific productivity conditional to promotion. Sample selection issues are solved using a traditional Heckman two steps estimation. In our framework the probit selection equation gives information on the determinants of the probability of promotion. We account for individual heterogeneity by considering the scientist's average yearly productivity before promotion (quantity/quality before promotion). Our results show age and gender effects in the different institutional environments, by rank. We characterize the work environment using co-authors' productivity and affiliations and we find evidence of a significant impact of co-authors on productivity. Finally we show that scientists recruited or promoted after the reforms of the academic systems in France and Italy in 1984 and 1980 are on average less productive then scientists belonging to other entry cohorts. However this occurs only for Professori Associati, Ricercatori and Maitre de conference for which the selection criteria were less strict in those two entry cohorts. In the probit selection equations we find that Italian or French scientist's chances of being promoted grow with age but decline partially after scientists are 61. Women, coeteris paribus, have a significantly lower probability of being promoted both in Italy and France. In Italy, promotion is influenced only by the quantity of a scientist's publications while in France both quality and quantity play a statistically significant role. In both academic systems we observe big recruitments waves that affect significantly the probability of promotion. In the productivity equations we show that age has a negative impact on the quantity and quality of articles published, but only in France. In Italy we observe a negative gender effect only for RUs. In Italy therefore women at the early stages of their career are penalized in their publication activity. However if Italian women manage to be promoted to higher ranks they publish as much as Italian men. Conversely in France we observe a negative gender effects across all ranks. We find evidence that the work environment is very important for individual scientists' productivity. In particular having a high quality co-authors and co-authors form the US (or from other research organizations like CNRS, CERN or INFN) has a positive effect on the quality and quantity of published articles. Finally we show that big recruitment waves of the 1980s had a negative effect on the subsequent quality and quantity of publications of professors in the related cohorts. This effect is significantly negative in the case for MCFs in France, and RUs and PAs in Italy. On the contrary, the effect seems positive POs and PRs. We explain this result by recalling that recruitment waves interested only the lower ranks of the academic ladder (RUs and PAs in Italy, MCFs in France). As fot higher ranks (POs and PRs), no special provisions were made, but only above-average scientists managed to be promoted. We are currently working on collecting similar data for CNRS and CNR researchers, so that by the time of the conference we should also be able to compare the productivity and career patterns of these scientists with those of their academic colleagues. This is of great interest for France and Italy, being the two institutions in competition with universities for attracting the nest talents, and the policy-makers' attention and support.
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ItemJapanese TA-Like Activities in the Sectors of Medical Care, Food and Energy(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Matsuo, Makiko ; Yarime, Masaru ; Yoshizawa, GoNote: This is part of the panel presentation "Knowledge Use and Exchange for Policy and Society in Japan: Concepts and Practices." Japanese TA-like activities in the sectors of medical care, food and energy Makiko Matsuo and Go Yoshizawa Given the conceptual and historical survey of TA, this presentation raises the following research questions: what kind of TA-like activities have been implemented in Japan, particularly focusing on medicine, food and energy sectors; what are the needs in these individual sectors for which institutionalization of TA would be able to meet; in which conditions fragmented or networked activities can be regarded as TA. Document analysis and interviews with relevant actors involved in the past and current TA-like activities. The approach is more like action research, by which we investigators change the context to realize the institutionalization of TA by mobilizing and networking these actors and ourselves through mutual learning. Preliminary Results Technology assessment (TA) refers to institutions and practices which support problem-definition (agenda setting) or decision-making for the development of technology and society by anticipating, at an early stage of the technology development, societal impacts of emerging technologies that are difficult to be governed by conventional research, innovation and legal systems. From this perspective, TA-like activities in the following sectors seem fragmented and less comprehensive. In the case of medical care, TA-like activities have been mostly economic assessment for the medical service payment, which is entirely focused on cost-effectiveness just for medical resource allocation, not for ethical and social implications. Advisory councils for ELSI on advanced technologies have no comprehensive discussions crossing over ministries. Inadequacy of agenda-setting also brings discussions to a deadlock - an expert panel on bioethics in the Cabinet Office has been holding years of debate on embryos. The legislation by parliamentary members is so dependent on legislative bureaus and swayed by social conditions. This entails a lack of consistency in debate as exemplified by virtually leaving discussions on transplanting organs from people 15 or younger. As to food, there are increasing applications of science and technology in this sector, such as pesticides, food additives, veterinary drugs, food irradiation, GM foods, health and dietary foods, nano foods, and cloned meat. The need for comprehensive assessment becomes more urgent, not only for social and ethical debate on GM foods and cost-benefit analysis, but also for examining how health foods affect Japanese individual dietary habits and life styles, food culture, food industry etc. Perspectives on sustainable fishery, relationship between energy and agriculture have also been dismissed. Risk assessment currently undertaken by the Food Safety Commission (FSC) is generally effectively conducted for foods subject to pre-market authorization, despite insufficient assessment of other aspects of applied technologies. The energy policy arena abounds in TA-like activities such as a number of plans, strategies, visions and roadmaps to comply with Kyoto protocol. These quantitative technical scenarios are consistent each other in number but they have hardly conducted social impact assessment. For example in the development renewable energy, there is potentially severe conflict over the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) legislation and a future distributed power supply system. There is no apparent clash, no TA-like activity, and no anticipatory governance. Other examples include an insufficient assessment on social, economic and environmental impacts of biomass fuels, the instalment of HEMS (home energy management system) and its consequence, and 24/7 convenience stores - how it affects the reduction of CO2 emissions, local retailers, regional employment, late-night criminal activities, urban life style etc. A more specific issue discussed is risks and regulations on multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT). There are controversies and confusions around scientific judgements on a couple of articles that imply this nanomaterial may causes asbestos-like mesothelioma. A precautionary but rather pointless and no evidence-based guideline announced by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) in February 2008 has plunged the nanotechnology industry into a further confusion and nanophobia-phobia (Rip 2006). Our analysis suggests the lack of a precautionary appraisal (Stirling 2007) might be the major cause.
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ItemDo University Incubators and Non-University Incubators Perform Differently?(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Tang, Ming FengTechnology business incubators (TBIs) are widely viewed as a promoter of regional/national innovation and competitiveness. Both developed countries and developing countries have established university incubators and non-university incubators since the 1960s. In China, the incubation industry has had a remarkable development. From 1987 (the year where the first Chinese technology business incubator was established in Wuhan) to nowadays, over 500 TBIs have been distributed almost thorough China. This paper aims to make a comparative study between university incubators and non-university incubators in China. It firstly outlines the background of Chinese incubation industry, and then compares university incubators and non-university incubators in terms of sponsorship, types of entrepreneurs, location, and services at a general level. In order to make the comparative study specifically, it samples Chongqing University incubator and Caohejing TBI (non-university incubator) as a case study. This paper is to focus on comparing the services and performance outcomes of these two types of TBIs and discussing which factors influence their incubation performance. We use Chan and Lau (2005)'s assessment framework with nine criteria as an analytical tool to compare the quality of services between Chongqing University Incubator and Coahejing TBI, like pooling resources, sharing resources, consulting, public image, networking, clustering, geographic proximity, costing and funding. We also employ the European Commission's assessment indicators (CSEC, 2002) to compare the performance outcomes of these two sampled incubators. Additionally, in-site visits, face-to-face interviews and semi-structured interviews are used in our research methodology. Our preliminary research finding is that the ultimate objective of technology business incubators converges in building-up innovation competitveness. But, university incubators and non-university incubators are different in terms of sponsorship, types of entrepreneurs, location, and services. University are sponsors of university incubators. They are often established around or in campus. The university sponsorship of incubators suggests that university incubators cannot behave as firms maximizing their profits. They function as an experimental base for academic entrepreneurs to accumulate innovation experiences and promote innovation capabilities. Since the management team of university incubators is lack of business background, their services are administration and building oriented rather than value-added oriented. For non-university incubators, industrializing high-tech and creating wealth are the key pursuing points. The corporate-based sponsorship of non-university incubators requires economic returns to investments. And the majority of the venture entrepreneurs come from firms, having both commercial experiences and technology skills. When they ask for help from the incubator, they want to get qualified specific services. To attain these objectives, non-university incubators employ some professionals and improve incubation services to attract venture firms with promising market potential. The location of non-university incubators concentrating in science and technical industrial park, provides tenant firms with sufficient incubation surface for potential large-scale production. Concerning the services of the two sampled incubators, we find that the Caohejing incubator has more advantages in pooling resources, consulting, public image, networking and funding than the Chongqing incubator. The Chongqing incubator has more advantages in terms of geographic proximity to the university. Our research results on their performance outcomes show that the Caohejing incubator is superior to its counterpart in terms of incubation funds, incubation surface, income creation of tenant firms, survival rate of tenant firms as well as the number of graduated tenant firms. However, the Chongqing incubator has an overwhelming advantage in the number of staff in tenant firms and the number of tenant firms. Finally, the Chongqing incubator prioritizes the fostering of domestic technology-based firms for upgrading indigenous innovation capabilities, whereas the Caohejing incubator gives preference to both foreign and domestic (mixed) technology-based firms for high-tech industrialization. The differences of these types of incubators are found to link with the type of tenant entrepreneurs, the quality of services and the specific context of each incubator. For example, Caohejing TBI is located in Shanghai whereas Chongqing Univeresity incubator is in Chongqing. Compared with Chongqing, longer open history, sustainable political and economical supports from the government and continuous foreign direct investments promote the regional innovation competence of Shanghai. The specific context contributes to the development of the Caohejing incubator and its tenant firms.
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ItemHelpfulness and Productivity: Implications of a New Taxonomy for Star Scientists(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Oettl, AlexanderThe need to hire the best and the brightest - "the war for talent" - has long been one of the most pressing strategic concerns facing managers (Kapur and McHale, 2005; Guthridge, Komm, and Lawson, 2008). This concern is largely driven by the observation that high performers, or stars, account for the generation of a disproportionately large level of output. The vice-president of engineering of Google, Alan Eustace, noted to the Wall Street Journal in 2005 that "one top-notch engineer is worth 300 times or more than the average", and that he "would rather lose an entire incoming class of engineering graduates than one exceptional technologist" (Tam and Delaney, 2005). Why is this? How do stars so greatly influence the performance of organizations? The existing performance taxonomy for scientists focuses exclusively on individual output, classifying a scientist as either a Star or a Non-Star. The seminal work by Zucker, Darby, and Brewer (1998), for example, defines stars as the top 0.75% of contributors to the genetic sequence database GenBank, a group that accounts for almost 17% of contributions. Recent work by Groysberg, Lee, and Nanda (2008) examines the skill portability of the top 3% of security analysts when they move firms, using a ranking of the perceived effectiveness of security analysts and Azoulay, Graff, Zivin, and Wang (2008) look at the impact of eminent scientists using a variety of measures; such as research funding, citations, and patenting. In all of these articles, the definition of a star is based solely on productivity, in other words, we define stars by what they physically produce. This uni-dimensional classification of star scientists is surprising as innovation is most often characterized as a communal process. Communal interactions matter for two reasons. First, innovation is more often a result of the recombination of existing knowledge and ideas, rather than the discovery of something fundamentally novel (Gilfillan, 1935; Nelson and Winter, 1982). As knowledge frontiers continue to expand, combinations of increasingly specialized levels of human capital are required to reach the forefront of knowledge (Wuchty, Jones, and Uzzi, 2007; Jones, 2008). It is this recombination of specialized ideas, either through formal collaborations (coauthorships, joint ventures, etc.) or informal means (discussions and comments from helpful individuals), that leads to innovation. Second, the exchange of knowledge is to a large extent governed through social channels. Individuals possess only finite levels of knowledge and knowledge search is costly; social forces can reduce barriers to knowledge flow through geographic proximity (Jaffe, Trajtenberg, and Henderson 1993), labor mobility (Almeida and Kogut, 1999; Oettl and Agrawal, 2008), social networks (Singh 2005), and membership in ethnic communities (Agrawal, Kapur and McHale 2008). While innovation is a communal process, the inability to perfectly contract between parties on knowledge exchange leads to failures in the market for knowledge and a decrease in knowledge transfer (Arrow 1962). As such, conditions that facilitate knowledge sharing or spillovers in the absence of formal contractual environs are of great value to firms. Ultimately, if our concern is to understand the mechanisms by which an individual maximizes his performance, simply understanding the productivity inputs of an individual would suffice. However, the strategy and economics literatures focus on performance measures at the organization and regional levels, and as such, mechanisms in which individuals influence the productivity of others become important as these mechanisms directly influence the performance of organizations and regions. Hence, mechanisms by which individuals generate spillovers are of paramount concern to scholars of strategy and economics. The importance of social factors on innovation illuminates the deficiency of our current productivity-focused conceptualization of star scientists (Stars versus Non-Stars). To expand our current conceptualization of star scientists, I develop a new taxonomy of star scientists by incorporating a social dimension: helpfulness to others. This new taxonomy allows an individual to not only vary along a productivity dimension but also along a helpfulness dimension. The objective of this paper is threefold. First, I expand upon the current dichotomous conceptualization of stars by developing a taxonomy that not only incorporates a star's individual productivity but also his helpfulness. In doing so, I move beyond the current uni-dimensional classification and redefine what it means to be a star. Second, I propose a measure to classify individuals into this new taxonomy. And third, I use this taxonomy to assess the extent to which different star types influence the productivity of others. Following prior studies (Allison and Long, 1990; Azoulay, Graff, Zivin, and Wang, 2008) I measure individual productivity using Impact Factor-weighted publication counts. Helpfulness, on the other hand, is measured by academic journal acknowledgements as acknowledgements are generally made to those who have helped in the development of the work. Using these measures of productivity and helpfulness, I classify a sample of 415 immunologists and examine their influence on the productivity of their coauthors. Coauthorship is used to pinpoint the timing of the formation of an interpersonal tie between the immunologist and a potential recipient of spillovers. It is this collocation in social space that allows the coauthor the potential to benefit from any spillovers the star may provide. By placing a star in both productivity and helpfulness space, while keeping the classifications discrete, I am able to classify an individual as one of four types: an All-Star, a Lone Wolf, a Maven, or a Non-Star. I define an All-Star as an individual with both high productivity and high helpfulness. A Maven is an individual with average productivity but high helpfulness. A Lone Wolf is someone who has high productivity but average helpfulness, and a Non-Star has both average productivity and average helpfulness. Restrictively, the current dichotomous conceptualization of stars groups both All-Stars and Lone Wolves together, and overlooks Mavens. By expanding on the current classification, I am able to examine the influences of individuals who vary both in their productivity and their helpfulness. Examining the changes in productivity from coauthoring with various star types would be an appropriate empirical exercise if coauthoring relationships were chosen at random, but clearly they are not. The problem with endogenous coauthor selection is that the coauthors selected by an immunologist may be chosen due to their productivity, thus producing spurious correlations between an individual's productivity and their coauthorship network. For this paper, I examine the decrease in productivity of coauthors when an immunologist dies. Across a number of specifications, the productivity of the coauthors of All-Stars that die decreases on average by 35% relative to the decrease in productivity when a Non-Star dies. More interestingly, coauthors of Mavens that have died experience a 30% decrease in productivity, while the coauthors of Lone Wolves experience decreases in productivity of only 19% on average. By expanding the current conceptualization of star scientists and focusing on both the productivity and helpfulness dimensions of scientists, I find that spillovers are most likely to be generated from individuals with high helpfulness. As a result, the literature has largely overemphasized the importance of Lone Wolves, yet overlooked and consequently underemphasized Mavens.
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ItemInnovation Passport: IBM's First-of-a-Kind Journey from Research to Reality(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Andrews, PeterGoing from invention to product or service has never been easy. With the increasing complexity of challenges and opportunities, many vital innovations can only be developed with partners. Such collaborations face challenges of culture, trust and geography. Innovation Passport tells the story of IBM's First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) program, Over the last 10 years, FOAK has taken hundreds of research assets and road tested them with its most valued clients. The program has stepped up to the demands of combining teams, often from different countries, to refine and tune inventions. At every step, commercialization remains a focus so that successful projects lead to successful offerings. This talk will take the audience through the time-tested FOAK process. They'll also get tips, guidance and more than a little caution. This presentation is for those who want to better understand technology transfer and how to make it happen themselves.