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Knowledge transfer is considered the efficient way to improve regional innovation, but relatively little is known about how the innovation efficiency of scientific and technological (S&T) talents is affected by knowledge transfer within institutional environment, particularly, limited studies carried out regional differentiation analysis. Using panel data from 30 provinces in China between 2005 and 2017, this article empirically tests the influence of the institutional environment on knowledge transfer and analyses its impact between knowledge transfer and innovation efficiency of S&T talents in China. The results show knowledge transfer can significantly improve both the scientific and the economic innovation efficiency of S&T talents. Moreover, the effects of knowledge transfer on the innovation efficiency of S&T talents in eastern, central and western China had heterogeneity. Formal and informal institutions play mediating roles between knowledge transfer and innovation efficiency of S&T talents. This study contributes to the literature by constructing an econometric model with identified variables to test the impact of knowledge transfer on the innovation efficiency of S&T talents in China, in addition, the equation about knowledge transfer was explored. The research findings are valuable to regional governments and policymakers; our empirical evidence helps to develop more efficient strategy and policy planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identifies and discusses strategies for enhancing the efficiency of technology transferring from university to the industrial sector, concerning activities carried out by Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs). The study answers two research questions: (i) What barriers hamper academic research transferring to industry? (ii) What are the inbound and outbound strategies for transferring academic research results to industry? Our findings show that the main barriers that hamper technology transfer are related to organisational, technical, human, and cultural factors comprising the academic and industrial environments. Regarding strategies, our findings reveal a comprehensive list of inbound and outbound strategies that might be implemented to cope with the ambidextrous nature of the TTOs and increase technology transfer. Finally, we discuss our findings and the relationship between the main barriers and the boundary-spanning strategies to support a more effective Technology Transfer process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wave of the digital era, Building Information Modelling (BIM) has emerged as the primary tool for intelligent construction and digital transformation in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. China's focus on policy guidance for the dissemination and application of BIM technology has promoted high-quality development and technological innovation in the AEC industry. However, few studies have described the multi-dimensional evolution picture of BIM technology policy in China, and lack of effective grasp and prediction of policy evolution law and future direction. An improved policy quantitative analysis framework is built using natural language processing (NLP) based on deep learning in this paper. The dynamic characteristics of 242 Chinese BIM technology policy documents from 1998 to 2022 in the PKULAW database are quantitatively analyzed by the framework, and the four-stage integrated evolution of Chinese BIM technology policy is quantitatively mapped in a visual form through network analysis and dynamic topic model (DTM). Furthermore, this research conducts a comprehensive discussion from three dimensions, providing valuable insights for policy makers and industry participants in China. The findings contribute to the deep integration of policy optimization and the construction industry, while also aiming to share China's experience in BIM technology governance with other countries and regions. Ultimately, this study seeks to support the global AEC industry in its digital transformation and development by offering valuable knowledge and perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological upgradation is the driving force of social and economic development. Although technological upgradation is extensively needed, it is characterised as high intelligence, high investment, and high risk. In the face of complex market competition patterns, industrial enterprises urgently need to seek external cooperation and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, the current digital systems of patents fail to fulfil efficiency improvement from technology transfer to research and development (R&D) cooperation for industrial enterprise. Nor does it provide adequate support for industrial enterprises' technological upgradation. Therefore, this research proposes a systematic framework that combines nautral language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) technologies, including the patent recommendation model, patent transferability evaluation model, and research team detection model. Such a digital system of patents improves the efficiency of technology transactions and R&D cooperation with research institutions for industrial enterprises to identify related authorised patents and locate technology research teams. It is also expected that the developed system will enable research institutions to recommend valuable patents and transfer innovative technologies effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disruptive technology has profoundly affected the market environment and business patterns. Traditional and emerging industries are willing to adopt it to nurture their innovation activities and achieve competitive advantage. However, traditional technological innovation theory cannot give accurate guidance because of the peculiarities of disruptive technology. Thus, in this study, we explore the diffusion mechanism of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technological innovation from the perspective of disruptive innovation. We implement maximum likelihood fitting methods and the goodness-of-fit test to analyse the network's degree distribution characteristics through evolution. Results illustrate that the connection mechanism changes through the evolution process. In particular periods, preferential attachment does not work. Dominant technologies will lose their position with the emergence of disruptive technologies, hence replaced by them. The findings will provide practical suggestions to firms in facilitating their strategic decision-making when faced with disruptive technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores to what extent and under what conditions resilience can be developed to cope with radical innovations in the industrial district context. Based on a comparative analysis of an Italian and Spanish cluster, this paper provides and in-depth examination of the transformation at the firm and cluster levels at the introduction, development, and diffusion of disruptive technologies, that enable clusters to cope with it and thrive. Our findings identify cluster attributes that support resilience and propose different measures of district resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study shows how R&D resources improve firm performance, taking advantage of open innovation activities in SMEs. It focuses on the mediating effect of R&D openness on the relationship between R&D resources and firm performance in SMEs. We employ secondary data of 1,046 SMEs located in South Korea's innovation clusters wherein scientific knowledge and technologies are efficiently created, transferred and utilised. The findings show that R&D resources (technological, human and financial resources) and R&D openness in SMEs positively affect firm performance. On the one hand, only SMEs with more financial resources (R&D investment) achieve better firm performance via a higher degree of external R&D collaboration. Fewer technological resources or more financial resources in SMEs can be a motivation for external collaboration. Differentiated open innovation strategies are required depending on the characteristics of R&D resources in SMEs in order to improve firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts with the Cobb Douglas function, introduces financial development as an influencing factor of technological innovation in strategic emerging industries into the production function, and then incorporates the transfer function into the linear model, further deepens the linear model into a nonlinear model, and chooses to use financial development scale and financial development efficiency as conversion variables. The panel smooth conversion model (PSTR) is used to study the nonlinear effects of financial development and technological innovation and find the best interval for financial development to promote technological innovation in strategic emerging industries. We introduce the economic and human capital spatial weight matrix in the spatial lag, spatial error, and spatial Durbin model. Finally, we verify the spatial spillover effect of financial development in promoting technological innovation in strategic emerging industries. The research results provide empirical evidence for the government to formulate policies for the long-term development of strategic emerging industries and technological innovation in strategic emerging industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to evaluate the impacts of international tourism development and green technology innovation on economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in the top 10 GDP countries between 1995 and 2018. Our preliminary findings reject the preposition of data normality, which instigate us to apply a novel method of moments quantile regression. The overall results suggest that international tourism development facilitates economic growth and increases carbon dioxide emissions asymmetrically across the different levels of economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions. Specifically, the economic growth impacts are relatively large for the comparatively more developed nations while the adverse environmental impacts are relatively larger for the comparatively less-polluted nations; thus, the tourism led-economic growth hypothesis is verified. On the other hand, green technology innovation is found to facilitate economic growth and mitigate carbon dioxide emissions, especially in the context of the relatively more developed and polluted economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In different studies in the field of healthcare, big data analytics technology has been shown to be effective in observing the behaviour of data, of which analysed to allow the discovery of relevant insights for strategy and decision making. The objective of this study is to present the results of a systematic review of the literature on big data analytics in healthcare, focussing in technologies, main areas and purposes of adoption. To reach its objective, the study conducts an exploratory research, through a systematic review of the literature, using the Methodi Ordinatio protocol supported by content analysis. The results reveal that the use of tools implies work performance at the clinical and managerial level, improving the cost–benefit ratio and reducing the time factor in the practice of the workforce in health services. Thus, this study hopes to contribute to the technological advancement of computational intelligence applied to healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precision agriculture (PA) technology has proven effective in optimizing yield with minimum inputs and in reducing environmental pollution. In this paper, we aim to investigate factors influencing PA adoption in developing countries at both the farmer (individual) and farm (organizational) levels. Findings from 59 high-ranking journal articles were reviewed to determine factors that facilitate or hinder PA adoption: 63% of studies reported factors at the farm level and 37% at the individual level. At the individual level, factors promoting PA adoption included the technology's relative advantages, observability, trialability, farmer experience in using technology, innovativeness, risk tolerance, education, and knowledge, whereas farmer age and technology complexity hindered PA adoption. Factors promoting PA adoption at the farm level included farm size, resource availability, perceived need for technology characteristics, technology compatibility, social influence, competitive pressure, and government support. PA adoption should, thus, include both levels; hence, a multi-level set of adoption determinants is presented in this study. The findings not only broaden the research agenda for future PA adoption studies that address gaps in the existing literature but also provide a holistic way for entrepreneurial technology developers and policymakers to understand factors that affect PA adoption. The study, thus, paves the way for further investigations to address the causes of slow progress in adoption of innovative technologies, such as PA, especially in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is significant interest in emerging technologies. Universities, companies and other adopters are researching how and when these technologies should be implemented. However, this research area still lacks ways to evaluate the maturity level of the technologies and rapid experimentation concepts for testing the new technologies. This paper addresses the research gap by providing a new evaluation method and a rapid experimentation concept. This method and concept were successfully used in twenty-five Flash-projects, where five emerging digital Industry 4.0 themes evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research was to map the state of the art on studies of new technologies in the agri-food sector through a systematic literature review in order to explore world trends. The systematic review method consisted of obtaining information from the Scopus database, with the search strategy limited by subject. Thiry-four keywords related to the topic were used and the search was limited only to title of scientific articles. For the coding and extraction of data and results, the VOSviewer software was used to generate, group and visualize networks and identify scientific fields and trends. In recent years there has been significant growth in the development of new technologies in the agri-food sector, concentrated in a few countries, institutions and disciplines. The results allow to identify changes in scientific paradigms and consolidate different scientific fields. It is possible to perceive that the fields of robotics, automation, artificial intelligence, among others, are gaining interest, and that genomics, biotechnology, and genetic improvement are losing dynamism. In addition, there is little research related to economic and social analysis and their relationship to the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State defence and security policies rely mostly on their military capabilities. The latter are ensured through research and development (R&D) as well as procurement, which are subject to defence industry dynamics. Furthermore the defence sector is heavily dependent on public funds; the latter can be more easily allocated if related R&D has a spill-over effect on the civilian sector, creating the potential for a bigger and more globally (or regionally) integrated market. This article investigates, then, how technology moves, and whether defence sector innovations create spin-offs in the civilian sector in the Netherlands. We aim to provide an industry-centred perspective on defence sector dynamics and potentials. For this, the article attempts to answer the following questions: Are defence technologies transferred to the civilian sector? What lessons can be derived from the Dutch case? To address these research puzzles the article's theoretical framework builds on the technology-transfer literature in analysing the case study of the Netherlands. The basis for this is 23 interviews with representatives of Dutch defence companies that were carried out both in a workshop and in one-to-one settings in May and June 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological competition between firms has changed from ordinary to generic technology (hereinafter, GT) innovation with the increasing complementarity and shareability of technology in the field of emerging technologies. While facing the R&D dilemmas and market failure of GT and its R&D process, here comes the question: who are contributing to the GT R&D in the process of building emerging technology knowledge systems? Using social network analysis and a patent panel dataset of 380 strategic emerging firms, our study empirically examines how patent cooperation networks influence the R&D performance of GT, and the moderating effect of alliance heterogeneity. We found that: (1) The network scale and network centrality of patent cooperation networks have a positive and significant impact on the R&D performance of GT, and the latter one shows a greater impact, while the network density of patent cooperation networks shows a negative and significant impact on the R&D performance of GT. (2) Alliance heterogeneity plays a positive moderating role between the network scale and R&D performance of GT, while the moderating effect turns to be negative between the network density/network centrality of patent cooperation networks and R&D performance of GT. Our study contributes lay a foundation for strategic decision-making and government promotion of GT R&D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the pineapple fruit contributing significantly towards Ghana's non-traditional export, the empirical space deficiently accounts for innovations within the sector. This article addresses prime questions that beg answering such as: the origin of innovations, when, how, what conditions facilitate adoption intensity or otherwise, what type of innovations are systematically associated with pineapple production. This study fills this lacuna by chronicling the main pineapple innovations using innovation history methodology embedded in an agricultural innovation system conceptual framing. Relying on a qualitative approach, the findings showed the emergence of two varieties – smooth cayenne and sugar loaf, overtaken by the MD2 variety. Degreening, forcing, and global Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) dominate. The Millennium Development Authority programme consolidated business plan development, efficient marketing, record keeping, and farming as a business. Successes were recorded in some instances with the transfer of technology extension model, but this article argues that the agricultural innovation system can be prioritized given the plurality of actors. The innovation history is trivialized, but it is essential for learning and co-learning in building stronger partnerships. This article underscores a radical use of innovation history both as a methodological tool and means of documenting innovations, particularly in the global south, where copious record-keeping remains rare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social-tech enterprises are organizations that create social value by employing technological innovation as part of their value proposition. The complexity and the cross-institutional character which link technological innovation to social business models makes these organizations inherently ecosystemic in their necessity of developing dense interactions to enact their social and technologically innovative objectives. This paper investigates which ecosystem configurations can enable the technological development of social entrepreneurship. Indeed, the research analyses European clusters of social innovation to understand if clusters can represent a viable ecosystemic option to promote technology transfer and adoption by social enterprises. Results reveal that current social innovation clusters display peculiar features as the necessity of bilateral networking with specialized actors, the low weight attributed to physical proximity, and the scarcity and informality of technology transfer processes. These elements, which are not typically displayed by a traditional cluster model, suggest considering different ecosystemic strategies to actively promote the technological development of social enterprises or for reconceptualizing clusters towards a demand-side perspective. Despite such a claim, our evidence shows that specific cluster configurations involving openness, low specialization on social economy, high cognitive proximity and structured governance models may informally unleash the generation of jacobian externalities fostering technological development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processes of technology development and transfer are affected by numerous barriers that hinder the efficient implementation of innovations into the economy. The paper is focused on a selected type of barriers of a technical character that are observed on the operational (intra-organisational) and tactical (inter-organisational) levels. The main objective of the paper is to identify and analyse a technical barrier related to the changing technical requirements in the course of innovation development. Against the state of the art analysis, the main technology transfer barrier discussed in the paper is illustrated with case studies presenting real barriers encountered in practice in a selected domain of optomechatronics and the successful limitation of their impact on innovation development and implementation processes. The barriers were identified by the authors in their many-year involvement in innovation development and the implementation of innovative research results in economic practice in the field of machine construction and maintenance carried out by an R&D organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electronic payments system is among recent service innovations that have transformed access to finance in developing and emerging economies. This paper analyses and forecasts the diffusions of four major electronic payment technologies in Nigeria, namely, ATM, PoS, Mobile and Web payments. Diffusion was measured by the volume of financial payments transacted on these technologies. First, we applied two growth models to evaluate the diffusion and to forecast the future trajectories of these payment technologies. Second, we applied the logistics substitution model to evaluate how these technologies compete in the Nigerian payments market. The findings show that like many technological innovations the diffusions of electronic payment technologies are characterised by growth, maturity, saturation, and decline. In addition, the mobile payment system was forecast to emerge as the most diffused payment technology given the volume of financial exchange that will occur on this platform. These findings have implications for innovators, regulators and service providers within the Nigerian payment ecosystems. The findings also have practical implication for achieving the cashless economy and the financial inclusion projects of the Nigerian state which rely on the successful diffusions of these technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology is essential to innovation and economic prosperity. Understanding technological changes can guide innovators to find new directions of design innovation and thus make breakthroughs. In this work, we construct a technology fitness landscape via deep neural embeddings of patent data. The landscape consists of 1,757 technology domains and their respective improvement rates. In the landscape, we found a high hill related to information and communication technologies (ICT) and a vast low plain of the remaining domains. The landscape presents a bird's-eye view of the structure of the total technology space, providing a new way for innovators to interpret technology evolution with a biological analogy, and a biologically-inspired inference to the next innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of China's high-speed rail (HSR) network on regional innovation cooperation examining the impact on intercity patent rights transactions in 2016 between 81,510 city-pairs. It shows that (1) China's intercity technology transfer network assumes a national-scale 'diamond structure'; (2) China's HSR network had a robust positive effect on intercity technology transfer; and (3) these impacts are direct and indirect operating through impacts on geographical proximity, industrial proximity, innovative proximity and technology complementarity. These findings broaden our understanding of the association between transport infrastructure and innovation networks in large emerging economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the rapidly changing technological environments, a significant effort has been undertaken to investigate promising technologies for the future and, accordingly, numerous studies have been conducted to develop an approach for identifying such technologies. One of the most frequently adopted approaches is patent analysis given that patent data are regarded as one of the most valuable and widely accepted sources to understand innovation activities. The term promising technology has been used in various contexts, but little effort has been made to provide a clear definition of it. As different perspectives may lead to different results, defining this concept is essential to obtain the best possible results. Thus, this study aims to develop a taxonomy of the promising technologies, and the following six perspectives along with their relevant patent analysis approaches are examined: key, outlier, vacant, emerging, new, and converging technologies. The research findings indicate that the concept of promising technology can be defined differently from diverse viewpoints, and this can be a basis for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa's poor economic performance in recent years has prompted calls by policymakers for structural transformation. To break the impasse, a stronger focus on innovation is one strategy the country has articulated through a new White Paper on Science, Technology and Innovation. Writing from this policy context, we adapt the revised contingent effectiveness model of technology transfer by including indigenous knowledge as a transfer object and emphasizes citizen needs and reparations as part of the demand environment, and appropriation as a transfer medium. Analytically, our use of this adaptation is to critically reflect on the typology of indicators produced in the first South African national survey of intellectual property and technology transfer at publicly financed research institutions. We find the dimension of least representation but presumably greatest significance in the typology is that of 'public value'. Our contention is that the output-based and commercially-biased indicators of technology transfer activity, which predominate in the typology, are insufficient to inform decision-making on technology transfer policy in a context of profound national socio-economic challenges and deep historical legacies of indigenous knowledge misappropriation. Broader evaluation data would form a richer, more inclusive evidence-base to inform new investments, as well as ongoing policy assessment, at both institutional and national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have drastically improved global connectivity and pervaded into most aspects of modern human life. To appropriate the benefits from ICTs, access to the required technology is an essential prerequisite. India's ICT adoption has been fast since 2000, but with sizeable disparities across the country. This study identifies the diffusion pattern of digital communications services in India, while accounting for technological augmentation. The study also surveys the factors influencing the variations in regional ICT adoption in India and supports Rogers theory of innovation diffusion by investigating how the social systems impacts technology adoption at different penetration levels. The findings will be useful for infrastructure capacity planning, taking policy decisions and projecting the diffusion process of emerging consumer technologies for advancing digital inclusion to support inclusive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article follows the scientific and entrepreneurial career of one of the most prominent genetic engineers, Jin-Soo Kim, in order to analyze the fate of a vision of biotechnology in South Korea, in which academy, government, and industry came together to "correct" Korean academic and economic life. I show how the scientific and the economic were intertwined in Kim's entrepreneurial lives, and so were the public and the private, commerce and law and virtue. As the founder of Toolgen, a biotech company specializing in genome editing, Kim built his career as a pioneer in biotech venture from the late 1990s, at a time when the Korean government tried to find certain opportunities in biotechnology amid the Asian financial crisis. I situate Kim's early career as a CEO of Toolgen and his return to an academic post at Seoul National University (SNU) within the rise of biotechnology entrepreneurship and the institutionalization of academic patenting in South Korea as an alternative to catch-up industrial and innovation policy that would free the country from the dependence that its own lack of science and technological innovation imposed on it. By 2005, as I show, Kim had emerged as an exemplary entrepreneurial scientist at SNU, a role model for reforming an old, tradition-bound research university into an entrepreneurial university, thereby helping to transform South Korea's industrial economy into a knowledge economy in an age of globalization. The fate of Toolgen and the scientific career of Kim, however, reflected the emergence of biotechnology entrepreneurship not only of perceived opportunity but of considerable resentments. I will end this paper with a brief discussion of a recent controversy over the ownership of his invention of the CRISPR technology at SNU. His story is thus a vista of the new ideas and sentiments of the 21st century global biotechnology manifested in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University-industry research collaboration (UIRC) is a major source for research and innovations and economic growth. Despite the extensive evidence on the importance of such collaboration in developed and developing countries, the literature related to strengthen such collaboration along with its innovation performance is still scarce. Scholars believed that the impact of education and training on researchers have a vigorous influence on research and innovations. Moreover, to enhance the competencies of education and training on researchers, it is mandatory to refurbish education and skills system in conjunction with technological infrastructure system along with their reinforcing factors i.e. knowledge sharing and research and development cooperation, respectively. In this paper, we evaluate the influence of education and skills and technological infrastructure system along with their corresponding reinforcing factors in the blended system thinking method to strengthen education and training. Evidence from UIRC in Malaysia provides empirical corroboration that the role of education and skills system and technological infrastructure system along with their reinforcing factors have a positive influence on education and training. Thus, the findings of this research suggest that intensifying the quality of education and skills system and technological infrastructure system with the reinforcing effect can enhance the effectiveness of education and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an extraordinary flood of new technologies in medicine nowadays. Sophisticated diagnostics based on genome assays, mass spectrometry and cell sorting platforms are driving the technological transfer and promote the entrance of individualized patient management in clinical practice. Mass spectrometry (MS) could be viewed as one of the major tools that promote the development of precision medicine (PM), which employs a patient's genotype and phenotype investigation to establish individually tailored drug treatment. While genetic testing allows the physician to choose appropriate medicine, MS assays provide the patient's actual phenotype, with all of the environmental, pharmacological and pathological variables. Therefore, MS is an essential technology for personalized patient management, and high-resolution MS systems are employed to resolve challenging analytical demands. The great technological advance of MS resulted in the introduction of methods with unprecedented identification power, extreme sensitivity, specificity and extended linearity range, which are simpler to use in the medical laboratories, and are based on the current reference analytical principles. Further, the ability to perform panel profiling with simultaneous measurement of bioactive compounds, their precursors and metabolites in a single sample, enormously amplifies the informative value of results, with ultimate improvement of patient care. Typical examples include newborn screening, therapeutic drug management, toxicology, endocrinology, microbiology, clinical omics assays and others. It should be specially emphasized that clinical MS integrates chemical and anatomical pathology: MS imaging and iKnife-MS guidance in surgery, although still in the research phase, open new horizons for personalized treatment and individualized patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decarbonizing the heat sector is a major challenge in the energy transition in Germany and elsewhere. District heating systems could play an important role in this context. However, the diffusion of the technology in Germany has been very slow. The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the technological innovation system (TIS) to enhance understandings of the impediments to the diffusion of non-urban district heating systems. Due to its strong local context dependence, district heating can be understood as a configurational technology, and the TIS in which it is embedded as a configurational TIS. The paper contributes to the literature by developing policy suggestions that could lead to an acceleration of the diffusion of locally context-dependent technologies. The author recommends that policymaking in configurational TIS should aim at designing smart innovation system structures that can manage a high level of context specificity and facilitate vertical and horizontal knowledge exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms often fail to shift from laboratory research to product development, and this failure is known as the Valley of Death. Although previous research has found solutions to the problem, the critical role of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) in the technology commercialisation and new product development (NPD) of manufacturing firms is often neglected. On the basis of the role theory of product innovation, this study aims to establish a new and comprehensive framework to investigate the role of KIBS in NPD in manufacturing. We identify the critical roles of KIBS as mentor and director, coordinator, strategic leader and gatekeeper, sponsor, and product champion in crossing the fuzzy front end of NPD. We find that manufacturers are likely prone to transform their inventions to innovations and finally benefit from their invented products through KIBS innovative capacity and availability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industry-University Cooperation (IUC) is recognised as an effective model for technological innovation, helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to seek opportunities from technological development and to achieve sustainable competitiveness. The study proposes an improved solution to resolve the 4 W questions commonly faced by SMEs, including identifying cooperative topics, comparing technology competitors, evaluating cooperative universities, and selecting research teams. Firstly, the Latent Dirichlet Allocation model is applied to extract sub-technology topics in a specific technology domain, and the patent clustering is analysed via K-means algorithm. Secondly, competitive and uncompetitive sub-technologies of the enterprise, as well as the geographical distribution of competitors in sub-technologies are analysed. Thirdly, the study proposes a new topic matching index (TMI) to help determine the best cooperative universities. Finally, the cooperation network is visualised to help identify the specific core research teams for each specific technology. The research team conducted an experimental study using real patent data on a 'Blockchain' technology enterprise to verify the proposed solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the new climate change regime ushered in by the 2015 Paris Agreement, technology development and transfer have emerged as essential means of global action for climate change mitigation and adaptation. In particular, technological innovation has appeared as a leading component to be accelerated, encouraged, and enabled under the Paris Agreement. However, while making the rule book to implement the Paris Agreement, a clash has occurred between developed and developing countries over the meaning of technological innovation and the intervening policies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to support innovation in developing countries. By exploring rule-making processes and expert-meetings under the UNFCCC, this paper examines how this discursive contestation has progressed in relation to the meaning of technological innovation and the creation of an appropriate institutional design to support developing countries' achievement of technological innovation. The analysis is based on the theoretical framework of discursive contestation between the two discourses of de-regulatory ecological modernisation and green governmentality with right-to-development. This research concludes by positing some policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the regionally differentiated environmental regulatory means, this paper evaluates the contribution of firms' R&D investment to economic growth with interprovincial panel data on 30 provinces in China from 2009 to 2016, which is based on the time-varying threshold model. Additionally, the coupling coordination degree model (CCDM) is used to measure the effects of technological innovation through enterprise collaboration for R&D input and investment-focused environment regulations. We then explore the inter-regional technology transfer path with different cooperation effects in areas and find: (i) The economic performance of the R&D investments of regional enterprises shows a downward trend with the strengthening of cost-focused ER while an inverted 'U'-shaped relationship that first strengthens and then weakens is presented with the strengthening of investment-focused ER. (ii) The degree of coupling calculated by CCDM is generally low, and synergies are improving from the west to the east, from a geographic perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the greater involvement of users and the co-creation of ideas with suppliers or other firms, innovation processes are increasingly based upon combinatorial knowledge. Thus, innovation is not restricted to research-and-development-driven, science-based knowledge, but is also the result of experiences and creative thinking. This has consequences for regional innovation policies because each knowledge type differs regarding policy requirements. Contributing to the under-researched topic of the barriers of combinatorial knowledge dynamics in practice, the aim of this paper was to guide government policies in transferring theoretical insights into a contemporary, place-based policy approach. In accordance with the knowledge base approach this paper clearly distinguishes between analytical knowledge, synthetic knowledge and symbolic knowledge. The analysis consists of in-depth interviews, conducted in two case-study regions in Germany. This paper deduces several local factors that have hampered combinatorial knowledge dynamics, and identifies obstacles that can only be overcome at the federal state or national levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grassroots technological innovation (GRTI) is perceived as a source of sustainable development while addressing local problems and needs of people belonging to the bottom of the economic pyramid. The fostering of sustainable development develops a need for scientific evaluation and subsequent diffusion of GRTI to ameliorate the livelihood of grassroots communities. It is, hence, the purpose of this research to assess the relative performance of different GRTIs with respect to economic, social, and environmental benefits. The empirical data for this study comprised of 32 GRTIs from the three different rural non-farm sectors in the Indian context. Analytical hierarchy process is used for deducing the relative assessment of the selected GRTI against the aforementioned performance criteria. The findings of this study offer imperative insights into the field of technology diffusion and development at the grassroots level and suggest recommendations for sustainable policy formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many studies have recognised the importance of defining specific public policies to encourage technology diffusion, many authors fail to provide a clear view about either the policies that affect the diffusion of technologies or the effect of the different political instruments. Adopting a content analysis of papers that directly or indirectly refer to the diffusion of a new technology, this study applies the integrative propositional analysis (IPA) methodology to: (a) identify the repertoire of the different diffusion policies identified by previous studies; (b) classify these policies according to the type of instruments that they use; (c) analyse the impact of each policy on the different adoption factors that may inhibit or foster the diffusion of a new technology; and (d) evaluate the scope of each type of policy in terms of the number of affected adoption factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past 30 years has seen an escalating interest in the potential role of universities in contributing to their regional economies, reflected in the increasing trend for regional innovation strategies to ascribe a central role for universities, particularly in peripheral, institutionally thin places. The global economic crisis and subsequent austerity measures implemented in many developed economies have put further pressure on universities from national and regional policymakers to become more explicitly involved in contributing to their local economies in order to justify their public funding. This paper will draw on the academic literature to consider how justified this focus is by questioning whether universities are willing or even able to play the roles expected of them in contributing to regional innovation. It will critique an approach to policymaking that often views universities as homogenous actors in the regional innovation system and places an over reliance on imitating success stories from other places without sufficient consideration of the specificities of local conditions. It will argue for a more realistic and nuanced approach to involving universities in regional innovation policy, concluding with key insights for both universities and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation in clusters is initially rooted in proximity among specialized actors, but over time it results from an interplay between the local and global levels. The internationalization of production and the relocation of cluster manufacturing activities abroad open a debate on the impact of such dynamics upon innovation, between knowledge acquisition opportunities and the weakening of local innovation activities. This paper contributes to the debate by empirically testing whether internationalization has an impact on cluster firms' innovation outputs. Based on a survey conducted among 259 Italian cluster firms, the results show that upstream and downstream internationalization per se does not impact innovation, measuring product, process, organizational, and marketing innovation outputs. On the contrary, collaboration with external actors, such as designers, research centres or universities, has a positive effect on firms' innovation outputs. This is consistent with the cluster model and with previous studies focusing on innovation in the cluster context. Our analyses show that it is not internationalization that matters when it comes to innovation for cluster firms. Innovation performances are influenced by the relational capabilities of cluster firms to connect and manage collaboration even outside the cluster scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and Development (R&D) service firms make significant contributions to innovation in other businesses. The extant literature considers these firms a homogenous sub-group of Knowledge Intensive Business Service firms (KIBS). The objective of this study is to investigate how R&D service firms innovate and the variety of innovation practices within these firms. Employing data from semi-structured interviews with senior managers from 32 UK-based R&D service firms, we suggest that there are two different modes of innovation: in the first mode, R&D service firms innovate similarly to KIBS whose innovation is ad-hoc in nature and driven by customers' requests; another group of R&D service firms innovate like New Technology-based Firms (NTBFs) relying more on structured in-house R&D activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a stochastic frontier model to elaborate how academia-industry research and development collaboration and government funding influence the innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises through a panel dataset from 2009 to 2015, including 30 provinces in China. We find that the research institute-industry collaboration promotes innovation efficiency of enterprises, while university-industry collaboration is adversely associated with innovation efficiency. Government funding plays a positive role on innovation efficiency across the board. Next, we divide the sample into three clusters according to enterprises' innovation ability. In the first cluster, which has the least innovation ability, research institute-industry collaboration, university-industry collaboration and government funding have no significant effect on enterprise innovation efficiency. In the second and third clusters, university-industry collaboration exerts a negative impact on innovation efficiency but government funding improves innovation efficiency. At the same time, we investigate the interaction effects of enterprise R&D personnel and academia-industry collaboration and government funding on innovation efficiency. We find some heterogeneity in the full sample and the three sub-samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies implicitly assume that knowledge search modes are homogeneous, and little is known about the impacts of specific search modes on innovation. Drawing upon the knowledge search literature, we differentiate among four types of search modes and analyze their impacts on innovation performance. Moreover, we enrich the theoretical framework by recognising the moderating role of strategic R&D orientation in affecting the relationship between specific types of search modes and innovation performance. Using a unique dataset of 418 Chinese firms, we find that, except for inward licensing, value chain search, capital search, and industry-university-research institute collaboration (IUR collaboration) exert positive effects on innovation performance. Moreover, the empirical results indicate that a strategic R&D orientation amplifies the positive effects of value chain search and IUR collaboration while it mitigates the negative effect of inward licensing on innovation performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances a measure of knowledge complexity to analyse for Ireland whether more complex knowledge is generated by local or foreign firms. Information on assignees, technological structure and global ownership contained within a recently developed Irish patent database forms the basis for distinguishing between technologies developed by local and nonlocal firms. Thereafter, our knowledge complexity index uses a modified bipartite network to link these technologies to their country of origin, i.e. local or nonlocal. Our results indicate that the most complex technologies tend to be produced in a few diverse regions. Furthermore, the majority of complex knowledge is generated in technology classes where the share of foreign activity is greater than local firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars underline the high relevance of bridging organisations in favouring innovation. Nevertheless, they do not investigate enough how bridging organisations favour technology transfer, particularly with regard to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). To fill this research gap, this paper reviews the studies on the technology transfer activities a bridging organisation could perform. Then, the main activities carried out by intermediators are empirically investigated to identify the main intervention processes and activities. The further analysis of these activities identifies three SMEs' abilities an intermediator may promote (i.e. networking, integration and absorptive capacity). This paper offers practical and theoretical contributions. First, it supports the definition of the intermediators' intervention plans with a whole description of the three potential levels of intervention. Second, it synthetises the relationship between technology management, bridging organisations and SMEs in three propositions. Finally, it highlights the need for policy makers' intervention supporting technology transfer offices and local institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Finnish industrial and trade fairs held in the Soviet Union in the context of Finnish-Soviet trade and scientific-technical cooperation in the 1950s and 1960s. While primarily focused on fairs, italso discusses different activities that accompanied them, such as lectures, visits, and negotiations between Finnish traders and Soviet officials and specialists. This study illustrates how such first-hand contact played an important role in Finnish-Soviet communications. First, they helped Finnish producers showcase their goods and technologies directly to Soviet buyers in various ministries and organizations. Second, these contacts included diverse activities such as face-to-face contacts, lectures, and seminars, being a means of technology transfer from Finland to the USSR. Finally, although they were commercial interactions without explicit ideological purposes - like many international exhibitions of the last century - Finnish fairs demonstrated a technological gap between Finland and the USSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In New Zealand, little is known about the preferences of sheep farmers for different information providers and technology transfer methods. A survey was undertaken to determine the usefulness of these sources of information and the influence of demographic factors such as age, education and farm size. The results of the survey indicated that preference for information providers and technology transfer methods varied widely. In addition, for the majority of information providers and technology transfer methods at least one demographic factor (education, farm size or age) influenced their perceived usefulness. The delivery of information to farmers, therefore, needs to be conducted in a targeted way using a number of different information sources and methods to ensure maximum uptake of the information. Providing information in a way that combines a number of information sources and delivery methods is likely to have the greatest impact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the role of globalization in the creation and dissemination of technology across firms operating in 30 emerging and developing economies. Firm-level data from four rounds of Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys from 2002 to 2014 is pooled to assess whether international exposure translates into greater propensity for firms to innovate. The viability of different channels of international technology transmission, i.e. exporting and importing activities, foreign licensing agreements and foreign direct investment are studied to analyze whether they indeed succeed in delivering the push to the firms operating in developing countries to innovate and as a result push them closer to the world's technology frontier. The empirical results endorse the view that exporting and importing activities and foreign licensing agreements are important channels for technology transfer. This study also acknowledges country, sector and firm specific characteristics and their differential capacity to benefit from foreign exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Seattle-based PATH is one of the world’s largest not-for profit organisations focused on improving health in low-income countries. This article argues the history of this understudied organisation is critical to understanding how collective action focused on facilitating developing countries’ access to essential health technologies is structured. Since its establishment almost 40 years ago, the organisation has been a catalyst for multidisciplinary public–private collaboration that has produced affordable, culturally appropriate health technologies. From its origins in reproductive health, enabling contraceptive technology transfers and advising on regulatory standards, to its more recent managerial roles in the development of inexpensive vaccines produced in developing countries, PATH has repeatedly illustrated how public–private collaboration in product research and development can increase poor populations’ access to essential health technologies. This in turn has provided substance to the contested narrative that engaging business is critical to reducing global health disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Finland is the only country in the world where all ports freeze over during a typical winter. Over the century 1878–1978, Finland developed a winter-seafaring system that broke the winter isolation and eliminated seasonal variation in shipping. By using diverse archival sources, we deconstruct the dominant narrative of Finnish winter seafaring through which national as well as technological development is often presented as natural, inevitable and straightforward. We reinterpret the Finnish winter navigation system as a tangible, historical experience and show that technological solutions in this domain cannot be understood outside the context of a decades-long process of nation-building. Finally, we argue that winter navigation became a central imaginary for Finland as a western, industrial and modern nation. As such, the Finnish winter-seafaring system presents a case of technological nationalism in which a small, peripheral country sought to integrate itself into a modern international order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Universities can significantly contribute to the regional development and innovation capability of a city if the knowledge produced in universities can be appropriately cycled back to the city in the form of technological innovation. Technology parks and technology transfer offices (TTOs), as urban knowledge and innovation spaces, are two important channels of building research platforms with enterprises where universities can disseminate knowledge. While technology parks create space for knowledge generation and innovation within a city, university TTOs play a critical role in enhancing knowledge spillover and creating new start-up firms. This paper highlights the contribution universities can make to Istanbul's potential of becoming an innovative city that houses successful urban knowledge and innovation spaces. By conducting interviews with the managers of technoparks and TTOs in Istanbul, we explore how the existence of technoparks and TTOs within a university affects the success of technology-transfer mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rapid population growth and stagnation of agricultural yields in Rwanda have caused a steady decline in food production per capita, a continuous expansion towards the use of marginal land and a strong degradation of land. The challenge of simultaneously achieving food security, rural welfare, land protection and soil fertility regeneration in the face of its high population is overwhelming to Rwanda. The objectives of this article are to assess the potential impacts of the alternative agricultural technologies on income, food production and soil loss for four arable farm household types and to assess policies that could induce adoption of these technologies. These include combined use ofTithonia diversifolia(green manure) and Diammonium phosphate. The bio-economic farm household model used has a form of a mathematical form of quadratic programming model. Model results show that these alternative agricultural technologies will clearly enhance food production and income for all farm household types except the full-time farm household for which cash at the beginning of the season is too restricted to switch to the new technologies. The outcomes of the model also reveal that with alternative technologies soil loss and soil organic carbon do not entail negative economic consequences. Off-farm employment policy will have a high impact on adoption among households with small farms and less off-farm opportunities because it provides cash that is needed to adopt the new technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]