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Many Russians believe that local engineers are very creative. Historically, however, the numerous inventions created by Russian innovators have rarely ended up as commercialized products. Are Russian engineers indeed creative in comparison to their foreign colleagues? What motivations are associated with this creativity? Is such a shared conception of creativity a barrier to the nation's development of innovations? I propose to answer these questions using interviews with Russian technopreneurs. For comparison with the Russian case, I will use another set of interviews with technopreneurs collected in three countries—South Korea, Taiwan and Finland—each of which can be characterized by different cultural contexts and level of technological development. I summarize the main findings of a collective research project, which employs Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot's idea of 'economies of worth.' The study demonstrates that the basic mixes of 'orders of worth' are varied across the selected countries. In Russia, this mix includes the industrial, the inspired and the market orders; in Taiwan, the market, the industrial and the domestic; in South Korea, the industrial, the domestic and the market; and in Finland, the project-base, the industrial and the market. Focusing on detailed analysis of the worlds of justification among Russian technopreneurs, the article argues that, contrary to the Finnish, South Korean, and Taiwanese cases, creativity and inspiration, together with values of producing technologies for their own sake, are prevailing motivations for Russian engineers. That can explain obstacles in the way of successful commercialization and technological development in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an empirical account of the case of Taiwan in her innovative efforts in the herbal medicine sector through scientific and technological development. This study aims to propose a network analysis approach, which is typically found in innovation studies, to illustrate the sociological dimensions of actor network theory. The sector is of interest from a social studies of science perspective due to the collision between traditional knowledge philosophies, which are well accepted in East Asian communities, and scientific regulatory standards, that have raised issues regarding the legitimacy and safety of the products. This study considers the actor network linkages between universities, government and industry which act as indicators of knowledge diffusion and collaboration. Relevant records were captured using a heuristic search string and was used to visualize: (i) the number of researchers (agglomeration denoted by the size of bubbles), (ii) organizational linkages through co-authorship (connectedness indicated by the presence of lines between organizations), and (iii) position of the organization (centrality in relation to other organizations). The case presented in this study takes a snapshot of how an advanced economy such as Taiwan, has developed a productive innovation system for herbal medicine. The development of the actor network has evolved mainly from productive working relationships in a close-knit community of researchers that mainly interact through the research organizations in Taipei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of funding sources for university-industry collaboration (UIC) has gradually changed, which may motivate universities to pursue different goals. Therefore, a question arises concerning whether and how funding sources influence the innovation performance of universities. This study explicates this relationship by using organisational control theory. Results of structural equation modelling using partial least squares based on a sample of 146 Taiwanese universities revealed that both governmental and industrial funding facilitated UIC management mechanisms and regulation implementation, which subsequently influenced the innovation performance of universities. Moreover, governmental funding has a greater impact on implementing UIC regulations and industrial funding has a greater impact on building UIC management mechanisms. The results also revealed that only industrial funding exerts a positive influence on the innovation climate of a university. Policy implications are discussed at the end of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Taiwanese high-tech firms’ data from 2003 to 2007 to investigate the impacts of international technology spillovers and firms’ R&D activities on firms’ innovation performance. We also consider absorptive capability and examine whether the technology spillovers have different effect on firms' innovation performance. We choose patent application counts to measure firms' innovation performance, and adopt panel Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) with fixed-effect and random-effect models as well as System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) model to estimate. The empirical findings indicate the innovation performance of high-tech firms is positively affected by their R&D efforts, export performance, and the presences of multinational corporations. Furthermore, when absorptive capacity is taken into account, the technology spillovers by exporting and technology import would affect the innovation performance more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how knowledge gained by the diaspora abroad played a strategic role in driving technological catch up in the integrated circuit industry in Taiwan. The evidence shows that efforts led by the government created conditions for the return and circulation of strategic human capital and the evolution of the absorptive capacity necessary to drive technological catch up. The integrated circuit industry was successful in getting human capital endowed with tacit and experiential knowledge to return and to circulate with considerable rooting in Hsinchu Science Industrial Park, which helped propel the integrated circuit industry in Taiwan to the technological frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial clusters evolve dynamically as the external environment changes. To better understand the nature of cluster evolution, which has nurtured economic growth in early 2000s, strategy and organisation scholars have attempted to unpack contributors to cluster evolution from the perspective of the ‘environmental uncertainty’ and ‘resource abundance’ effects. The paper adopts and extend an earlier extant model through empirical testing of the thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) industrial cluster in Taiwan, a developing country. This study modifies the extant network model by adding a diffusion of technological innovation index to cluster evolving. Using the extended case study, the study examines the dynamic evolutionary process in the TFT-LCD industrial cluster. It was found that the evolution of the TFT-LCD industrial cluster resembles the theoretical argument in some respects. The characteristics of network change are modified according to these results. Implication for policymakers and decision-makers of developing countries are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents an empirical study of household technology adoption rates in Taiwan. Technology transfers can be broadly defined as the set of activities and processes whereby technology is passed from a supplier to a receiver. Taiwan's economy took off in the 1970's. As its economy became increasingly stronger in the past three decades, various home appliances have made their way into Taiwanese homes. They represent modern inventions with commercial potential as they become distributed through populations via commercial market diffusion processes. The innovative effect explains the demand stimulated by external factors such as advertising while the imitative effect explains the demand stimulated mainly by internal factors such as word-of-mouth communication.