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The ways in which societies and institutions institutionalize and practice invention management reflects not only how new ideas are valued, but also imaginaries about the role of science and technology for societal development. Often taking the US Bayh-Dole-Act as a model, many European states have recently implemented changes in how inventions at academic institutions are to be handled to optimize their societal impact. We analyze how these changes have been taken up—and made sense of—in regions with different pre-existing infrastructures, practices and semantics of invention management. For doing so, we build on a comparative analysis of continuities and changes in infrastructures, practices and semantics of invention management in North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW, a former Western state) and Saxony (a former GDR state) to reflect on how academic institutions have been handling inventions along transforming socio-political contexts. Building on document analysis and qualitative interviews with research managers, we discuss ongoing differences in practices of invention management and the semantic framing of the societal value of inventions in NRW and Saxony, and discuss how this can be understood before the background of their ideological, political and economic separation until reunification in 1990. Joining the conceptual perspectives of path dependencies and sociotechnical imaginaries, we argue that two critical incidents in the history of these states (the reunification in 1990 and a legal change in 2002) allowed for wide-ranging institutional alignments, but also allowed path dependencies in practices and semantics of invention management to prevail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) have been in the fourth wave of the low emission vehicle development since 2006. Moreover, the BEV technology diffusion is beyond national boundaries due to the changes in the innovation mode and product characteristics. The paper adopts priority patent applications and international patent families to map the BEV transnational technology diffusion from the perspective of global technology innovation (GTI). Our study finds the sources and recipients of BEV technology are concentrated in a few countries or regions, while the transnational technology diffusion is uneven, especially in the core group. The key drivers of technology diffusion are the innovation capacity of countries and the scale of countries' market demand for BEV technology. Our findings enrich the literature on transnational technology diffusion and help policy-makers or company managers better understanding of why some countries may achieve success while others made little progress in the similar context of promoting BEV development. • Mapping the technology diffusion of battery electric vehicles by using patent data. • The transnational technology diffusion of battery electric vehicles is uneven. • The technology sources and recipients of battery electric vehicles are concentrated. • The market proximity between the U.S. and China is closer, so does Germany and China. • Innovation capacity and market scale are key drivers of technology diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]