Andrew Webster

Making sense of diversity and reluctance: academic–industrial relations and intellectual property

The commercialisation of the public sector research base, and in particular academic research, has been a continuing preoccupation among policy makers around the world. Empirically, these issues are explored in the management of intellectual property in university spin-offs (USOs) that emerge through both informal and formal linkages with universities across three sectors. The paper utilises a recently developed methodology to map knowledge flows as well as linkages between organisations. This enables us to examine the exchange of knowledge in commercial and academic networks and the implications of changes in the sponsorship, ownership, and proprietary status of knowledge for these patterns of exchange. It is argued that some of the most important points of tension between universities and the firms studied derive from misconceptions in the value of intellectual property rights.

Integrating pharmacogenetics into society: in search of a model

There has been considerable scientific, corporate and policy interest in the more effective use of genetics in both drug development and delivery. Pharmacogenetics — the study of the relationship between an individuals genetic makeup and response to medicinal drugs — has attracted global interest, but will it live up to its promise? Looking beyond the hype that has accompanied much of the commentary in the area, the future of pharmacogenetics will depend on how competing interests and options are resolved.

Rationalising knowledge : IT systems, professional identities and power

This paper explores the impact of a new IT system on the knowledge claims and occupational boundaries made by professional groups within a hospital laboratory setting. Within organizational settings professional groups enjoy considerable power and status through the specialised knowledge claims they make, deploying a variety of material and discursive resources to secure these. However, when organizations introduce new technologies to manage information needs, professional boundaries and claims to expertise may be threatened. This paper examines the strategies deployed by two key professional groups - Medical Laboratory Scientific Officers and medics - to secure their knowledge claims and statuses within the new organizational context shaped in part by an IT system. Though medics were more successful here, they had to accommodate to new demands within the organization. The professional identity and organizational space of the MLSOs were also redefined but, in contrast, by being narrowed. The different experiences and strategies of the two groups reflect their unequal holding of cultural capital and their differential capacity to define their status relative to the organization itself.

Standardizing the Unknown: Practicable Pluripotency as Doable Futures

Abstract To standardize human embryonic stem cells is an exercise in standardizing different kinds of unknowns. Such standards, currently being developed in the field, can change the understanding of what a stem cell is. In the influential International Stem Cell Initiative (ISCI), scientists in a fiercely competitive field are prepared to exchange research material and data that would normally be highly confidential. ISCI participants understand the particular unknown that they are seeking to standardize as a ‘known unknown’ and hope that their collaborative work will serve to move the field forward and thus enable both competition and comparable data. Such known unknowns are seen to be of vital importance, yet of a different epistemic currency than the types of unknowns that could lead to scientific fame and fortune. Furthermore, while the notion of ‘pluripotency’ is of pivotal importance as a discursive resource when demarcating the abilities of embryonic stem cells from those of adult stem cells, it can also present a practical problem. A more flexible definition allowing for different stem cell ‘niches’ could render the cell lines less pluri but more potent. The reconfiguration of pluripotency may serve to transport human embryonic stem cells into a clinical and ‘doable’ future.

Regimes of ordering: the commercialization of intellectual property in industrial-academic collaborations

This paper examines a diversity of regulatory mechanisms and negotiation processes involved in attmpts to commercialize university research which provide direct and indirect means of linking the activities o f individuals and organizations in the acquisition and exchange of commodified goods. The key,question addressed is how is an activity that is always uncertain —the production of knowledge —is ‘packaged’ by intellectual property management and intellectual property rights so that it is controllable, commod

Governance-by-standards in the field of stem cells: managing uncertainty in the world of “basic innovation”

able and enhs into exchange reidiomhips. This paper addresses the acquisition and stabilization of proprietaly claim to knowledge between public and priuate organizations by considering a detailed case o f a unwersip spin-off and in doing so raises a number of more general issues about the translation of knowledge.

The social management of biomedical novelty: Facilitating translation in regenerative medicine

This paper explores the role of the International Stem Cell Initiative (ISCI) in its attempt to develop biological standards and experimental protocols for the embryonic field as a whole. Drawing on empirical research derived from UK and other labs and fieldwork within ISCI meetings, we describe the way standards have emerged and the difficulties in stabilizing them at the local level. The paper discusses the ways in which this form of governance-by-standards acts to manage uncertainty – to a degree – and suggests that this requirement to manage uncertainty is becoming a key characteristic of what we call “basic innovation”. We conclude by drawing out the implications of this for the management of uncertainty and the increasingly diverse regulatory space that will be needed to oversee the eventual clinical application of hESC.

Reflections on Reflexive Engagement Response to Nowotny and Wynne

Regenerative medicine (RM) is championed as a potential source of curative treatments for a variety of illnesses, and as a generator of economic wealth and prosperity. Alongside this optimism, however, is a sense of concern that the translation of basic science into useful RM therapies will be laboriously slow due to a range of challenges relating to live tissue handling and manufacturing, regulation, reimbursement and commissioning, and clinical adoption. This paper explores the attempts of stakeholders to overcome these innovation challenges and thus facilitate the emergence of useful RM therapies. The paper uses the notion of innovation niches as an analytical frame. Innovation niches are collectively constructed socio-technical spaces in which a novel technology can be tested and further developed, with the intention of enabling wider adoption. Drawing on primary and secondary data, we explore the motivation for, and the attempted construction of, niches in three domains which are central to the adoption of innovative technologies: the regulatory, the health economic, and the clinical. We illustrate that these niches are collectively constructed via both formal and informal initiatives, and we argue that they reflect wider socio-political trends in the social management of biomedical novelty.

Health technology assessment: a sociological commentary on reflexive innovation

This short article provides a response to Nowotny and Wynnes commentary on an earlier article by the author that examined the relation between science and technology studies (STS) and science policy. The article offers a reply with respect to understanding the domain of science policy; how Nowotny and Wynne seek to broaden the scope and so critical leverage of STS beyond the “policy room”; and the implications this has for the ways in which an STS/non-STS nexus might be configured in the future.

Links between Universities and Their Spin-Offs: Variation by Type and Sector

This study provides a sociological commentary on the current debates within health technology assessment (HTA), specifically in response to the approaches taken in France, The Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. It argues that HTA is part of a wider reflexive innovation system that seeks to order current and prospective technologies. The study discusses the socio-political process of HTA priority setting, the rhetorical role of HTA, the localised and contingent use of HTA, and the policy gap between guidelines and practice. It argues for the development of new types of methodologies for assessment and for a stronger social embedding of HTA practice.