David Wield

Academic-industry links and innovation: questioning the science park model*

Considerable resources are being devoted to science parks as policy instruments aimed at promoting research-based industrial and innovative activity. The phenomenon, which began in the US and Europe, is now attracting interest throughout the world, including Eastern Europe, South America, and Africa. The concept of linkage between commercial enterprises and academic research is central to the US and UK science park model. Drawing on empirical research completed in the UK, the paper assesses the potential and actual role of science parks in linking academic research with industrial activity. These findings show that current UK experience does not demonstrate high levels of such linkages. Further, analysis of the empirical and theoretical basis for science parks, drawing on current understanding of the innovation process and the relationship between academic research and industrial activity, suggests that the science park model itself is problematic.

Genetically modified crops in the European Union: regulatory conflicts as precautionary opportunities

The first genetically modified crops and foods to be approved for commercial use in the European Union have prompted intense controversy. Food retailers and processors have been forced to take up the concerns voiced by their customers. New networks of groups have formed to oppose the technology. In response to these pressures, regulators who approved the products have had to reconsider questions they had previously dismissed or officially resolved. Governments have devised more precautionary measures of various kinds. For example, they have increased the burden of evidence for demonstrating safety, have broadened the practical definition of the ‘adverse effects’ which must be prevented, and have devised marketstage precautions for such effects. These extra measures manage the risk debate as well as any risks. In such ways, the technocratic model of European harmonization is being challenged and superseded. This may allow differences in national practices to be viewed as valuable expert resources for a different harmonization model, rather than as deviations from a universal rational norm. Regulatory conflicts offer precautionary opportunities, which could lead to more flexible and democratic procedures. Theoretical perspectives – on risk, uncertainty, precaution, European integration, expertise and the internal market – help illuminate these possibilities.

European Union regulation of agri-biotechnology: precautionary links between science, expertise and policy

Despite various institutional reforms in the European Union (EU), regulatory procedures for genetically modified (GM) products are still held up by disagreements among experts; claims about a products safety often correspond to a narrower account of precaution than broader counter-claims from objectors. In the EU, we argue, these conflicts have given practical meaning to the concept of precaution, rather than any explicit interpretation of an a priori principle. Through dynamic tensions between the various claims and accounts of precaution, EU regulatory-expert procedures have identified and addressed more scientific uncertainties than before. Yet decisions about GM products still face legitimacy problems, because they arise fundamentally from the great burden placed on science as the basis for societal choices about agri-biotechnology. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Cutting-edge technology

In recent years there has been a growing belief that materials constitute a generic technology of revolutionary significance, ranking alongside information techno- logy and biotechnology. Our main aim is to examine the plausibility of this claim. In so doing we indicate what is distinctive about changes i n materials science and technology, and report on recent forecasts of potential change. Our second aim is briefly to discuss corporate and public policy on materials innovation i n a number of advanced countries. We present some preliminary jindings from interviews conducted with prominent UK materials producers and users. We conclude that there have been some important incremental and radical innovations i n materials technology. But because the diffusion of innovative materials and processes into different industry sectors and products has been uneven, i n terns of their current and likely future impact on the economy as a whole these changes cannot yet be described as revolutionary. The future impact ...

Managing R&D in technology-followers

The R&D effort, even of the largest, most technologically advanced developing countries, and their most sophisticated firms, cannot match that of the major industrial nations or the largest corporations. Our objective in this paper is to analyse innovation, technical change and R&D management in technology-leaders to build a framework for R&D in technology-followers outside of those major nations. This framework emphasises the importance of specific learning mechanisms and puts forward an argument that in-house R&D is indeed required in technology-followers, but a profoundly different type of R&D. R&D units, based in the firm, can become the location for organised learning, the problem-solver of last resort in production, the in-house knowledge store and gatekeeper, and the focus for independent design and product development capacity.

The Governance of Agro- and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Innovation: Public Policy and Industrial Strategy

Abstract Multinational companies in the life science sector are heavily influenced by government policies and regulations and in turn attempt to influence these actors nationally and internationally. This paper focuses on recent and on-going research, principally on the agro-biotechnology and, to a lesser extent, on the pharmaceutical industries, covering the evolution of policy and regulation in Europe, how policies are influenced by stakeholder pressures and how policy in turn influences company strategies for product development. We focus particularly on new ‘governance’ agendas in Europe and consider the relative impacts of enabling, constraining, discriminating and indiscriminate policies on company strategies as part of our development of an integrated approach to policy and governance. We also consider changes in external operating environments for multinational companies and compare past histories and present pressures on agro-biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. The paper argues, with evidence, that a more enabling and discriminating policy and regulatory environment can achieve public goals more efficiently and effectively, taking account of impacts on innovation, than more blunt policy instruments. This type of environment takes into account the resources and capabilities available to firms and research laboratories rather than relying on broad brush carrot and stick approaches.

Frameworks for pharmaceutical innovation in developing countries: the case of Indian pharma

Abstract Some industrially advanced developing countries have, in the last decades, built substantial pharmaceutical scientific and industrial capabilities. The more advanced of these countries have built chemical and biological R&D, generic and reverse engineering, and drug discovery capabilities. There have been tremendous barriers to entry but nevertheless a range of imitative approaches have evolved, with some significant scientific, health and industrial advances. Opportunities in India are in part created by the problems of maturity being faced by big pharmaceutical firms in developed countries. Big pharmaceutical firms are searching for novel approaches to retain a high value-added model of innovation for drug development. These difficulties provide opportunities for innovative companies in developing countries. This paper explores the challenges faced under these circumstances by Indian pharmaceutical companies. Are they attempting to ‘catch-up’ by chasing a failing model of innovation? Do they have an alternative model? Or can they become an important part of a transformed new global model of pharmaceutical innovation?

Knowledge Ecologies and Ecosystems? An Empirically Grounded Reflection on Recent Developments in Innovation Systems Theory

Recent academic and policy debate on innovation indicates that there has been some shift from a more traditional systems approach to ecologies and ecosystems. The latter are concepts transferred from the world of biology to the social world in order to explain the evolutionary nature of interrelations between different individuals, their innovative activities, and their environment. We evaluate the concept of knowledge ecology and the theory of innovation ecosystem on two fundamental grounds; firstly, on the grounds of theoretical plausibility and conceptual consistency; secondly, on empirical grounds of the case of public–private interrelations of biotech innovation in Cambridge. The argument is that the concept of knowledge ecology and the theory of innovation ecosystems can lead to problems of reductionism and functionalism. This is due to their development in abstraction from more grounded analysis of historical processes of the social division of labour. Knowledge and innovation need to be looked at in the context of historically founded processes of socioeconomic development.

Partnerships in African crop biotech.

Even in sub-Saharan Africas most progressive nations, agbiotech partnerships are still often poorly oriented to end users, fragmented in scope and of limited impact in achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

Regulation as a Means for the Social Control of Technology

The argument that regulation is a necessary, though controversial, component of technology policy is discussed in detail. Ib addition to the regulation of technology, various other regulatory policies, such as market regulation, affect the development of technology. Various types of direct regulation and their conditions of operation are discussed. It is shown that regulation can afect technological innovation positively by providing a surrogate market. The paper serves as an introduction to this special issue and shows how the different contributions fit into a general framework of regulatory effects on technolgy. Regulation as a factor in competition is discussed, particularly in the context of developing countries.