Riccardo Viale

Polyvalent Knowledge and the Entrepreneurial University: A Third Academic Revolution?

Knowledge is increasingly ‘polyvalent’ as theoretical, practical and interdisciplinary implications form a common center of gravity. The changing nature of knowledge drives the institutional spheres of university and industry together in advanced industrial societies and developing countries, alike. Government policy lags and leads a shift from mono helix to triple helix knowledge production under different societal conditions. An entrepreneurial scientific role and an entrepreneurial university embedded in a triple helix of university-industry-government relations is the epicenter of innovation in a ‘third academic revolution’, the next ‘great transformation’.

Complex Adaptive Systems and the Evolutionary Triple Helix

Innovation dynamics are more and more considered to represent one of the most important processes in the development of modern economic systems. This perspective is at the root of the development of various innovation concepts. The systematic study of different systems of innovation has raised the awareness that each particular system has its own characteristics, and that it is not always possible to unilaterally define all the parameters that play a role in shaping innovation processes. The article describes the main obstacles facing public policy decision-making drawing on examples from innovation and research policy. It argues that Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) research can teach us a series of useful lessons, especially those features necessitating the consideration of innovation systems as complex adaptive systems.

The Capitalization of Knowledge

The United States economic crisis of the past decade has precipitated a debate over future economic strategy. The alternative positions are whether it is better to try to save old industries or develop new ones. Nevertheless, worker control of firms through Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and state government investment in new high-tech companies have one thing in common. They both represent a turn toward the microeconomic level of firms in influencing economic policy rather than the traditional macroeconomic level of monetary or fiscal policy.

Biological and cultural bases of human inference

Contents: Preface. R. Viale, Introduction: Local or Universal Principles of Reasoning? R. Viale, D. Osherson, Cognitive Development, Culture, and Inductive Judgment. R.E. Nisbett, T. Masuda, Culture and Point of View. A. Norenzayan, Cultural Variation in Reasoning. S. Atran, D.L. Medin, N. Ross, Thinking About Biology: Modular Constraints on Categorization and Reasoning in the Everyday Life of Americans, Maya, and Scientists. L.A. Hirschfeld, Who Needs a Theory of Mind? J. Perner, A. Kuhberger, Framing and the Theory-Simulation Controversy: Predicting Peoples Decisions. D. Sperber, An Evolutionary Perspective on Testimony and Argumentation. J.M. Weinberg, S. Nichols, S. Stich, Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions. L. Macchi, M. Bagassi, Probabilistic Reasoning and Natural Language.

Reasons, cognition and society

Homo sociologicus and homo oeconomicus are, for different reasons, unsatisfactory models for the social sciences. A third model, called “rational model in the broad sense”, seems better endowed to cope with the many different expressions of rationality of the social agent. Some contributions by Weber, Durkheim and Marx are early examples of the application of this model of social explanation based on good subjective reasons. According to this model and to the evidence of cognitive anthropology, it is possible to reconcile primitive thinking with the inferential principles of Western people. Lastly, cognitive psychology can contribute to the discovery of generalizations of reason-based choices that can strengthen the explanatory power of “rational model in the broad sense”.

Introduction: Anti-cyclic Triple Helix

The year 2009 may have represented a turning point for research and innovation policy in Western countries, with apparently contradictory eff ects. Many traditional sources of fi nancing have dried up, although some new ones have emerged, for example as a result of the US stimulus package. Manufacturing companies are cutting their R&D budgets because of the drop in demand. Universities saw their endowments fall by 25 per cent or more because of the collapse in fi nancial markets. Harvard interrupted the construction of its new science campus, while Newcastle University speeded up its building projects in response to the economic crisis. Risk capital is becoming increasingly prudent because of the increased risk of capital loss (according to the International Monetary Fund, the ratio between bank regulatory capital and riskweighted assets increased on average between 0.1 and 0.4 for the main OECD countries during 2009) while sovereign funds, like Norway’s, took advantage of the downturn to increase their investments. According to the National Venture Capital Association, American venture capital shrank from US

Introductory article: The mind-society problem

7.1 billion in the fi rst quarter of last year to US

Economics, Bounded Rationality and the Cognitive Revolution

4.3 billion in the fi rst quarter of 2009 (New York Times, 13 April 2009). Many of the pension funds, endowments and foundations that invested in venture capital fi rms have signalled that they are cutting back on the assets class. The slowdown is attributable in part to venture capitalists and their investors taking a waitandsee approach until the economy improves. The future outlook for R&D looks poor unless a ‘white knight’ comes to its rescue. This help may come from an actor whose role was downplayed in recent years, but that now, particularly in the USA, seems to be in the ascendant again. It is the national and regional government that will have to play the role of the white knight to save the R&D system in Western economies (Etzkowitz and Ranga, 2009). In the previous 20 years the proportion of public fi nancing had gradually fallen in

The capitalization of knowledge : a triple helix of university-industry-government

The mind-society problem deals with the relations between mental and social phenomena. The problem is crucial in the main methodologies of social sciences. The thesis of hermeneutics is that we can only understand but not explain the relationship between beliefs and social action because mental and social events are not natural events. The thesis of social holism is that social phenomena are emergent and irreducible to mental phenomena. The thesis of rational choice theory is that social phenomena are reducible to mental phenomena and this reduction is explained by unrealistic a priori principles of rationality. These theses depend on their different solutions to the following fundamental philosophical issues: the mind-body identity; the causal nature of social explanation; the realistic goal of science. A positive answer to these issues implies support of a different solution to the mind-society problem: social phenomena are conventional concepts and they can be reduced and explained in terms of realistic concepts describing the causal mechanisms of individual reasoning and decision-making. Cognitive psychology seems to supply us some initial tentative models to explain social action, but research into neuropsychology might be able to generate the proper causal representations of the relation between mind and action.

L'explication des normes sociales

The purpose of this book is to publish the ideas of the late Herbert Simon and sympathetic economists, on the subject of bounded rationality, economics, cognitive science and related disciplines, and to reprint some of Professor Simon’s classic papers which have appeared in journals not widely read by economists.