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Accelerating innovation in clean energy technologies is a policy priority for governments around the world aiming to mitigate climate change and to provide affordable energy. Most research has focused on the role of governments financing R&D and steering market demand, but there is a more limited understanding of the role of direct government interactions with startups across all sectors. We propose and evaluate the value-creation mechanisms of network resources from different types of partners for startups, highlighting the unique resources of government partners for cleantech startups. We develop and analyze a novel dataset of 657 U.S. cleantech startups and 2,015 alliances with governments, firms, research organizations, and not-for-profit organizations from 2008 to 2012 and analyze short-term firm outcomes from the different alliances. Our findings highlight the importance of governmental partners in technology development alliances to catalyze cleantech startup innovation (the patenting activity of cleantech startups increases by 73.7 percent with every additional governmental technology alliance when compared to those startups that did not engage in such alliances) and as quality signals to private sector investors for licensing alliances (private financing deals increase by 155 percent for every additional license from a government organization). Overall, these findings extend the alliance perspectives on innovation, contribute to the emerging research on entrepreneurial ecosystems, and underline the need to develop empirical evidence in different sectors.

The need for policy makers to understand science and for scientists to understand policy processes is widely recognised. However, the science-policy relationship is sometimes difficult and occasionally dysfunctional; it is also increasingly visible, because it must deal with contentious issues, or itself becomes a matter of public controversy, or both. We suggest that identifying key unanswered questions on the relationship between science and policy will catalyse and focus research in this field. To identify these questions, a collaborative procedure was employed with 52 participants selected to cover a wide range of experience in both science and policy, including people from government, non-governmental organisations, academia and industry. These participants consulted with colleagues and submitted 239 questions. An initial round of voting was followed by a workshop in which 40 of the most important questions were identified by further discussion and voting. The resulting list includes questions about the effectiveness of science-based decision-making structures; the nature and legitimacy of expertise; the consequences of changes such as increasing transparency; choices among different sources of evidence; the implications of new means of characterising and representing uncertainties; and ways in which policy and political processes affect what counts as authoritative evidence. We expect this exercise to identify important theoretical questions and to help improve the mutual understanding and effectiveness of those working at the interface of science and policy.