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AbstractBiotechnology represents hope for those who believe that new technology can contribute to overcoming a range of pressing productivity and environmental constraints facing poor farmers. Pouring money into the science and technology however without recognizing institutional and systemic complexities associated with creating 'pro‐poor' technologies is unlikely to deliver much for those farmers. Moreover, there are a range of economic and political contextual factors which further complicate efforts to put the technology to use for poorer farmers. This article outlines some of the issues and possible new approaches which are discussed in more detail in later articles in this special issue. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Why do corporations develop technologies which can be associated with the generation of various environmental risks and how are the technologies that they develop governed by factors within and around firms? The authors examine the factors that have motivated and guided technological innovation, based on an examination of multinational companies developing genetically modified (GM) crops for the European market. The analysis is based on an inherently interdisciplinary approach to the study of innovation, which incorporates factors that are governed endogenously through the processes within companies (that is, strategic decisionmaking) and exogenously through interactions between firms and their external constituents (that is, government policies and regulations, and stakeholder and public perspectives and engagements). It is found that the introduction of GM technologies in Europe has been shaped significantly by public perception and societal reactions. It is also found that the aspects of industry strategies which contributed most to the course of European public opposition to GM crops were: (a) the choice of first-generation GM products; (b) interactions between pesticide-product and biotechnology-product strategies in different companies, and industry's efforts to present their sector and its products as contributing to sustainable development; (c) cultural and world-view differences between companies; and (d) company responses to European biotechnology policies and risk regulation. It is demonstrated that actions which seem rational to individual actors (corporations, governments, public interest groups) can have counterintuitive, and often counterproductive, outcomes in the longer term and when considered from the perspective of interactions within broader governance processes.

The book explores different approaches towards the 'entrepreneurial university' paradigm, explores channels and mechanism used by universities to implement the paradigm and contributes to the public discussion on the impact of commercialization on university research and knowledge. It argues that different types of university-industry interaction may have repercussions even on funding of basic research if an appropriate balance is ensured between the two. University activities - both research and education in all forms - should provide economic and social relevance directed towards open science and open innovation. This book adds value to current knowledge by presenting both a conceptual framework and case studies which describe different contexts

This study investigates science, technology, and innovation (STI) policy and governance in relation to research and innovation (R&I) ecosystems in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). To understand the implications of STI policy and governance on R&I, the authors focus on university, industry and government actors; using the Triple Helix and National Systems of Innovation approaches as analytical frameworks to guide the study. The authors identify a range of factors hindering R&I actors' interactions, including gaps in STI governance responsibilities and accountabilities, policymaking and structural transitions, R&I management capacity and capability gaps. Based on the findings, they propose changes to policymaking and the governance of R&I in SSA, in addition to advancing innovative approaches such as 'resource circulation' in the context of knowledge, research and science infrastructure scarcity. The findings provide fresh insights into STI policy and governance frameworks, fostering actors' interactions and supporting performance improvements in research, science and innovation systems across Africa.

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.