Suchergebnisse

Finnish university technology transfer is currently caught in the turbulences of major changes in the national innovation system. Three virtually simultaneous changes are of special importance. The first is the massive on-going renewal of the Universities Act governing the Finnish higher education system in its entirety. It was originally initiated to provide universities with more financial and operational flexibility and autonomy and, thus, with better premises to fulfil the three mandates (i) to educate, (ii) to conduct academic research, and (iii) to impact societal welfare. The second change is the foundation of the so-called Strategic Centres for Science, Technology and Innovation (Finnish acronym: SHOK) that aim at establishing and re-enforcing long-term research cooperation between the academia and the Industry. The final change is the enactment of the new University Inventions Act in early January 2007. The Act provided universities with the rights of ownership to inventions made in sponsored research that, according to the principle of the professor's privilege, were considered property of the respective academic inventors prior to the change In the beginning of 2008 Etlatieto Ltd. interviewed 11 of 20 research universities active in Finland to capture the potential impacts the three changes might have on university technology transfer activities. The set of interviewees comprised professionals conducting different tasks in the technology transfer units of universities ranging from research directors to technology transfer officers to lawyers. According to the results, the expected benefits of the renewal of the Universities Act mainly comprise of the increasing financial flexibility of universities hoped to translate into a proliferation of tools available for the transfer of university technology (support of start-ups, investments etc.), and a general increase in the profile of technology transfer functions that should alleviate their current deficiency in resources. Challenges regarding the Universities Act, on the other hand, relate to the lack of administrative and business related expertise in universities required to fulfil the up-coming tasks mandated by the Act, and the lack of commitment on part of universities' management resulting in insufficient resources. SHOKs, in turn, are expected to enable longer project cycles, to reduce administrative burden, to encourage the setting of scientifically more ambitious research objectives, as well as to increase research collaboration and its efficiency. Challenges were identified to relate to proposed IPR-practices potentially endangering the academic freedom of university research, the incentive schemes of top researchers to participate in SHOK projects, the inefficiencies of a large participant base, and the dangers of a strongly industry driven mode of co-operation to academic values. Finally, the benefits of the University Inventions Act are expected to emerge from the gradual dismantling of the 'ivory tower of academe', an increase in the amount of received invention disclosures, and more efficient administrative practices in university technology transfer functions. Perceived challenges, in turn, include interpretational difficulties of the Act, the modest commitment of university management to university technology transfer in general, increasing administrative burdens, and strong cultural differences between researchers, industry and university administration.

to connect to critical stakeholders and, thereby, to integrate into foreign business ecosystems. Reverting to explorative, inductive methodology, the study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by approaching networking from a rare angle; networking as practice. The study examines (i) the precepts and principles that direct the start-ups' networking efforts, (ii) the practices they employ to identify relevant partners and establish connections to them, (iii) the practices they make use of in the interface of newly established connections to sway and commit the respective partners to their cause and network, and finally (iv), the practices that offshore governmental agency nodes apply to help start-ups assimilate to foreign local ecosystems. We found that firms need to embrace and learn how to exploit serendipitous networking opportunities to gain access to stakeholders that purely ansoffian planning approaches could never uncover. The exploitation of serendipity necessitates flexibility with regard to the start-ups' existing product or service concepts, strategies and business plans because in the serendipitous mode these are often re- and co-designed with newly encountered stakeholders. Many of the actual networking practices were found to have evolved together with the progress of other dominant megatrends such as the spread and acceptance of social and other digital media. Such progress seems to have endogenously affected some of the conventional cultural tenets of networking, helping to bypass hierarchical gatekeepers in organizations, for instance. In addition, the diffusion and acceptance of more content- and context-rich communication techniques such as social and mobile video, prototyping and story-telling have made pitching a proposal faster, more holistic, experiential and interactive. We further found that offshore governmental agency nodes can play a decisive role in accelerating and facilitating the integration of foreign newcomers into a local ecosystem. Important prerequisite for the capability to provide such services is a respected and established status within the ecosystem, a vast, cross-sectoral network, and professional employees with hands-on industrial experience in the respective ecosystem.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the recently introduced demand based innovation policy instrument in Finland - the Strategic Centers for Science, Technology and Innovation (in Finnish - SHOKs). SHOKs are formed to support the innovative activities of existing industries in Finland with emphasis on industrial renewal through innovation. The focus in this paper is on the current state of SHOKs, the role of different actors in their formation process, the organization of SHOKs, the development of strategic long-term research agendas and short-term research programs, the challenges related to intellectual property rights, and co-operation between different SHOKs. The paper compares these dimensions across SHOKs and tries to highlight some potential threats and opportunities that might arise. The underlying interview data shows that, while SHOKs are fairly similar in most of the dimensions, there are differences in partner selection, industry specificity, and formulation of research areas. It should be noted that individual SHOKs are in very different stages of development as some have existed for two years and others are still to be established.

This study sets out to inspect empirically whether existing theory in Geographical Economics (GE) is able to provide a rationale for the controversial and much debated structure of the highly knowledge- and research-intensive biotechnology industry in Finland. In addition to providing evidence of GE in action, we integrate the effects that active public technology policy might have on geographic structures of industries into our analysis as a novel discourse. The results provide evidence of a theory based rationale that is able to deepen our understanding of the roles that different regions have enacted in the development of the case industry. Simultaneously, however, the rationale also reveals several challenges that different types of regions still have to overcome in order to steer on a track of sustainable economic development in the future. Based on the results we argue that public sector funding has enabled certain regions to develop in ways that otherwise would not be sustainable.

This study scrutinizes the impact of value-creating practices in university-industry technology transfer that facilitate the diffusion of knowledge generated in academic research towards its successful application by companies on markets. To be more precise, the aim is to demarcate the role that US university technology transfer offices (TTOs), one of the consequential arrangements conjured into existence by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, play in matching the substance of academic research and the need-driven demand of commercial markets. In the process, they implicitly, yet strategically, guarantee the sustainability of the flow of technologies out of the laboratories towards market application, as their actions and motives uphold and sustain the incentive structures of both of the universes, the academic and the commercial. This is accomplished by performing and specializing in the very functions that neither universe has been able or willing to perform in order to take a step closer towards each other. These contributions are often hard to capture in quantitative measures, which has led to common criticism about the effectiveness of TTOs. We propose such measures to be used with care in the comparative evaluation of TTO performance, but also point at and recognize their value as parameters that can be utilized to internally monitor the performance of each TTO individually over time as a tool of management. Some alternative, Intellectual Capital based measures are suggested.

This paper aims to provide new insights into the analysis of National Innovation Systems (NIS). Whereas the common approach is to analyze specific parts or a defined set of actors and their interactions, this paper attempts to take a more systemic approach by analyzing results of 13 surveys directed to different sets of actors related to the Finnish NIS. The focus is on the overall complexity of the system, the demand- and user-based dimensions of innovative activities and policies, internationalisation of innovative activities, public support for high growth companies, regional innovation policies, and educational policies. The results are mostly descriptive and the emphasis is on the most important findings of the surveys. In addition to the main findings, the paper includes all questionnaires and a description of the complete data set.