Knowledge that Transforms

This study examines mass media communication as a vital yet under-explored channel for disseminating social sciences. Drawing on the knowledge transfer and science communication literature, we identify specific Social Sciences Communication Barriers (SSCBs) that may hinder the effectiveness of mass media in this regard. These barriers include perceptions of lower expertise compared to STEM fields, heightened competition from non-academics, and difficulties aligning disciplinary expertise with public expectations. By means of a between-subjects experiment, we analyse responses to op-eds written by social scientists in economics, management science and sociology on business-related topics. Using a representative French sample (n = 1080), complemented by replication studies in two other European contexts, we find that social scientists benefit from an “academic premium” in terms of credibility that significantly enhances engagement with their audiences, thus supporting the effectiveness of mass media as a dissemination channel—but solely when addressing topics aligned with their disciplinary expertise. Conversely, this premium is diminished when academics also act as consultants. This study addresses calls for further research on knowledge dissemination in the social sciences and offers insights for scholars, institutions, and policymakers.

Emerging crowdsourcing and crowdfunding mechanisms enable citizens to decide which research projects should be funded. By transferring control from professional scientists, these mechanisms reflect a broader shift towards more open “Mode 2” knowledge production that allows non-academic stakeholders to shape the direction of science. Although this may lead to a greater emphasis on the social impact of research, there is no systematic evidence on how crowd evaluators weigh social impact relative to other criteria such as scientific merit or team qualifications. There are also concerns that the personal financial costs associated with crowdfunding prevent certain socio-economic groups from participating, reducing the representativeness of opinions. Similarly, it is not clear what role citizens’ personal interest in particular topics plays in shaping their evaluations. We provide empirical evidence using data from over 2,300 crowd evaluators who assessed four research proposals in different fields and could express their support using a crowdsourcing mechanism (i.e., recommendation) and a crowdfunding mechanism (i.e., donation of own money). We confirm that crowd evaluators give significant weight to perceived social impact, although this weight is not larger than that of scientific merit. Compared to crowdsourcing, crowdfunding gives greater voice to citizens with higher income and education. Personal interest in a topic tends to be associated with greater project support, which may partly reflect an inflated assessment of social impact. Despite these general patterns, we also observe differences across projects – illustrating context-specificity and variability that make open Mode 2 processes difficult to predict and control.

Our paper contributes to the growing scholarly discussion on public sector innovation by investigating how national governments can foster and direct change through initiatives that bridge the national and local government levels. We introduce the concept of a ‘nested experimental space’ to capture the government’s efforts to suspend established rules in a national experiment, while supporting the creation of local experimental spaces that foster the development and testing of diverse new practices. We conducted an inductive comparative study of three cities in the capital region of Finland that participated in a trial aimed at improving the integration of immigrants. Our findings highlight how each city’s motives and resources shaped the unique strategies for their local experimental spaces, leading to distinct approaches to experimentation and resulting in the cities assuming different roles within the broader field. Nested experimental spaces offer a promising approach to overcoming several limitations commonly associated with public sector innovation by linking together credible top-down policy innovation driven by ministries with bottom-up service innovation. • Nested experiments link top-down policy innovation and bottom-up experimentation • Governments enable experimentation by loosening constraints and providing resources • Actors enact own approaches to experimentation and local experimental spaces • Local experimental spaces drive diverse and complementary innovations • New practices diffuse horizontally across actors and vertically by shaping policy

Analyzing US macro data via a structural vector-autoregressive model (SVAR), Deleidi and Mazzucato (2021) find strong positive spillovers from mission-oriented government spending on private research and development, as well as on overall economic activity (“crowding in”). Deleidi and Mazzucato apply the SVAR to first-differenced data despite the possibility of cointegration. The replication shows that the result hinges on the transformation of the data and the choice of the sample period. The time variation of the estimation results is substantial. When estimating the model with data starting after 1985, the results point to a temporary “crowding out” of private research and development spending. • Findings in Deleidi and Mazzucato (2021) about the “supermultiplier” are not robust. • Transformation of the data matters (first differences vs. level). • Results exhibit substantial time variation. • Results for the most recent part of the sample indicate temporary crowding out of private R&D.

The notion of green industrial policy (GIP) has gained attention recently in order to conceptualize the relationship between the transition to green technologies and the development of domestic manufacturers of such technologies. In this paper, we contribute to advancing the literature on GIP by presenting a conceptual framework on GIP in the context of latecomer catch-up of domestic firms in developing countries. The framework combines insights from the development studies literature on industrial policies, policy mixes in sustainability transition studies and the literature on firm-level catch-up. We apply the framework to study how industrial policies and energy policies have interacted and influenced the initial entry and early-stage catch-up of domestic solar PV module manufacturers in Indonesia in the period 2008–2023. Empirically, we draw on semi-structured interviews with representatives of domestic solar PV module manufacturers, industry informants and relevant government agencies. Based on the conceptual framework, we identify the inhibiting and encouraging factors influencing firm-level catch-up trajectories within three distinctive phases. We find that, while the catch-up trajectory of domestic solar PV module manufacturers resembled a path toward coexistence during the first and second phases, the third phase involved an aborted catch-up trajectory. However, a new catch-up trajectory toward coexistence may be emerging in relation to the recent establishment of export-oriented solar PV module production. Conceptually, the paper contributes to advancing the literature on GIPs by adopting a firm-oriented perspective and by seeking closer integration with research in development studies on the catching-up of latecomer firms.

Synthesis programs, designed to address critical scientific challenges through interdisciplinary solutions, have garnered substantial attention from funding agencies. This study quantitatively evaluates the detailed impact of synthesis programs on promoting these interdisciplinary solutions, using data drawn from the Major Research Plan (MRP) instituted by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). We measure and compare the interdisciplinarity in knowledge absorption and integration of articles funded by the MRP with that of articles published in the same journal and year without synthesis intervention, as well as those supported by the NSFC’s General Program. Key dimensions of interdisciplinarity, encompassing variety, balance, and disparity, along with their aggregation, are measured using article references and, more importantly, the main content of these articles. Findings indicate that synthesis programs have fostered interdisciplinary research, but their effects on bolstering knowledge absorption and integration differ. These initiatives motivate researchers to absorb more disparate knowledge from a wider range of disciplines and pave the way for a more balanced integration of dissimilar knowledge. Our findings support the implementation of synthesis programs as a catalyst to accelerate the integration of knowledge across disciplines and domains, and offer insights for funding agencies, expert groups, and researchers engaged in the design, execution, and assessment of such programs. • We examine the detailed impact of synthesis programs on cultivating the interdisciplinarity of scientific solutions. • A dual-approach framework quantifies interdisciplinary knowledge absorption and integration using references and content. • Synthesis programs promote wider absorption and balanced integration of dissimilar knowledge. • Synthesis programs outperform financial incentives alone in fostering the integration of balanced and disparate knowledge. • Synthesis programs foster collaboration, with interdisciplinarity shaped more by institutional breadth than author count.

This paper examines the “more is actually less” FDI argument in the context of a high-tech industry using Vietnam's electronics industry as a case study, where multinational corporations dominate output and capital investment. We connect Gereffi's global value chain governance framework with Meyer's country-of-origin perspective to analyze intra- and inter-industry spillovers. In doing so, we examine how FDI shapes domestic firms' managerial capabilities and technological upgrading. Using a ten-year firm-level panel and a metafrontier approach, we find that domestic firms achieve only 52 % efficiency in converting inputs to outputs and operate at just 64 % of the FDI technological frontier, with little improvement over time. Horizontal FDI enhances domestic management practices but fails to deliver meaningful technology spillovers. Its growing dominance also widens the technology gap, indicating the growing backwardness of domestic technology. Vertical FDI has mixed effects: upstream FDI supports managerial improvement, while downstream FDI encourages technological upgrading under competitive pressure. Spillovers vary by industry and FDI origin, with ASEAN- and China/Taiwan-based FDI offering modest technological and productivity gains. Our findings highlight the asymmetry between managerial and technology spillovers, suggesting that without stronger local linkages, FDI dominance may constrain, rather than enable, domestic upgrading in high-tech sectors. • Vietnam's domestic electronics production technology lags, reaching only 64 % of FDI output. • FDI dominance in Vietnam's electronics widens the technology gap with local firms. • Horizontal FDI boosts domestic management, but technology spillovers remain weak. • Backward FDI aids domestic management capabilities; forward FDI pushes technological upgrading. • ASEAN and Chinese FDI enable modest tech and productivity gains for local firms.

The study of innovation depends heavily on high-quality patent data. Yet, datasets containing complete patent documents focus only on recent decades, while historical patent datasets with broader temporal coverage typically lack detailed information. Therefore, our ability to leverage advances in textual analyses to study long-run innovation dynamics remains limited. To this end, we introduce a large-scale dataset of the universe of technical specifications of British patents granted between 1617–1899. Our data consists of the full specification texts alongside linked information about inventors, including their disambiguated names, occupations, and addresses. We use our data to document changes over time in total inventive activity, the geography of innovation, inventor occupations, and patent novelty and impact. Finally, we discuss use cases and avenues for subsequent research. Resources : Dataset ; GitHub • We publicly release three centuries of British patent data (1617–1899) for research on innovation. • We use fine-tuned language models to extract and link inventor information (including names, occupations, and geocoded addresses). • Our dataset directly facilitates textual analyses of historical patent documents.

Investments in research infrastructures (RIs) enable universities to enhance scientific excellence, internationalization and industrial collaboration. The study leverages a unique, large dataset of RIs funding awarded to higher education institutes (HEIs) in Czechia and Poland, based on EU cohesion funds, 2007–2013. Both countries benefited from disproportionally high shares of funding allocated to RIs in this relatively short period. The study analyzes the effects of RIs funding for HEIs, including the counts of publications, publishing scientists and collaborations with scientific and industrial partners. It uses the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore conditions necessary and sufficient to accomplish the expected outcomes. fsQCA identified equifinal pathways for large/small, generalist/specialized universities, health and life science / physical science and engineering infrastructures as well as levels of regional economic development. The results revealed 5 distinctive approaches that HEIs might adopt while investing in RIs, depending on existing configurations of organizational and environmental variables that influence the effectiveness of RIs funding. The findings offer valuable insights for policy makers and HEI management considering how to optimally allocate funds for RIs. • Investments in research infrastructures (RIs) at universities boost publications, active scientists and collaborations • fsQCA identified RIs strategies for higher education based on size, scope, specialization and regional circumstances • Equifinal pathways for large/small, generalist/specialized universities, different science fields and regional GDP levels • Research using large datasets of EU-funded projects in Czechia and Poland, economies with high shares of RIs funding

This study examines how workforce health affects corporate innovation output. At the inventor level, we show that healthier individual inventors, measured using facial recognition-based estimates of Body Mass Index, produce more valuable patents. At the firm level, we show that better workforce health is associated with improved innovation output, particularly in the presence of increased creative destruction and product market competition. Improved workforce health enhances corporate innovation primarily through efficiency gains. This study highlights the importance of workforce health as one of the key drivers of innovation and emphasizes the need for firms to prioritize employee health in their innovation strategies.