Knowledge that Transforms

This paper analyses the influence of technological flows in the choice of joint ventures as a governance form of technology alliances, using a theoretical framework based on Transaction Costs Economics and the Economics of Intellectual Property Rights. We argue that the formation of a joint venture is only necessary in situations for which technological flows make the monitoring of alliance activities and the distribution of cooperation rents difficult. Our hypotheses have been confirmed using a sample of technology alliances created by companies from the European Union between 1992 and 1999.

Due to the severity of rare diseases, the societal need for biopharmaceutical treatments for these diseases is high, despite low numbers of patients. Therefore, we investigated the barriers currently hindering the willingness to develop orphan drugs in the Netherlands. To this end, a robust, small sample, exploratory analysis of Dutch multi-actor development of orphan drugs was performed. Various factors that were expected to stimulate the adoption of orphan drug development were found to be important barriers. Concerted actions of producers, users, and especially regulators are necessary to overcome these barriers, but the prerequisite of a shared problem definition is lacking.

This editorial examines the question of whether plagiarism may be on the increase in the social sciences and, if so, what needs to be done to keep the problem in check. It was prompted by the discovery of an alert reader in June 2007 that a 1993 paper in Research Policy appeared to have plagiarised a 1980 article in the Journal of Business. The allegation was investigated, and it was agreed by the Editors that the 1993 paper constituted a clear and serious case of plagiarism. However, the author concerned has published over 100 articles and books. Already, two other publications have been judged by the editors of the journals concerned to have plagiarised previous publications. Two more are under investigation, but the great majority of the remainder still remain to be checked. The fact that academic misconduct on this scale has gone unchecked over such a prolonged period raises serious issues about the efficacy of the processes used to police the conduct of researchers. Furthermore, the unexpected discovery that a paper by the author under investigation appears itself to have been plagiarised poses a fundamental question as to whether plagiarism may be far more common than previously assumed. The editorial concludes that a measured degree of vigilance and a greater willingness to pursue any well-founded suspicions of research misconduct are required by editors, referees, publishers and the wider academic community if the scourge of plagiarism is to be kept at bay.

Science and security policy are increasingly overlapping because of concerns that legitimate research might be misapplied to develop biological weapons. This has led to an expansion of security policy to cover broad areas of research and scientific practice, including funding, publishing, peer-review, employment, materials transfer, post-graduate teaching and academics’ ability to design and perform experiments and disseminate research. Such changes raise policy concerns because many of the technologies used to produce biological weapons are ‘dual use’ and have legitimate peaceful applications. As a result, attempts to control their generation, diffusion or application can have unintended impacts on socially beneficial applications. This paper explores recent changes in the governance of science and technology and contributes to future policy making by assessing the relative merits of understanding the development of dual use policy in terms of either technology transfer or technology convergence. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Professional services firms survive by exploiting the skills and knowledge of their employees to deliver a range of projects for clients. As a result of working on these projects, an organization's capabilities evolve in unpredictable and often divergent ways. In order to help their staff conduct these projects, services firms have invested heavily in knowledge management systems. To date, few attempts have been made to use the information contained in these knowledge management systems to understand the nature and evolution of capabilities in professional services firms. Using the expert yellow pages of Arup, one of the world's leading engineering consultancies, we develop a new approach based on co-word and proximity analysis to map the knowledge and skills of professional services firms. This approach provides a mechanism to allow such firms to better understand what they know and help them to deploy their skills in new and potentially lucrative ways.

Given that biomedical innovation involves intense collaboration across disciplines, occupations and organizations, a nation's integrative capabilities (the ability to move between basic science and clinical development) and relational capabilities (the ability to collaborate with diverse organizations) have been identified as crucial. This paper deploys qualitative analysis of biomedical innovation in the UK and US to identify mechanisms influencing innovation at the project level through which these macro level capabilities may have effects. From this a propositional framework is developed that helps explain the likely impact of such capabilities for characteristically different kinds of innovation projects at the micro level. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

As an introduction to the special issue on "emerging nanotechnologies", this paper puts in perspective contemporary debates and challenges about nanotechnology. It presents an overview of diverse analyses and expectations about this presumably revolutionary set of technological, scientific and industrial developments. Three main lines of argument can then be delineated: first of all, the degree of cumulativeness of science and technologies and the respective roles of newcomers and incumbents in the industrial dynamics; second the knowledge dynamics in nanotechnologies, especially the linkages by science and technology and third the role of institutions (network, geographic agglomeration and job market). It finally discusses methodologies to delineate the field of nanotechnologies and to collect data. For more informations: http: //www.nanoeconomics.eu/