Knowledge that Transforms

Many technology studies have conceptualized transitions between technological generations as a series of S-curve performance improvements over time. Surprisingly, the interregnum between successive generations has received little attention. To understand what happens in the interregnum, we study the transition from 2G to 3G in mobile communications. Our study identifies the presence of forces for both change and continuity across heterogeneous social and technical elements shaping an uneven transition between 2G and 3G mobile communications technology platforms. Unanticipated misalignments and asynchronies that emerged during the journey shifted the incentives of the various actors involved to participate. Based on these observations, we offer several conjectures as to the dynamics that can give rise to temporal discords during inter-generational technological transitions.

This paper examines the roles that publicly funded research play in the process of combinatorial drug discovery. It is shown that firms rely heavily on public research knowledge and, even more so, on education in organic chemistry, genomics and biochemistry. Publicly funded research also led to the creation of dozens of chemical-based companies, provided firms with an access to a larger network of innovators and generated important instruments and methods that are being used throughout the value chain of combinatorial drug discovery. The effects of public research, however, often look different depending on whether one sees them through the prism of larger or smaller firms, EU15 countries or the US, universities or other PROs.