New Knowledge for Old Regions? The Case of the Software Park Hagenberg in the Traditional Industrial Region of Upper Austria

This paper seeks to enhance our understanding about the opportunities and limits of new path creation in traditional regional innovation systems. Due to their inherited historical legacies, such systems are usually thought of being ill-equipped to give rise to high-tech or knowledge intensive activities. Departing from recent insights on research concerned with the transformation of innovation systems and evolutionary economic geography we identify in a conceptual way enabling and constraining factors for the rise of new development paths in traditional regions. Empirically, we focus on the case of the “Software Park Hagenberg†(SPH) located in the old industrial region of Upper Austria. We examine key events triggering the emergence and subsequent evolution of the SPH and explore the role of the RIS in shaping the development trajectory of the SPH. Moreover, applying social network analysis tools, we investigate the pattern of networking between firms, research organisations and educational bodies within the SPH and we provide some evidence on the diffusion of knowledge and innovation generated though these interactions throughout the regional economy.

Why not empower knowledge workers and lifelong learners to develop their own environments?

In industrial and educational practice, learning environments are designed and implemented by experts from many different fields, reaching from traditional software development and product management to pedagogy and didactics. Workplace and lifelong learning, however, implicate that learners are more self-motivated, capable, and self-confident in achieving their goals and, consequently, tempt to consider that certain development tasks can be shifted to end-users in order to facilitate a more flexible, open, and responsive learning environment. With respect to streams like end-user development and opportunistic design, this paper elaborates a methodology for user-driven environment design for action-based activities. Based on a former research approach named 'Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments'(MUPPLE) we demonstrate how workplace and lifelong learners can be empowered to develop their own environment for collaborating in learner networks and which prerequisites and support facilities are necessary for this methodology

Robotika za djecu: nacionalne politike i inicijative u tri europske zemlje

This article explores the issue of introducing children between six and ten years of age ‎to robotics and investigates the use of robots in schools and in extracurricular activities. The central ‎questions are 1) whether and how the introduction of robotics is addressed in political strategies and‎ educational policies (RQ1), and 2) what the main actors in the introduction of robots in educational‎ settings are (RQ2). Therefore, a pilot study in three European countries (Austria, Lithuania, Romania)‎was conducted, which included an analysis of national policy strategies, as well as interviews with three‎ stakeholders per country. The article illustrates the specificities of the investigated countries presented as ‎case studies and discusses them in a comparative way. The findings show that the investigated countries’‎ educational policies aim at mirroring the Digital Agenda for Europe and that two opposite approaches ‎to implementation of robotics (bottom-up vs. top-down) can be identified.‎Ovaj članak istražuje upoznavanje djece u dobi od šest do deset godina s robotikom te ispituje‎ upotrebu robota u školama i izvannastavnim aktivnostima. Središnja pitanja su 1) je li uvođenje robotike ‎obuhvaćeno političkim strategijama i obrazovnim politikama i na koji način (RQ1) te 2) tko su glavni‎ akteri uvođenja robota u obrazovno okruženje (RQ2). Kako bi se odgovorilo na ova pitanja, provedena ‎je pilot studija u tri europske zemlje (Austriji, Litvi i Rumunjskoj) koja je uključivala analizu nacionalnih ‎policy strategija, kao i intervjue s po tri dionika u svakoj zemlji. Članak ilustrira specifičnosti istraživanih ‎zemalja prezentirane kao studije slučaja, raspravlja o njima i međusobno ih uspoređuje. Nalazi pokazuju ‎kako obrazovne politike u analiziranim zemljama imaju za cilj preslikati Digitalnu agendu za Europu ‎te da se mogu identificirati dva suprotna pristupa implementaciji robotike, odozdo prema gore i odozgo ‎prema dolje.

Review of Professional Doctorates

This review concerns the range and type of Professional Doctorates offered in Ireland and internationally. It looks at their growth, fields of study, structure of programmes and distinctions between them and the PhD

ERAWATCH country reports 2011: Austria

The main objective of the ERAWATCH Annual Country Reports is to characterise and assess the performance of national research systems and related policies in a structured manner that is comparable across countries. EW Country Reports 2011 identify the structural challenges faced by national innovation systems. They further analyse and assess the ability of the policy mix in place to consistently and efficiently tackle these challenges. The annex of the reports gives an overview of the latest national policy efforts towards the enhancement of European Research Area and further assess their efficiency to achieve the targets. These reports were originally produced in November - December 2011, focusing on policy developments over the previous twelve months. The reports were produced by the ERAWATCH Network under contract to JRC-IPTS. The analytical framework and the structure of the reports have been developed by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the Joint Research Centre (JRC-IPTS) and Directorate General for Research and Innovation with contributions from ERAWATCH Network Asbl.JRC.J.2-Knowledge for Growt

Knowledge structuring-Knowledge domination. Two interrelated concepts

“Sociology for me is not only about the big institutions, such as governments, organizations, business firms or societies as a whole. It is very much about the individual and our individual experiences. We come to understand ourselves much better through grasping the wider social forces that influence our lives.” ( Anthony Giddens, published at www.polity.co.uk, a leading social science and humanities publisher. ) This quotation helps identify one reason for integrating ideas about knowledge management with concepts from Anthony Giddens structuration theory in the theoretical framework that I use as an analytical tool in this research. Structuration theory concerns itself with the “social forces that influence our lives” and these forces interest me. In the same article Giddens continuous: ”We live in a world of quite dramatic change…There are three major sets of changes happening in contemporary societies and it is the task of sociology to analyze what they mean for our lives today. First there is globalisation….The second big influence is that of technological change. Information technology is altering many of the ways in which we work and in which we live. The nature of the jobs people do, for example, has been transformed….The third fundamental set of changes is in our everyday lives. Our lives are structured less by the past than by our anticipated future”. In this paper I agure that there is a continous structuring going on in society. I therefore concern myself with a pair of twin concepts that are interrelated. The first one is knowledge structuring; the second is knowledge domination. These two concepts are of vital importance when trying to understand, assess and monitor implications of transformations of work processes and tools at work.Knowledge structuring; knowledge domination; knowledge management; structuration theory; cognitive theories; transformations; information technology; globalisation.