Knowledge Brokerage in action in European Cities: key insights from five succesful knowledge brokerage initiatives

The Informed Cities Initiative applied the theory of knowledge brokerage to the field of urban sustainability, in a research project funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme. This brochure is one of the project’s outputs; it reports the findings from five European case studies, using data collected via structured questionnaires and follow-up telephone interviews with key figures in the brokerage process in the case study cities

Two-phased knowledge formalisation for hydrometallurgical gold ore process recommendation and validation

This paper describes an approach to externalising and formalising expert knowledge involved in the design and evaluation of hydrometallurgical process chains for gold ore treatment. The objective was to create a case-based reasoning application for recommending and validating a treatment process of gold ores. We describe a twofold approach. Formalising human expert knowledge about gold mining situations enables the retrieval of similar mining contexts and respective process chains, based on prospection data gathered from a potential gold mining site. Secondly, empirical knowledge on hydrometallurgical treatments is formalised. This enabled us to evaluate and, where needed, redesign the process chain that was recommended by the first aspect of our approach. The main problems with formalisation of knowledge in the domain of gold ore refinement are the diversity and the amount of parameters used in literature and by experts to describe a mining context. We demonstrate how similarity knowledge was used to formalise literature knowledge. The evaluation of data gathered from experiments with an initial prototype workflow recommender, Auric Adviser, provides promising results

Jiang Zemin's discourse on intellectuals: the political use of formalised language and the conundrum of stability

This article focuses on the specific forms of power that are embodied in the properties and functions of formalised language, as it was used by Jiang Zemin in crucial political documents on the Party’s policy towards intellectuals. This inquiry illuminates various possibilities for the normalisation and inculcation of formalised language in the understudied decade of the 1990s, when the mantra “without stability, nothing can be achieved” became a tautology. The internal constitution of the selected texts is examined with an eye to the dialogic interaction with the production and reception of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping’s political discourses on intellectuals (Mao 1942; Deng 1978). The analysis of language practices and discursive formations in a comparative per-spective sheds light on the respective socio-political and historical contexts. It also reveals the extreme involution-devolution of formalised language in the Jiang Zemin era, when “preserving stability” was reaffirmed as a crucial concern of the Party leadership with the ultimate aim of preserving its monopoly of power

Comparing knowledge bases: on the organisation and geography of knowledge flows in the regional innovation system of Scania, southern Sweden

This paper deals with knowledge flows and collaboration between firms in the regional innovation system of southern Sweden. It focuses on industries which draw on different types of knowledge bases. The aim is to analyse how the functional and spatial organisation of knowledge interdependencies among firms and other actors vary between different types of industries which are part of the same regional innovation system. We argue that knowledge sourcing and exchange in geographical proximity is especially important for industries that rely on a synthetic or symbolic knowledge base, since the interpretation of the knowledge they deal with tend to differ between places. This is less the case for industries drawing on an analytical knowledge base, which rely more on scientific knowledge that is codified, abstract and universal, and therefore less sensitive to geographical distance. Thus, geographic clustering of firms in analytical industries builds on other rationale than the need of proximity for knowledge sourcing and exchange. To analyse these assumptions empirically, we draw on data from three case studies of firm clusters in the region of southern Sweden: (1) the life science cluster represents an analytical (science) based industry, (2) the food cluster includes mainly synthetic (engineering) based industries, and (3) the moving media cluster is considered as symbolic (artistic) based. Knowledge sourcing and knowledge exchange in each of the cases are explored and compared using social network analysis in association with a dataset gathered through interviews with firm representatives.knowledge bases; life science; food cluster; moving media; Sweden

Can Thomas Kuhn's paradigms help us understand software engineering

Peer reviewe

The Potential of an Enhanced Cooperation Measure in the EAFRD (2014-2020): the case of Ireland

This report was funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) through the National Rural Network (February-May, 2012).The current Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on support for Rural Development by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) includes Article (36) Cooperation that is potentially instrumental for realising the objectives of FOOD HARVEST 20204. The purpose of this report is to assess the scope and potential of Article 36 in the context of Irish agriculture and its findings have four key aspects. First, the main areas of confluence between Article 36 and primary policy objectives as set out in Food Harvest 2020 are identified. Second, a range of cooperation categories and types relevant to Article 36, many of which are operational in Ireland, are profiled. Third, drawing from case-studies of these co-operation types5, the operational characteristics of each type are presented, focusing on compatibility with Article 36. Possible supports that would encourage and assist the formation and operation of the cooperation types on a broad scale into the future, and also any possible constraints that would prevent success, are indicated. Fourth, a brief discussion of some key implementation considerations arising from the analysis overall is presented.Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marin

The rhetoric of research

In 1993 Christopher Frayling, the Rector of the Royal College of Art in London, published an article about the nature of research in art and design. The present paper revisits his threefold distinction of "research- in art, research-through art and research-for art", and considers why Frayling found the third category to be problematic. The analytical methods used are linguistic (a constructionist approach to the rhetorical effect of construing various prepositions with "research"), and philosophical (a Wittgensteinian approach, distinguishing between socially agreed normative criteria, and non-normative indicators or symptoms). The paper argues that the instrumentality of terms such as "research" should be contrasted by observations of how the register of artefacts is used in the advancement of the field. If one adopts a constructionist approach then one is forced to be sceptical about the reification of publicly agreed criteria. The paper uses Wittgenstein's distinction between criteria and symptoms to identify three indicators of research that may point towards a solution to Frayling's problem through the re-description of his category "research- for" art as "a work-of" art.Final Accepted Versio

Talent management in academia: the effect of discipline and context on recruitment

Although talent management is widely discussed in large for –profit organisations and multinationals, it has been little discussed in relation to higher education. This paper examines one aspect of talent management, recruitment, in academia in accounting, in two different countries, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland. It frames the study around three dilemmas - transparency versus autonomy, the power of human resources versus the power of academics, and equality versus homogeneity. It considers the recruitment context and drivers, what this tells us about how talent is defined, and the insights that can be gained from comparing recruitment across different disciplines and geographical contexts. By examining recruitment in one discipline across different contexts we show that recruitment is influenced by a complex interplay between subfield and context which can be linked to the strategic priorities of universities in the three contexts, resulting in different definitions of talent

Science/policy boundaries: a changing division of labour in Dutch expert policy advice

Item does not contain fulltex

Mapping innovative clusters in national innovation systems

In the following paragraphs we will discuss the ?mapping of innovative clusters in national innovation systems?. For this we have used a data set of almost 3.000 firms that participated in the first and fifth survey of the Mannheimer Innovation Survey (which is comparable with CIS data). The Community Innovation Survey (CIS) is an initiative of the EU Commission and a joint survey of DG XIII/SPRINT/EIMS and Eurostat. To begin with we will, in the context of a definition of innovation systems, highlight the outline conditions for innovations in Germany, focusing above all on the basis of innovations, science and engineering. This is followed by a step-by-step empirical analysis of the mapping of innovative clusters at the company level which is based on the Community Innovation Survey set of data; and finally the structural influences (size-effect, effects of sectors/industries) on the innovative behaviour or innovative styles are presented. The explanatory power of structural influences on the innovative behaviour will also be analysed as well as the influence of other variables such as information flows and cooperation patterns within the innovation system of Germany. In the summary at the end of this paper we will suggest starting points for potential implications for innovation policy in order to be able to develop generic and specific policies for the different industry clusters. As far as we know from firms innovating at a certain level of organisation, they use a special portfolio of information and knowledge transfer strategies that can not simply be transferred to firms which are not (yet) innovative. While accepting that innovative inhouse activities are necessary to keep track with international developments and competition, a highly innovative atmosphere within the economy which supports innovative activities should be among the main goals of innovation policy. Furthermore, firms need to have an absorptive capacity to transform knowledge into innovations that bring economic success. --