A Clean Energy Roadmap: Forging the Path Ahead

Calls for better-aligned state policies, reduced market uncertainty, expanded power grid access, interagency and cross-sector collaboration, and a robust research-to-commercialization pipeline to boost investment in clean energy innovations and new firms

Where do Innovations Come From? Transformations in the U.S. Economy, 1970-2006

This article brings to bear new data on the issue of structuring national innovation systems. Drawing on a unique data set of prize winning innovations between 1971 and 2006, we document three key changes in the U.S. economy. The first is an expanding role of interorganizational collaborations in producing award winning innovations. The second is the diminishing role of the largest corporations as sources of innovation. The third is the expanded role of public institutions and public funding in the innovation process. This leads us to the surprising conclusion that the U.S. increasingly resembles a Developmental Network State in which government initiatives are critical in overcoming network failures and in providing critical funding for the innovation process. The paper concludes by addressing the implications of these finding for debates over the appropriate regime for intellectual property rights.

Social Innovation

This Article provides the first legal examination of the immensely valuable but underappreciated phenomenon of social innovation. Innovations such as cognitive behavioral therapy, microfinance, and strategies to reduce hospital-based infections greatly enhance social welfare yet operate completely outside of the patent system, the primary legal mechanism for promoting innovation. This Article draws on empirical studies to elucidate this significant kind of innovation and explore its divergence from the classic model of technological innovation championed by the patent system. In so doing, it illustrates how patent law exhibits a rather crabbed, particularistic conception of innovation. Among other characteristics, innovation in the patent context is individualistic, arises from a discrete origin and history, and prioritizes novelty. Much social innovation, however, arises from communities rather than individual inventors, evolves from multiple histories, and entails expanding that which already exists from one context to another. These attributes, moreover, apply in large part to technological innovation as well, thus revealing how patent law relies upon and reinforces a rather distorted view of the innovative processes it seeks to promote. Moving from the descriptive to the prescriptive, this Article cautions against extending exclusive rights to social innovations and suggests several nonpatent mechanisms for accelerating this valuable activity. Finally, it examines the theoretical implications of social innovation for patent law, thus helping to contribute to a more holistic framework for innovation law and policy

University Technology Enterprise Network in Portugal: A Bottom-up Approach to Improve Regional Innovation Ecosystems

The authors would like to thank the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) for financial support of this work within the UTEN project. Our appreciation also goes to the technology transfer offices for their cooperation and effort in providing information and generously shared their time and experience with us and acknowledge the support from all the people at the IC2 Institute (Austin, Texas), as well as to Prof. José Manuel Mendonça at INESC TEC, and Prof. Aurora Teixeira from the University of Porto. We also acknowledge Ms. Francesca Lorenzini for her diligent remarks.In the new paradigm of Open Innovation (OI), traditional cooperative research agreements or sponsored research are no longer effective enough to meet the needs of the system and the market. Today, any Innovation Ecosystem has a myriad of players, such as: big and small companies, startups, R&D institutions, brokers, and other intermediaries. The UTEN (University Technology Enterprise Network) Program, launched in March 2007 by The University of Texas at Austin’s IC2 Institute to accelerate the development of a sustainable, globally competitive, professional technology transfer (TT) and commercialization network, was founded with the propose of improving the Portuguese international competitiveness in university–based science/technology commercialization. We argue that initiatives taken place in the project have gotten UTEN network presently run in OI fostered mostly by the TT Offices and their own networks and officers. This paper shows the actions taken to develop UTEN and improve the Portuguese Innovation Ecosystem. The data we offer in support of our argument is a collection of implementation that started with 14 Portuguese Universities and select international partners in a five-year program. Our indicators show that UTEN has leveraged this growth by stimulating new competencies in international technology transfer and commercialization, and by facilitating industry access to the world’s leading markets. This bottom-up approach contributed to building the necessary relationships between all actors within this innovation ecosystem by providing the necessary knowledge to play their roles. This case is evidence that critical mass and regional public policies are very important in the development of “high-tech” regions

Reflections on the Commercialization of Research Conducted in Public Institutions in Canada

We are presently witnessing a remarkable emphasis upon the commercialization of research in public institutions around the world. The issue is polarizing within the academic community, but the commercialization of research in public institutions has, in itself, largely failed to capture the public imagination. Nothing suggests that a large-scale debate on this issue is forthcoming in Canada or elsewhere. The purpose of this paper is therefore to build the case for why large-scale debate is necessary and to set the stage for that debate by providing an account of all of the alleged benefits and harms of commercialization. Our review of these benefits and harms exposes the fact that there is much that we simply do not know about the impact of commercialization, which provides support for the claim that much greater caution is warranted on the part of public institutions currently embracing this phenomenon with enthusiasm. Therefore, to ensure that this social experiment proceeds safely, ethically, and democratically, we must start gathering and sharing all of the relevant information pertaining to effects of this commercialization phenomenon, engage all those with relevant expertise and those whose interests are at stake in discussions about the values involved and the relative merits of various courses of action, and then ground policies and practice in the arena of commercialization in these discussions

The SILVER Spark for Nevada

The SILVER Spark for Nevada: Sustainable Innovation Leading a Vital Economic Renaissance Nevada. A State of stark contrasts, with historic booms and devastating busts experienced throughout its modern history. A State frequently forced to reinvent itself as ever-evolving circumstances have demanded. A State that has been driven to the edge time after time and, yet again and again, has managed to discover another way to prosper. A State that now finds itself in a precarious position as the “Great Recession” hit it harder than any other and has left it struggling to recover. As you will conclude by reading The SILVER Spark, Nevada can successfully build a globally-competitive economic engine based on innovation and entrepreneurship through the commercialization of research, discovery, and development. It will, however, require changes in how the State operates, by uniting the many competing visions, missions and goals found statewide. Although the seventh largest state geographically, Nevada is only the thirty-fifth most populous state in the Union. So it must also find a unique way to focus its admittedly stretched resources on a strategic set of priorities to successfully diversify its economy. The ‘SILVER’ Spark proposes an approach to do exactly what so many across the State have suggested must be done for so long—transform the State’s legacy economy and create new-economy jobs. It advocates the application of sustainable innovation to lead a vital economic renaissance through the following three major transformational actions: Drive more public and private innovation in the State. Improve the State-wide commercialization ecosystem. Accelerate entrepreneurial activity throughout Nevada. Nevada is uniquely Nevadan. From its world-class gaming facilities to its innovative laboratories, Nevada is still a place where dreams can become reality. Nevada itself is collectively a gigantic open source laboratory. It is a place where a scientific theory, an educated hypothesis or sometimes little more than conjecture can change everything in a spark. It is time for Nevada to reclaim its innovation brand

Innovation Indicators: for a critical reflection on their use in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs)

It has been widely recognized that innovation is an important driver of economic growth. Many Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) have adopted innovation indicators to monitor innovation performance and to evaluate the impact of innovation policies. This paper argues that innovation indicators should be customized to the different socio-economic structures of LMICs. For this, the definition of innovation needs to be relevant to the multitude of innovation actors and processes in LMICs. LMICs also need to build competences not only in the construction of innovation indicators within their statistical systems, but also in the use of these indicators by among others policy makers. Especially as the fourth edition of the Oslo Manual (OM 2018) has broadened the scope of “innovation”, opening up policy space for LMICs to accommodate the diversity in their national systems of innovation and to develop accompanying innovation indicators.JEL Classification Codes: O38, O32, O29, P47http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/iizuka-michiko