14,457 research outputs found

    Who Owns the Key to the Vault? Hold-up, Lock-out, and Other Copyright Strategies

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    Exploring the role of servitization to overcome barriers for innovative energy efficiency technologies – the case of public LED street lighting in German municipalities

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    In this paper we analyse the case for public application of LED street lighting. Drawing from the energy services literature and transaction cost economics, we compare modes of lighting governance for modernisation. We argue that servitization can accelerate the commercialisation and diffusion of end-use energy demand reduction (EUED) technologies in the public sector if third party energy service companies (ESCo) overcome technological, institutional and economic barriers that accompany the introduction of such technologies resulting in transaction costs. This can only succeed with a supportive policy framework and an environment conducive towards the dissemination of specific technological and commercial knowledge required for the diffusion process

    When a good science base is not enough to create competitive industries: Lockin and inertia in Russian systems of innovation

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    Despite a well-developed science and technology base and considerable industrial capacity during the soviet era, Russia has largely failed to create a competitive industrial sector despite two decades of transition. This paper seeks to understand why Russia has not succeeded despite having relatively favourable initial conditions. We develop an understanding of its innovation system and the interplay between the firm and the nonfirm sector. We argue that – in any economy - when political and economic regimes were rapidly reformed, there is considerable structural inertia associated with complex interdependencies between the state, domestic firms and the formal and informal institutions that bind them together. In the case of Russia, this inertia has resulted in a system-wide lock-in, and industrial enterprises continued to engage in routines that generated a suboptimal outcome. Market forces did not result in the western-style innovation system, but a hybrid one, with numerous features of the soviet system. A significant segment of industry maintains a Soviet-style dependence on ‘top-down’ supply-driven allocation of resources and a reliance on external (but domestic) network of sources for innovation and capital. At the same time, ‘new’ firms and industries have also evolved which undertake their own R&D, and utilise foreign sources of capital and technology, and at least partly determine their production and innovative activities on the basis on market forces.innovation systems, R&D, Russia, inertia, institutions, lock-in, transition, competitiveness

    When a good science base is not enough to create competitive industries: Lock-in and inertia in Russian systems of innovation

    Get PDF
    Despite a well-developed science and technology base and considerable industrial capacity during the soviet era, Russia has largely failed to create a competitive industrial sector despite two decades of transition. This paper seeks to understand why Russia has not succeeded despite having relatively favourable initial conditions. We develop an understanding of its innovation system and the interplay between the firm and the non-firm sector. We argue that, in any economy, when political and economic regimes were rapidly reformed, there is considerable structural inertia associated with complex interdependencies between the state, domestic firms and the formal and informal institutions that bind them together. In the case of Russia, this inertia has resulted in a system-wide lock-in, and industrial enterprises continued to engage in routines that generated a sub-optimal outcome. Market forces did not result in the western-style innovation system, but a hybrid one, with numerous features of the soviet system. A significant segment of industry maintains a Soviet-style dependence on "top-down" supply-driven allocation of resources and a reliance on external (but domestic) network of sources for innovation and capital. At the same time, "new" firms and industries have also evolved which undertake their own R&D, and utilise foreign sources of capital and technology, and at least partly determine their production and innovative activities on the basis on market forces.innovation systems, R&D, Russia, inertia, institutions, research and development, lock-in, transition, competitiveness

    Exploring Blockchain Adoption Supply Chains: Opportunities and Challenges

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    Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Acquisition Research SymposiumThrough cyber-enabled industrial espionage, China has appropriated what Keith Alexander, the former Director of the National Security Agency, dubbed “the largest transfer of wealth in history.” Although China disavows intellectual property (IP) theft by its citizens and has set self-sustained research and development as an important goal, it is unrealistic to believe IP theft will slow down meaningfully without changing China’s decision calculus. China and the United States have twice agreed, in principle, to respect one another’s IP rights. However, these agreements have lacked any real enforcement mechanism, so the United States must do more to ensure its IP is better protected from China’s sophisticated hackers. We call for selective interventions in nascent industries—especially those with important implications for national defense. U.S. policymakers must consider both the supply and demand aspects of the “market” for intellectual property theft to make informed decisions as to how to steer resources. This paper offers insight that the supply side of the equation has been given relatively short shrift. We offer a spectrum of potential interventions to address underinvestment in cybersecurity leading to IP theft and discuss where to go from here.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

    Exploring Blockchain Adoption Supply Chains: Opportunities and Challenges

    Get PDF
    Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Acquisition Research SymposiumThrough cyber-enabled industrial espionage, China has appropriated what Keith Alexander, the former Director of the National Security Agency, dubbed “the largest transfer of wealth in history.” Although China disavows intellectual property (IP) theft by its citizens and has set self-sustained research and development as an important goal, it is unrealistic to believe IP theft will slow down meaningfully without changing China’s decision calculus. China and the United States have twice agreed, in principle, to respect one another’s IP rights. However, these agreements have lacked any real enforcement mechanism, so the United States must do more to ensure its IP is better protected from China’s sophisticated hackers. We call for selective interventions in nascent industries—especially those with important implications for national defense. U.S. policymakers must consider both the supply and demand aspects of the “market” for intellectual property theft to make informed decisions as to how to steer resources. This paper offers insight that the supply side of the equation has been given relatively short shrift. We offer a spectrum of potential interventions to address underinvestment in cybersecurity leading to IP theft and discuss where to go from here.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

    Intellectual property rights in a knowledge-based economy

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    Intellectual property rights (IPR) have been created as economic mechanisms to facilitate ongoing innovation by granting inventors a temporary monopoly in return for disclosure of technical know-how. Since the beginning of 1980s, IPR have come under scrutiny as new technological paradigms appeared with the emergence of knowledge-based industries. Knowledge-based products are intangible, non-excludable and non-rivalrous goods. Consequently, it is difficult for their creators to control their dissemination and use. In particular, many information goods are based on network externalities and on the creation of market standards. At the same time, information technologies are generic in the sense of being useful in many places in the economy. Hence, policy makers often define current IPR regimes in the context of new technologies as both over- and under-protective. They are over-protective in the sense that they prevent the dissemination of information which has a very high social value; they are under-protective in the sense that they do not provide strong control over the appropriation of rents from their invention and thus may not provide strong incentives to innovate. During the 1980s, attempts to assess the role of IPR in the process of technological learning have found that even though firms in high-tech sectors do use patents as part of their strategy for intellectual property protection, the reliance of these sectors on patents as an information source for innovation is lower than in traditional industries. Intellectual property rights are based mainly on patents for technical inventions and on copyrights for artistic works. Patents are granted only if inventions display minimal levels of utility, novelty and non-obviousness of technical know-how. By contrast, copyrights protect only final works and their derivatives, but guarantee protection for longer periods, according to the Berne Convention. Licensing is a legal aid that allows the use of patented technology by other firms, in return for royalty fees paid to the inventor. Licensing can be contracted on an exclusive or non-exclusive basis, but in most countries patented knowledge can be exclusively held by its inventors, as legal provisions for compulsory licensing of technologies do not exist. The fair use doctrine aims to prevent formation of perfect monopolies over technological fields and copyrighted artefacts as a result of IPR application. Hence, the use of patented and copyrighted works is permissible in academic research, education and the development of technologies that are complimentary to core technologies. Trade secrecy is meant to prevent inadvertent technology transfer to rival firms and is based on contracts between companies and employees. However, as trade secrets prohibit transfer of knowledge within industries, regulators have attempted to foster disclosure of technical know-how by institutional means of patents, copyrights and sui-generis laws. And indeed, following the provisions formed by IPR regulation, firms have shifted from methods of trade secrecy towards patenting strategies to achieve improved protection of intellectual property, as well as means to acquire competitive advantages in the market by monopolization of technological advances.economics of technology ;

    The implications of growing cross-border interdependence for systems of innovation

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    Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, this paper highlights the importance of takinginto account the role of non-domestic elements in an innovation system, which is traditionallystudied by using the nation-state as the unit of analysis. Learning and knowledge accumulationis often assisted by inward and outward FDI, although this is sometimes overlooked in thestudy of innovation systems. Multi-level, multi-country interactions within a modernknowledge based economy means that firms are not always constrained by the limitations oftheir domestic resources. Nonetheless, there are factors that constrain and pre-determine theextent to which firms and locations can benefit from external knowledge sources, be theydomestic or foreign.economics of technology ;

    Net Neutrality as Global Principle for Internet Governance

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    This paper discusses the concept of network neutrality (NN) and explores its relevance to global Internet governance. The paper identifies three distinct ways in which the concept of network neutrality might attain a status as a globally applicable principle for Internet governance. The paper concludes that the concept of a "neutral" Internet has global applicability in a variety of contexts relevant to Internet governance
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