Delivering on Open Government: The Obama Administration's Unfinished Legacy

This report examines progress made during President Obama's first term toward open government goals outlined in a comprehensive set of recommendations that the open government community issued in November 2008, titled Moving Toward a 21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda. We examine activity in the three main areas of the 2008 report: creating an environment within government that is supportive of transparency, improving public use of government information, and reducing the secrecy related to national security issues

Measuring Innovation Competencies and Performances: A Survey of Large Firms in Belgium

Based on original survey data, this paper provides evidence on firms' innovation competencies and performances in Belgium. The relationship with firm size and technological opportunity is systematically evaluated. The first conclusion is that firms recognize the strategic importance of innovation but fail to undertake the "practical" steps to develop it. Large firms globally better master innovation competencies. However, small firms allocate the largest share of profits to finance innovative projects. In terms of performances, small and large firms, as opposed to medium ones, show the best results for their R&D investments and patent applications. It is also shown that the share of turnover due to incremental innovation is the highest within small firms, while technological breakthroughs are more important within large firms. There is a positive relation between technological opportunity and innovation competencies, R&D investments and patent applications. Services firms have relatively weak records on all innovation indicators but perform well concerning human resources, educational activities and the management of market information. Foreign firms invest significantly less in R&D than local firms. Finally costs- and risks-related barriers to innovation are the most important to all firms, whatever the size and technological opportunity.Innovation competencies, Innovation performances, Barriers to innovation, Survey data

What percentage of innovations are patented?: empirical estimates for European firms.

Patents;Propensity;Innovation surveys;Europe;Industry;

Knowledge spillovers: cities' role in the new economy.

Jerry Carlino points out that cities, no longer centers of manufacturing, now serve as centers of creativity and innovation. The resulting “knowledge spillovers” are important components of today's economic growth.Cities and towns ; Patents

Secrecy and Intelligence: Introduction

The catalyst for this special issue of Secrecy and Society stems from a workshop titled “Secrecy and Intelligence: Opening the Black Box” at North Carolina State University, April, 2016. This workshop brought together interested scholars, intelligence practitioners, and civil society members from the United States and Europe to discuss how different facets of secrecy and other practices shape the production of knowledge in intelligence work. This dialogue aimed to be reflective on how the closed social worlds of intelligence shape what intelligence actors and intelligence analysts, who include those within the intelligence establishment and those on the outside, know about security threats and the practice of intelligence. The papers in this special issue reflect conversations that occurred during and after the workshop

Knowledge spillovers and the new economy of cities

Despite much theorizing about the role of geographic concentration of employment in knowledge spillovers, local densities' role in promoting innovations has largely been unexamined. More often, studies have considered the effects of city size variables on innovative activity, although the role of scale was not the main focus of these studies. This paper considers the role of knowledge spillovers on innovations at the MSA level. The authors use patents per capita in an MSA as our measure of innovations in that MSA. They find that the rate of patenting is positively related to the employment density of the highly urbanized portion of an MSA (its urbanized area). Specifically, the authors find, on average, that rate of patenting is 20 percent to 30 percent greater in an MSA with a local economy that is twice as dense as the local economy of another MSA. Since local employment density doubles more than four times in the sample, the implied gains in patents per capita due to urban density are substantial. Thus, these findings confirm the widely held view that the nation’s densest locations play an important role in creating the flow of ideas that generates innovation and growth.Patents ; Urban economics

India and the Patent Wars: Pharmaceuticals in the New Intellectual Property Regime

[Excerpt] India and the Patent Wars contributes to an international debate over the costs of medicine and restrictions on access under stringent patent laws showing how activists and drug companies in low-income countries seize agency and exert influence over these processes. Murphy Halliburton contributes to analyses of globalization within the fields of anthropology, sociology, law, and public health by drawing on interviews and ethnographic work with pharmaceutical producers in India and the United States. India has been at the center of emerging controversies around patent rights related to pharmaceutical production and local medical knowledge. Halliburton shows that Big Pharma is not all-powerful, and that local activists and practitioners of ayurveda, India’s largest indigenous medical system, have been able to undermine the aspirations of multinational companies and the WTO. Halliburton traces how key drug prices have gone down, not up, in low-income countries under the new patent regime through partnerships between US- and India-based companies, but warns us to be aware of access to essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries going forward

Global Dialogue Report - Global Governance and Regulation: London

The London Dialogue involved up to 23 participants in discussions about the role of global governance and regulation in the protection and promotion of human wellbeing in the twenty-first century. It ranged across a broad spectrum of governance and regulation issues. The discussion proceeded on the understanding that global governance and regulation is important for all our efforts to live well as individuals but that they are more significant still because they are vital to our efforts to live well together in an increasingly globalised world. The discussion started by recognising that the ecosystem of global governance and regulation was becoming ever more complex, involving a diverse range of new players, new organisations and new values. It was felt that developing a better understanding of the structure and dynamics of this new ecosystem would be an important first step in developing more effective governance and regulation. The discussion of the problems of current global governance and regulations systems and institutions identified a lack of trust in governance institutions as critical at this time. This was related to what was perceived as weaknesses of transparency and accountability for some parts of the global governance regime. Large philanthropic organisations were not seen as being exempt from these issues of distrust, transparency and accountability. The problems of the short -term-ism of national governments (political cycles) and their focus on national priorities in global governance were discussed. The exclusion of women, girls and youth were highlighted as a particular problem of governance systems.The discussion identified a wide range of innovation and trusted institutions of governance and regulation. A number of these involved the innovative use of new information and communication technologies to improve voice and accountability. Further initiatives demonstrated other ways in which trust can be built. These innovations appeared to provide a good foundation on which philanthropic organisations might build to contribute to rebuilding trust in global governance and regulation institutions. The discussions explored the idea that global governance problems might be better dealt with by breaking the problems and challenges into smaller, bite-sized chunks. It echoed the more profound view that there may be fundamental problems with the ideas and values on which current approaches to governance and regulation are founded.The discussion concluded with a suggestion that philanthropic organisations might further explore what was perceived to be their unique position as intermediaries between business, government and civil society in order to explore what their comparative advantage might be in strengthening global governance and regulation in ways that better protect and promote human wellbeing in the face of growing threats and uncertaint

More open than open innovation? Rethinking the concept of openness in innovation studies.

This paper re-examines the concept of open innovation developed in organization sciences (Chesbrough, 2003a). We claim that this paradigm, which insists on the distributive nature of innovation among a wide range of heterogeneous actors, does not put enough emphasis on the condition of access to knowledge. Yet, the open dimension of knowledge is a very important feature to sustain a collective mode of innovation. We propose therefore a stronger definition of open innovation, which is based on three constitutive characteristics: (i) Firms voluntarily release knowledge; (ii) Knowledge is open, i.e. is available to all interested parties without discrimination; (iii) dynamic interactions take place among the stakeholders to enrich the open knowledge base. Examples that fit our definition of open innovation are open science, user centered innovation (von Hippel, 2005), free-libre open source software, collective invention (Allen, 1983), etc. We conclude with a discussion on the role of IPR to secure open innovation.open source, free software, intellectual property rights (IPR), open innovation, collective invention.

Diversity As A Trade Secret

When we think of trade secrets, we often think of famous examples such as the Coca-Cola formula, Google’s algorithm, or McDonald’s special sauce used on the Big Mac. However, companies have increasingly made the novel argument that diversity data and strategies are protected trade secrets. This may sound like an unusual, even suspicious, legal argument. Many of the industries that dominate the economy in wealth, status, and power continue to struggle with a lack of diversity. Various stakeholders have mobilized to improve access and equity, but there is an information asymmetry that makes this pursuit daunting. When potential plaintiffs and other diversity advocates request workforce statistics and related employment information, many companies have responded with virulent attempts to maintain secrecy, including the use of trade secret protection. In this Article, I use the technology industry as an example to examine the trending legal argument of treating diversity as a trade secret. I discuss how companies can use this tactic to hide gender and race disparities and interfere with the advancement of civil rights law and workplace equity. I argue that instead of permitting companies to hide information, we should treat diversity data and strategies as public resources. This type of open model will advance the goals of equal opportunity law by raising awareness of inequalities and opportunities, motivating employers to invest in effective practices, facilitating collaboration on diversity goals, fostering innovation, and increasing accountability for action and progress