Innovation intermediaries in university-industry collaboration: analysis of online platforms

This paper was presented at The XXVII ISPIM Innovation Conference – Blending Tomorrow’s Innovation Vintage, Porto, Portugal on 19-22 June 2016. The full conference proceedings are available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.The importance of intermediation in university-industry collaboration (UIC) has been widely acknowledged, however, the phenomenon of UIC online tools is not yet studied in detail. In this paper, we examine fifteen UIC online platforms, identify their functions and role that they play in UIC. By combining secondary data with interviews with platform developers and users, we identify five main archetypes of collaborative online platforms: education-focused, knowledge transfer platforms, crowdsourcing platforms, networking tools and platforms for innovation marketing. We also present a number of the benefits the platforms bring. These tools reduce the time and resources spent establishing and managing collaborations; they help to make networking more targeted; they help to reveal the value that university research has for business and increase the adoption of university education. Our findings suggest that whilst facing some challenges, the platforms analysed represent a scalable, rapidly growing and more importantly demand-led business opportunity

Triple helix knowledge interactions: A study of institutional, virtual and on-line intermediaries

Moving from a triple helix perspective, through quadruple and quintuple toward N-Tuple helices, the emphasis placed on the utility of knowledge and the effectiveness of knowledge transfer by the world’s leading economies only increases. Similarly, at an organisational level the shift toward knowledge sharing and open innovation reflects this also. Therefore, the importance of understanding the interactions between the respective stakeholders and the specific mechanism and structures being developed to facilitate and manage this activity, is imperative too. This will better enable us to maximise the potential offered to companies, universities and societies from knowledge sharing and exchange and this study focuses on one particular type of organisation operating within this intersection – intermediaries who facilitate knowledge or technology transfer. Firstly we identify a range of structural models that stakeholders from around the world have adopted to build their knowledge and technology transfer offerings. These range across institutional: through faculty-based; arms-length; peripheral; regional-virtual and virtual-online. The article discusses the relative merits of each structure before focussing in on one new and emergent mode – the virtual online platform. We then explore different on-line platforms before deriving a simple typology that begins to characterise their respective service offerings and major differentiating characteristics. Finally, the article showcases five specific offering, representing the respective typologies, before discussing their relative strengths and weaknesses and their fit with the wider structural offerings, presented in the earlier sections of the paper. The article makes a number of contributions. By identifying the respective structural configurations of intermediaries, researchers may compare and contrast each format and University senior managers can likewise consider the respective options before they select and launch their own knowledge or technology transfer office. Also by exploring and comparing the virtual online platforms, actors in the triple helix can understand how this new type of intermediation fits within the existing typologies

Policy insights and modelling challenges: The case of passenger car powertrain technology transition in the European Union

Purpose: We are interested in what policy insights can be transferred from EU countries that have been most successful in introducing EVs to those that are debating policy options. As we use a model to explore this, we are also interested in the application of modelling, seeking to understand if real world policies and results can be replicated in a model and, more generally, the challenges to the use of modelling in policy appraisal. Methods: We use the EC-JRC Powertrain Technology Transition Market Agent Model (PTTMAM), a system dynamics model based around the interactions of conceptual market agent groups in the EU. We perform iterative scenario tests to replicate the policies carried out in the Netherlands and the UK in recent years in an attempt to achieve similar results in EV sales. We then transfer the policy scenarios to other EU member states and assess the transferability of the policies. Results: Reasonable approximations of the Netherlands and UK EV policies and sales were achieved and implemented in other EU member states. Conclusion: We find that the PTTMAM is fit-for-purpose and can replicate successful policies to a certain degree. Policy success is sensitive to country specific conditions, and a system dynamics model like the PTTMAM can help identify which conditions react to which policy stimulus. There are challenges to modelling in policy appraisal, such as the subjectivity of the modeller and flexibility to specific conditions, which must be kept transparent for the model to be a relevant tool for policy making

Modeling Information Manufacturing Systems to Determine Information Product Quality

Many of the concepts and procedures of product quality control can be applied to the problem of producing better quality information outputs. From this perspective, information outputs can be viewed as information products, and many information systems can be modeled as information manufacturing systems. The use of information products is becoming increasingly prevalent both within and across organizational boundaries. This paper presents a set of ideas, concepts, models, and procedures appropriate to information manufacturing systems that can be used to determine the quality of information products delivered, or transferred, to information customers. These systems produce information products on a regular or as-requested basis. The model systematically tracks relevant attributes of the information product such as timeliness, accuracy and cost. This is facilitated through an information manufacturing analysis matrix that relates data units and various system components. Measures of these attributes can then be used to analyze potential improvements to the information manufacturing system under consideration. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate the various features of the information manufacturing system and show how it can be used to analyze and improve the system. Following that is an actual application, which, although not as involved as the illustrative example, does demonstrate the applicability of the model and its associated concepts and procedures.Data Quality, Timeliness of Information, Information Product, Information systems, Critical Path