University knowledge networks in space Are far-reaching scientists also international knowledge brokers?

Modern universities are increasingly urged to operate more entrepreneurially, leading them to try to diffuse their knowledge production more systematically, most obviously through scientific articles and patents. The authors investigate the role of universities as knowledge brokers and delimit more precisely the sphere of emergence and influence of university-derived knowledge. The main issue empirically addressed is whether the likelihood of a patenting team being geographically widespread depends on the characteristics of the inventing academic scientists\u27 publishing network. In so doing, the authors estimate the respective influences of scientists\u27 publishing patterns on the range of their entrepreneurial behaviours (represented by their patenting activity)

Identifying Cultural and Cognitive Proximity between Managers and Customers in Tornio and Haparanda Cross Border Region

Daily intercultural interactions in cross-border regions such as those between customers and managers can be a source of knowledge and ideas. However, such interactions can pose distinctive constraints and opportunities for learning and exchange of ideas. This study adopts a relatively fine–grained quantitative approach to study elements of cognitive and cultural proximity which have a major impact on these interactions. It is based on a survey of 91 managers of small service firms and 312 customers in the twin city of Tornio and Haparanda on the border between Finland and Sweden. Seven elements of proximity were identified and measured. Six elements of perceived cognitive and cultural proximity including values, conservative values towards new ideas, knowledge and use of technology, use of a foreign language, sufficiently focusing or providing specific details and ways of solving problems were found significant in terms of shaping perceptions of Swedish and Finnish managers and customers, which shape these interactions. The results enhance our understanding of how daily cross-border intercultural can be examined in the context of cross-border regional knowledge transfer

Exceptional preservation of palaeozoic steroids in a diagenetic continuum

The occurrence of intact sterols has been restricted to immature Cretaceous (~125 Ma) sediments with one report from the Late Jurassic (~165 Ma). Here we report the oldest occurrence of intact sterols in a Crustacean fossil preserved for ca. 380 Ma within a Devonian concretion. The exceptional preservation of the biomass is attributed to microbially induced carbonate encapsulation, preventing full decomposition and transformation thus extending sterol occurrences in the geosphere by 250 Ma. A suite of diagenetic transformation products of sterols was also identified in the concretion, demonstrating the remarkable coexistence of biomolecules and geomolecules in the same sample. Most importantly the original biolipids were found to be the most abundant steroids in the sample. We attribute the coexistence of steroids in a diagenetic continuum-ranging from stenols to triaromatic steroids-to microbially mediated eogenetic processes

The power implications of the shift to customer reviews: A field perspective on jobbing platforms operating in France

Customers reviews are a new type of third-party evaluation that transformed how power operates over evaluated producers, and in so doing attracted scholarly attention. However, this literature rarely addresses the power relationships operating between platforms collecting and aggregating these reviews. We address this blind spot by relying on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields, which we use to highlight that the reaction of producers to traditional third-party evaluations depend on, and reproduce, the domination of an evaluation intermediary over its competitors. Our qualitative study of the field of jobbing platforms in France reveals that producers react to customer reviews only on platforms accumulating relatively better stocks of reviews, in a self-reinforcing manner. Managers of platforms with smaller stocks of reviews resist by sheltering jobbers from reviews. Our study re-introduces field-level power dynamics between platforms to research exploring the forms of power that operate on producers subjected to reviews. It adds to studies of evaluation intermediaries by specifying that the accumulation of reviews underpins the power relationships between intermediaries in the customer review era and by identifying sheltering as a new form of resistance. Finally, it updates Bourdieu’s theory to the digital age by explaining that individuals’ accumulation of capital online relates to inter-organisational power dynamics

New shapes and new stakes: a portrait of open innovation as a promising phenomenon

International audienceOpen innovation has attracted extensive interest (and has raised numerous debates) in the recent literature on economics and management of innovation. If rich and stimulating, open innovation remains however a loose concept, which calls for further exploration of its shapes and stakes. This article precisely intends to 1) question the originality of the open innovation paradigm, by confronting it with other related concepts developed in the literature previously; 2) investigate more in depth the new modalities that open innovation may take in reality; and 3) discuss the rationales and challenges of the different declinations of the open innovation model by analyzing their benefits and their costs. In other words, we both summarize the state of the art on open innovation and identify research tracks worth being investigating in the future