The third mission : Enhancing academic engagement with industry

There is an ongoing debate in the literature about a “third mission” for universities. Examples of successful academic spin-offs have led to a widespread policy of encouraging collaboration between the academic and commercial worlds. However, the commercialization of research-based innovations often suggests a conflict of interest to academics. In this study we explore what types of knowledge spillover are preferable for academics and how universities can support them. Analysing a survey of 226 academics in a medium-sized university in Norway, we found that supporting the entrepreneurial knowledge and skills of academics might cause a modest increase in their entrepreneurial intentions. At the same time, we found that incentives for joint research projects with industrial partners enhance academics’ desire to take part in such collaborations. We conclude by questioning the well-publicized policy efforts focused on boosting academic start-ups. We argue that more knowledge about starting and running a business would be helpful, but only for a small number of academics who are already interested in such activities. To enhance broader academic involvement in the “third mission”, policies should encourage a wider range of activities and focus on providing incentives, such as tax regimes or co-funding possibilities, for other types of research-industry collaboration, such as joint research projects.publishedVersio

Zeptometer displacement sensing using cavity opto-magneto-mechanics

Optomechanical systems have been proven to be very useful for precision sensing of a variety of forces and effects. In this work, we propose an opto-magno-mechanical setup for spatial displacement sensing where one mirror of the optical cavity is levitated in vacuum via diamagnetic forces in an inhomogenous magnetic field produced by two layers of permanent magnets. We show that the optomechanical system can sense small changes in separation between the magnet layers, as the mechanical frequency of the levitated mirror shifts with changing magnet layer separation $d$. We use Quantum Fisher Information (QFI) as a figure of merit of the displacement sensing precision, and study the fundamental precision bound that can be reached in our setup. Nonlinear interaction inherently present in the optomechanical Hamiltonian improves the precision, and we show that in the case of a pure state of the optical cavity, one can achieve extremely small displacement sensing precision of $\Delta d\sim36\times10^{-21}\text{m}$. Further, we incorporate decoherence into our system to study the effect of leaking photons from the optical cavity on the QFI

Responsible innovation in venture creation and firm development: the case of digital innovation in healthcare and welfare services

The increasing adaptation of digitalisation has engendered numerous venture ideas and entrepreneurial opportunities. Many of these ideas bear the potential to address grand societal challenges. However, perceived opportunities can be elusive, especially in the context of complex problems. Opportunity confidence (OC) can be essential to venture creation and firm development. OC depends on evaluating socioeconomic, socio-ethical, and socioecological factors, which are not straightforward. Responsible innovation (RI) can be a viable approach to building OC. However, whether or how firms and entrepreneurs pursue RI to build OC needs to be clarified. Accordingly, we explore these issues through a case study of nine for-profit firms in digital healthcare and welfare services. The findings reveal that although the firms do not integrate RI principles in innovation and entrepreneurial activities per se, they practice them to varying degrees. This helps them to build OC. The study contributes to theory, practice, and policy.publishedVersio

Are you reading what I am reading? The impact of contrasting alphabetic scripts on reading English

This study examines the impact of the crosslinguistic similarity of translation equivalents on word recognition by Russian-English bilinguals, who are fluent in languages with two different but partially overlapping writing systems. Current models for bilingual word recognition, like BIA+, hold that all words that are similar to the input letter string are activated and considered for selection, irrespective of the language to which they belong (Dijkstra and Van Heuven, 2002). These activation models are consistent with empirical data for bilinguals with totally different scripts, like Japanese and English (Miwa et al., 2014). Little is known about the bilingual processing of Russian and English, but studies indicate that the partially distinct character of the Russian and English scripts does not prevent co-activation (Jouravlev and Jared, 2014; Marian and Spivey, 2003; Kaushanskaya and Marian, 2007)

Changing role of users : Innovating responsibly in digital health

Despite the recognition of the importance of stakeholder inclusion into decisions about new solutions offered to society, responsible innovation (RI) has stalled at the point of articulating a process of governance with a strongly normative loading, without clear practical guidelines toward implementation practices. The principles of RI direct us to involve the user early in the innovation process. However, it lacks direction of how to involve users and stakeholders into this process. In this article, we try to understand how to empower users to become a part of innovation process though empirical cases. Based on 11 cases of firms innovating in digital health and welfare services, we look on firm practices for user integration into their innovation process, as well as how the user’s behavior is changing due to new trends such as availability of information and digitalization of services. We try to explore this question through lenses of responsible innovation in the emerging field of digital healthcare. Our findings indicate that users are not a homogenous group—rather, their willingness to engage in innovative processes are distributed across a spectrum, ranging from informed to involved and, at extreme, to innovative user. Further, we identified signs of user and stakeholder inclusion in all our cases—albeit in different degrees. The most common group of inclusion is with involved users, and firms’ practices varying from sharing reciprocal information with users, to integration through focus groups, testing or collecting a more formative feedbacks from users. Although user inclusion into design space is perceived as important and beneficial for matching with market demands, it is also a time-consuming and costly process. We conclude with debating some policy impacts, pointing to the fact that inclusion is a resource-consuming process especially for small firms and that policy instruments have to be in place in order to secure true inclusion of users into the innovation process. Our article sheds light on RI practices, and we also suggest some avenues for future research to identify more precisely whom to include, when to include and at what stage of the innovation process.publishedVersio

Universities' mundaneness and regional engagement : Setting the stage

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Universities and regions : New insights and emerging developments

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Unpacking Mundaneness : A novel conceptual framework for universities and regional engagement

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Innovating Responsibly—Challenges and Future Research Agendas

Innovation involves creating value from ideas, but this raises the question of for whom is the value created? Especially when there is growing recognition of global challenges such as poverty, inequality, aging population or availability of quality healthcare [1], responsible research and innovation (RRI) is suggested to govern innovation development. The core principles of RRI suggest broader stakeholder inclusion during the decisionmaking process, the anticipation of societal needs and reflection of concerns and a capacity to build flexibility into innovation wherever possible [2–4]. Aligning with these principles calls for new innovation policies [5,6] without which there may be problems; in particular the failure of institutions to include all layers of society into decision-making processes can lead to a sense of an individual powerlessness. While Sustainability 2021, 13, 3215. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063215 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2021, 13, 3215 2 of 6 several researchers claim that RRI is advantageous for businesses [14], other studies point to the negative effects of RRI on innovation processes [15]. With this background, we suggest that responsibility lies with individual actors [10] and that responsible decisions need to be undertaken at the firm level [16]. We suggest there is scope for ‘responsible innovation’ (RI) approach, which has a more fine-grained focus on the innovation itself [17,18] and may be more amenable to operationalization. In this SI we invited theoretical and empirical contributions that focus on how firms organize their entrepreneurial and innovation process to ensure responsible outcomes.publishedVersio

Absorptive and adaptive capacity as a key to successful commercialization process. A case study of SMEs in the Norwegian petroleum sector

When studies have identified different types of dynamic capabilities, scholars agree that the field lacks empirical studies of new firms and the role of dynamic capabilities in their survival and development (Zahra et al., 2006). Following this call, we aim to answer the following research question: How absorptive and adaptive capacity of the firm enhances its ability to commercialize? A longitudinal comparative case study of three new innovative firms operating within drilling and exploration activities in the Norwegian petroleum industry was chosen. The findings reveal that for small innovative firms in the early-stage, absorptive capacity may be especially crucial for development of innovative product, while adaptive capability is necessary for successful commercialisation process and firm survival