The coevolution of knowledge networks and knowledge creation

Trabajo presentado al 8th European Meeting on Applied Evolutionary Economics celebrado en Sophia Antipolis (Francia) del 10 al 12 de Junio de 2013.Previous research has modeled the evolution of either knowledge creation or knowledge networks, but not their co-evolution. This work presents an agent-based model to cover this gap and challenge the intuition that both phenomena are mutually re-enforcing. The model consists on the rules of partner selection and the rules of knowledge creation by the agents. Agents in the knowledge network choose their partners depending on their previous collaboration history and on their attractiveness. Similarly, the amount of knowledge created by each agent depends on his number of partners and the knowledge he has created earlier. The simulations of the model show a wide variety of scenarios with different policy strategies suitable for each.Peer Reviewe

Differences between examiner and applicant citations in the European Patent Office: a first approach

Trabajo presentado a la 19th International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators: "Context counts: Pathways to Master Big and Little Data" celebrada en Leiden (Holanda) del 3 al 5 de septiembre de 2014.In the US Patent Office, examiners add extra shares of citations to foreign applicants. We explore a similar country club effect in the European Patent Office (EPO). Using EPO data of over 3,500,000 citations in years 1997-2007, we find national variation in the probability of an applicant originating a citation rather than the examiner. Symmetrically to the US case, EPO examiners add extra citations to non-signatory member states. Moreover, if examiners are likely to come from the same country of the applicants, applicant-citation shares increase, pointing to the existence of national bias in EPO patent examiners. These results hold after controlling for sub-national characteristics of the patenting process.Peer Reviewe

Diffusion of ideas and complex propagations

Trabajo presentado a la DRUID Academy Conference, celebrada en Aalborg (Dinamarca) del 21 al 23 de enero de 2015.This paper analyzes how social structure and social reinforcement affect the diffusion of an idea in a population of human agents. A percolation approach is used to model the diffusion process. This framework assumes that information is local and embedded in a social network. We introduce social reinforcement in the model by softening the condition to adopt when the number of adopting neighbors increases. Our numerical analysis shows that social reinforcement severely affects the output of the process. Some ideas with an original value so low that it would not get diffused through percolation can be spread due to the strength of social reinforcement. This effect also interacts with the structure of the network, getting a more sizeable impact on small worlds with a low rewiring probability. Also, social reinforcement completely changes the effect of clustering links, because sequential adoption of neighbors can make one agent adopt at later stages.Peer Reviewe

The sensing paradox in service innovation: Too much user-producer interaction?

Trabajo presentado a la DRUID15 Conference on: "The Relevance of Innovation" celebrada en Roma (Italia) del 15 al 17 de junio de 2015.This study seeks to explain the paradox that firms most engaged in fulfilling actual user needs might be the ones who benefit less from a capability for systematically evaluating market demands. Service-oriented innovation research stresses that the relational nature of service delivery, especially when customized, provides opportunities for firms to engage in intensive user-producer interaction already during their regular business activities. We examine under which conditions having a strong sensing user needs capability can be a weakness rather than a strength for such firms. By using NK-logic, we modelled the conjunction of customer and firm behaviour with respect to sending and sensing user feedback. Our simulations resulted in a hypothesis regarding the relation between various interactive search strategies on the one hand, and innovativeness on the other hand. Subsequently, we used survey data from 292 respondents to verify these findings empirically. Our regression results suggest that, for firms who provide client-specific services, there is limited value in investing in an ability to monitor and evaluate user feedback closely. Having a sensing capability and receiving user requests has a negative interaction effect for firms providing customized solutions, while this effect is positive when firms do not tailor their services. The results confirm that focusing too much on articulated market demands might prevent customizing firms from introducing commercially successful service solutions. With these findings, we support innovation managers dealing with the strategic dilemma whether or not to devote resources to sensing capabilities.Peer reviewe

Diffusion of ideas, social reinforcement and percolation

This paper analyzes how social structure and social reinforcement affect the diffusion of an idea in a population of human agents. A percolation approach is used to model the diffusion process. This framework assumes that information is local and embedded in a social network. We introduce social reinforcement in the model by softening the condition to adopt when the number of adopting neighbors increases. Our numerical analysis shows that social reinforcement severely affects the output of the process. Some ideas with an original value so low that it would never get diffused can be spread due to the strength of social reinforcement. This effect also interacts with the structure of the network, with a more sizeable impact on small worlds with a low rewiring probability. Also, social reinforcement completely changes the effect of clustering links, because sequential adoption of neighbors can make one agent adopt at later stages

Diffusion in small worlds with homophily and social reinforcement:A theoretical model

We introduce homophily in a percolation model of word-of-mouth diffusion in social networks by reorganizing the nodes according to similarity in preferences for adoption of an innovation. Such preferences are described by a “minimum utility requirement” for an agent to adopt. We show that homophily removes the non-linear relation between preferences and diffusion in the standard percolation model with a high diffusion regime (“hit”) and a low diffusion regime (“flop”). Instead, in a model with perfect homophily, the final diffusion scales linearly with individual preferences: all agents who are willing to adopt, do adopt the innovation. We also investigate the combined effect of homophily and social reinforcement in diffusion. Results indicate that social reinforcement renders clustered networks more efficient in terms of diffusion size for network with strong homophily, while the opposite is true for networks without homophily. The simple structure of our model allows to disentangle the effect of social influence, homophily and the network structure on diffusion. However, the controllability of the theoretical structure comes at the expenses of the realism of the model. For this, we discuss possible extensions and empirical applications.</p

Landscape Study of Potentially Essential Patents Disclosed to ETSI:A study carried out in the context of the EC ‘Pilot Study for Essentiality Assessment of Standard Essential Patents’ project

In November 2017, the European Commission issued a Communication ‘Setting out the EU approach to Standard Essential Patents’1 in which it calls for increasing transparency on SEP2 exposure. In 2020, the European Commission published a commissioned report3 that aims to evaluate the technical and institutional feasibility of performing large-scale essentiality checks of patents, titled ‘Pilot project for essentiality checks of Standard Essential Patents’.This study is a companion to the above report. Since patents disclosed at Standards Developing Organisations (SDOs) may be a starting point of such essentiality analyses, this study aims to (1) provide a patent landscape analysis of SDO disclosed patents (and what this implies for their use as input to an essentiality assessment mechanism) and (2) analyse whether SDO disclosed patents differ from comparable other patents in quality (both technical merit and economic value). This study focuses on patents disclosed to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), This SDO is not only very important in the field of telecommunications, but also maintains one of the best databases of such disclosures to date

Academic Research Values: Conceptualization and Initial Steps of Measure Development

In this paper we draw on value theory in social psychology to conceptualize the range of motives that may influence research-related attitudes, decisions, and actions of researchers. To conceptualize academic research values, we integrate theoretical insights from the personal, work, and scientific work values literature, as well as the responses of 6 interviewees and 255 survey participants about values relevant to academic research. Finally, we propose a total of 246 academic research value items spread over 11 dimensions and 36 sub-themes. We relate our conceptualization and item proposals to existing work and provide recommendations for future measurement development. Gaining a better understanding of the different values researchers have, is useful to improve scientific careers, make science attractive to a more diverse group of individuals, and elucidate some of the mechanisms leading to exemplary and questionable science

Diffusion in small worlds with homophily and social reinforcement: A theoretical model

We introduce homophily in a percolation model of word-of-mouth diffusion in social networks by reorganizing the nodes according to similarity in preferences for adoption of an innovation. Such preferences are described by a “minimum utility requirement” for an agent to adopt. We show that homophily removes the non-linear relation between preferences and diffusion in the standard percolation model with a high diffusion regime (“hit”) and a low diffusion regime (“flop”). Instead, in a model with perfect homophily, the final diffusion scales linearly with individual preferences: all agents who are willing to adopt, do adopt the innovation. We also investigate the combined effect of homophily and social reinforcement in diffusion. Results indicate that social reinforcement renders clustered networks more efficient in terms of diffusion size for network with strong homophily, while the opposite is true for networks without homophily. The simple structure of our model allows to disentangle the effect of social influence, homophily and the network structure on diffusion. However, the controllability of the theoretical structure comes at the expenses of the realism of the model. For this, we discuss possible extensions and empirical applications