Responsible north-south research and innovation: A framework for transdisciplinary research leadership and management
The number, scale and ambition of transdisciplinary research initiatives between the global north and the global south is increasing, yet there is very little theoretical or empirical scholarship on how to lead and manage implementation to promote responsible practice. Within science, technology and innovation (STI) studies and decolonising research frameworks, and utilising collaborative autoethnography, this study codifies experience with implementing the 'Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments' (RISE) program (2017-2020). Our specific aim is to explore the leadership and management tensions and challenges of implementing transboundary transdisciplinary research. The findings reaffirm the importance of research leaders and managers carefully operationalising north-south research by critically reflecting on power asymmetries between disciplines, partners and locations, leveraging the potential for transdisciplinary consortia to build research capabilities in the global south, and creating a culture of reflexivity on the historical and social positionality in which research is designed, funded, implemented and evaluated. The findings foreground the role of boundary-spanning 'integrators' and 'pracademics', roles that have received little attention to date but are essential for effective delivery and societal impact beyond scientific advances. A framework for implementing north-south transdisciplinary research is outlined with five domains: (1) collaborative leadership; (2) agile management; (3) flexible consortia; (4) researcher positionality; and (5) co-design and participation. The framework can support efforts for responsibly designing and implementing large, transdisciplinary, cross-country research programs in line with ambitions for decolonising north-south research.
The NBER Orange Book Dataset: A user's guide
This paper introduces a newly digitized, open-access version of the Food and Drug Administration's "Orange Book"-a linkage between approved small-molecule drugs and the patents that protect them. The Orange Book also reports any applicable regulatory exclusivity that prevents competitive entry. We summarize the Orange Book's coverage and discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with using these data for research. Empirical validations against various administrative datasets suggest that Orange Book records are, largely, complete and accurate. We conclude with a specific use case-calculating legal exclusivity periods for drugs-to highlight the types of choices that researchers must make when using this resource.
Vaccine technology transfer in a global health crisis: Actors, capabilities, and institutions
The COVID-19 pandemic, which featured international pharmaceutical firms seeking to build global manufacturing networks to scale-up the supply of vaccines, has generated heightened interest in understanding the role of firm-to-firm technology transfer. While considerable attention has been given to tracking the extent of international vaccine technology transfer, we know little about how partnerships were established and work in practice. Understanding the challenges that such projects face, and how such challenges may be overcome, is crucially important. This paper provides an account of the partnership between the British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, the vaccine developer that has engaged in the most technology transfer and built the widest global manufacturing network, and Bio-Manguinhos, a public laboratory linked to Brazil's Ministry of Health. The case study demonstrates the importance of capabilities and regulatory flexibility. Moreover, the analysis highlights the role of political factors that affect the process of technology transfer, and innovation more broadly. Because of the risks involved and the need to quickly mobilize existing capabilities and build new ones, as well as the imperatives of coordinating among manufacturing and regulatory processes and allocating resources to make such arrangements feasible, technology transfer projects need to be enabled politically. Looking forward, the case study has implications for initiatives to expand technology transfer for broadened production of vaccines in the Global South.
Routinization, within-occupation task changes and long-run employment dynamics
The present study adds to the literature on routinization and employment by capturing within-occupation task changes over the period 1980-2010. The main contributions are the measurement of such changes and the combination of two data sources on occupational task content for the United States: the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) and the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). We show that within-occupation reorientation away from routine tasks: i) accounts for 1/3 of the decline in routine-task use; ii) accelerated in the 1990s, decelerated in the 2000s but with significant convergence across occupations; and iii) allowed workers to escape the employment and wage decline, conditional on the initial level of routine-task intensity. The latter finding suggests that task reorientation is a key channel through which labour markets adapt to various forms of labour-saving technological change.
Towards regional scientific integration in Africa? Evidence from co-publications
Regional scientific integration is a critical pathway for the development of an integrated African research area and knowledge-based society. On the African continent, progress in scientific production and integration has remained limited, mostly led by a global or international agenda, and bound to a few top publishing nations. The high-level policy commitments and the accumulated policies and strategies developed and pursued under the various intertwined sub-regional economic groupings have, to date, only diversely contributed to policy alignment and coordination in the area of science, technology, and innovation (STI) across Africa. In this context, this paper provides a first and hence original assessment of the role of region-specific factors in shaping scientific collaboration on the continent. For this purpose, our study builds upon the proximity approach to analyse the determinants of scientific collaboration between African countries, using co-publications data from Thomson Reuters' Web of Science database as a proxy of such collaboration. Our results suggest that the majority of African regional economic communities (RECs) have not yet had a significant effect on scientific co-publication. Nevertheless, some important region-specific factors do seem to be at play, such as a shared ethnical language, membership in the African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education (CAMES), and the presence of a common European partner as a third partner in co-publication. Existing policies aimed at the development of an Africa-wide research area should aim to leverage existing and emerging regional excellence networks and novel coordination models to accelerate the process of scientific integration in Africa.
The new paradigm of economic complexity
Economic complexity offers a potentially powerful paradigm to understand key societal issues and challenges of our time. The underlying idea is that growth, development, technological change, income inequality, spatial disparities, and resilience are the visible outcomes of hidden systemic interactions. The study of economic complexity seeks to understand the structure of these interactions and how they shape various socioeconomic processes. This emerging field relies heavily on big data and machine learning techniques. This brief introduction to economic complexity has three aims. The first is to summarize key theoretical foundations and principles of economic complexity. The second is to briefly review the tools and metrics developed in the economic complexity literature that exploit information encoded in the structure of the economy to find new empirical patterns. The final aim is to highlight the insights from economic complexity to improve prediction and political decision-making. Institutions including the World Bank, the European Commission, the World Economic Forum, the OECD, and a range of national and regional organizations have begun to embrace the principles of economic complexity and its analytical framework. We discuss policy implications of this field, in particular the usefulness of building recommendation systems for major public investment decisions in a complex world.
The unintended consequences of the pandemic on non-pandemic research activities
Research about the Covid-19 pandemic has taken center stage in shaping the work of many scholars, inter alia highlighting the importance of research in addressing the grand challenges humanity faces. However, the pandemic has also ushered in increased administrative, teaching and out of work commitments for many researchers, leading to concerns that academics will become less willing to invest time in obtaining resources to undertake non-Covid-related projects. Using a large-scale survey of business, economics and management researchers, coupled with their publication histories and additional institutional data, we examine how far individuals experienced the focus on the pandemic as 'crowding out' interest in, and undermining their confidence in applying for grants for work not focused on the pandemic. We found 40% of the sample agree that the pandemic has impaired their confidence in applying for non-pandemic-related grants and 'crowded out' other projects. Researchers with current and prior grants, particularly those with the most experience of holding grants, scholars whose work 'impacted' beyond academia, and early career researchers, disproportionately considered themselves to be most affected. We also found that researchers' perceptions differed based on institutional characteristics. We discuss the implications of these findings for grant providers and national research agencies as well as for individual academic researchers and the institutions in which they work.
On the syndemic nature of crises: A Freeman perspective
In this paper we draw a parallel between the insights developed within the framework of the current COVID-19 health crisis and the views and insights developed with respect to the long term environmental crisis, the implications for science, technology and innovation (STI) policy, Christopher Freeman analyzed already in the early 90's. With at the time of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic entering in many countries a third wave with a very differentiated implementation path of vaccination across rich and poor countries, drawing such a parallel remains of course a relatively speculative exercise. Nevertheless, based on the available evidence of the first wave of the pandemic, we feel confident that some lessons from the current health crisis and its parallels with the long-term environmental crisis can be drawn. The COVID-19 pandemic has also been described as a " ": a term popular in medical anthropology which marries the concept of 'synergy' with 'epidemic' and provides conceptually an interesting background for these posthumous Freeman reflections on crises. The COVID-19 crisis affects citizens in very different and disproportionate ways. It results not only in rising structural inequalities among social groups and classes, but also among generations. In the paper, we focus on the growing inequality within two particular groups: youngsters and the impact of COVID-19 on learning and the organization of education; and as mirror picture, the elderly many of whom witnessed despite strict confinement in long-term care facilities, high mortality following the COVID-19 outbreak. From a Freeman perspective, these inequality consequences of the current COVID-19 health crisis call for new social STI policies: for a new "corona version" of inclusion versus exclusion.
The impact of the pandemic-enforced lockdown on the scholarly productivity of women academics in South Africa
The underrepresentation of women in research is well-documented, in everything from participation and leadership to peer review and publication. Even so, in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, early reports indicated a precipitous decline in women's scholarly productivity (both in time devoted to research and in journal publications) compared to pre-pandemic times. None of these studies, mainly from the Global North, could provide detailed explanations for the scale of this decline in research outcomes. Using a mixed methods research design, we offer the first comprehensive study to shed light on the complex reasons for the decline in research during the pandemic-enforced lockdown among 2,029 women academics drawn from 26 public universities in South Africa. Our study finds that a dramatic increase in teaching and administrative workloads, and the traditional family roles assumed by women while "working from home," were among the key factors behind the reported decline in research activity among female academics in public universities. In short, teaching and administration effectively displaced research and publication-with serious implications for an already elusive gender equality in research. Finally, the paper offers recommendations that leaders and policy makers can draw on to support women academics and families in higher education during and beyond pandemic times.
Innovation, growth and the transition to net-zero emissions
The climate crisis and the global economic impact of the Covid-19 crisis occur against a background of slowing growth and widening inequalities, which together imply an urgent need for a new environmentally sustainable and inclusive approach to growth. Investments in "clean" innovation and its diffusion are key to shaping this, accompanied by investments in complementary assets including sustainable infrastructure, and human, natural and social capital which will not only help achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, but will also improve productivity, living standards and the prospects of individuals. In this article, we draw on the theoretical and empirical evidence on the opportunities, drivers and policies for innovation-led sustainable growth. We highlight the importance of a coordinated set of long-term policies and institutions that can enable and foster private sector investments in clean innovation and assets quickly and at scale. In doing so, we draw inspiration from Chris Freeman's work on the system-wide drivers of innovation, and his early vision of achieving environmental sustainability by reorienting growth.
The importance of STEM: High school knowledge, skills and occupations in an era of growing inequality
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) jobs have grown in importance in the labor market in recent decades, and they are widely seen as the jobs of the future. Using data from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey, we first investigate the role of employment in STEM occupations when it comes to recent changes in the occupational employment distribution in the U.S. labor market. Next, with data from the High School and Beyond sophomore cohort (Class of 1982) recent midlife follow-up, we investigate the importance of high school students' mathematics and science coursework, knowledge, and skills for midlife occupations. The Class of 1982 completed high school prior to technological changes altering the demand for labor. We find that individuals who took more advanced levels of high school mathematics coursework enjoyed occupations with a higher percentile rank in the average wage distribution and were more likely to hold STEM-related occupations. Findings suggest that the mathematics coursework enabled workers to adapt and navigate changing labor market demands.
The fall of the innovation empire and its possible rise through open science
There is growing concern that the innovation system's ability to create wealth and attain social benefit is declining in effectiveness. This article explores the reasons for this decline and suggests a structure, the open science partnership, as one mechanism through which to slow down or reverse this decline. The article examines the empirical literature of the last century to document the decline. This literature suggests that the cost of research and innovation is increasing exponentially, that researcher productivity is declining, and, third, that these two phenomena have led to an overall flat or declining level of innovation productivity. The article then turns to three explanations for the decline - the growing complexity of science, a mismatch of incentives, and a balkanization of knowledge. Finally, the article explores the role that open science partnerships - public-private partnerships based on open access publications, open data and materials, and the avoidance of restrictive forms of intellectual property - can play in increasing the efficiency of the innovation system.
Appraising research policy instrument mixes: a multicriteria mapping study in six European countries of diagnostic innovation to manage antimicrobial resistance
This article provides prospective appraisal of key policy instruments intended to stimulate innovation to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR refers to the ability of microbes to evolve resistance to those treatments designed to kill them, and is associated with the overuse or misuse of medicines such as antibiotics. AMR is an emerging global challenge with major implications for healthcare and society as a whole. Diagnostic tests for infectious diseases can guide decision making when prescribing medicines, so reducing inappropriate drug use. In the context of growing international interest in policies to stimulate innovation in AMR diagnostics, this study uses multicriteria mapping (MCM) to appraise a range of policy instruments in order to understand their potential performance while also highlighting the uncertainties that stakeholders hold about such interventions in complex contexts. A contribution of the article is the demonstration of a novel method to analyse and visualise MCM data in order to reveal stakeholder inclinations towards particular options while exploring interviewees' uncertainties about the effectiveness of each instrument's design or implementation. The article reports results from six European countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK). The findings reveal which policy instruments are deemed most likely to perform well, and why, across stakeholder groups and national settings, with areas of common ground and difference being identified. Importantly, the conclusions presented here differ from prominent policy discourse, with international implications for the design of mixes of policy instruments to combat AMR. Strategic and practical methodological implications also emerge for general appraisal of innovation policy instrument mixes.
Unpacking the effects of adverse regulatory events: Evidence from pharmaceutical relabeling
We provide causal evidence that regulation induced product shocks significantly impact aggregate demand and firm performance in pharmaceutical markets. Event study results suggest an average loss between $569 million and $882 million. Affected products lose, on average, $186 million over their remaining effective patent life. This leaves a loss of between $383 million and $696 million attributable to declines in future innovation. Our findings complement research that shows drugs receiving expedited review are more likely to suffer from regulation induced product shocks. Thus, it appears we may be trading off quicker access to drugs today for less innovation tomorrow. Results remain robust to variation across types of relabeling, market sizes, and levels of competition.
Talent goes to global cities: The world network of scientists' mobility
Global cities boast higher rates of innovation as measured through patent and scientific production. However, the source of the location advantage of innovation hubs is still debated in the literature, with arguments ranging from localized knowledge spillovers to network effects. Thanks to an extensive data set of individual scientist career paths, we shed new light on the role of scientist location choices in determining the superior innovative performance of global cities. We analyze the career paths of around two million researchers over a decade across more than two thousand cities around the globe. First, we show that scientists active in global cities are more productive in terms of citation weighted publications. We then show that this superior performance is in part driven by highly prolific scientists moving and remaining preferentially in global cities, i.e., central cities in the international scientist mobility network. The overall picture that emerges is that global cities are better positioned to attract and retain prolific scientists than more peripheral cities.
Do synthesis centers synthesize? A semantic analysis of topical diversity in research
Synthesis centers are a form of scientific organization that catalyzes and supports research that integrates diverse theories, methods and data across spatial or temporal scales to increase the generality, parsimony, applicability, or empirical soundness of scientific explanations. Synthesis working groups are a distinctive form of scientific collaboration that produce consequential, high-impact publications. But no one has asked if synthesis working groups synthesize: are their publications substantially more diverse than others, and if so, in what ways and with what effect? We investigate these questions by using Latent Dirichlet Analysis to compare the topical diversity of papers published by synthesis center collaborations with that of papers in a reference corpus. Topical diversity was operationalized and measured in several ways, both to reflect aggregate diversity and to emphasize particular aspects of diversity (such as variety, evenness, and balance). Synthesis center publications have greater topical variety and evenness, but less disparity, than do papers in the reference corpus. The influence of synthesis center origins on aspects of diversity is only partly mediated by the size and heterogeneity of collaborations: when taking into account the numbers of authors, distinct institutions, and references, synthesis center origins retain a significant direct effect on diversity measures. Controlling for the size and heterogeneity of collaborative groups, synthesis center origins and diversity measures significantly influence the visibility of publications, as indicated by citation measures. We conclude by suggesting social processes within collaborations that might account for the observed effects, by inviting further exploration of what this novel textual analysis approach might reveal about interdisciplinary research, and by offering some practical implications of our results.
Business innovation modes and their impact on innovation outputs: Regional variations and the nature of innovation across EU regions
This work contributes to the literature on innovation systems and, in particular, delivers a thorough analysis on business innovation modes across a range of regional contexts. This analysis refers to the strand of literature on STI (Science and Technology-based Innovation) and DUI innovation modes (Innovation based on learning-by-Doing, learning-by-Using, learning-by-Interacting) that have been intensely debated over the past few years. It is a relevant area of research because it discusses the most effective innovation mode adopted by firms and their regions in the context of increasing global competition. In this scientific area, we inquire whether and how the regional context and its specific technological capabilities produce a differentiated impact of STI and DUI innovation modes on innovation outputs, alongside the nature of innovation outputs. In this respect, this study advances the literature on regional innovation systems that have not been analyzed by other scholarly contributions in this strand who have mostly discussed the differentiated impact of innovation modes across individual countries, industries, and business networks. Based on the large heterogeneity of regions across the European geography, we move beyond the set of individual country studies and develop a thorough analysis based on the Community Innovation Survey (CIS 2014) data from the Eurostat office about EU regions. Empirical evidence based on the application of a multiple treatment model suggests that both regional specificities and the nature of innovation matter. In addition, the DUI innovation mode proves to be often more important than expected for most types of innovation output.
Are R&D-Intensive firms also corporate social responsibility specialists? A multicountry study
Seeking to obtain efficiency in the development and integration of knowledge about R&D and corporate social responsibility (CSR), firms face hard choices about their resource allocation to these two areas because of the specialized nature of knowledge and related barriers to integration. We address this organizational resource allocation dilemma by relaxing the common assumption that firms are either responsible or irresponsible and examining financial slack as a possible moderator. Using a multicountry sample of 1,957 firms over a 16-year timespan, we find strong empirical support for the positive association between firms' R&D intensity and CSR specialization, a novel concept that-distinct from CSR as such-gauges the extent to which firms specialize in specific environmental, social, or governance aspects of CSR. However, there is insufficient support for financial slack as a moderator in general (except for one noteworthy industry pattern and an alternative operationalization of slack). The exceptions suggest that the nature of organizational slack may influence the relationship between R&D and CSR specialization.
Administrative Discretion in Scientific Funding: Evidence from a Prestigious Postdoctoral Training Program
The scientific community is engaged in an active debate on the value of its peer-review system. Does peer review actually serve the role we envision for it-that of helping government agencies predict what ideas have the best chance of contributing to scientific advancement? Many federal agencies use a two-step review process that includes programmatic discretion in selecting awards. This process allows us to determine whether success in a future independent scientific-research career is more accurately predicted by peer-review recommendations or discretion by program staff and institute leaders. Using data from a prestigious training program at the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA), we provide evidence on the efficacy of peer review. We find that, despite all current claims to the contrary, the existing peer-review system works as intended. It more closely predicts high-quality science and future research independence than discretion. We discover also that regression discontinuity, the econometric method typically used to examine the effect of scientific funding, does not fit many scientific-funding models and should only be used with caution when studying federal awards for science.
The development of complex and controversial innovations. Genetically modified mosquitoes for malaria eradication
When there is significant uncertainty in an innovation project, research literature suggests that strictly sequencing actions and stages may not be an appropriate mode of project management. We use a longitudinal process approach and qualitative system dynamics modelling to study the development of genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes for malaria eradication in an African country. Our data were collected in real time, from early scientific research to deployment of the first prototype mosquitoes in the field. The 'gene drive' technology for modifying the mosquitoes is highly complex and controversial due to risks associated with its characteristics as a living, self-replicating technology. We show that in this case the innovation journey is linear and highly structured, but also embedded within a wider system of adoption that displays emergent behaviour. Although the need to control risks associated with the technology imposes a linearity to the NPD process, there are possibilities for deviation from a more structured sequence of stages. This arises from the effects of feedback loops in the wider system of evidence creation and learning at the population and governance levels, which cumulatively impact on acceptance of the innovation. The NPD and adoption processes are therefore closely intertwined, meaning that the endpoint for R&D and beginning of 'mainstream' adoption and diffusion are unclear. A key challenge for those responsible for NPD and its regulation is to plan for the adoption of the technology while simultaneously conducting its scientific and technical development.
Private and public values of innovation: A patent analysis of synthetic biology
Emerging science and technology fields are increasingly expected to provide solutions to societal grand challenges. The promise of such solutions frequently underwrites claims for the public funding of research. In parallel, universities, public research organizations and, in particular, private enterprises draw on such research to actively secure property rights over potential applications through patenting. Patents represent a claim to garner financial returns from the novel outcomes of science and technology. This is justified by the potential social value promised by patents as they encourage information sharing, further R&D investment, and the useful application of new knowledge. Indeed, the value of patents has generated longstanding academic interest in innovation studies with many scholars investigating its determinants based on econometric models. Yet, this research has largely focused on evaluating factors that influence the market value of patents and the gains from exclusivity rights granted to inventions, which reflect the private value of a patent. However, the patent system is a socially shaped enterprise where private and public concerns intersect. Despite the notion of the social utility of inventions as a patenting condition, and evidence of disconnection between societal needs and the goals of private actors, less attention has been paid to other interpretations of patent value. This paper investigates the various articulations of value delineated by patents in an emerging science and technology domain. As a pilot study, we analyse patents in synthetic biology, contributing a new analytical framework and classification of private and public values at the intersections of science, economy, and society. After considering the legal, business, social and political dimensions of patenting, we undertake a qualitative and systematic examination of patent content in synthetic biology. Our analysis probes the private and public value propositions that are framed in these patents in terms of the potential private and public benefits of research and innovation. Based on this framework, we shed light on questions of what values are being nurtured in inventions in synthetic biology and discuss how attention to public as well as private values opens up promising avenues of research in science, technology and innovation policy.