Project

4C-NANONETS

In the 4C NANONETS project, we formed an interdisciplinary research team from technology and innovation management, sociology of technology and computer science to expand existing research on university-industry knowledge transfer. We seek to challenge the general assumption about technology transfer as strictly sequential division of labor between university-led creative science and industry-led commercialization. In particular, we focus on two related phenomena that deviate from this traditional division of labor: (1) downstream and upstream production of technological knowledge, i.e. university scientists patenting activity and industry scientists publishing activity, respectively. (2) simultaneous co-production of technological knowledge, i.e. co-author- and -inventorship of scientific papers and patents among cooperating academic and industry scientists. We seek to capture these facets of university-industry relations by assuming a social network perspective that is constructed from co-citations and co-authorships among scientific publications and patents in the nano field. The field will be delineated in terms of technology- and application-related sub-fields, using special clustering algorithms together with recent keyword-based approaches and patent classifications. The general-purpose technology with many cross-industry applications will provide a rich empirical basis to measure (1) the relative occurrence and success of downstream, upstream and co-production of technological knowledge, (2) scientists necessary network positions to engage in these kinds of knowledge production, and (3) the trade-offs with their individual creativity and productivity when engaging in these kinds of knowledge production. In the end, we will be able to better understand how clusters and cooperation emerge and affect the creativity and commercialization of nano research. This will help to derive better policy implications for technology transfer through networking among scientists. This project is ccordinated by Christoph Ihl and Jan Reerink.