CrossOver - New Forms of Knowledge Creation

Spin-offs as Boundary Crossing and a New Type Knowledge Creation: Opportunities for Innovation, Risks for Scientific Quality?

This project deals with the relations that nonuniversity research institutes have to the contexts in which the results of their research and development are put into practice. The focus is on spin-offs that make those results available for use and continued development by private companies. Spin-offs are to be read as symptoms of change processes in the German science system. Institutionally, the trend toward spin-offs also reflects the attempt of institutes to demonstrate the social relevance of research. Cognitively, the trend manifests new ways of acquiring knowledge. The distinction between theoretical basic research and policy-oriented research practice seems to be losing importance in view of a new mode of knowledge production that integrates and synthesizes theoretical and practical aspects through recursive loops.

As part of this project, Cirus analysed, if and how differences in national science systems and policy measures may result in diverging impacts of spin-off creation on the parent organizations.

Products

Kornelia Konrad & Bernhard Truffer (2006): The Coupling of Spin-offs and Research Institutions in the Triangle of Policy, Science & Industry – An International Comparison, Discussion Paper P 2006-103, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Berlin. download (in German)

Abstract

Academic spin-offs have received increasing attention in discussions about science and innovation policy and in research. Most of the attention has been focused on determining the conditions for fostering spin-offs, but this paper shifts the focus back to the potential repercussions for academic institutions. These may result from the involvement of researchers in spin-off processes and from incentives aimed at supporting spin-off activities. In a first step, the paper develops a conceptual framework with which to analyse repercussions that result from the interaction between policy measures for supporting spin-offs and structural features of national science systems. Policy measures and structural aspects of the science systems influence the ways spin-offs and their parent institutions interact. As patterns of linkages differ, so too may their impacts on academic institutions. Secondly, based on secondary analysis of comparative studies, we develop a number of hypotheses as to which repercussions on academic institutions may be expected in a number of European countries. The paper concludes by proposing implications for policy as well as for further research.

Projectpartners

• Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB ): Andreas Knie, Dagmar Simon, Holger Braun-Thürmann, Jörg Potthast
  
• Sozialforschungsstelle Dortmund (sfs) : Heike Jacobsen, Gerd Möll

The project is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the initiative "Knowledge for Decision-making Processes—Research on the Relation between Science, Politics, and Society"
www.sciencepolicystudies.de

Duration

6/2004 – 3/2007

Responsible at CIRUS

• K. Konrad
• B. Truffer

Project website

http://www.sciencepolicystudies.de/projekt/ausgruendung/index.htm