STPS545 KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN INNOVATION SYSTEMS

Course Objectives

Course Description:

The course globally aims to solidify the links / interactions between engineering sciences and social sciences. Given the present rapid changes in many technologies and in their host social conditions, it is believed that a global and shared understanding of the future challenges is mandatory between these two eduation, research and practitioner communities, in order to develop the necessarily inter/transdisciplinary analysis and action tools. Such tools are largely missing today. One mission of this course is to establish an educational (and also research) forum to build the premisses of  'strong interdisciplinarity regimes' between engineering and social sciences.  

Focus of the course this semester will be on TECHNOLOGY, NETWORKS and SOCIETY. Technological networks are increasingly shaping our physical world but also our social communication spaces. Conversely, they are also shaped by several sociopolitical and economic determinants. They are typically “large scale socio-technical systems”. Starting by the road, railroad, canal, telegraph networks during the early industrial periods, continuing by the highways, telephone networks, high-speed trains, all sorts of energy networks in modern times, and booming today by telecommunication networks, these systems are also the privileged canals of technical and organisational innovation diffusion. They heavily rely on scientific and technological knowledge development, impact all spheres of social activity, from nation building to geopolitics, from the development of large scale business corporations to changing our living and working modes, from financial structures to scientific organizations. The socio-technical systems based on network industries are a kind of 'social total fact' diffusing in all social tissues but also fed by them. The course will focus on the dynamics of scientific-technological–organizational innovations, the combinations of which characterize the development of network industries. Examples, mainly from transport, telecommunications and energy sectors network industries, will be analyzed, from technical innovation, economic, policymaking, sociological, historical and regional comparison and inter-sectoral interaction perspectives. 

Course Content

The transfer of technology and knowledge to different stakeholders of innovation systems is an important policy issue, which requires public intervention. The main rationale behind this intervention is to address market failures dealing with incomplete markets for technology and IP transfer, as well as systemic failures at regional, national and global systems of innovation which may be related not only to the institutional problems but also weak networking and linkages between different actors involved in the supply and demand of knowledge and technology. Policy instruments in this context aims to facilitate the knowledge and technology transfer and their commercialization through a number of means such as supporting research and private sector interactions, developing innovative clusters, improving regulations to support IPR commercialization, promoting innovative public procurement, and funding start-ups and spin-offs.
The concept of knowledge and technology transfer has become a central focal point in the enterprise system as well with the rise of the concept of open innovation. As described by
Chesbrough, `open innovation is a new paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology `. Although initially promoted as a business-driven phenomenon, open innovation is now a central point in knowledge and technology transfer policies, as it requires firms to search and acquire know-how and IPR from universities, research institutions and other firms.

Course Learning Outcomes

Course Outcomes:

• Gain an interdisciplinary perspective to analyze scientific, techno-economic and social interactions leading to innovation and technological development, in particular in network industries
• Gain competences to develop harmonious strategies to analyse, promote and accompany multi-level transformations triggered by technological innovation in general and in network industries in particular
• Acquire inter-related conceptual, methodological and applied knowledge bodies to design science, technology and innovation policies
• Develop conceptual, methodological and practical policy action and decision making abilities to establish links between various social spheres such as the State and corporations, a nation and its international surrounding, various industrial sectors, several competing perspectives such as social, economic and environmental