This study addresses two major questions of great salience in science, technology and innovation studies. What are the promoters of innovativeness in academia? Are patenting of inventions and research performance in conflict in academia or do they rather co-evolve and/or reinforce each other? Patents applications to the South African Patent Office from 1996 to 2006 are used as indicators of inventive capacity of South African universities for that period. The investigation determines, for the first time, patenting activities of local universities at the South African Patent Office and identifies the performance of faculties and departments. The assertion that previous industry working experience can affect the inventiveness of academic researchers is then investigated. No other study has investigated this issue in South Africa. The study finds that most inventors or co-inventors worked in industries before universities employed them. The study contends that employing scientists or engineers who previously worked in industry is an effective mechanism through which universities could absorb scientific and technical skills that could inform researchers on how to design patentable inventions and thus promote their inventive capacity. It is argued that this mechanism is equally valid in developed and developing countries (like South Africa) and those universities internationally wishing to improve their entrepreneurial character should aim to employ academics with previous industry work experience. The study also investigates whether patenting impedes the research performance (publication outputs, teaching, development of disciplines, etc.) of universities’ professors using the Poisson regression model. The confounding effects of other variables deemed to affect the publication productivity, such as research/faculty orientation, collaboration, etc. are taken into account. The results show that professors who are inventive: (i) outperform academically (NRF-rating) and publish more than those who do not invent at all; (ii) inventiveness and academic performance can co-exist peacefully and reinforce each other. The study finally investigates whether or not concurrent production of scientific articles and patenting of technical inventions can support each other. In an analysis of 70 patents obtained from the USPTO (United States Patent and Trade Marks Office), EPO (European Patent Office), and WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) that were invented or co-invented by scientists employed in South African universities from 1994 to 2006, 58 patents (82% plus) overlapped, i.e. formed pairs with scientific articles. Authors tended to patent and publish at the same time and the same intellectual work informed both products. Extended case studies of backward and forward citation patterns of pairs pertaining to the classes of polymers (chemistry and related sciences), optoelectronics (signal processing), biotechnology and related sciences and mineral processing (separation technology) point to two important conclusions. Some technical knowledge can also flow into the public science domain via an article. Some scientific knowledge can also flow into the patent domain via a patent. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Informatics / unrestricted

The building of agro-biotechnology capabilities in small countries: The cases of Costa Rica, New Zealand and Uruguay. Isabel Bortagaray 411 pages Directed by Dr. Susan E. Cozzens This dissertation has studied the role of institutional environments on the building of agro-biotechnological capabilities in small countries, through a comparative case study design. The key question was whether the institutional environments in Costa Rica, New Zealand and Uruguay have evolved in a way that have fostered or hindered the transition towards modern biotechnology at the level of firms and sector. Biotechnology provided a particularly interesting area of study because of the dramatic changes it has undergone since the 1970s and consequently, it facilitated to study the transition from second generation to third generation biotechnology. Innovation studies have trend to focus on pharmaceutical biotechnology. This research however, attempted to understand the dynamics behind biotechnology applied to agriculture, in countries with agricultural-based economies. In this context three small countries were selected: Costa Rica, New Zealand and Uruguay, based on some commonalities in terms of size (population), their reliance on agriculture, and some historical features that inter-connect them. The choice of biotechnology applied to agriculture enabled to study the extent to which the institutional environments have changed and processed change vis a vis fundamental technological development. The institutional environment was defined as composed by institutions (rules of the game), the web of organizations (players of the game), and policies. Technological capabilities were defined as composed by skills, processes and resources. Primary data was collected based on in-depth interviews to research organizations, hybrid research-related organizations, firms, and policy-making agencies in each country. These findings suggest that institutional thickness (number and variety of organizations and institutions), cohesiveness (shared sense of strategic purpose), and coherence between institutions and policies with regard to their goals and means are crucial for strengthening more complex, cumulative, encompassing (different biotechnologies with multiple focuses), and expanding biotechnologies.

abstract: This document builds a model, the Resilience Engine, of how a given sociotechnical innovation contributes to the resilience of its society, where the failure points of that process might be, and what outcomes, resilient or entropic, can be generated by the uptake of a particular innovation. Closed systems, which tend towards stagnation and collapse, are distinguished from open systems, which through ongoing encounters with external novelty, tend towards enduring resilience. Heterotopia, a space bounded from the dominant order in which novelty is generated and defended, is put forth as the locus of innovation for systemic resilience, defined as the capacity to adapt to environmental changes. The generative aspect of the Resilience Engine lies in a dialectic between a heterotopia and the dominant system across a membrane which permits interaction while maintaining the autonomy of the new space. With a model of how innovation, taken up by agents seeking power outside the dominant order, leads to resilience, and of what generates failures of the Resilience Engine as well as successes, the model is tested against cases drawn from two key virtual worlds of the mid-2000s. The cases presented largely validate the model, but generate a crucial surprise. Within those worlds, 2008-2010 saw an abrupt cultural transformation as the dialectic stage of the Resilience Engine's operation generated victories for the dominant order over promising emergent attributes of virtual heterotopia. At least one emergent practice has been assimilated, generating systemic resilience, that of the conference backchannel. A surprise, however, comes from extensive evidence that one element never problematized in thinking about innovation, the discontent agent, was largely absent from virtual worlds. Rather, what users sought was not greater agency but the comfort of submission over the burdens of self-governance. Thus, aside from minor cases, the outcome of the operation of the Resilience Engine within the virtual worlds studied was the colonization of the heterotopic space for the metropolis along with attempts by agents both external and internal to generate maximum order. Pursuant to the Resilience Engine model, this outcome is a recipe for entropic collapse and for preventing new heterotopias from arising under the current dominant means of production. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology 2013