This working paper dwells on the relationship between a dialogue-oriented mode of knowledge production in line with transdisciplinarity and the flourishing of a culture of socioeconomic democratisation. These scientific and cultural-political undertakings have in common an effort of bridge-building between fragmented entities, be it scientific disciplines and their mono-logical explanations or single-issue policies which foster micro-efficiency to the detriment of social cohesion and socio-economic effectiveness. The paper starts by presenting emblematically some typical problematics of social innovations which need experience-based knowledge of practitioners as well the structure-aware knowledge of scientific research. In the second section transdisciplinary research is proposed as a research programme focussing on socially relevant problems and a structured dialogue with practitioners. Transdisciplinarity is based on a two-fold-dialogue: First, it is an interdisciplinary dialogue between different disciplines which overcome their respective research programmes and paradigms and contribute their knowledge to joint-problem solving. Second, it is a dialogue of two forms of knowledge: experience-based and analyticalstructural knowledge. In the final section, the potential of this type of research is shown to address the problematics of social innovation as a research programme as well as a socially-transformative practice. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

Over the past two decades, universities have experienced far reaching changes in their tasks and roles. Their main mission is no longer confined to education and research, but increasingly also covers technology transfer and commercialisation activities. The aim of this paper is to examine as to which extent this phenomenon could also be observed in Austria. We differentiate between four key tasks of universities, including their roles as "antenna" for receiving external knowledge, source of highly skilled labour, cooperation partner for industry and seedbed for new firm formation. Focusing on the biotechnology sector we will demonstrate that an opening of the ivory tower and a move of Austrian universities towards the market place has occurred. Furthermore, we will show that these changes have been to some extent policy-driven in nature. (author's abstract) / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers