Controlling the commercialisation of science across inter-organisational borders: Four cases from two major Swedish universities

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how different types of controls are applied in different mechanisms for commercialising science, depending on the inter-organisational interactions involved. To achieve this purpose, we followed a multiple-case study design and selected four cases from Uppsala University and the Karolinska Institutet that provided variation in the commercialisation mechanisms (PET Centre, Ångström Materials Academy, Actar, and Karolinska Development). We find that action and result controls dominate in linear ‘spin-out’ funnel mechanisms, while interactive mechanisms entail a combination of action, result and personal controls. However, the inter-organisational interactions also impact which controls are applied in a commercialisation mechanism: conflicting goals between a few closely related organisations or limited external interactions are associated with result controls, while action controls dominate in the absence of external interactions if time and efficiency are key goals. Result controls also assume very different roles, depending on the inter-organisational context of a specific commercialisation mechanism.     

Innovation forecast: Un-avoidable and context dependent

In order to mobilize the necessary resources for innovation forecasts are unavoidable. However, a forecast is never a neutral or objective assessment. Given an interdependent business landscape, there are at least two major context-related aspects that affect an innovation forecast. First, the actor that makes the forecast is embedded into a specific context. Secondly, the potential innovation stems from a specific environment, and will during the innovation journey be related to other environments in a producing and a using setting, and thus to other investments in place. In this paper we examine the development of one innovation and the forecasts made by three different economic actors. There is an interesting variation in the forecasts that can be explained as a variation of contexts of the actors. The contexts influence the way that the forecasts are done and especially in terms of what the context of the innovation is assumed to be. The empirical findings suggest that the results of the innovation forecast are highly dependent on the actors' abstraction of the business landscape which in turn is affected by the contexts of the actors.     

The logic of innovation in construction

The paper investigates the logic of innovation in construction by addressing four questions: What is actually being renewed in construction? How is it being done? Who is involved? and Why do or do not the companies innovate? The paper draws on a combination of an industrial network perspective and the exploration–exploitation dichotomy to analyze data from a study of innovation in the Norwegian and Swedish construction industries. The findings show that construction companies are increasingly working more systematically to turn project-level ideas into company-wide knowledge. This indicates an innovation logic that is oriented towards exploitation of new combinations through the internal network. The companies are also increasingly concerned with establishing closer connections to customers and users, which have traditionally been weak. This has led to an orientation towards exploitation through the external network, at least on the customer side. In turn, this may lead to more innovative behavior and renewal in the industry as a whole. However, it requires that not only the customer relationships, but also the relationships on the supply side must change. Companies in the construction industry should be conscious about their innovation logic, in terms of whether they base their innovation behavior on a biased orientation towards exploitation or exploration or towards the internal or external network. A balance is needed.