When memes program the genes: What managers need to know about the emerging genetic revolution

Many industries and their offerings have fallen victim to managerial shortsightedness. Firms often believe they are invincible and see themselves as immune to threats from seemingly unrelated technologies. There seemed to be no apparent link between bound paper books and the emerging internet, no discernible ties between the video rental business and streaming technologies, and no obvious connections between photography and cellular phones. When these associations were established by means of other, newer technologies, major incumbent firms such as Barnes & Noble, Blockbuster, and Kodak came crashing down. CRISPR is the technology of the moment, one that will enable the programming of evolution. While we might think about gene editing in terms of cures for diseases, its repercussions will impact almost every domain of human and planetary development, and sooner than one might think. In this installment of On The Horizon, we adopt an evolutionary perspective to understand the impact of the genetic revolution on firms regardless of industry.     

Life after school: How science and technology teachers construe capability

Science and technology teachers create microcosms of the world beyond school as responses to perceived student needs. The focus of these microcosms for both science and technology classrooms was less of a concern for work preparation than for the development of social and intellectual habits. All of the teachers have strong views of the virtues of civil daily life and what it might take for their students to live the good life. The practical capability the teachers want their students to have transcends the instrumental to become moral.     

The Early Careers Of Engineers And The Accumulation Of Skills In The Canadian Economy

In this paper we use world cycling records to study the pattern of technological development of the track bicycle. We find that there is a strong evidence of ‘contagious’ effects among cycling records which in turn provides indirect evidence of ‘contagious’ effects among technological innovations. Interestingly, the ‘contagiousness’ of records is not a salient characteristic of track and field competitions where, arguably, technology plays a smaller role.     

科技工作者的审美倾向与其问题发现和解决的相关性分析

采用"中国公民人文素质调查问卷",对全国1089名科技工作者的审美倾向与问题解决进行了相关性分析。结果表明:科学美对于科技工作者具有极为重要的方法论意义,但不具有本体意义;科技工作者的"艺术美"审美倾向与问题解决不具有直接的相关关系,推动科学问题解决的审美倾向是科学美审美倾向,推动科学问题发现的审美倾向是自然美审美倾向,并针对上述结果进行了相应探讨。     

A functional approach for studying technological progress: Extension to energy technology

This paper extends a broad functional category approach for the study of technological capability progress recently developed and applied to information technology to a second key case—that of energy based technologies. The approach is applied to the same three functional operations—storage, transportation and transformation—that were used for information technology by first building a 100 plus year database for each of the three energy-based functional categories. In agreement with the results for information technology in the first paper, the energy technology results indicate that the functional approach offers a stable methodology for assessing longer time technological progress trends. Moreover, similar to what was found with information technology in the first study, the functional capability for energy technology shows continual—if not continuous—improvement that is best quantitatively described as exponential with respect to time. The absence of capability discontinuities—even with large technology displacement—and the lack of clear saturation effects are found with energy as it was with information. However, some key differences between energy and information technology are seen and these include:

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Lower rates of progress for energy technology over the entire period: 19-37% annually for Information Technology and 3-13% for Energy Technology.

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Substantial variability of progress rates is found within given functional categories for energy compared to relatively small variation within any one category for information technology. The strongest variation is found among capability progress among different energy types.

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More challenging data recovery and metric definition for energy as compared to information technology.

These findings are interpreted in terms of fundamental differences between energy and information including the losses and efficiency constraints on energy. We apply Whitney's insight that these fundamental differences lead to naturally modular information technology artifacts. The higher progress rates of information-based as opposed to energy-based technologies follows since decomposable systems can progress more rapidly due to the greater ease of independent as opposed to simultaneous development. In addition, the broad implications of our findings to studies of the relationships between technical and social change are briefly discussed.     

中国与美国技术差距缩小了吗

首先对中国技术创新水平进行了跨国跨期比较分析,并探寻了中国技术创新水平现状以及与美国的技术差距;其次,构建了理论模型,从长期和短期视角剖析了后发国家的技术追赶机制,进而对中美技术差距的影响因素进行了计量分析。研究表明：①在技术追赶过程中,短期内,后发国家应积极发挥后发优势,根据自身技术水平权衡模仿创新和自主创新,而在长期,随着技术差距逐渐收敛于稳定值,后发国家应加强自主创新;②相对于美国,尽管中国技术水平仍较滞后,但中美技术差距呈缩小态势;③当前,自主创新、FDI的溢出吸收以及劳动力资本和生产性投资有助于缩小中美技术差距,但高科技产品进口却导致了技术差距的扩大;④随着“刘易斯拐点”的到来和中国工业化进程的深入,劳动力、资本等传统要素对缩小中美技术差距的作用正在逐渐减弱。     

基于技术创新模式的我国风电装备制造业创新能力分析

全球风电市场的发展为我国风电设备制造业的发展提供了机遇和有利条件。分析了我国风电设备制造业的发展现状,对该产业所采用的技术创新方法进行了分类,归结为模仿创新、合作创新和自主创新3种模式。基于此创新模式分类,绘制了我国主要风电设备整机制造企业的技术能力演变路线图,总结了技术创新模式对企业创新能力提升的影响,并指出模仿创新模式和合作创新模式已经不能满足我国风电设备制造业发展的需要,我国风电设备制造业只有在积极引进消化吸收国际先进技术的同时,通过自主创新,提高技术创新能力,开发更多具有核心技术和自主知识产权的产品,才能抓住发展机遇,走出困境,做大做强。     

多层级视角下京津冀科技创新政策府际关系研究

府际关系协调有利于实现创新资源、要素的有效汇聚与整合,进而提升政策有效性。以京津冀为例,构建中央-地方多层级府际关系模型,分析中央政策主体合作网络特征与政策扩散特征、地方政策主体合作网络特征与政策执行特征的相关性。研究发现,中央政府部门间形成了以科技部为核心的核心—边缘网络结构特征;北京市政府部门间呈现出以中关村科技管理委员会为核心的核心-边缘网络结构特征;天津市政府部门间呈现出以天津市科学技术委员会为核心的星型网络结构特征;河北省则没有形成稳定的网络关系。中央政策主体合作网络中的度中心性与政策扩散广度具有相关性;地方政策主体合作网络中介中心性、度中心性与政策执行强度具有相关性。     

Corporate governance,environmental regulations,and technological change

This paper investigates the relationship between environmental regulations and innovation by focusing on the automobile industry in a cross-country setting. We provide empirical evidence that the presence of agency problems mitigates the negative effects of environmental regulations on overall R&D activity, which leads to full compensation when the degree of agency problems is sufficiently high. Guiding our empirical analysis, we provide a general model consistent with the structure of existing ownership data. Specifically, we model ownership structure as a combination of two extreme corporate governance types. On the one extreme there are profit maximizers, and on the other extreme there are managers who are only concerned with their private benefits. The model leads to a simple country level ownership indicator and shows that if an economy is dominated by firms with higher agency problems, then pollution tax might even increase overall R&D, while reducing pollution. According to our estimations, such an outcome is possible only for out-of-sample values of the ownership indicator, where the degree of agency problems is extremely high.     

科研人员职务科技成果赋权、组织能力与衍生创业间关系研究

科研人员职务科技成果赋权是推动职务科技成果转化的重要制度设计。现有研究多从权力改革视角探究赋权科研人员的作用效果,忽视了权力改革后组织能力支持对赋权效果的重要影响。选取中国科学院西安光学精密机械研究所作为案例研究对象,运用扎根理论,深入探究科研人员职务科技成果赋权、组织能力与衍生创业的关系。结果发现,科研人员职务科技成果所有权和长期使用权赋权对科研人员衍生创业具有正向影响;科研人员职务科技成果收益权下放程度与科研人员衍生创业呈倒U型关系;组织能力中的组织文化塑造能力、组织资源整合能力和组织制度构建能力分别在科研人员职务科技成果赋权影响衍生创业的过程中发挥中介作用。