Prometheus

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Latest documents

• The paradox of open innovation in Slovenian firms

  Innovation and open innovation are expected to strengthen firm performance. The learning process and inbound activities are particularly important for catch-up countries and firms. The empirical evidence, though, is incomplete and provides inconclusive results. This paper studies the role of open innovation activities in a sample of Slovenian firms. Using a combination of survey data and official registry financial statements data, we investigate the differences in the role of open innovation across firms with different productivity. The results show that open innovation is more important in less productive firms. This is consistent with the theoretical ideas that stress the role of learning, capacity building and knowledge transfer. However, these firms also invest less in open innovation activities, which is a paradox in itself, introducing an important challenge for managers as well as questions for future research.

• Edmund Phelps, Raicho Bojilov, Hian Teck Hoon and Gylfi Zoega, Dynamism: The Values That Drive Innovation, Job Satisfaction and Economic Growth
• Christoph Bartneck, Tony Belpaeme, Friederike Eyssel, Takayuki Kanda, Merel Keijsers and Selma Sabanovic, Human–Robot Interaction: An Introduction
• Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, We have Always Been Cyborgs
• Metaphor and theory: a case study of astronomy

  Metaphors enable the understanding of one thing in terms of another. Although central to reasoning and theorizing, there is limited understanding about their role in theory development. This paper presents a process of metaphorical reasoning that addresses the question of how metaphors support theory development. The process is applied to the case of astronomy, which helps explain why metaphors create reality and why their reality-creating side cannot be separated from their creative side. The paradoxical nature of metaphors means that metaphorical reasoning is an open-ended process. The paper also shows that emergence – a fundamental property of metaphors – explains their paradoxical nature. This same property makes metaphor a compressed interpretation of the world, characterized by the discarding of information. Finally, it is argued that metaphors are abstract intermediaries between senses and experiences. Given that metaphors are central to reasoning and theorizing, it is not surprising that these findings are consonant with what we know about theory (creative, reality-creating, sparse, abstract and open-ended). What is surprising, though, is that the discarding of information seems to be essential for the building of theory. The paper concludes by exploring what this entails for our understanding of theory.

• How research institutions can make the best of scandals – once they become unavoidable

  We posit that, once scandals become unavoidable, they can be considered for transformation into opportunities for research institutions, scientific communities and science regulators to implement in-depth changes and policies they would otherwise oppose. Research institutions and scientific communities can take advantage of scandals by participating proactively in constructing their consequences. We develop four mechanisms by which scandals can be used to bring positive change in research institutions and scientific communities. These are nullifying the high-status protection of almost untouchable researchers, ‘resetting’ the system that was conducive to scandals, changing the reference point upon which the entity is judged to emphasize progress and offering a learning opportunity to involved parties.

• Michael J. Boyle, The Drone Age: How Drone Technology Will Change War and Peace
• Alex Nicholls and Rafael Ziegler (eds) Creating Economic Space for Social Innovation
• Editorial
• Simeon J. Yates and Ronald E. Rice (eds) Oxford Handbook of Digital Technology and Society

Featured documents

• Three decades of research on innovation and inequality: Causal scenarios, explanatory factors and suggestions
• Constructivism and its risks in artificial intelligence

  The research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies involve choices that extend well beyond the search for narrow engineering solutions to problems. The label ‘constructivism’ is used to capture this larger realm of social choice. Drawing on the history of AI, a distinction is ...

• Toward a Relational View of Organizational Innovation: Learning from Previous and Subsequent Stages of Innovation in Large Biopharmaceutical Firms, 1990–2006

  The paper draws on insights from relational sociology to develop a relational view of organizational innovation which suggests that feedback between stages of innovation may occur regardless of whether they precede one another, and activities at different stages may have reciprocal effects....

• Prestige auditing and the market for academic esteem: a framework and an appeal

  Much has been written about the remarkable rise of global university rankings from their initial appearance in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (Shanghai) tables in 2003. The examination of all things rankings, however, has arguably outpaced its conceptual uptake. This paper addresses...

• Between innovation and industrial policy: how Washington succeeds and fails at renewable energy

  During its eight years in office, the Obama administration undertook an ambitious effort to transition the US economy towards the use of renewable energy technologies, and promote American leads in the global ‘cleantech’ industry. While many of the strategies selected to achieve these goals...

• A hand-up or a hand-out? An argument for concierge services for the development of innovation capacity in startups

  This study suggests that a concierge service, provided by governments, can assist startups to gain streamlined access to the services, capabilities and capital required to bring innovation efficiently and cost-effectively to market. It analyses a range of concierge models in five separate...

• Revisiting an information infrastructure for development: exploring the cost of information in Pacific Island development

  Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been associated with development programmes for many decades. A theme of Lamberton's commentary on such initiatives focuses on the lack of attention given to information as a key ...

• Civil society and global copyright reform advocacy: incoherent frames as missed opportunities?

  After almost a decade of civil society (CS) efforts aimed at reforming the global intellectual property (IP) system, this study examines whether the paucity in global copyright reform is a result of the failure by civil society to mobilise around an explicit or coherent frame. While previous...

• Metaphor and theory: a case study of astronomy

  Metaphors enable the understanding of one thing in terms of another. Although central to reasoning and theorizing, there is limited understanding about their role in theory development. This paper presents a process of metaphorical reasoning that addresses the question of how metaphors support...

• Data sharing policies in scholarly publications: interdisciplinary comparisons

  Digital sharing of research data is becoming an important research integrity norm. Data sharing is promoted in different avenues, one being the scholarly publication process: journals serve as gatekeepers, recommending or mandating data...