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This paper aims to assist in a better understanding of the real role of patents by examining how Crossley Brothers – the world's main producer of gas engines before the First World War – and its partners (as well as the German inventor Nikolaus Otto) used the patent system to introduce the gas engine into Spain. The evidence suggests that patents were for them mainly an instrument to protect the market for their imported products. It is probable that the know-how transferred to the local agents and the engines imported could somehow enhance the domestic industrial abilities, but the supposed aim of the patent system – creating a local industry – was not achieved. Although the Spanish patent system was not well implemented, this was not the main explanation of this failure; rather it was the weak domestic technological abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a project following up previous work about patterns of and attitudes to assessment among sociologists. Two forms of data collection were undertaken: an online questionnaire to sociology departments and a series of focus groups with undergraduate students. The results showed that assessment has become a more salient issue than ten years ago, but that most of the innovations in practice had taken place in post-1992 institutions. The focus group findings confirm those from national satisfaction surveys; namely that student dissatisfaction with assessment is profound and that it persists throughout their undergraduate experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stem cell science is an emerging global industry in which nation states compete fiercely for economic advantage. Currently, the USA dominates this international competition but critics have argued that it lacks an innovation strategy to maintain its position. Strong international competition and internal policy problems may pose significant challenges to the future of US stem cell science. At the same time, the governments of the UK, China, India, Australia and Singapore are developing strategies to enhance their competitive edge within the global stem cell economy. How should the US government respond to these developments? Is a federal strategy necessary to protect the advantages of the US stem cell industries or can it be assumed that the present innovation infrastructure is sufficiently flexible and dynamic to cope with the global challenge? In this paper we address these questions through an examination of the US stem cell innovation system from the perspectives of science, society and the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on international differences in retail productivity has highlighted formidable environmental barriers to the 'industrialisation' of mass retailing as a driver of declining British interwar productivity growth in this sector (and in services more generally). We examine evidence for such barriers, using a case study of a firm that built its interwar expansion strategy on 'American' retail methods -- Marks & Spencer (M&S). We find that, rather than facing barriers to the adoption of American mass retail practices, M&S reaped major productivity gains from this process. This adds further evidence to an emerging literature rejecting the barriers to industrialisation thesis for retailing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay undertakes a comparative review of radical innovation in the early Cold War, when UK jet propulsion development far outpaced any US efforts. British ingenuity created a series of jet engines which Americans adopted. One among these, which captures contrasting organisational formats for handling complexity and innovation, was the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire, a tough, reliable propulsion system. The USAF's licence assigned production to Curtiss-Wright, which had made piston engines for decades and which spectacularly botched the project, wasting millions. Eventually, the Pentagon shifted the J-65 American Sapphire to GM's Buick division, which finally fabricated adequate but obsolete engines in the mid-1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out to demonstrate how regulation, markets and technology can be intertwined. It argues that the introduction of technology in a regulated market, such as that of international telecommunications, must be seen in terms of its impact on economic and political alliances in that regulatory market. It presents a case study of the first transatlantic telephone cable, TAT1 - a joint project between the US company, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), the British Post Office (GPO) and Canada's Overseas Telephone Corporation - and a coaxial cable proposed by another US company, International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). Both cables became part of a British attempt to alter existing British and US domestic regulation of international telegraph transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]