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Preliminary versions of the manuscript were presented at the conference “XXI Jornadas de la Asociación de Economía de la Educación”, Porto (July, 2012), at the “5th European Conference on Intellectual Capital”, Bilbao (April, 2013) and “EU-SPRI Early Career Research Conference”, Lund (October, 2013)., The present paper elaborates a critical reflection on the ‘one-size-fits-all’ model which conceptualizes universities as centres of excellence in education, research and third mission. It is argued that the shortcomings of this perspective are twofold: first, HEIs are treated as homogeneous institutions with equal capacity to perform and contribute to social engagement; and second, missions are undistinguishable from each other. Both features lead to mischaracterizations concerning the role of universities and their contribution to society. In the view proposed here missions are university strategies linked by complex relationship of compatibility, and the paper puts in perspective the persisting gap concerning the nature of and the relations across them., This research is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education through the Formación de Profesorado Universitario (F.P.U.) program.

This paper analyses the changing pattern of relationships between project-based suppliers and railway operators in Europe. These changes are related to the creation of new market structures in railway sectors during the 1990s. The paper discusses two main consequences of this change: (1) the shift of core capabilities from railway operators to project-based suppliers, and (2) the emergence of numerous organisational interfaces and new feedback loops that bridge railway projects and railway operations. Drawing upon the concept of large technical systems (LTS) and upon the model of innovation in complex product systems (CoPS), the paper claims that innovative activity in railways can only be adequately understood by paying attention to the interdependencies between railway projects and the operational railway network. Projects and the operational system are interwoven activities, forming a project–system innovation cycle. Two case studies of large-scale railway projects in Germany and the UK are presented to support the argument. The evidence suggests that successful innovation in market-based railway operations increasingly depends on dynamic systems integration and effective co-ordination capabilities. Dynamic systems integration refers to the need for the continuous adaptation of technical and organisational project solutions in response to the changes in the operational system. It is argued that projects can be managed more effectively under market structures that provide certain organisations in the railway system with a strong co-ordinating role in the activities linking projects with the operational system.

This paper discusses a conflict between private defence firms and government procurement agencies related to Intellectual Property management issues that emerged during the privatization process of the main UK defence research establishment. Our analysis questions a common argument found in studies of the defence industries: that a close confluence of interests exists between private suppliers and their public customers, so much so that the boundaries between public and private actors become blurred. Instead, we argue that the tensions between private suppliers and their government customers are jeopardizing the success of process innovations in defence procurement that rely on >partnership> and collaboration between defence and government customers and users. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved., This paper is based on research carried out by the authors in the study “Managing IPR in Shared Digital Environments”, jointly funded by the UK Economic Social Research Council “E-Society Programme”, and the UK Ministry of Defence under the Joint Grants Scheme (ESRC Award Reference RES-335-25-0017).

This paper aims to show that alliance networks can play an important role in facilitating large-scale strategic change projects. It focuses on the particular case of IBM, whose radical redirection from an exploitation strategy towards an exploration strategy was realized by major changes in its network strategy. We show that by involving new partners in the network and by loosening the ties with its existing partners, IBM managed to transform from a hardware manufacturing company to a global service provider and software company. The findings suggest that the traditional view of large firms as being slow to adapt may not be valid because alliance networks can be used to overcome inertia. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper explores the relationship between innovation and the survival probability of manufacturing firms in the Netherlands, conditional on firm age and size. The empirical analysis combines firm level data on innovation, derived from the second Community Innovation Survey, and on the date of exit, from the Business Register of all firms active in the Netherlands. To estimate the survival probability of a firm we use a non-parametric approach, based on the calculation of Transition Probability Matrices over different time periods. The results show that innovation has a positive and significant effect on the probability of firms’ survival. This effect increases over time and is conditional on firm age and size; we observe that small and young firms are the most exposed to the risk of exit, as found in earlier studies, but also those that most benefit of innovation to survive in the market, especially in the longer term.

This paper investigates the development of university spinout companies (USOs). Employing a case-based research method, our study found that there are two important elements in their development. First, USOs go through a number of distinct phases of activity in their development. Each venture must pass through the previous phase in order to progress to the next one but each phase involves an iterative, non-linear process of development in which there may be a need to revisit some of the earlier decisions and activities. Second, at the interstices between the different phases of development we found that ventures face “critical junctures” in terms of the resources and capabilities they need to acquire to progress to the next phase. The different phases are critical as these ventures cannot develop into the next phase without overcoming each of the junctures. We identify four different critical junctures that spinout companies need to overcome if they are to succeed: opportunity recognition, entrepreneurial commitment, credibility and sustainability.

In the article we describe how the digital computer regime grew out of existing computing regimes through a process of transformation. This transformation is conceptualised as a regime shift: a change in the rule set that underpins technical change, guiding innovative activity and output into particular directions. Examples of such rules are technical standards, product standards, user requirements, design rules and organisational rules of how to produce, what to produce. The paper describes how the new digital computer regime had to start from structures of the old regimes, and only later on developed its own distinctive elements. It describes how specific changes in the existing computing regimes, particularly the increasing division of labour, the growing schematisation of computing activities and the development of more sophisticated punch card machinery, contributed to the design and programming methods of the digital computer. How the old programming methods constrained the development of the new regime is also discussed. The article does not go into the actual processes of diffusion of digital computers into specific domains. It does however discuss the role of market demand dynamics for the evolution of digital technology, which too often is portrayed as a technology/science push phenomenon.