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This paper maps research outcomes and identifies spillover effects at a US University Research Center (URC) that offers user facilities for nanotechnology research. We use scientometric and network science approaches to analyze measures of topical orientation, productivity, impact, and collaboration applied to URC-related Web of Science abstract publications records. A focus is on the analysis of spillover effects on external organizations (i.e., non-affiliated users). Our findings suggest the URC’s network relies on external organizations acting as brokers, to provide access to the facilities to other external organizations. Analysis of heterophily indicates that collaboration among internal and external organizations is enhanced by the facilities, while articles written by a mix of co-authors affiliated with internal and external organizations are likely to be more cited. These results provide insights on how URCs with user facilities can create conditions for diverse collaboration and greater research impact.

This paper examines how automation and digitalisation influence the way everyday scientific work practices are organised and conducted. Drawing on a practice-based study of the field of synthetic biology, the paper uses ethnographic, interview and survey data to offer a sociomaterial and relational perspective of technological change. As automation and digitalisation are deployed in research settings, our results show the emergence and persistence of what we call ‘mundane knowledge work’, including practices of checking, sharing and standardising data; and preparing, repairing and supervising laboratory robots. While these are subsidiary practices that are often invisible in comparison to scientific outputs used to measure performance, we find that mundane knowledge work constitutes a fundamental part of automated and digitalised biosciences, shaping scientists' working time and responsibilities. Contrary to expectations of the removal of such work by automation and digitalisation, we show that mundane work around data and robots persists through ‘amplification’ and ‘diversification’ processes. We argue that the persistence of mundane knowledge work suggests a digitalisation paradox in the context of everyday labour: while robotics and advanced data analytics aim at simplifying work processes, they also contribute to increasing their complexity in terms of number and diversity of tasks in creative, knowledge-intensive professions.

Bio-based production of industrial chemicals using synthetic biology can provide alternative green routes from renewable resources, allowing for cleaner production processes. To efficiently produce chemicals on-demand through microbial strain engineering, biomanufacturing foundries have developed automated pipelines that are largely compound agnostic in their time to delivery. Here we benchmark the capabilities of a biomanufacturing pipeline to enable rapid prototyping of microbial cell factories for the production of chemically diverse industrially relevant material building blocks. Over 85 days the pipeline was able to produce 17 potential material monomers and key intermediates by combining 160 genetic parts into 115 unique biosynthetic pathways. To explore the scale-up potential of our prototype production strains, we optimized the enantioselective production of mandelic acid and hydroxymandelic acid, achieving gram-scale production in fed-batch fermenters. The high success rate in the rapid design and prototyping of microbially-produced material building blocks reveals the potential role of biofoundries in leading the transition to sustainable materials production., Graphical abstract Image 1, Highlights • An automated biomanufacturing pipeline is benchmarked for the production of material monomers. • Over 85 days, 160 genes were screened for activity, assembled into 115 unique pathways and tested for in vivo production. • E. coli production strains were successfully constructed to produce 17 target compounds at competitive titers. • Scale-up potential is demonstrated through enantioselective production of mandelic acid targets at gram-scale in bioreactors. • The high success rate demonstrates the capabilities of biofoundries to rapidly prototype microbial production strains.

Entrepreneurial scholarship suggests that a small firm’s ability to grow is a function of its capacity to sense and respond to changes in the market as well as the broader environment for the firm’s goods and services. Developing detailed measures of internal capabilities at a large scale, however, is often hampered by limitations in the availability of data from conventional sources, low survey response rates and panel attrition. The emergence of new information sources, including big data sets derived from the online activities of firms, coupled with advanced computational approaches, raises fresh analytical possibilities. In this exploratory study, we turn to freely accessible website data to gauge internal capabilities, specifically for market sensing and responding. To operationalize the construct of seizing, the paper uses an application of topic modeling, a text mining approach commonly used in computer science, on archived website data from the Wayback Machine for two time periods, 2008–2009 and 2010–2011, to explain sales growth for green goods enterprises in two later time periods, from 2010 to 2012. We find an endogenous inverse U-shaped relationship exists between market seizing and sales growth. Increasing levels of focus on a firm’s local geographic area also predict sales growth. We consider these findings in light of the practitioner literature on firm agility and pivoting and discuss opportunities for future work using website data to study entrepreneurship and the strategic management of innovation.

Assessing corporate engagement with an emerging technology is essential for understanding the development of research and innovation systems. Corporate publishing is used as a system-level knowledge transfer indicator, but prior literature suggests that publishing can run counter to private sector needs for management of dissemination to ensure appropriability of research benefits. We examine the extent of corporate authorship and collaboration in nanotechnology publications from 2000 to 2019. The analysis identified 53,200 corporate nanotechnology publications. Despite the potential for limits on collaboration with corporate authors, this paper finds that eight out of 10 nanotechnology corporate publications involved authors from multiple organizations and nearly one-third from multiple countries and that these percentages were higher in recent years. The USA is the leading nation in corporate nanotechnology publishing, followed by Japan and Germany, with China ranking fourth, albeit with the greatest publication growth rate. US corporate publishing is more highly cited and less cross-nationally collaborative. Asian countries also have fewer collaborative authorship ties outside of their home countries. European countries had more corporate collaborations with authors affiliated with organizations outside of their home countries. The paper concludes that distinguishing corporate publications, while difficult due to challenges in identifying small- and medium-sized corporations and grouping variations in corporate names, can be beneficial to examining national systems of research and development.

The publication of our article “Introducing the dilemma of societal alignment for inclusive and responsible research and innovation” (Ribeiro et al., 2018) was accompanied by three commentaries (Guston, 2018; Nordmann, 2018; and Kuzma and Roberts, 2018). In the original article, we invoked Collingridge’s dilemma of the social control of technology to introduce a complementary dilemma of “societal alignment” in the governance of science, technology and innovation. Thoughtful and challenging critiques were presented in the three commentaries. In this paper, as completed in June 2019, we respond to those critiques and, in so doing, seek to further clarify and extend our arguments.

Horizon scanning is intended to identify the opportunities and threats associated with technological, regulatory and social change. In 2017 some of the present authors conducted a horizon scan for bioengineering (Wintle et al., 2017). Here we report the results of a new horizon scan that is based on inputs from a larger and more international group of 38 participants. The final list of 20 issues includes topics spanning from the political (the regulation of genomic data, increased philanthropic funding and malicious uses of neurochemicals) to the environmental (crops for changing climates and agricultural gene drives). The early identification of such issues is relevant to researchers, policy-makers and the wider public.

Encouraging innovation in manufacturing is of much interest in business and policy circles. One aspect of this emphasis on innovation is the assumption that innovation leads to tangible business outcomes that can sustain the competitiveness of industries and create jobs. This study examines the relationship between product and process innovation and profitability and employment growth using a unique set of cross-sectional data from the Georgia Manufacturing Survey over three time periods of 2005, 2010, and 2016. The results failed to show a connection between innovation and firm performance in the 2010 and 2016 periods. One implication from the 2010 and 2016 results is that standard product and process improvements may not be enough to achieve benefits in 2010 and 2016, because manufacturers may be having difficulty appropriating profits from these innovation practices in today’s globally competitive climate. The results suggest a need for more nuanced measurement of innovation in associating it with business outcomes.

The synthetic biology research community will influence the future development of synthetic biology and its emergence into the sociopolitical and regulatory arenas. Because of this influence, we provide a first look at those involved in the research field—their views regarding the field and interactions with the public—using a unique sample of United States–based researchers who have published in the broad field of synthetic biology. Our data indicate a range of views of the moral and regulatory aspects of the science, based in part on various values and professional judgments, with differences emerging across synthetic biologists (e.g., bench scientists and computer scientists) and researchers focusing on ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI). Importantly, the researchers are engaged in public outreach activities, which could provide opportunities for public discourse on the sociopolitical aspects of synthetic biology. The implications of these findings for the future of the technology and upstream engagement emerge.

From the early 2010s, policymakers and firms in advanced industrial economies began introducing approaches to systemically exploit manufacturing and industrial data using the notion of cyber-physical convergence. Three innovation concepts have been especially highlighted: Smart Manufacturing, the Industrial Internet and Industrie 4.0. In parallel, academics have employed these concepts in numerous ways to advance their work. Despite this broad interest, precise definition and delineation of the cyber-physical convergence research domain have received little attention. Also missing is systematic knowledge on the interactions of these concepts with research trajectories. This paper fills these gaps by operationalising a newly constructed definition of convergence, and delineating the associated research domain into five data-centric capabilities: Monitoring, Analytics, Modelling and Simulation, Transmission and Security. A bibliometric analysis of the domain is then performed for 2010–2019. There are three findings. First, Analytics and Security have assumed strategic positions within the domain, coinciding with a “strategic turn” in policy. Second, backed by concerted policy and funding efforts, growth in Chinese scientific output has outpaced key competitors, including the U.S. and Germany. Finally, the patterns of promoting their works in terms of the three concepts differ significantly amongst U.S.-, Germany- and China-based authors, which mirrors the different policy discourses prevalent in those countries.

Research universities are expanding their institutional research presence overseas through the creation of research centers, facilities and partnerships outside of their home countries. We argue that such international university research ventures (IURV) are a distinct type of intermediary node in global knowledge networks occurring at the intersection of three trends: (1) expanding international research collaborations, (2) globalization of higher education, and (3) growing demand for capacity building in science, technology and innovation in emerging economies. To understand and characterize the scope and scale of this phenomenon we undertake an exploratory study of IURVs of 108 research-intensive universities in the United States. Data on U.S. IURV locations and their characteristics is collected from university websites and other secondary sources. We find that 54 U.S. research universities have established at least one IURV, with 183 IURVs in total created in 59 countries. A conceptual framework based on motivations and pathways of IURV emergence is developed. It distinguishes between strategy-driven, collaboration-driven, policy-driven and problem-driven IURVs. Insights from the mapping of U.S. IURVs are discussed, along with implications for future research.

Research highlights • Patent documents are a signalling mechanism about innovation values. • Extant patent valuation literature tends to overlook the public value of innovation. • Both private and public value propositions are found in patent documents. • Public value propositions are less frequent but more diverse. • Analysing private and public values in patents offers innovation policy insights., Emerging science and technology fields are increasingly expected to provide solutions to societal grand challenges. The promise of such solutions frequently underwrites claims for the public funding of research. In parallel, universities, public research organizations and, in particular, private enterprises draw on such research to actively secure property rights over potential applications through patenting. Patents represent a claim to garner financial returns from the novel outcomes of science and technology. This is justified by the potential social value promised by patents as they encourage information sharing, further R&D investment, and the useful application of new knowledge. Indeed, the value of patents has generated longstanding academic interest in innovation studies with many scholars investigating its determinants based on econometric models. Yet, this research has largely focused on evaluating factors that influence the market value of patents and the gains from exclusivity rights granted to inventions, which reflect the private value of a patent. However, the patent system is a socially shaped enterprise where private and public concerns intersect. Despite the notion of the social utility of inventions as a patenting condition, and evidence of disconnection between societal needs and the goals of private actors, less attention has been paid to other interpretations of patent value. This paper investigates the various articulations of value delineated by patents in an emerging science and technology domain. As a pilot study, we analyse patents in synthetic biology, contributing a new analytical framework and classification of private and public values at the intersections of science, economy, and society. After considering the legal, business, social and political dimensions of patenting, we undertake a qualitative and systematic examination of patent content in synthetic biology. Our analysis probes the private and public value propositions that are framed in these patents in terms of the potential private and public benefits of research and innovation. Based on this framework, we shed light on questions of what values are being nurtured in inventions in synthetic biology and discuss how attention to public as well as private values opens up promising avenues of research in science, technology and innovation policy.

Tackling the pressing sustainability needs of society will require the development and application of new technologies. Biotechnology, emboldened by recent advances in synthetic biology, offers to generate sustainable biologically-based routes to chemicals and materials as alternatives to fossil-derived incumbents. Yet, the sustainability potential of biotechnology is not without trade-offs. Here, we probe this capacity for sustainability for the case of bio-based nylon using both deliberative and analytical approaches within a framework of Constructive Sustainability Assessment. We highlight the potential for life cycle CO2 and N2O savings with bio-based processes, but report mixed results in other environmental and social impact categories. Importantly, we demonstrate how this knowledge can be generated collaboratively and constructively within companies at an early stage to anticipate consequences and to inform the modification of designs and applications. Application of the approach demonstrated here provides an avenue for technological actors to better understand and become responsive to the sustainability implications of their products, systems and actions.

In the past decade, advances in synthetic biology research and applications have raised important questions about the role of humans in shaping the natural world. A broad field combining multiple disciplines, synthetic biology involves the engineering of biological components and systems to create novel organisms or to change the makeup of existing organisms in novel ways. It has applications for medicine, energy, sustainability, security, and agriculture, among others. Although some argue that humans have always been changing nature (Kaebnick 2013; Kaebnick and Murray 2013), or that categorizing humans as separate from nature is misconceived, discussion surrounding synthetic biology reveals that many see synthetic biology as increasingly blurring the lines between natural and man-made (Boldt 2013; European Commission Directorate General for Health and Consumers 2010; Jennings 2013). Specific concerns differ depending on the particular field and applications, with a range of ecological, environmental, bio- and cybersecurity, health, regulatory, infrastructural, societal, and equity uncertainties raised (Cummings and Kuzma 2017; Goodman and Hessel 2013; Hoffman et al. 2017; Wintle et al. 2017).

Emerging technologies are increasingly promoted on the promise of tackling the grand challenge of sustainability. A range of assessment and governance approaches seek to evaluate these claims, but these tend to be applied disparately and lack widespread operationalisation. They also face specific challenges, such as high levels of uncertainty, when it comes to emerging technologies. Building and reflecting on both theory and practice, this article develops a framework for Constructive Sustainability Assessment (CSA) that enables the application of sustainability assessments to emerging technologies as part of a broader deliberative approach. In order to achieve this, we discuss and critique current approaches to analytical sustainability assessment and review deliberative social science governance frameworks. We then develop the conceptual basis of CSA - blending life-cycle thinking with principles of responsible research and innovation. This results in four design principles – transdisciplinarity, opening-up, exploring uncertainty and anticipation – that can be followed when applying sustainability assessments to emerging technologies. Finally, we discuss the practical implementation of the framework through a three-step process to (a) formulate the sustainability assessment in collaboration with stakeholders, (b) evaluate potential sustainability implications using methods such as anticipatory life-cycle assessment and (c) interpret and explore the results as part of a deliberative process. Through this, CSA facilitates a much-needed transdisciplinary response to enable the governance of emerging technologies towards sustainability. The framework will be of interest to scientists, engineers, and policy-makers working with emerging technologies that have sustainability as an explicit or implicit motivator., Graphical abstract, Highlights • Analytical and deliberative approaches to assessing emerging technologies are reviewed and critiqued. • A new conceptual framework is developed which blends complementary deliberative and analytical approaches. • Four design-principles are proposed for evaluating the sustainability of emerging technologies. • A concise but flexible three-step methodology is outlined to demonstrate how deliberative and analytical approaches can be aligned.

Identifying nanoscience and nanotechnology (nano) publications in global databases is essential to profile and track research in this ever-changing field. Crafting an effective search query to retrieve as many nano-related publications as feasible, while moderating irrelevant publications, is challenging. This paper reports on a major update to a well-established nano search routine. We offer a nine-module search that significantly augments retrieval from the Web of Science (WoS) compared to use of the WoS Nanoscience & Nanotechnology Category (Nano-WC). We compare search results, showing modular overlaps with a “Nano*” search, and among the modules. Analyzing the resulting set of 2.2 million nano publication abstract records affirms the tremendous multidisciplinary reach of nano-related research and the continued strong growth of the field. By country, China has enhanced its role as the world’s leading producer of nano publications, with slower growth for the US. Relatively high nano publication growth is also evident for India, Iran and several other emerging economies. Analyses of nano publications for 2013-2017 identify more than 20 emerging topics, primarily in the energy and two-dimensional materials domains that are apt to be actively researched in the coming few years.