Marine Bernard (p), Marie Ferru, Bastien Bernela

Bastien Bernela

A literature interested in the geography of science (Livingstone, 1995; Eckert and Baron, 2013) evolved in recent years in a context of support of inventor’s mobility manifested by European mobility programs (Morano-Foadi, 2005). Considering that knowledge is attached to individuals (Cañibano, 2006), many authors assume that mobility allows researchers to meet and collaborate with new researchers to exchange knowledge (scientific network diversification). Mobility would be therefore indispensable to product new knowledge and diffuse it across space. In this article, we propose to answer the following question: should I move to diversify my network? Network diversification means here collaborating with new partners (ie. social diversification) or with new partners from changing geography (ie. spatial diversification).
Authors have mainly focused on the impact of mobility at the macro perspective through issues of “brain drain” (from Bhagwati (1976) to Breschi et al. (2017)), studying migratory flows and nodes in networks at the cities and countries levels. In parallel, some authors developed a greater focus on individuals, mainly testing the impact of researchers’ mobility on their performance (Hoisl, 2007; Lawson and Shibayama, 2015). However, few authors have analyzed the link between mobility and scientific network (Fontes, 2012, Melin, 2005). Inscribed in this direction, our research searches to test the role of mobility in building and developing the scientific network at a micro level, reintegrating mobility in the context of the ongoing career of researchers.
Empirically, we focus on scientific publications of researchers, that constitute a relevant indicator of successful collaborations. We focus on chemistry: the co-authorship is particularly dense because of scientific practices (experimental dimension, need for technical skills, importance of teams, etc.) but not tremendous (the average number of co-authors 4 per article). We analyze the formation and dynamics of co-authorship personal network over time of 80 chemists located in two French labs. With bibliometric data, we collected the affiliations to understand the geography of co-authorship. When do researchers diversify their co-authorship and renew collaborations? Is the geography of co-authorship sensitive to the spatial trajectories of chemists? Do mobile researchers maintain collaboration over time despite geographical distance?

Fumi Kitagawa (p), Niki Vermeulen, Marion Maisonobe

Bastien Bernela

Our study aims to broaden theoretical horizons by bringing together two broad streams of literature: the governance of city regions, and organisational studies of higher education institutions (HEIs). In particular, we introduce the concept of “hybrid spaces” where different institutional logics coexist and interact. Empirically, we present the case of a City Region Deal in Scotland, more specifically, the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal (ESES-CRD). Our focus is on the Data Driven Innovation (DDI) Programme, which is part of the City Region Deal aiming to “help establish the region as the data capital of Europe”, by drawing in inward investment, fuelling entrepreneurship and delivering inclusive economic growth. It attempts to realise its goals by helping organisations and individuals to connect to research and development in the generation, storage, analysis and use of various forms of data. In addition, the programme aims to improve digital skills through working with schools, further and higher education, employers, and training providers, and to stimulate entrepreneurship.

In this paper, we ask the following key questions:
• How can we understand the influence of the City Deal’s focus on data-driven innovation on the profile of the University of Edinburgh?
• How does the university position itself in the evolving local institutional constellations of a City Region Deal?
• How is inter-sectoral and inter-organisational collaboration encouraged and orchestrated, and inhibited in the context of the University of Edinburgh and the City Region Deal?

Pieter Stek , Marina Van Geenhuizen (p)

Bastien Bernela

While there has been an overall global shift of economic activity, it is little known about such a shift in R&D in specific economic sectors. Medical technology is such a sector. To fill the knowledge gap, the study makes use of unique historical patent data and identifies the top clusters and changes herein in the world in a period of 15 years. The theoretical background is that of agglomeration economies, particularly knowledge spill-overs, and as a compliment or substitute, that of network economies (Acs et al., 2002, 2013; Ponds et al., 2009). We perceive dynamics from two different angles: enabling conditions and drivers. While agglomeration and networks are seen as enabling conditions, the study perceives R&D organisations, like multinational corporations, universities and government research institutions, primarily as drivers in R&D, causing growth, shrinking, relocation and transfer of R&D activities, thereby drawing on their dynamic knowledge capabilities (Cohen and Levinthal, 2000; Teece, 2006; Autio et al., 2013; Alkemade et al., 2015).
Empirically, the focus is on the following questions: 1) Which are the spatial dynamics in global clusters of medical devices technology, with regard to patent output? 2) How do these dynamics relate to characteristics of drivers, agglomeration and networks in clusters?
The main results can be summarized as follows. R&D in the medical devices sector has been growing in the past years. Annual patent output has doubled between 1996 and 2011. However, there is strong stability in terms of numbers of clusters and spread over the continents. With a small increase in number of clusters, only Asia Pacific increases slightly in importance, while North America has maintained the largest share of clusters. Also, clusters of all sizes grow at a similar rate over the whole period (as indicated by a stable gini-coefficient). With regard to individual clusters and rank size, the top ten clusters have remained mostly unchanged over the 15 years period, with a few exceptions, like a somewhat rising Seoul (Korea) and falling Washington and Chicago (US). In the last observation period (2008-2011) most clusters in the top are in the US – New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Chicago-, three are in Asia – Tokyo, Seoul and Osaka, and one in Europe – Frankfurt and one in Israel (Tel-Aviv).
With regard to underlying mechanisms, a model of patent output is developed and estimated using regression analysis with change in patent output as the dependent variable. Three sets of explanatory variables are used, namely, driving organisations’ knowledge gaining, agglomeration conditions and network conditions. The results indicate that patent output is positively and significantly associated with knowledge gaining by multinational corporations. The partial model is relatively strong as evidenced by R2 of 0.62. In addition, in a partial model that ignores multinational corporations, one agglomeration quality turns out to yield a positive and significant result, namely, number of scientific publications as an indicator of size and productivity of scientific communities in a cluster. In addition, the ‘conditioning’ of the clusters through the national innovation system (NIS) also yields a positive and significant result. Remarkably, none of the collaboration network variables, like network size and diversity, turns out to be significant. The partial model of agglomeration factors and network factors (R2 of 0.26) suggest minor importance compared to drivers. In addition, at the individual level of clusters, different growth trajectories are visible, in particular, Asian clusters’ networks are relatively small compared to cluster size. However, relatively small networks do not hinder strong cluster growth, like in the case of Seoul.
The preliminary conclusions are the following ones. There is no global shift in inventive activity in the medical devices sector, but stability. Stability in global distribution tends to go along with specific patterns of knowledge gaining by multinational corporations, as well as with some agglomeration advantages from large and productive scientific communities in clusters and a positive NIS. The underlying mechanisms tend not to be related to (changes in) networks. By adopting a sector approach, the results contribute to literature by providing new understandings of dynamics in the global distribution of inventive activity.
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See extended abstract online

Myriam Saadé-sbeih (p), Romain Boistel (p)

Bastien Bernela

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a multicriteria and comparative methodology quantifying the environmental impacts of products and services throughout their entire life cycle. Conceived in the late 1960s in the USA to evaluate industrial systems, it was first dedicated to the analysis of energy consumption and solid waste generation. Parallel to its standardization in the 1990s and increasing integration in environmental policy making in the 2000s, the scope and issues covered by LCA studies broadened with the diversification of environmental impact categories and the complexification of related models. These methodological developments mobilized a growing scientific community, originally hosted in research centers from, mostly, the European Union, the USA and Japan. Despite the ambition of developing a holistic approach assessing the environmental burdens of global economic activities, LCA focused in its first decades on particular contexts with poor consideration of situations and systems in “emerging” and “developing” countries. This contribution seeks to investigate the circulation of the methodology by exploring the spatial redistribution of LCA scientific production from the 1990s onwards. The analysis is based on bibliometric data extracted from three scientific journals addressing LCA. The preliminary results at the country level show a progressive increase and spatial expansion of publication activities. The territorial redistribution of scientific publications happens in two waves, first to South-East Asia and South America starting at the beginning of the 21st century and accelerating in the late 2000s, particularly with the steady and rapid growth of the Chinese scientific production. The second wave of publication redistribution starts in 2010 with a growing number of publications originating from African or Middle-Eastern countries.