Science,Technology and Society

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of external knowledge search strategy on innovation ambidexterity for SMEs. In order to achieve the purpose of research, hypotheses were set up by dividing exploitative knowledge sources and exploitative knowledge. Based on the Tobit regression analysis results by using the 975 data of Science and Technology Policy Institute, this research provides four findings as follows: First, exploitative knowledge breadth positively and significantly influences innovation ambidexterity. Second, exploitative knowledge depth positively and significantly influences innovation ambidexterity. Third, explorative knowledge breadth positively and significantly influences innovation ambidexterity. Lastly, the relationship between explorative knowledge significantly influences innovation ambidexterity. The results indicate that their knowledge search strategies ware significant driver of their innovation ambidexterity. In the final conclusion section implications and limitations of research results and suggestion for future research are discussed.

Even though global markets are transferring from offline to online, offline sales are rapidly increasing in two top global furniture firms in Korea and Japan each—IKEA and Nitori. This study aims to answer the following research question: ‘What are the differences and similarities between IKEA and Nitori in the open innovation dynamics of furniture design and function?’ Diverse naturalistic qualitative research methods such as participatory observation, or focus group interviews were used. IKEA is mainly pursuing engineering open innovation strategies, including advanced furniture design with engineering knowledge, fusion with new IT and other technologies for new and innovative furniture function and design, and pursuit of creative design idea frontiers. Nitori is mainly pursuing a strategy towards customer open innovation, which is focused on domestic and regional requirements.

Alongside Patent Super Aggregators represented by Intellectual Ventures in the United States, there is a trend to construct patent intermediary in the context of platform ecosystem. Accordingly, patent operation platforms (POPs) have emerged recently in China, yet few studies focus on uncovering their structures and operating mechanisms. This article aims to explore them based on two in-depth case studies with the application of a four-dimensional service innovation framework. Findings pinpoint that POP consists of ‘Patent Plus’ database, patent service platform and two-sided patent platform, as a closed loop. In this structure, ICT plays a prominent role, connected with new service concepts, service delivery system and client interface, to operate the platform. Our article also shows implications to POP related theory and practice.

This article empirically explores whether the Korean research and development (R&D) paradox has been intensified during the post-global financial crisis (2009–2018). We employ the augmented production function model to test the intensified R&D paradox, which is defined as a continuous decline in a firm’s output elasticity of R&D investment. Using a data set of 720 R&D-active firms, which have ever received more than one government funding, this study drew the following major conclusions on the whole sample firms and two sub-sample firms (smart convergence and conventional industries). First, the R&D paradox has been intensified in the post-global financial crisis over the past decade. Second, the smart convergence industry shows higher a firm’s output elasticity of R&D investment than the conventional one does. Third, in recent years, R&D investment failed to even have significant effect on the value-added. Last, a firm’s output elasticity of R&D investment was found to be much more vulnerable in large and semi-large firms than in SMEs in Korea. In sum, this study confirms the intensified Korean R&D paradox during the post-global financial crisis in Korea. We discuss the government’s role in resolving the R&D paradox in Korea.

More than half of Chinese high-technology firms are led by top executives (chairman and CEO) with R&D background. This study investigates whether and how top executives’ R&D background affects corporate innovation outcomes using a sample of listed firms in the high-technology industries in China. We find that the R&D background of top executives is positively related to innovation outcomes. We also find evidence on the mediating effect of R&D expenditure and moderating effect of corporate risk-taking on the above relationship. Our baseline results are robust to tests that address concerns caused by potential unobservable characteristics, reverse causality and other issues. Findings of our study have important implications for firms that aim to enhance their innovation outcomes and countries regarding their research policymaking and R&D management.

The benefits and challenges associated with cell-based meat (CBM) influence actors’ perspectives on the importance of its development and production. We build on Boltanski and Thévenot’s framework to analyse the values that start-ups and investors address to a responsible innovation (RI). In an uncertain and complex context, interactions among actors shape innovative enterprises. Our research question is as follows: In what ways do the justifications employed by start-ups and investors converge (or not) in order to foster investment in the CBM industry? By identifying the prioritised values by start-ups and investors concerning the importance of developing and producing CBM, we demonstrate how two key groups are providing justifications, shifting from conflicting interests and towards the observance of the common good. Twenty-two start-ups were analysed alongside ninety-four investors. The analysed justifications were obtained from start-ups and investors’ official websites and interviews. Moreover, this study aims to provide an interdisciplinary study of a RI phenomenon, insomuch as there is insufficient research on this topic.

This study examines the confrontation between Taiwan and Covid in the period before the virus finally invaded and spread widely on the island in May 2021. While the general approach to Taiwan’s success in keeping the virus out is historical, stating the policy lessons learned from previous anti-pandemic experience, the study focuses on how these coping strategies were able to be made and conducted with little disruption from misinformation and conspiracy theories. Inspired by Sheila Jasanoff’s notion of how science and technology are received through different political and policy systems, and by Bruno Latour’s semiotic reflections on the actor-network theory, the STS take on post-truth politics here is institutional and discursive: instead of focusing on the scientific and the misleading in individual policies, I provide an ethnography of rumour and scientific discourse on Covid, capturing their interactions and net effects in the context of policy discussions. Following closely the daily press conferences held by the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), the only official information source for the Covid pandemic, I argue that discursive frames were made upon the limited information given and few confirmed cases found. Through the expert authority and ‘what if?’ scenarios seen at these conferences, Taiwan’s anti-Covid policies came to be presented as a narrative on crises and what the government was doing to get over them, and rumours were either ignored or marginalised. Meanwhile, though disputes and speculations on pandemic control did exist among experts, they only surfaced after the local outbreak, whereupon conspiracy theories flared up, challenging the already exhausted CECC. Together, the excessive information by experts, health professionals, policy analysists and talkshow hosts composes a ‘post-truth normal’ that has started to place Taiwan’s democracy and its trust in expertise on trial.

Is ANT an actor in its own ontology? This question summarises a number of issues that will be comprehensively investigated in this article. ANT will be analysed ‘reflexively’, that is, considering it as an actant of the ontology that it reclaims as a theory. The analysis of the concept of ‘description’ and the observation of the relational effects that ANT exerts and that are exerted on it reveal its asymmetric singularity in relation to the other actors. Therefore, we will argue whether ANT should actually be considered a ‘standing refutation’ of itself. The analysis of the concept of sociological relativity and its comparison with physical relativity reveal a possible reason for this self-contradictory behaviour, which will be the basis of our assumption concerning the emergence of a new type of action. Finally, a brief reinterpretation of ANT will be proposed, in the light of the newly introduced concepts of ontologisation and metaphysical action: it seems that this apparent contradiction can be ‘reabsorbed’ within the theory itself. Latour’s philosophical production will be broken down based on the applicability of the analysis.