Barjak, Franz
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Segmenting household electricity customers with quantitative and qualitative approaches
Understanding private electric utility customers is essential given their central role in the sustainability transition of the electricity system. Socio-economic attributes, environmental attitude, and electricity consumption are not enough to take the new technological, economic and regulatory bases of the residential electricity markets in many industrialized countries into account. Further attributes can help to obtain a more holistic understanding of the private electricity customer. We conduct three studies and find a good correspondence of the customer segments resulting from a survey of the literature, an expert workshop, and a survey of Swiss electricity customers. Five key customer segments are distinguished: 1) affluent and quality-oriented, 2) ecologically aware, 3) technophile, 4) regionally rooted, and 5) stable and uninterested. Due to their unique energy preferences, these customer segments represent critical boundary conditions for technology adoption driven sustainability transitions. Assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the segmentation methods suggest that with sufficient resources a combination can produce reliable and valid segments.
The effectiveness of policies for formal knowledge transfer from European universities and public research institutes to firms
We use survey data for 247 European universities and 40 public research organizations to investigate the effects of institutional policies on four outcomes of transfer performance (R&D agreements with companies, patent applications, licence agreements, and start-ups established). We find that the effects of policies to establish clear rules, improve transparency, and provide financial or non-finan- cial incentives vary by outcome. Improving transparency by publishing the policies for licencing or intellectual property are often negatively correlated with outcomes, particularly for licence agree- ments. Out of three non-financial incentives, only social rewards have a rather positive effect (on start-ups), but financial incentives are positively correlated with several outcomes. A higher salary is positively linked to the number of research agreements and patent applications, while giving in- ventors a share of revenue is positively correlated with licencing and start-ups. The results suggest that the type of incentive as well as the degree of transparency of transfer policies should be chosen to complement the main transfer channels and strategy of the institution.
Case Studies of e-Infrastructure Adoption
This article reports results from a study of e-Infrastructure adoption in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). The authors find that bridging barriers between computer and domain scientists is of key importance. In particular, SSH communities have to be accepted as being distinct and not suited to a ‘‘one size fits all’’ strategy of e-Infrastructure diffusion. Sustainability was also a core issue, whereas barriers to resource sharing could mostly be resolved with technological solutions, and skills and training activities are a reflection of the general ‘‘user dilemma.’’ The authors’ recommendations to European Union (EU) policy makers point the way to promoting e-Infrastructure development and wider application in the SSH.
International collaboration, mobility and team diversity in the life sciences: impact on research performance.
The combination of knowledge and skills from different backgrounds or research cultures is often considered good for science. This paper describes the extent to which academic research teams in the life sciences draw on different national knowledge pools and how this is related to their research performance. We distinguish between international collaboration between research teams and international mobility leading to team diversity, where scientists with a background in another country work as members of a team over time. Our findings confirm previous results on the positive relationship between international collaboration and team performance. Moreover, we show that the most successful teams have a moderate level of diversity: maximizing diversity does not maximize performance. These results have implications for research team management and for research policy, in particular pointing out a need for adequate integration support to mobile scientists.
Understanding the relationship between organizational culture and inbound open innovation
Purpose – The relationship between corporate culture and inbound open innovation (OI) has been limited to two sub-constructs: a culture for openness and an innovation culture, but until now a richer conceptualization of corporate culture is missing. Design/methodology/approach – The authors apply Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s (1983) competing values framework and regress these together with company internal and external control variables on five measures of inbound OI, reflecting product innovation, process innovation and the sourcing of innovation activities. The authors use data from a survey of more than 250 Swiss companies, primarily SMEs. Findings – The importance of the firms’ market environments suggests that the results are affected by the specific situation in which the firms found themselves at the time of the survey: after a strong currency shock, inbound OI activities seem to be a reaction to external pressure that favored planning and rule-oriented (formal) cultures to implement cost-cutting process innovations. Practical implications – Companies should develop a vision and a strategy, ensure open and transparent communication, have suitable reward and support mechanisms in place, adjust structures and processes, and institutionalize and formalize any change whenever they are confronted with a situation that requires a quick reaction and an adjustment to their degree of openness. Originality/value – The paper clarifies the relationship between cultural traits and inbound OI, using a well-established understanding of corporate culture and differentiating between innovation types. It points to the importance of the external environment in order to understand the role of culture.
A statistical analysis of the web presences of European life sciences research teams
Web links have been used for around ten years to explore the online impact of academic information and information producers. Nevertheless, few studies have attempted to relate link counts to relevant offline attributes of the owners of the targeted Web sites, with the exception of research productivity. This article reports the results of a study to relate site inlink counts to relevant owner characteristics for over 400 European life-science research group Web sites. The analysis confirmed that research-group size and Web-presence size were important for attracting Web links, although research productivity was not. Little evidence was found for significant influence of any of an array of factors, including research-group leader gender and industry connections. In addition, the choice of search engine for link data created a surprising international difference in the results, with Google perhaps giving unreliable results. Overall, the data collection, statistical analysis and results interpretation were all complex and it seems that we still need to know more about search engines, hyperlinks, and their function in science before we can draw conclusions on their usefulness and role in the canon of science and technology indicators.
Organisational mission and the involvement of academic research units in knowledge sharing with private companies
We still do not have a full understanding of how the different missions of academic organisations relate to their performance in knowledge sharing. This paper addresses this gap with a data set of more than 900 Swiss academic institutions and distinguishes between mechanisms of knowledge sharing, different levels and types of missions, and the strength of isomorphic processes. We find that the missions of organisations and fields are more important than the missions of institutes for knowledge exchange through commercialisation and teaching. The opposite is true for industrial PhD students, a research-based mechanism of knowledge exchange. Coercive and mimetic isomorphic processes in organisations and normative isomorphic processes in research areas have different effects: since commercialisation of knowledge is not the main activity in any discipline, low normative isomorphism leaves more freedom for institutes to decide how and by which mechanisms they share knowledge, which correlates positively with commercialisation performance.
The Emerging Governance of E-Infrastructure
The paper studies the transition to ICT-based support systems for scientific research. These systems currently attempt the transition from the project stage to the more permanent stage of an infrastructure. The transition leads to several challenges, including in the area of establishing adequate governance regimes, which not all projects master successfully. Studying a set of cases from Europe and America, we look at patterns in the size and scope of the undertakings, embeddedness in user communities, aims and responsibilities, mechanisms of coordination, forms of governance, and time horizon and funding. We find that, though configurations and landscapes are somewhat diverse, successful projects typically follow distinctive paths, either large-scale or small-scale, and become what we term ‘stable metaorganizations’ or ‘established communities.’
Assessing the web connectivity of research groups on an international scale
The purpose of this paper is to claim that it is useful to assess the web connectivity of research groups, describe hyperlink‐based techniques to achieve this and present brief details of European life sciences research groups as a case study. Design/methodology/approach A commercial search engine was harnessed to deliver hyperlink data via its automatic query submission interface. A special purpose link analysis tool, LexiURL, then summarised and graphed the link data in appropriate ways. Findings Webometrics can provide a wide range of descriptive information about the international connectivity of research groups. Research limitations/implications Only one field was analysed, data was taken from only one search engine, and the results were not validated. Practical implications Web connectivity seems to be particularly important for attracting overseas job applicants and to promote research achievements and capabilities, and hence we contend that it can be useful for national and international governments to use webometrics to ensure that the web is being used effectively by research groups. Originality/value This is the first paper to make a case for the value of using a range of webometric techniques to evaluate the web presences of research groups within a field, and possibly the first “applied” webometrics study produced for an external contract.