Social innovation is once more an increasingly popular notion circulating as an apparent means to solve the Grand Challenges of the 21st Century. But this common-sense idea of social innovation is based on a quasi-concept, where processes of innovation are absent. To restore some academic rigour...

Some universities and departments have been very successful in stimulating university spin-off firms (USOs). This has persuaded policy makers and university administrators to devote considerable resources to improve universities' capabilities to promote USOs, but with little tangible results....

This paper analyses the relationship between universities and industry in Norway. Funding figures, publication and patent data, surveys and interviews all indicate that there has been a slow and steady increase in university-industry relations the last 20 years. In the 1980s we notice an...

Entrepreneurial scientists who patent, start spin-off companies and commercialise in other ways are usually seen as occupying a dual role with one leg each in the academic world and another in the entrepreneurial world. This article instead argues that many entrepreneurial scientists should be...

Local research units, this article argues, play a very important role for the scientific field they belong to, for example by mobilizing financial support, offering job opportunities, attracting talented recruits, and providing adequate training. Little is known, however, about such units, at...

This paper analyses the role of technical-industrial research institutes for industrial innovation in Norway. Using statistical data and a survey among firms, the paper shows that there are many different types of interaction between institutes and firms. In addition to R&D and technical...

This paper analyses the historical role of public research organisations for industrial growth and innovation in Norway – and the changes in this role over time. Public research organisations include research institutes and higher education institutions, and we go back in time to the 19th...

Many countries have a sector of research institutes that have been set up to promote industrial growth and help with users’ problem solving. Not formally part of the higher education sector, research institutes are significantly less understood and studied than universities. This paper and...

This paper shows that there have been important changes in how the global economic system works. A high growth regime has gradually been substituted by one of low growth. This change appears to be especially pronounced for small economies. Until the end of the 1980s the scope for technological...

During the last two decades we have seen a revival of interest in the works of Joseph Schumpeter and “evolutionary” ideas in economics more generally. A professional society honouring Schumpeter’s name has been founded, and linked to it we have had for more than fifteen years now a...