Inter-institutional Networks Research Articles

Inovação e arranjos institucionais: contribuições para um análise teórica das redes de inovação | Innovation and institutional arrangements: contributions to a theoretical analysis of innovation networks

This paper analyses the role played by institutional arrangements around the innovation of processes and products, calling the attention to the new media sector. Such arrangements are characterized by the emergence of networks. The constitution of interinstitutional networks is relevant because of the capacity to, potentially, give a new configuration to the kind of innovation made as well as to the economic and social results. We are following a neo-institutional approach and, so doing, present contributions to the theoretical literature on the innovation process, especially of some authors still not very well known in Brazil.

Effect of R&D programmes on the formation of university–industry–government networks: comparative analysis of Japanese R&D programmes

Japan has established several R&D programmes since the 1980s aimed at basic and fundamental R&D in response to the criticism of its free-riding on Western basic research. In some of these programmes, the linkages between university, industry and government have been a requirement for formation or selection of projects. In this paper, it is investigated how five Japanese R&D programmes promote inter-sectoral and inter-institutional networks. The result shows that the projects of the Next Generation Programme for pre-competitive research formed few but multiple university–industry–government linkages within each project by designing the complementary relationships among the participants. Linkages between private companies were not much formed except for the projects of the ERATO Programme, in which researchers temporarily leave their own institutes. The funds for more basic research was found to have little effect on the formation of networks within projects but do form the linkages outside the projects.

Supporting remote communities with a shared virtual classroom: a view of social contexts

The development of information and communication technologies has made it possible for schools to establish inter-institutional electronic networks to enhance the quality of education in small schools in sparsely populated countries like Finland. Along with this development, new kinds of virtual classrooms have emerged in symbiosis with conventional schools. A virtual classroom in a school context is a new, mostly uninvestigated, phenomenon. This article reports on the results of a Finnish project that linked two lower secondary classrooms to make one virtual classroom. The article reports on an exploratory case study of the virtual classroom and discusses justification of its establishment and practice, within the social contexts embedded in the project.

Science for the Scattered Fisheries of the Canadian Interior

A healthy ferment exists in various fields of scientific research and management on Canadian freshwater fisheries. Important achievements have been registered in ecology, as well as in economics and on legal–jurisdictional aspects. The time is right to bring some order into recent administrative chaos to consolidate scientific contributions of the past, to encourage some recent initiatives, and to expedite research that is explicitly interdisciplinary, i.e. organized from transdisciplinary perspectives and conducted so that the contributions of various disciplines are not readily discernible in the end products. A capability to transfer insights and information directly to planning and decision-making on large fisheries programs, on major industrial developments, and to regional governments and agencies is badly needed. Such a capability for freshwater fisheries can be stimulated into maturity by expanding and developing some five or six interdisciplinary and interinstitutional scientific networks that have evolved in various parts of Canada in recent decades. These and other specific conclusions are specified in some detail.