Technology Advice Research Articles

Help, I Need Somebody! Business and Technology Advice in Emerging Science Based Ventures at American Universities

Help, I Need Somebody! Business and Technology Advice in Emerging Science Based Ventures at American Universities

Arctic Science and Technology Advice with Ministries

This seventh Synthesis with the Science Diplomacy Action serial emerged from the panel session on Arctic Science and Technology Advice with Ministries, which was convened during the Arctic Circle Japan Forum in Tokyo on 5 March 2023. This session built on transdisciplinary dialogues with the February-March 2022 webinar series on Enhancing International Scientific Cooperation: Arctic Science and Technology Advice with Ministries, which was funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan with coordination and logistics provided by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), as represented in Synthesis 6. Dialogues in both venues were strongly influence by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war with consequences for international Arctic scientific cooperation, as reflected by the 3 March 2022 “pausing” of the Arctic Council. With this background, the Arctic Circle Japan Forum session addressed three questions: 1. How can nations maintain as well as enhance international Arctic scientific cooperation, especially in the context of Open Science? 2. How can individual scientists work with ministries to build Open Science inclusively during times of geopolitical strain? 3. How can ministries facilitate continuity with the Arctic Council inclusively beyond the Arctic Council chairship rotation from Russia to Norway in May 2023? The panel involved leaders from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), National Institute for Polar Research (NIPR), Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Science Diplomacy Center™ and the University of the Arctic (UArctic). Panelists’ international perspectives from Finland, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States are represented in the transcript of their panel dialogue, which is reproduced herein to provide insights about continuity with international scientific cooperation and Open Science inclusively to achieve progress with Pan-Arctic sustainable development.

Enhancing International Scientific Cooperation: Arctic Science and Technology Advice with Ministries

This sixth Synthesis with the Science Diplomacy Action serial is the product of the February-March 2022 webinar series on Enhancing International Scientific Cooperation: Arctic Science and Technology Advice with Ministries, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan to EvREsearch LTD with Science Diplomacy Center™ coordination and logistics provided by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). These inclusive webinars began on 21 February 2022 and continued despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, emphasizing the importance of “open science” with both allies and adversaries for our shared survival as a globally interconnected civilization. The webinar series was designed to address an inevitable question: “What are the relationships and synergies between the Arctic Science Ministerial (ASM) process and the 2017 Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation, both of which involve ministries and science?” The three webinars involved keynote presentations from leaders of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA) and University of the Arctic (UArctic) as well as from ASM1 (2016), ASM2 (2018), ASM3 (2021) and ASM4 (2023 pending). Each webinar was designed further around leading questions with keynote presenters from Arctic and non-Arctic states inclusively, involving: Finland, Germany, Japan, Norway, Russian Federation, United Kingdom and Unites States with registered participants from 49 nations. The first webinar focused on “What is Science” with expert contributions from the perspectives of the natural sciences, social sciences and Indigenous knowledge. The second webinar was convened on 10 March 2022 to address: “How Can Science Transform Data into Evidence for Informed Decisionmaking?” The third webinar was convened on 24 March 2022, focusing on “What International Efforts/Processes Are Needed to Facilitate Progress in Understanding the Arctic System and Its Global Impacts?” These transdisciplinary dialogues demonstrated the importance of international cooperation and common-interest building with science diplomacy, enabling open science with inclusion and continuity despite global geopolitics. The webinar series originated in sight of Science and Technology Advice with Ministries, initially with foreign affairs, science and environment ministries but extending to ministries of defense under current world affairs. Lessons from this holistic (international, interdisciplinary and inclusive) webinar series reinforce strategies with informed decisionmaking to operate across a continuum of urgencies, short-to-long term (pandemic to climate timescales) “for benefit of all on Earth across generations.”

‘Armed with the necessary background of knowledge’: embedding science scrutiny mechanisms in the UK Parliament

The unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic have intensified the demands placed upon parliamentarians to scrutinize and evaluate evidence-based government proposals, making visible the parliamentary mechanisms that enable them to do so. This paper examines the steps that led two such mechanisms to become embedded in the institution of Parliament during from 1964 to 2001: the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology (a scrutiny and information-gathering body) and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (a legislative science and technology advice body). Drawing on official papers, Hansard records and unpublished archival material, this account complements existing studies of the relationships between government ministers and experts. It highlights how individual members of the all-party Parliamentary and Scientific Committee have influenced institutional change. In so doing it exposes some of the challenges confronting Parliament in the scrutiny of science policy from the mid-twentieth century to today. In particular, it reveals MPs' concerns about their ability to scrutinize science policy in the absence of a select committee on science and technology in the Commons during the 1980s. This shows that parliamentary scrutiny of science was compromised during the very period when the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher set about making major changes to the organization and funding of government-sponsored research in the UK.

Examining the Characteristics of Practical Knowledge From Four Public Facebook Communities of Practice in Instructional Design and Technology

Instructional design and technology (IDT) professionals participate in communities of practice (CoPs) on Facebook to seek pedagogical and educational technology advice for solving instructional design (ID) problems. Much of the IDT literature has focused on formal educational environments and not on nonformal settings outside the classroom and beyond formal education. Further analysis of tacit or practical knowledge exchanged among community members is required to understand the purpose, functions, and organizational knowledge capital in online CoPs. To fill this gap, this study uses natural language processing (NLP) to analyze the practical knowledge of 6,066 anonymized users’ posts from four large public IDT CoPs on Facebook from September 2017 to September 2020 after cleaning the dataset. User posts were publicly available and required no password authentication for access, including Instructional Designer (4,717), Designers for Learning (228), Adobe Captivate Users (599), and Articulate Storyline (522). The proposed methodology aims to extract practical knowledge of individual online CoPs in three parts. First, the characteristics of written communication among members are extracted by calculating word and sentence lengths, word frequencies, and contiguous words. Second, the characteristics of members’ exchange of practical knowledge are obtained through sentiment identification, entity recognition, and relationships between pedagogical and educational technology entities. Third, the functions of individual online CoPs are developed through topic modeling with latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and BERTopic. The findings suggest similarities and differences among IDT CoPs, different resource distribution conventions, and members exchanging pedagogical and educational technology advice. The study highlights the need for pedagogical foundations to support instructional and technical decisions, mechanisms for self-assessment of practical knowledge concerning IDT competencies, community protocols for addressing misconceptions about learning, onboarding materials for new members, and new topic structures to classify practical knowledge. NLP tasks are implemented using Python libraries to support the future development of awareness tools.

Editorial

Editorial

Calestous Juma. 9 June 1953—15 December 2017

Until his untimely death in December 2017 Professor Calestous Juma was an internationally-recognized authority and leader in the application of science, engineering and innovation to sustainable development in developing and developed countries. His continuing original work focused on analysing the co-evolution of technological innovation and institutional change in socio-economic systems. He ran programmes that advanced science, technology and innovation policy research, especially biotechnology, provided high-level science and technology advice and promoted the conservation of biological diversity. Juma was a Kenyan national and US permanent resident.

Training Skills with Common-Interest Building

This fourth Synthesis of the Science Diplomacy Action series involves that pedagogy of common-interest building among allies and adversaries alike as a negotiation skill to apply, train and refine. This serial edition also represents a journey with science diplomacy and its engine of informed decisionmaking among friends who facilitated the first formal dialogue between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia regarding security in the Arctic, which we co-directed at the University of Cambridge in 2010. The starting point for that NATO-Russia dialogue was science diplomacy, as an holistic (international, interdisciplinary and inclusive) process to balance national interests and common interests for the benefit of all on Earth across generations. Operation of this holistic process became clear in 2016 during the 1st International Dialogue on Science and Technology Advice in Foreign Ministries, when the ‘continuum of urgencies’ was identified from security time scales (mitigating risks of political, economic, cultural and environmental instabilities that are immediate) to sustainability time scales (balancing economic prosperity, environmental protection and societal well-being across generations). The following year, the theoretical framework of informed decisionmaking – operating across a ‘continuum of urgencies’ short-term to long-term – emerged with the case study published in Science about the 2017 Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation, which has entered into force among the eight Arctic states. With continuing acceleration, in 2020, Springer published the first volume in the new book series on INFORMED DECISIONMAKING FOR SUSTAINABILITY. The graduate course on “Science Diplomacy: Environmental Security and Law in the Arctic Ocean” was introduced in 2016 with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, involving a Mock Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting as the culminating synthesis with the Student Ambassadors. Framed around their working papers for the Mock Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting, the Student Ambassadors negotiated a declaration, which they adopted by consensus and signed at end of that first semester. In subsequent years, additional holistic integration exercises were introduced into the course, including the Common-Interest Building – Training Game with the pedagogy of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, each of which has international, interdisciplinary and inclusive relevance at local-global levels (APPENDIX 1: Syllabus – Spring 2020). From 2017 through 2020, the graduate course was expanded to Science Diplomacy: Environmental Security and Law in the Arctic Ocean, involving The Fletcher School in Medford (Massachusetts, United States) and the International Law Programme at MGIMO University in Moscow (Russian Federation). Building on a Memorandum of Understanding between our institutions, this joint video-conferencing course was approved by the Russian Ministry of Education and involved Carnegie Corporation of New York funding that was directed by Prof. Paul Arthur Berkman, contributing to the soon-to-be Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School. Each year, Student Ambassadors from the United States and Russian Federation adopted and signed joint declarations by consensus, as an exercise in common-interest building. Results of training skills with common-interest building are reflected herein with the compilation of consensus declarations crafted by the Student Ambassadors in their Mock Arctic Council Ministerial Meetings from 2016 to 2020. The essence of common-interest building is to make inormed decisions that operate across time in view of urgencies, short-term to long-term, tactical and strategic. Urgencies are embedded across diverse time scales with local-global relevance, as demonstrated by accelerating impacts through: month-years with our global pandemic; years-decades with high technologies; and decades-centuries with global human population size and atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration in our Earth system. The underlying process of informed decisionmaking involves holistic integration with science as the ‘study of change’, revealed with the natural sciences and social sciences as well as Indigenous knowledge, all of which characterize patterns, trends and processes (albeit with different methods) that become the bases for decisions. Contributing with research and action, the institutions involved with decisionmaking produce: governance mechanisms (laws, agreements and policies as well as regulatory strategies, including insurance, at diverse jurisdictional levels); and built infrastructure (fixed, mobile and other assets, including communication, observing, information and other systems that require technology plus investment). Coupling of governance mechanisms and built infrastructure contributes to progress with sustainability, which were weaved throughout the course with the Arctic Ocean as a case study. Outcomes of the joint-video conferencing course between The Fletcher School and MGIMO University have accelerated globally into the training initiatives with diplomatic schools among foreign ministries as well as with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). Our hope is science diplomacy and its engine of informed decisionmaking will lead to lifelong learning across the jurisdictional spectrum with its subnational-national-international legal levels for the benefit of all on Earth across generations.

Help, I Need Somebody! Business and Technology Advice in Emerging Science-Based Ventures

Early-stage science-based ventures (SBVs) require a wide range of intellectual resources and know-how to successfully commercialize their technologies. Often entrepreneurs gain this knowledge through advisory relationships providing commercial and technical guidance. We explore the effects of those dual advice domains – business and technology – on the early-stage progress of SBVs. Using longitudinal data from 112 emerging SBVs, we find that business advice has a positive impact on SBV progress, while technology advice does not, and in fact, delays the process of finding a market application for the SBV’s technology. We further find that advice complementary to the entrepreneur’s experience, thus creating greater knowledge variety in the SBV, will lead to a more positive outcome. These insights help unpack the underexplored mechanisms of advice absorption in SBVs.

Help, I Need Somebody, Not Just Anybody? The Role of Advisors During Technology Venture Emergence

Entrepreneurs of new technology ventures often seek advice and mentoring. However, research in knowledge management and cognitive psychology have suggested that the accumulation of advice might depend on the venture's absorptive capacity and the learning capabilities of the entrepreneur receiving advice. To date, this has been poorly studied in nascent technical ventures. Through a novel quantitative study of 105 nascent technology ventures associated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (“I-Corps”) Program, we found that in contrast to technology advice, business advice accelerates technology venture emergence, and this venture emergence is further enhanced by advice that complements rather than amplifies an entrepreneur’s prior experience. These findings offer important insights to the literature on entrepreneurial learning and advisors, and inform public policy and institutions supporting technology entrepreneurship.

Science Diplomacy – To 2030 and Beyond

The 2nd International Dialogue on Science and Technology Advice in Foreign Ministries was co-convened at the Tufts European Center in Talloires, France, from 15-17 September 2017 by the International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA) and the Science Diplomacy Center (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University). ‘The Talloires Dialogue’ engaged the Foreign Ministries Science and Technology Advice Network (FMSTAN) and other representatives from foreign ministries of sixteen nations to address developments in our globally-interconnected civilization that require science and technology advice for informed decision-making. Multi-stakeholder fora, including INGSA and FMSTAN, provide global and international venues for dialogues among allies and adversaries alike to build common interests with continuous progress, responding to crises and emergencies, disruptive technologies, global spaces and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals beyond 2030 on a planetary scale. Progress with science diplomacy was discussed as an evolving international, interdisciplinary and inclusive process that requires training to balance national interests and common interests for the benefit of all on Earth across generations.

Exponential Innovation and Human Rights: Implications for Science and Technology Diplomacy

The international community has historically maintained hope that advances in science and technology offer humanity a wide range of options for improving its well-being. Recently anxieties arising from rapid advancement in science and technology and the emergence of new global business models have re-opened debates on the relations between exponential innovation and human rights. The search for inclusive innovation models has led to the need to rethink traditional views about concepts such as “technology transfer” that continue to underpin international negotiations, especially under the United Nations (UN). This paper explores these themes and proposes alternative ways for emerging economies to expand their human potential without undue reliance on the one-way flow of scientific and technological knowledge from the industrialized countries. It calls on strengthening international science and technology advice, especially in the UN Secretariat, to help support more constructive discussions on the interactions between innovation and human rights.

A Global Network of Science and Technology Advice in Foreign Ministries

This paper is a product of the International Dialogue on Science and Technology Advice in Foreign Ministries (Vienna Dialogue) in October 2016, involving more than twenty nations and several international organisations. The event was a key step to further develop the Foreign Minister Science and Technology Advisor Network (FMSTAN), growing from an initial group of five nations. The Vienna Dialogue was convened by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) at the Vienna headquarters of IIASA, bringing together diplomats from foreign ministries to consider the value of evidence for informed decision‐making by nations with regard to issues, impacts and resources within, across and beyond national boundaries. The evidence comes from the natural and social sciences with engineering and medicine as well as other areas of technology. By building common interests among nations, science is a tool of diplomacy, promoting cooperation and preventing conflict in our world. Science diplomacy was discussed as an international, interdisciplinary and inclusive process to help balance national interests and common interests in view of urgencies today and across generations in our globally‐interconnected civilization.

A comparison of the efficacy and tolerability of the PCSK9 inhibitors, Alirocumab and evolocumab, in routine lipid clinic practice

Aim: The UK NICE Technology Advice Guidance published in June 2016 recommends alirocumab and evolocumab use in Familial Hypercholesterolaemia and secondary prevention at different low density lipoprotein – cholesterol (LDL-C) thresholds following the use of maximum tolerated oral lipid lowering agents. The suggested LDL-C cut-offs are 5.0mmol/l, 4.0mmol/l and 3.5mmol/l for primary prevention FH, single vascular bed secondary prevention and multiple vascular bed secondary prevention respectively.

Is Any Advice Good Advice? The Impact of Business and Technology Advisors on Venture Emergence

Founders of new technology ventures often seek advice and mentoring in both informal and organized settings. However, despite numerous studies on the subject, we have a poor understanding of whether and how advice affects nascent venture emergence. In this study, we aim to increase our understanding of when advice aids new venture emergence and do so by looking at the type of advice, business versus technology, as well as the entrepreneur’s previous experience level. Specifically, we build competing hypotheses to address the question of whether entrepreneurs benefit more from advice when they lack experience and thus are in greater need of advice, versus when they are more experienced and better able to understand and implement advice. Using a sample of 121 entrepreneurs representing 86 nascent technology ventures associated with the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (“I-Corps”) Program, we find that business advice improves venture emergence, while technology advice does not. New venture emergence is further enhanced by advice that complements, rather than amplifies, the entrepreneur’s experience base. We further determine that more experienced entrepreneurs typically benefit most from advisors. In addition to offering important insights to the literature on organizational learning and advisors, these findings have strong impact on the public policy and institutional mechanisms supporting technology entrepreneurship.

PHP51 - Impact Of Early Health Technology Advice On Clinical Development Programs

PHP51 - Impact Of Early Health Technology Advice On Clinical Development Programs

WEBSITE MANAGEMENT ISSUES FOR COMMUNITY-BASED, NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS IN RURAL AND REGIONAL AREAS

A paucity of research examines the factors which are most important in helping community-based, non-profit organizations to design websites that achieve their aims. This article attempts to fill this research gap by exploring website management issues within 17 organizations in two locations: Victoria, Australia and Tuscany, Italy. Integral to the research was an examination of structural barriers and inter-organizational relationships that act to facilitate the take-up, or otherwise, of technology. Theory regarding the diffusion of innovations and social network analysis provided the background. The qualitative method chosen for the study was constructivist grounded theory. The sample was purposively selected and data collection included semi-structured interviews with key actors; the mapping of organizational relationships; and the examination of websites. The findings indicate that organizations with a combination of good internal skills, and strong access to external advice and skills are in the best position to create websites that satisfy their needs, with good access to external information and communication technology services and advice more important than strong internal skills. Organizations must also consider how to deal with six broad areas related to the development and maintenance of websites: strategy; technical knowledge and design; project management; support; training; and funding. The conclusion sums up the views of the organizations in the study about the best ways to gain the skills they need to provide good web design.

Congress's own think tank: Learning from the legacy of the Office of Technology Assessment (1972-95)

1. Pre-History: Meeting the Need for Science Advice to the U.S. Congress 2. Key Features of the Technology Assessment Act of 1972 3. Startup: Setting the Agenda in OTA's Early Years 4. Growing Pains: Evolution of OTA's Process of Technology Assessment 5. After the Fall: Strengths and Weaknesses of Post OTA Efforts to Fill the Gap 6. Looking Forward: Comparing Future Options 7. Conclusions: Restoring Independent, Authoritative, and Objective Science and Technology Advice to the U.S. Congress

Gestão de ativos de Propriedade Intelectual: um estudo sobre as práticas da Braskem S.A.

Este estudo de caso objetiva identificar o nível de alinhamento entre as práticas de gestão de ativos de Propriedade Intelectual (PI) da Braskem S.A. e o postulado pela literatura em termos de orientação estratégica. Estudos focados em sistemas de gestão de PI das empresas não foram localizados em busca bibliográfica, predominando aqueles com foco em países, regiões e setores e uso de abordagens econômicas e dados secundários. Argumenta-se que a gestão de ativos de propriedade intelectual pode agregar valor ao negócio se alinhada à estratégia competitiva das empresas, o que dirige o foco da análise à gestão de PI em empresas, nas dimensões operacional e estratégica, tomando-se como referências as estratégias competitivas. Foram realizadas entrevistas com informantes-chave, análise documental e de bases de dados de PI. Verificou-se que não há políticas formalmente dedicadas à gestão de PI, embora existam algumas diretrizes e normas de orientação das ações. Há uma coordenação de PI no setor de Inovação, em Triunfo (RS), já as atividades estão descentralizadas nos setores de tecnologia, de marketing e assessoria jurídica. Ativos de PI não são valorados. Práticas de gestão de PI estão alinhadas à estratégia empresarial e sofrem influências da estrutura de mercado, corroborando apenas parcialmente indicações da literatura revisada.

Drivers of housing technology adoption in South Africa

This study seeks to understand factors influencing the adoption of housing technology by home builders in South Africa. Builders that construct simplexes are more cautious in technology adoption. Those that construct simplexes and apartments are more likely to stick to tried and tested housing technologies. The most influential sources of new technology advice are sub-contractors, home buyers and National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) seminars. That South African builders are cautious about improving building styles implies that membership of the National Home Builders Registration Council needs to strengthened and that the council needs to be used as the platform to educate builders about advantages of building improvements. Key words: Technology adoption, housing sector, home builders and South Africa.