Technology Policy Makers Research Articles

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Despite the challenges of COVID-19, the journal experienced again a successful year. It seems that the “working-from-home” model that a lot of authors was forced into, helped with catching up on a few articles that had been waiting for attention! As initiated the end of 2017, it is now customary to evaluate how the journal is performing. Scopus ( www.scopus.com ) measures impact with a “CiteScore” and the graph in Fig 1 (extracted from Scopus on 10 December 2020 - see PDF) shows the progress made over the last few years. The CiteScore for a year is calculated as Citation Count for the year / number of documents the previous 3 years. The Citescore for 2019 is now the highest ever at 1.4 (Measured May 2020), and the Citescore so far for 2020 is 1.2 (remember that this increases over time). Our ranking wrt the Percentile in the category, is currently stable at the high end of a Q3 journal. Another important source for journal standing, is Scimago Journal and Country Rank ( www.scimagojr.com ), where the journal is also listed as a Q3 journal in the “Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering” subject area. It is very encouraging to observe how the number of citations had been growing (Fig 2 in the PDF). This edition has a total of 16 articles, with 13 from authors with South African connections and the balance from international authors. On a sad note, a well-known pioneer in Technology Management (Prof Rias van Wyk) passed away in early October. He was director or Technoscan, focusing on Technology Guidance for the new millennium, serving engineers, technology managers and Science and Technology policy makers. He was also an extraordinary professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering, Stellenbosch University. He studied at the University of Pretoria, Harvard and Stellenbosch, and his career included University of Free State, University of Stellenbosch, University of Cape Town and University of Minnesota. He retired in Minnesota and travelled regularly to South Africa. At the time of his passing, he had an article in review at this journal, and I thought it therefore appropriate to make this article the feature article of this final edition of 2021. If you have suggestions on how we can take this journal forward, please let me know. Corne Schutte Editor

Governing a Globalized Digital Economy: How to Make Technology Policy and Regulation Work for Developing Countries

Harnessing the economic opportunities of digital technologies often requires changes in policy and regulation. Domestic regulation and policy-making alone are unable to deal with the multilevel interactions that take place in the governance of digital technologies. In an era of unprecedented levels of interdependence, measures that regulate the global digital economy at the regional and at the international levels are fundamentally important. Despite the growing need for international cooperation in technology policy-making, global governance is falling short of their tasks. In particular, multilateral institutions and formal mechanisms of coordination are not representative of the interests and policy priorities of low- and middle-income countries. Drawing on the findings of a recent study, this essay seeks to understand the relative importance of international coordination in technology policy in developing countries. In doing so, it addresses how low- and middle-income countries can design and adopt much-needed digital regulation while rethinking the international dynamics that shape domestic and cross-border technology policy-making.

Equity and Technology Use in Education

With the rapid adoption of technology in the education sector, a paradigm shift from traditional learning methods to digital learning has been experienced. This article focuses on the importance of ensuring equity in the use of technology among learners, as it relates to their right to access educational technology. While the issue of digital transformation in education is a shared responsibility among educators, this article discusses it from a comprehensive perspective. Supposedly, equity in educational technology access is an issue addressed by researchers in different school settings, including researchers in science in K-12 settings. This article describes how assessment and evaluation could make a difference among learners when it comes to enhancing their capacity to access and use technology in learning. The article concludes with some recommendations for educational technology policymakers to ensure that all students have the same opportunity in accessing educational technology in a bid to avoid a digital divide among learners.

Technology Gaps among South East Asia Countries from the Perspective of Technology Achievement Index

Countries within South East Asia regions have gaps in technology development, where how much the gaps exist is difficult to measure. This study explores the gap among countries utilising Technology Achievement Index as the main indicator and tool and analyse how discrepancies may occur. The results show large amount of data absences that makes acknowledging recent gaps difficult. Despite of data unavailability, gaps among countries are not as dreaded. Among all countries, Singapore still takes the lead of overall Technology Achievement Index compared to other South East Asia countries whilst Timor-Leste becomes the lowest of overall Technology Achievement Index. By knowing the gaps in the Technology Development in South East Asia, this study expected to give a contribution to technology policy makers so that developing countries in the South East Asia can have a room to continue to thrive in economic development because technology advancement is one of the significant factors in the economic growth of a country. Future regional agreements in South East Asia are needed to achieve mutual benefits of technology development especially for science and technology policy makers.

A hybrid approach to detecting technological recombination based on text mining and patent network analysis

Detecting promising technology groups for recombination holds the promise of great value for R&D managers and technology policymakers, especially if the technologies in question can be detected before they have been combined. However, predicting the future is always easier said than done. In this regard, Arthur’s theory (The nature of technology: what it is and how it evolves, Free Press, New York, 2009) on the nature of technologies and how science evolves, coupled with Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions (Kuhn in The structure of scientific revolutions, 1st edn, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p 3, 1962), may serve as the basis of a shrewd methodological framework for forecasting recombinative innovation. These theories help us to set out quantifiable criteria and decomposable steps to identify research patterns at each stage of a scientific revolution. The first step in the framework is to construct a conceptual model of the target technology domain, which helps to refine a reasonable search strategy. With the model built, the landscape of a field—its communities, its technologies, and their interactions—is fleshed out through community detection and network analysis based on a set of quantifiable criteria. The aim is to map normal patterns of research in the domain under study so as to highlight which technologies might contribute to a structural deepening of technological recombinations. Probability analysis helps to detect and group candidate technologies for possible recombination and further manual analysis by experts. To demonstrate how the framework works in practice, we conducted an empirical study on AI research in China. We explored the development potential of recombinative technologies by zooming in on the top patent assignees in the field and their innovations. In conjunction with expert analysis, the results reveal the cooperative and competitive relationships among these technology holders and opportunities for future innovation through technological recombinations.

The evaluation index improvement for the relocation of research equipment

In this paper, evaluation index improvement for research equipment relocation is presented and discussed to boost the effectiveness of research equipment management. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model was designed for the evaluation index improvement for research equipment relocation, and the pairwise comparison scale was set up based on the importance of each evaluation criterion. The consistency rate (CR) was measured, and it was confirmed that the decision-making was reasonable. The improvement of the evaluation index was necessary for the objective and fair relocation of research equipment. Therefore, the evaluation index for the relocation of research equipment was designed for an objective and fair evaluation. It is hoped that the study findings will be very useful and will contribute greatly to the professors, researchers, and policymakers involved in science and technology policymaking and R&D.

Impediments to Sustaining South Korea’s Economic Development: Pathologies of Cooperation in Intra-Team Dynamics of Technology Commercialization

Technology innovation and commercialization have been the cornerstone of South Korea’s remarkable economic development. In this paper, we argue that South Korea’s technology-based economic development is unsustainable without fundamental changes in its technology policy-making and implementation approaches. Developed countries’ systems of innovation (SI) operating at the technology frontier have increasingly embraced bottom-up technology policy, making them more reliant on cooperation among teams at the project level. Drawing on Social Interdependence Theory, this research finds that the intra-team dynamics of South Korea’s technology transfer and commercialization (TTC) process negatively impacts on not only current TTC projects, but also the transition of South Korean SI toward an integrative policy approach that fosters innovation and commercialization. It is clear that the top-down policy-making model supportive of linear models of innovation that South Korea has relied on for so long needs to be replaced. However, the current intra-team dynamics of TTC teams may continue to hinder this transition. While Korean TTC teams perceive themselves to be cooperative and effective in general, there is a pronounced lack of cathexis which undermines their cooperation. This may be an impediment to the success of technology commercialization teams and their projects. Further research is warranted to confirm this finding and explore the extent to which this problem hinders the sustained technology-led development of South Korea.

Technology foresight for digital manufacturing: Russian case

The technological foresight plays a significant role in promotion of the emerging technologies. The paper investigates technological prospects of priorities implementation indicated in the ‘Strategy for the Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation’. More precisely, we examine the advanced digital and intelligent production technologies deployment by applying foresight methods and new solutions such as an advanced text-mining. The main goal of the study is to define a range of the most promising technologies with respect to markets and products within the priority. We identified five large cross-cutting areas manifesting physical and digital convergence. These clusters include computer modelling and flexible manufacturing systems from the production side, and sensor technologies, virtual/augmented reality, the Internet of Things from the IT side. The revealed technological trends correspond to global patterns and unveil a range of sectoral applications. Product development technologies are confessed to be the core of digital manufacturing. During the analysis we uncovered 350 prospective products and services that should be exposed to further expert evaluation. Our results offer a new insight on science and technology policy-making by adjusting technology development across industries. A suggested framework allows expanding current boundaries of forecasting activities at the national level in order to boost Russian scientific performance.

The necessity of developing knowledge map of the world in Earth Sciences and mines field studies based on research activities: a case study of Iran

As Robert Merton believes, as Science is a social construct, researchers in a certain research community have to share their findings. However, one of the main activities of knowledge management is the sharing knowledge through formal channels, including theses and dissertations, books, articles, conferences, etc., because it has a significant impact on the advancement of sciences and will improve the quality of R&D activities, organizational performance, and the achievement of researchers to competitive advantage. Current global databases such as Scopus, web of science, Google Scholar, as well as academic social network sites (SNS) such as Researchgate and Academia.edu are not successful in demonstrating the dynamics of knowledge In order to understand the dynamics of science, scientific collaboration, industrialization of the countries, we analyze and draw a strategic map in Earth Sciences and Mines of Iran's to help science and technology policy-makers, based on reviewing of the research activities of researchers in different dimensions of geology and mining field study. Through a scientometrics approach, 8431 publications including thesis (1967 to 2015) and papers (1991 to 2016) in two special fields of geology and mining were analyzed. According to the findings, a total of 127 universities in the 80 field study and 294 disciplines in the field of geosciences, 52 universities, and 13 disciplines in the field of geology and 36 universities and 26 disciplines in the field of mining and geophysics have been involved in the production of theses. Among them, the largest amount of publications in the field of geosciences includes fields of geology, mining engineering, civil engineering, natural geography, natural resources engineering respectively. There is an incremental growth of scientific activities in the mineral sector of Iran but unacceptable trend in relation to the number of minerals deposits, mines as well as the total number of mines in Iran. According to the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC), researchers in this area are more interested and performed the most scientific activity in metal (7), non-metallic and decorative (8), and oil and gas (5) section and (3), (5), (2) categories respectively. Also developing the statistical and GIS Mapping of research activities show low index of relationship between industrial needs and university research activities, lowest to medium (dispersive) overlap and duplicates, and insufficient research activities in various fields of the earth's sciences and subsequently lowest growth of quantity of the publications in this field so far for geosciences education of Iran despite the advances in the field of geosciences over the past 50 years. These findings improved our knowledge and helped us to know about our deficiencies/potential so that we suggest to develop a new generation of freely geosciences research activities databases based on web-GIS and scientometrics for researches/ers in the world in the 3rd millennium. In fact, understanding of these and drawing the universal research activities strategic map in the geosciences field study will help us to make an appropriate policies and decisions, improving initiatives and creativity, shed light on developing multi-dimensions of geosciences.

Governmental Science and Technology Policy-Making on Technology-Intensive Industry Based on Allison’s Models : Focused on the Nuclear and Radiation Field

Governmental Science and Technology Policy-Making on Technology-Intensive Industry Based on Allison’s Models : Focused on the Nuclear and Radiation Field

Beyond Brexit’s uncertainty: the foreseeable Britain’s innovative stagnation

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the causes that determine the UK’s civilian research and development (R&D) expenditure to forecast its possible evolution in a post-Brexit scenario.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use the Johansen’s co-integration analysis for time series.FindingsThe authors find a co-integration relationship between R&D and variables such as exports, military expenditure, patents, EU GDP per capita and USA GDP per capita. The authors also observed a stagnation in the foreseen R&D expenditure over the next five years.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors warned that the results can only be viewed as a glance into the understanding of the complex elements that undergird the UK’s civilian, scientific and technological policy-making. But the authors see them as an interesting starting point for scrutinizing current shortcomings in policy-making, while providing clues for corrective action that would otherwise lead the UK to a structural crisis in its economic performance.Originality/valueThis study constitutes a first attempt to account for the loss of the UK’s innovative influence all over the world.

Conceptualizing and institutions facilitating ‘use’ of innovation indicators in South Africa’s science, technology and innovation policymaking

This paper attempts to simplify and conceptualize the meaning of ‘use’ of innovation indicators in science, technology and innovation (STI) policymaking. The paper provides a conceptual framework that guides analysis of innovation indicators ‘use’ in STI policymaking. It maps the institutions involved in the indicators chain. In this study, a case study approach study approach is employed zeroing on South Africa. This study is a qualitative research that encompass multi-methods of data collection such as secondary literature review and interviews with mapping and tracing. The conceptual framework adopted frames innovation indicator use in terms of reception, internal application, external application and decision support. The results show that innovation indicators are variously used for STI policymaking by different institutions in South Africa. The salient factors determining use include the indicators processes; relevance; simplicity; timeliness and comparability. Conceptualizing ‘use’ clarifies meaning and facilitates wide understanding of the subject, an imperative for innovation indictor developers and users. Elaborating institutions involved gives insights on the innovation indicator chain and structures for STI. Future studies should explore the ‘influence’ of innovation indicators in policymaking. Institutions involved in the innovation indicator chain should be aware of and are encouraged to facilitate use of indicators in STI policymaking.

Power and culture in emerging medical technology policymaking: the case of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in Canada

This article captures how scientific uncertainty is negotiated and its implications on public health policy. Through the case study of the Human Papillomavirus vaccine in Canada, we investigated how policymakers engage in ‘sensemaking’, the process whereby policymakers mediate shifting informational terrain to come to an understanding of what events and information mean, how they become significant and how they are acted upon. Key informant interviews reveal that policymakers make decisions amidst uncertainty by invoking public health cultural ideologies and by actively managing interactions with the manufacturer. This reflects a non-linear dispositif that is influenced by the co-production of culture and power.

China’s long game in techno-nationalism

The passage of China’s national cybersecurity law in June 2017 has been interpreted as an unprecedented impediment to the operation of foreign firms in the country, with its new requirements for data localization, network operators’ cooperation with law enforcement officials, and online content restrictions, among others. Although the law’s scope is indeed broader than that of any previous regulation, the process through which it was drafted and eventually approved bears similarities to three previous cases from the past two decades of Chinese information technology policy-making. In comparing these four cases, we argue that economic concerns have consistently overshadowed claims of national security considerations throughout laws directed at foreign enterprises.

A novel system dynamics’ model for the motors of a sectoral innovation system–simulating and policymaking

In recent years, science and technology policymaking has been taken into consideration by many researchers. One of the most important fields of this policymaking is innovation systems’ management; which is divided into national, regional, sectoral and technological innovation systems. In this research, there is a focus on a sectoral innovation system in the petrochemical industry and a system dynamics’ model is developed for this purpose. The contribution of this paper is dynamic switching between motors in the sectoral innovation system that makes the model more realistic. The validation results are above 85% on average, which shows an acceptable performance of the model. Following on, some scenarios and policies are presented to improve the performance of the model in different conditions. The evidence shows which scenario has the best performance and will bring increased profit to the entire cycle.

Birth of Industry 5.0: Making Sense of Big Data with Artificial Intelligence, "The Internet of Things" and Next-Generation Technology Policy.

Driverless cars with artificial intelligence (AI) and automated supermarkets run by collaborative robots (cobots) working without human supervision have sparked off new debates: what will be the impacts of extreme automation, turbocharged by the Internet of Things (IoT), AI, and the Industry 4.0, on Big Data and omics implementation science? The IoT builds on (1) broadband wireless internet connectivity, (2) miniaturized sensors embedded in animate and inanimate objects ranging from the house cat to the milk carton in your smart fridge, and (3) AI and cobots making sense of Big Data collected by sensors. Industry 4.0 is a high-tech strategy for manufacturing automation that employs the IoT, thus creating the Smart Factory. Extreme automation until "everything is connected to everything else" poses, however, vulnerabilities that have been little considered to date. First, highly integrated systems are vulnerable to systemic risks such as total network collapse in the event of failure of one of its parts, for example, by hacking or Internet viruses that can fully invade integrated systems. Second, extreme connectivity creates new social and political power structures. If left unchecked, they might lead to authoritarian governance by one person in total control of network power, directly or through her/his connected surrogates. We propose Industry 5.0 that can democratize knowledge coproduction from Big Data, building on the new concept of symmetrical innovation. Industry 5.0 utilizes IoT, but differs from predecessor automation systems by having three-dimensional (3D) symmetry in innovation ecosystem design: (1) a built-in safe exit strategy in case of demise of hyperconnected entrenched digital knowledge networks. Importantly, such safe exists are orthogonal-in that they allow "digital detox" by employing pathways unrelated/unaffected by automated networks, for example, electronic patient records versus material/article trails on vital medical information; (2) equal emphasis on both acceleration and deceleration of innovation if diminishing returns become apparent; and (3) next generation social science and humanities (SSH) research for global governance of emerging technologies: "Post-ELSI Technology Evaluation Research" (PETER). Importantly, PETER considers the technology opportunity costs, ethics, ethics-of-ethics, framings (epistemology), independence, and reflexivity of SSH research in technology policymaking. Industry 5.0 is poised to harness extreme automation and Big Data with safety, innovative technology policy, and responsible implementation science, enabled by 3D symmetry in innovation ecosystem design.

Determining information needs of science and technology policy makers in Iran

Information needs of policymakers have different aspects including type of needed information, information sources, information providers, and information formats. This study uses a qualitative approach to identify information needs of science and technology (S&T) policymakers in Iran. For achieving this goal, a task-based approach was adopted and preliminary exploratory interviews with three experts in the field of S&T were done to design the interview protocol. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 Iranian S&T policymakers. Interviews were transcribed and then thematic analysis was done. The results showed that S&T policymakers need aggregated, integrated, quantitative/statistical, analytical, and up-to-date information on different entities in the S&T area. The entities are mainly persons, organizations, research projects, research publications, indicators, products, patents, services, funds, and research facilities and equipment. To have clear and accurate information all of these entities should be clearly defined semantically. Information sources such as databases and consultancy service organizations and experts can be considered to provide policymakers’ needed information. The results of this study can be used by different groups. Librarians, information system developers, and consultant researchers that develop and provide information services for policymakers can use the results to determine the types and format of information about each entity that should be presented to policymakers.

Text mining to gain technical intelligence for acquired target selection: A case study for China's computer numerical control machine tools industry

Technology strategy plays an increasingly important role in today's Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Informing that strategy with empirical intelligence offers great potential value to R&D managers and technology policy makers. This paper proposes a methodology, based on patent analysis, to extract technical intelligence to identify M&A target technologies and evaluate relevant target companies to facilitate M&A target selection. We apply the term clumping process and a trend analysis together with policy and market information to profile present R&D status and capture future development signals and trends in order to grasp a range of significant domain-based technologies. Furthermore, a comparison between a selected acquirer and leading players is used to identify significant technologies and sub-technologies for specific strategy-oriented technology M&A activities. Finally, aiming to recommend appropriate M&A target companies, we set up an index-based system to evaluate the acquired target candidates from both firms-side perspective and target firm-side perspective and differentially weigh for specific M&A situations. We provide an empirical study in the field of computer numerical control machine tools (CNCMT) in China to identify technology M&A targets for an emerging Chinese CNCMT company — Estun Automation under different M&A strategies.

Ending the Mending Wall: Herding, Media Coverage, and Co-Location in IT Entrepreneurship

The advent of the Internet and the maturation of the Information Technology (IT) industry has significantly decreased transaction and coordination costs. However, there is still a strong preference for being geographically proximal, notably when accessing capital markets for innovation activities (like the formation of funding ties between venture capitalists (VCs) and new IT ventures). While VCs prefer to support co-located entrepreneurs, significant evidence suggests that the funding of non-local IT entrepreneurs does occur. In this work, we investigate how trends in the form of herding and media coverage, which are not specific to the entrepreneur but pertain to the technology sector the entrepreneur operates in, may influence VCs to reach across geographic boundaries. Using a series of matched sample methodologies, results suggest that the influence of media is significantly stronger for VCs considering funding non-co-located, as opposed to co-located, IT entrepreneurs. However, and strikingly, support for the effect of herding is notably weaker. Managerial and policy implications, particularly for technology entrepreneurs and policy-makers seeking to support such innovators, are discussed within.

Cubesat Program Assessment

Many countries are considering the role of space technology in their science and technology portfolios. Countries with no previous or expressed interest in space technology are now assessing potential applications of space technology. National space agencies through bi-lateral agreements, the United Nations (UN), NGOs, and some private entities are extolling the benefits of space technology, products and services for the emerging and developing world. Some countries contemplate strategies to develop indigenous space technology capacity. The range of space technology capacity contemplated may include goals such as developing a cadre of STEM 21st century workforce, increasing utilization of space data products and services, establishment of a satellite manufacturing base, purpose-built space launch facilities, or even developing space launch capability.A new paradigm in the satellite community is the practice of developing satellites weighing less than 500 kilograms with capabilities comparable to much larger satellites. Small satellites have been described as a disruptive technology due to their significantly lower costs and faster development cycles. In particular cubesats have attracted considerable interest from academic, government and industry. Potential utility of these platforms has reached a level where industry is beginning to commercialize the technology. How may cubesat programs contribute to national priorities? How do government science and technology policy makers measure success of these programs? A methodology is presented which classifies the objectives of various cubesat projects and relates them to an internationally recognized socioeconomic index. Based on outcomes of this analysis recommendations are offered on the role of cubesats in science and technology policy of emerging and developing countries.