Intellectual Property Rights Protection

This chapter provides background on China’s intellectual property rights (IPR) system. It explains the surge in patenting activity in China over the past two decades. Given the central role played by universities and public research organizations, the chapter details the legislative progress made in management of intellectual property with respect to technology transferred from these two key actors in China’s innovation system. The chapter also outlines the challenges that still remain with regard to management of intellectual property and patent licensing on the part of Chinese universities and public research organizations. Finally, the chapter documents the most recent legislative changes in China’s IPR system in order to strengthen it further.

Exploring Employee Perceptions towards Smart Working during the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Comparative Analysis of Two Italian Public Research Organizations

Of all the socio-economic changes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the disruption to workforce organizations will probably leave the largest indelible mark. The way work will be organized in the future will be closely linked to the experience of working under the same institution’s response to the pandemic. This paper aims to fill the gap in knowledge about smart working (SW) in public organizations, with a focus on the experience of the employees of two Italian research organizations, CNR and INGV. Analysing primary data, it explored and assessed how SW had been experienced following the implementation of governmental measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19.

The classification of public research organizations: Taxonomical explorations

This article addresses, conceptually and empirically, the classification of public research organizations (PROs) understood as non-university and non-enterprise research-focused organizations that are public by nature or in which the government has an influence. The construction of archetypes of research performing organizations has been a standard method of analysis, as reflected in the Frascati Manual that guides national statistical offices to delineate the perimeter of the institutional sector of PROs. However, this practice has often overlooked the emergence of new types because traditional approaches to classification tend to characterize previously defined mutually exclusive categories, rather than allow evidence to reveal categories ex-post. This gives rise to a number of concerns related to the scientific validity of the classification of entities in the organizational field of research. The present article discusses conceptual and methodological issues associated with different classificatory strategies. It also presents the empirical results of a taxonomical exploration that allows the identification of categories not determined ex-ante. Our empirical strategy consists in applying clustering techniques on a number of organizational dimensions, chosen based on theoretical grounds and proxied by variables determined by data availability. We implement it on a pilot dataset of 197 research-focused organizations from eight different European countries.

LOW EFFICIENCY IN THE USE OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT RESOURCES IN BRAZILIAN PUBLIC RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS: CAUSAL CHAINS ANALYSIS1

ABSTRACT Open Innovation paradigm brought additional challenges to the already complex Brazilian ST&I scenario of scarce resources and ineffective public policies. The Public Research Organizations (PROs) face obstacles regarding the limitation imposed by their public nature, complex laws and regulations, inadequate technological and organizational structure, and lack of strategy and priority. Besides that, to improve their results and catch up the competitiveness, Research & Development (R&D) projects must be transdisciplinary and collaborative, which usually require a high volume of budget, large teams, and organizational structure for Research Management and Administration (RMA). The low efficiency in the use of physical, financial and human resources are hampering PROs to overcome the financial crisis and backwardness of the national ST&I results. This study aimed to make a deep analysis of this macro problem in the R&D Manager perspective as a social actor, based in the Situational Strategic Planning method. The results evidenced the vastness of the problem and supported the comprehension of the social game in place and the work fronts where the actor could tackle the problem. The main conclusion is that PROs must take into account the capacity building in RMA to leverage results and influence positively the ST&I policy arena.