Beyond internal capacity: Research and technology organizations as embedded system actors in low-tech manufacturing

As services dominate developed economies all over the world, service innovation represents an important challenge for organisations wanting to ensure their successful performance over time. In this paper, we propose a conceptual model for the development of service innovation capabilities within a special type of service-intensive organisation: Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs), which are important innovation actors in contemporary economies. This model focuses on the interplay between resources and processes, and highlights the importance of service innovation strategies for developing relevant capabilities. Finally, dynamisation perspectives that ensure the sustainability of these capabilities are also presented. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Giannopoulou, E., Gryszkiewicz, L. and Barlatier, P-J. (2011) 'A conceptual model for the development of service innovation capabilities in Research and Technology organisations', Int. J. Knowledge Management Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp.319-335.

Research and technology organizations (RTOs) are studied in the innovation policy literature mainly as providers of R&D services and as intermediaries between universities and the private sector. Through the case of the Institut National d’Optique (INO), Canada’s leading RTO in the optics and photonics industry, we argue that RTOs can also act as entrepreneurs by generating technologies and commercializing them through licensing, technology transfers and spin-offs. By analyzing the broad range of activities undertaken by INO, we also discuss what characteristics make some RTOs more likely to embrace entrepreneurship than others. Those characteristics include the following: renewed access to government funding to build a strong in-house research infrastructure and scientific workforce; strategic R&D planning that incorporates commercial objectives and an environment that encourages a culture of entrepreneurship among employees; the ability to act as the driving force of a network of academic, government and private sector organizations. From a policy perspective, the INO case indicates that the main value of using RTOs as entrepreneurship instruments does not lie in profitability but rather in developing dynamic regional systems of innovation.

The main challenge in innovation seems to be not a lack of ideas, but a deficit in the evaluation and transformation of ideas into new processes or products. Due to their specific characteristics and the fact that innovations of SMEs are application-oriented, SMEs depend on external know-how for fundamental research. They therefore need a support network that translates the knowledge necessary for successful innovation into their language. Technical feasibility studies provided by research and technology organizations (RTOs) are designed to promote this knowledge transformation and transfer to SMEs. In this paper, the authors examine whether or not technical feasibility studies can facilitate knowledge transfer between SMEs and RTOs. The results of a literature review and an empirical investigation of the Feasibility Studies Program of the Austrian Industrial Research Promotion Fund reveal evidence of a stimulating effect of technical feasibility studies on SMEs' innovative activities. They also identify prerequisites for SMEs to tap the full potential of their interaction with RTOs. First, there has to be a developed research scene that is willing and able to meet the needs of SMEs. Second, SMEs have to recognize the potential advantages of working together with RTOs in the innovation process and to overcome their common fear of contact with RTOs. The insights presented may enhance the quality of similar initiatives now and in the future.

UK research and technology organizations (RTOs) compete globally by offering engineering, technology and innovation services. Although associated historically with specific industries, UK RTOs have expanded into nontraditional markets and sectors. This article profiles 15 UK RTOs and we suggest that UK RTOs have unique technology and innovation capabilities, which cut across industrial boundaries.

The objective of this work is to evaluate the impact of research and technology organizations (RTO) on firm competitiveness. To this end, we develop a framework that includes strategies to deal with the methodological problems highlighted in the literature. The main features of this framework are the definition and classification of different types of impacts, the estimation of (rough) quantitative measures of them and the development of a multivariate model to explain the different impacts including the traditional indicators of firm characteristics and their relationships. The empirical work is based on a database constructed from information from the responses to a questionnaire designed specifically to estimate the impact of RTOs on Spanish firms, and information from the Spanish Innovation Survey. Our findings show that firms are able to recognize the influence of these relationships on different technical, economic, investment and intangible impacts and to roughly estimate their economic impact, and that several characteristics of these relationships affect the impact of RTOs.

NATO's Research and Technology Organization (RTO) Systems, Analysis, Studies Task Force (SAS-074) is currently developing a process to increase the utilization of human and social-science based Theories, Models and Methods (TMM develop appropriate P-S objectives within the planning process; and, provide a knowledge base to promote the appropriate use of P-S TM&Ms throughout the Analysis -Planning -- Execution -- Assessment cycle. It also reviews the insights gained from other NATO RTO activities, including the recent SAS-071 workshop on Modeling and Simulation (M&S) in Irregular Warfare and highlights the development of a virtual community of interest.

ABSTRACTThis paper studies open innovation practices in Russian state-owned enterprises (SOEs). In 2011, the Russian Government set ambitious goals in science, technology and innovation, and uses its large SOEs as channels to achieve these targets. These initiatives focus on the collaboration among innovation actors and introduce open innovation (OI) principles. Based on a large-scale innovation survey, we compare private enterprises to state-owned peers and present selected case studies. Our data support the claim that Russian SOEs are driving the demand for technology and mainly absorb incoming OI activities. Different to their peers, SOEs extend their OI activities to the country’s knowledge producers, such as research and technology organisations (RTOs), and leading universities. They work on incorporating scientific knowledge that could, indeed, hold the key to globally competitive technological innovations, but also have better capabilities to include business partners.Abbreviation: OI: Open innovation; SOE: State-owned enterprise; RTO: Research and technology organisation; STI: Science, technology and innovation.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a contingent model that facilitates knowledge of the strategies followed by the research technology organizations (RTOs) of Valencia and the Basque Country, Spain, to adapt to the turbulence of their environment. Design/methodology/approach The research includes context, organizational and results variables and identifies some barriers that the RTOs encounter in collaborating with SMEs and also the best practices they follow to develop competitive advantages. The methodology used consisted of applying the proposed model to the 27 RTOs of both autonomous regions; a factor analysis was then performed to determine whether there exist groups of related (correlated) variables; finally, the authors proceeded to carry out a hierarchical cluster analysis to observe how the 27 RTOs are distributed according to their ability to adapt and respond to environmental turbulence. Findings The technological policy must consider the characteristics of each region to propose more efficient and equitable mechanisms that allow the RTOs to face new challenges. Originality/value This study proposes a theoretical model suitable for RTOs to respond to environmental changes, to the current economy globalization and to cope with new challenges. This proposal means that RTOs must manage an appropriate combination of key factors, including the development of more proactive innovation strategies, an organic organizational structure to relate better with other innovation agents and universities, which help them to work more efficiently with SMEs and to obtain a higher innovative performance.

Both society and customers pose many new challenges for public research and technology organisations. Making the right long-term technological choices, generating and maintaining an appropriate research portfolio, speeding-up innovation processes and integrating customer and market needs into science-based research are among the major expectations. We describe how a multidisciplinary research organisation has implemented new processes and practises to rise to these challenges. The paper points out the benefits of using a parallel research approach to the business innovation process, where the different phases – the development of new technology, applications and business models – are carried out interactively and concurrently. Furthermore, we show how foresighting acitivities, research portfolio management and use of business plans for long-term research programmes contribute to the parallel research process.

National innovation systems and policies are confronted by many interrelated factors, including large socio-economic structural problems, globalisation, pressure to provide public research funding and changes in research communities driven by the Mode 2 paradigm. These changes challenge sectoral public research organisations (PROs). The role of universities and other policy organisations in innovation policy has been studied at length but there has been little investigation of PROs, despite their significance in developed and developing economies. This article fills this gap by exploring PROs in Finland, an open, industrialised and export-dependent economy. It draws several conclusions about the current state and future prospects of PROs in Finland. PROs are in transition in terms of their organisational, managerial and funding structures and their role in the internationalising national innovation system. Their rationale, legitimacy and strategies are also changing due to national innovation driven missions and internationalisation strategies. All PROs in Finland now engage in international cooperation. However, despite increasing funding from international sources and the globalisation of many aspects, PROs are still national organisations subject to national policies and governed by national bodies. Finnish PROs need to redefine their strategies at the international and European levels without forgetting their national role.

This paper documents the conception and results of a research project on the changing roles of research organisations in Europe. Institutional settings and functional orientation of these organizations reflect the ongoing transformation of economies into service economies. Several analytical tools have been developed to study the dynamics of research organisations. These tools allow the positioning of research organisations in national systems of innovation and the interpretation of institutional reforms. They emphasise the service character of research activities and innovation policy and help to explain differences in the research landscapes across the EU.

Atmospheric pressure (AP) cold plasmas have been steadily gaining importance over the last 20 years. It is often stated that AP processes reduce costs by obviating the need for expensive vacuum systems, and are much easier to implement in industrial production lines. However, every industrial process comes with its own lot of challenges that must be addressed before a viable, robust plasma solution can be put in place.Tackling these challenges is precisely the primary objective of our company, Molecular Plasma Group (MPG). Created as a spin-off from VITO (Belgium) and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) to commercialize a unique nano-coating technology using cold atmospheric plasma, MPG SA was established in 2016. Today, our ambition is to be a global Key Enabling Technology (KET) platform, providing scalable environmentally-friendly atmospheric pressure plasma solutions for industries, research and technology organizations, and academia.In this presentation, we will offer an overview of our efforts in the promotion of AP cold plasma technology to the industrial world. From an engineering point of view, we will discuss various topics such as the design of industrially-viable plasma heads, solutions for fiber and powder treatment, roll-to-roll processes, nozzle design (including modeling), dynamic process control. On the scientific side, we will cover aspects such as the benefits of precursor atomization, types of chemistries and substrates that can be processed, along with a few examples of practical applications of adhesion-promoting, release, bioactive, as well as anti-biofouling coatings.Finally, we will present our very recent “success story”, initiated in the frame of the COVID-19 pandemic. From the idea to the installation of industrial machines at customers, we have designed an AP cold plasma process to deposit ultra-thin virucidal coatings that greatly enhance safety, performance, and possibly lifetime of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as face masks. This way, PPE does not act only as a simple “mechanical barrier” to pathogen agents but can effectively prevent cross-contamination and the spread of pathogens. The additional functional layer offers active, fast disinfection properties while being harmless to the user. Figure 1

Innovation is of fundamental importance in services (den Hertog, van der Aa, and de Jong, 2010) as it underlies the ability to sustain competitive advantage (Miller, Fern, and Cardinal, 2007). Moreover, it helps fight commoditization (Lyons, Chatman, and Joyce, 2007), as new ideas are easily introduced and also easily imitated in services; “in such an environment, innovative ability — the ability to continue the process of innovation — may be crucial for leading edge companies”. Proficient New Service Development (NSD) process has been declared one of the key determinants of successful service innovation (de Brentani, 1995; Riedl et al., 2009), but still few organizations actually actively manage it (de Jong et al., 2003; Kim and Meiren, 2010). Thus, often, NSD and related service innovation becomes simply based on an historical way of acting. This raises concerns about the organizations’ ability to ensure long-term performance through service innovation. In other words, in order to maintain or improve performance, organizations must continuously develop new services (Storey and Kelly, 2001) and build innovation capabilities (Schang, Wu, and Yao, 2010). This requires a certain level of their service innovation capabilities’ “dynamisation”, aimed at solving the capability-rigidity paradox (Leonard-Barton, 1992), which means fighting a situation whereby core capabilities become rigidities because of path dependence, inertia, or cognitive traps such as commitment.

This chapter will present a series of university-industry collaboration (UIC) projects between a university industrial design research unit and various small-medium (manufacturing) enterprises (SMEs) with a focus on the facilitators role in these projects. Previous research has referred to ‘innovation intermediaries' as a term to define (service) firms that proactively facilitate collaboration between two or more parties in innovation projects. In terms of technological development these have been exemplified as research and technology organisations (RTOs). The authors suggest an adjacent term ‘intermediary interpreters' to describe the key facilitator by bringing together the term 'intermediaries' and the term ‘interpreters' as they are defined by Roberto Verganti. These individuals have specialised external expertise and ability to take part in the ‘design discourse; to support innovation. The authors argue that intermediary interpreters are an important third party in UIC projects that provide unique support that can help SMEs embrace innovation strategy and more effectively internationalise.

Revisiting industrial policy: Lessons learned from the establishment of an automotive OEM in Portugal