Lorenzo Cassi

Regional scientific integration is a critical pathway for the development of an integrated African research area and knowledge-based society. On the African continent, progress in scientific production and integration has remained limited, mostly led by a global or international agenda, and bound to a few top publishing nations. The high-level policy commitments and the accumulated policies and strategies developed and pursued under the various intertwined sub-regional economic groupings have, to date, only diversely contributed to policy alignment and coordination in the area of science, technology, and innovation (STI) across Africa. In this context, this paper provides a first and hence original assessment of the role of region-specific factors in shaping scientific collaboration on the continent. For this purpose, our study builds upon the proximity approach to analyse the determinants of scientific collaboration between African countries, using co-publications data from Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science database as a proxy of such collaboration. Our results suggest that the majority of African regional economic communities (RECs) have not yet had a significant effect on scientific co-publication. Nevertheless, some important region-specific factors do seem to be at play, such as a shared ethnical language, membership in the African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education (CAMES), and the presence of a common European partner as a third partner in co-publication. Existing policies aimed at the development of an Africa-wide research area should aim to leverage existing and emerging regional excellence networks and novel coordination models to accelerate the process of scientific integration in Africa.

This paper looks at the different strategies that two of the tire industry’s most prominent players, Pirelli and Michelin, deployed to exploit a radical process innovation: robotized, modular manufacturing. This paper argues that Pirelli, originally the technological follower, could develop a more nuanced, complex and ultimately successful strategy thanks to its superior knowledge integration capabilities. Empirically, we examine the structural characteristics and evolution of inventors’ networks in the two companies to reveal their knowledge integration capabilities. We apply the cohesive blocking method developed by White and Harary (Sociol Methodol 31(1):305–359, 2001) to argue that Pirelli, while relying on comparable skills in terms of technical fields, leveraged a more connected, cohesive and structured skills than Michelin. On this basis, it could develop and deploy a more complex strategy that better fit the characteristics of the new process technology. Pirelli’s knowledge network structure enhanced its knowledge integration capabilities and allowed for a more efficient fit between technology and strategy.

Observing that most social networks are clustered, the literature often argues that agents are more willing to form links that close triangles. We challenge this idea by proposing a simple model of new collaboration formation that shows why network clustering may arise even though agents do not “like” network closure. We address empirically this question on the longitudinal evolution of the French co-invention network, and find that two inventors are less likely to form a first research collaboration when they have common partners. Our findings further reveal the preferences of inventors towards forming non-redundant connections.

This article provides an original framework for analyzing networks of scientific collaborations in Europe at regional level. Which are the determinants of the observed clustering phenomenon? Which is the role of the territories? The aim of this article is to provide empirical evidence in order to answer to these questions. For this, we base our analysis on scientific collaborations between European regions in eight different disciplines (e.g. Medicine, Chemistry…) over the period 2001-2011. A normalized centrality measurement is proposed. We test the impact of territorial resources and field scientific characteristics on regions centrality in each of the analyzed discipline. Firstly, the analysis highlights a strong heterogeneity between disciplines, showing the need of carrying out specific investigation for each of them. Second, the results show the different roles played by local resources, according to the disciplines. Finally, the article discusses the implications of these results in terms of science and innovation policies.

Science policy is increasingly shifting towards an emphasis in societal problems or grand challenges. As a result, new evaluative tools are needed to help assess not only the knowledge production side of research programmes or organisations, but also the articulation of research agendas with societal needs. In this paper, we present an exploratory investigation of science supply and societal needs on the grand challenge of obesity – an emerging health problem with enormous social costs. We illustrate a potential approach that uses topic modelling to explore: (a) how scientific publications can be used to describe existing priorities in science production; (b) how policy records (in this case here questions posed in the European parliament) can be used as an instance of mapping discourse of social needs; (c) how the comparison between the two may show (mis)alignments between societal concerns and scientific outputs. While this is a technical exercise, we propose that this type of mapping methods can be useful to domain experts for informing strategic planning and evaluation in funding agencies