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Thank you for inviting me to participate in this important and timely conference. Global competition and the role of the United States within that arena is a very hot issue today.

The role of public procurement as an instrument to stimulate innovation has been increasingly emphasized by European policymakers. This perspective raises demand for the understanding of public procurement as an activity taking place in a variety of different procurement contexts and as an act of innovation. Accordingly, this paper proposes a taxonomy of public procurement and innovation, combining interactive learning and evolutionary perspectives on innovation processes to account for the broad range of different ‘interaction environments’ or ‘resource interfaces’ in which government or public sector organizations may act as lead users of innovations. On this basis, the taxonomy draws practical policy implications for the design of programmes and initiatives for the public procurement of innovations.

To induce innovation in the public sector, Directive 2014/24/EU encourages internal and external consultation during the procurement process. However, little is known regarding the prominence of these practices. Determining the extent of knowledge sourcing in innovation procurement across 28 European countries, this paper presents an institutional cluster analysis, examining heterogeneity across knowledge sourcing activities, procurement areas, and tender innovation outcomes for 1,505 public procurers from 2008-2010. Building upon existing taxonomies, three types of procuring agencies are identified: Large collaborative agencies practicing public procurement of innovation (31%); supplier-focused pre-commercial procurers (20%); and direct procurers at the municipal level (49%). Validation supports this heterogeneity, using innovation outcomes and policy drivers. At the country level, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Poland are most represented in respective clusters. Findings enable predictions regarding impacts on agencies and innovation from the new public procurement directive's translation into national law by Member States.

Even more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination toward a number of groups in employment settings in the United States, workplace discrimination remains a persistent problem in organizations. This chapter provides a comprehensive review and analysis of contemporary theory and evidence on the nature, causes, and consequences of discrimination before synthesizing potential methods for its reduction. We note the strengths and weaknesses of this scholarship and highlight meaningful future directions. In so doing, we hope to both inform and inspire organizational and scholarly efforts to understand and eliminate workplace discrimination.

Commercialization of research projects at the university, in particular, its efficiency and performance, have attracted little attention in the empirical literature to date. This despite the fact that commercialization of university knowledge is increasingly seen as a third task of universities and understanding of what enhances and what blocks the processes involved, is virtually lacking, particularly on the project level. The purpose of this chapter is therefore to identify factors that influence the performance of university-driven knowledge projects, including efficiency, in the context of commercialization of knowledge at universities. In this context, the study employs Data Envelop Analysis combined with Rough-Set Analysis on a sample of 42 projects in the Netherlands. The major factors influencing overall performance in commercialization turn out to be years of collaboration with large firms and efficiency in use of resources in the projects, but the affinity of the project managers at university with the market also plays a role. The best overall results in commercialization (introduction to market in a relatively short time) are gained with a longer period of collaboration with large firms (5–10 years) and a medium level of efficiency. There are also some contradictory trends. The chapter concludes with implications of the results, as well as some future research paths.

In the EU and especially in Germany, public procurement is bound to a tight legislation that also sets and enforces strategic goals such as innovation or sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether different archetypes of public procurement organizations (centralized or decentralized; state-level or local-level) perceive and implement strategic goals differently. A survey with data from 104 entities is used for this purpose. The findings reveal that the implementation of strategy is different in centralized or state-level organizations compared with decentralized or local organizations. Centralized organizations give goals such as innovation, transparency, and sustainability a high priority, while local ones highlight regional development and SME support

This article sets out to answer two interrelated questions: is it advisable for developing countries to use public procurement efforts for development, and should more developing countries join the World Trade Organization (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement (GPA)? We survey key arguments for and against joining the GPA, and argue that government procurement should not be seen only as an indirect support measure for development, but also as a direct vehicle for promoting innovation and industries and, thus, growth and development. We also show that using public procurement for development assumes high levels of policy capacity, which most developing countries lack. In addition, we show how the GPA as well as other WTO agreements make it complicated for the developing countries to benefit from public procurement for innovation. The article suggests that the developing countries could apply a mix of direct and indirect (so-called soft) public-procurement-for-innovation measures. In order to do this, developing countries need to develop the policy capacity to take advantage of the complex and multi-layered industrial policy space still available under WTO rules.

There has been a significant rise in the number of patents originating from academic environments. However, current conceptualizations of academic patents provide a largely homogenous approach to define this entrepreneurial form of technology transfer. In this study we develop a novel categorization framework that identifies three subsets of academic patents which are conceptually distinct from each other. By applying the categorization framework on a unique database of Swedish patents we furthermore find support for its usefulness in detecting underlying differences in technology, opportunity, and commercialization characteristics among the three subsets of academic patents.

Research on Science parks (SPs) has attracted a growing interest in the last decades. This widespread innovation policy initiative pursues technology-based industrial and entrepreneurial growth through business development and technology transfer across new and mature firms. Despite the common agreement on SPs' potential benefits, literature have showed mixed results regarding the performance of SPs. To explain this findings, current research pointed out at the lack of a common guiding framework. To cover this knowledge gap, this manuscript proposes an integrative definition and research model together with a multidimensional measurement instrument suitable to encompass the diverse reality of this global phenomenon.

Based on a systematic literature review of 281 indexed journal articles published between 1990 and 2018, the paper provides an integrative framework of enabling factors of SPs' performance.

The results illustrate an integrative conceptual framework of SPs that allows further comparison and generalization of research. At the same time, this manuscript provides valuable insights for managers and entrepreneurs as it conveys a standardized view of SPs' internal context useful for benchmarking.

Grounded in the resource-based view (RBV), the paper conducts a thorough literature review to develop an integrative research model featuring three value streams: physical infrastructures, formal links and support services. In addition, a multidimensional measurement tool to operationalize these three dimensions is proposed.