Search results

The present paper seeks to illuminate the role played by university‐based technology transfer offices (TTOs) in driving the transfer of research‐based knowledge and technology from institutions of higher education to industry in Hong Kong.

Following a literature review, the authors use empirical data on technology transfer and innovation, and case studies of existing TTOs at City University of Hong Kong (City U) and Hong Kong University of Technology and Science (HKUST), to analyze and illustrate the changing nature of the role that TTOs have played in Hong Kong, from the late 1980s to the present.

It is found that, while TTOs originally served primarily to generate additional revenues for their affiliated universities through the creation and commercialization of intellectual property, that role has gradually evolved to support innovative start‐up companies through technology transfer.

This study is limited in having included only two case studies. In the future more cases should be examined, not only of other spin‐offs and start‐ups from City U and HKUST, but also from other Hong Kong universities as well. The study implies that TTOs should continue to learn how to respond to the needs of start‐ups through self‐evaluation. Universities should better manage TTOs, and the government, through better understanding of the capacity of TTOs to create spin‐offs, should develop policy measures that facilitate the process.

This study is among the first to examine the role of TTOs using a case‐study approach, especially in addressing the relationship between university‐industry linkages and the broader innovation system in Hong Kong.

The authors' intention is to demonstrate how adopting a more precise interpretation of the term “institution” as used in the innovation studies literature provides a better understanding of the dynamic nature of an innovation system. The paper therefore focuses less on organisations and other key actors in Hong Kong's innovation system and more on the laws, rules, procedures, business practices, etc. that facilitate and govern such activity.

The paper adopts the term “innovation environment” to denote the institutional setting within which innovative activity is carried out in Hong Kong and reviews key elements of the innovation environment to note trends towards innovation‐oriented changes. Data and other descriptive information that informs the treatment of the innovation environment are based on interviews of diverse actors associated with Hong Kong's innovation system as well as research into an interdisciplinary body of literature.

The authors find that although there has been little evidence of substantial progress in the development of Hong Kong's innovation system, key elements of the innovation environment exhibit trends in the direction of a more robust use of innovation‐related resources to drive economic growth in the territory.

Apart from its focus on Hong Kong's innovation system, the paper advances innovation studies by demonstrating that its methodology of examining the innovation environment – the institutional setting in which key organisational actors carry out innovative activity – reveals the dynamism of an innovation system that might not emerge from a focus on organisations and other key actors.

The purpose of this paper is to review key academic literature on the characteristics of business firms' intellectual property (IP) strategy and to examine the implications for how Chinese firms can deal with today's business environment under the globalization.

A selection of peer‐reviewed articles from scholarly journals listed in major academic search engines is reviewed. The search results showed that ProQuest included 509 related articles and ScienceDirect included 121. The abstract of all the articles were reviewed. Finally, 26 articles were identified and comprehensively reviewed. The key characteristics of the role of internal and external contexts for IP strategy development were then analysed in terms of the challenges faced by Chinese firms.

The results show that IP strategies involve IP identification/generation, valuation, utilization and enforcement. Its effectiveness depends on both internal (i.e. company size, ownership of firms, business strategies and the value of the IP) and external factors (i.e. industry structure, level of competition, and novelty of technology). Given that many Chinese firms are developing new innovative capabilities and need to protect their IP in domestic or international markets, there is a need for these firms to align their emerging IP strategy with future business strategies.

The study focuses on the IP strategies and management in business organizations, and therefore excludes the articles from law and economics literature.

The paper suggests a conceptual framework and provides managerial implications on IP management at firm level, particularly relevant for Chinese business firms.

This article discusses prospects of strengthening new increasingly global economic activities and environmental governance by focusing on the institutional relationship between information society policy issues and environmental policy issues. These two sets of issues have some common denominators insofar as they are both comprehensive and go beyond traditional sector policy rationalities, as illustrated by the notions of “sustainable development” and “ecological modernization” in the case of environmental issues, and neither can avoid the problem of governance subjects such as social legitimacy and institutional dynamics between the main actors. The article also identifies a more functional relationship between these issues and discusses challenges common to both as well as asking whether there is institutional potential and capacity to find “synergy” by integrating environmental policy elements into moves towards information society and vice versa. The case study of Finland reveals that information society strategy lacks environmental policy objectives and discusses the factors behind this failure. The lack of integration of different policy areas is an issue of organizational power with policy actors showing no real interest in radically changing prevailing bureaucratic institutions and socioeconomic structures. Beyond organizational factors the policy problems seem to be based on the inconsistency of different policy rationalities with information society reasoning being justified by economic‐technical rationality whereas environmental policies are justified by natural scientific rationality, which policy makers do not consider to be in their interests. The article concludes with the assertion that the principles of ecological modernization could potentially unite environmental policies and positive environmental aspects of information society policies.