SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT: SPECIFICITIES AND CONCEPTUAL PREMISES Adriana Bin1 Sergio Salles-Filho2 Introduction The purpose of this article is to explore the specificities of science and technology development and innovation processes in the organizational sphere and their implications for planning and management. Much research has been done to understand the evolution of the institutional structures relating to knowledge creation and appropriation, to identify the main stimuli and the results associated with them, and to analyze the concatenation of activities involved in the execution of these processes. As the relations among science, technology and innovation (ST&I) and economic and social development become increasingly clear, more studies have focused on the most suitable ways of structuring and coordinating these processes to enable them to generate more benefits. The perception that the specificities of ST&I planning and management derive from the specificities of ST&I development processes in different organizations has motivated a search for a common theoretical framework within which to interpret the execution and management of research and innovation activities. The challenge for such a framework is to address both the micro- and macro-institutional levels. The analytical approach selected for the present purpose is based mainly on the evolutionary economics and transaction cost economics traditions. Before noting the most important elements in this approach for a discussion of ST&I planning and management, the article presents a brief discussion of recent trends associated with the organization and institutionalization of ST&I development processes. On the basis of this initial presentation and after highlighting certain conceptual aspects, the article then justifies and discusses the difference between the planning and management of ST&I and of other processes in the organizational sphere, posing three key questions: (i) Why plan 1

PhD student at the Department of Science and Technology Policy, State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), São Paulo, Brazil, Tel: 55 19 35214597, e-mail: [email protected]. 2 Professor of the Department of Science and Technology Policy, State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), São Paulo, Brazil, Tel: 55 19 35214597, e-mail: [email protected].

and manage ST&I processes? (ii) What are the elements that make ST&I planning and management different from other planning and management processes in the organizational sphere? (iii) What premises need to be taken into consideration when planning and managing ST&I processes? The conclusion sums up the conceptual structure proposed on the basis of the preceding analysis, recommending that ST&I processes must be planned and managed as evolutionary processes defined by targeted attitudes to search routines and an understanding of the selective instances in which organizations are engendered, taking into consideration the distinct institutional elements that mediate such relations. Recent trends in knowledge production and appropriation Recent trends in the understanding of the relations among science, technology and innovation (ST&I)3 have consisted mainly of open approaches. Open approaches are based on the collective logic that characterizes the production and social appropriation of knowledge, but also on perceptions of an increase in participation and interaction by the different actors who comprise this collective logic in the production of common results. According to open approaches, sharing (planned or unplanned) is the crux of any innovative system in terms of a systemic logic. Gibbons et al. (1994) argue that the dynamics of science and research in contemporary society is influenced by new mechanisms of knowledge generation that are more oriented to contexts of application and use, resulting in the approximation of knowledge creation and its social appropriation. For these authors this new form, called Mode 2, contrasts with the traditional form of knowledge production, Mode 1, since by evidencing the need to solve a specific problem it leads to the involvement of a more varied array of actors, transdisciplinarity (with constant interaction between basic and applied science, and between theory and practice), an increasing concern with social accountability, and an extension of quality control over what is produced via the incorporation of new criteria which consider interests beyond those traditionally involved in the disciplinary scientific universe.

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The article suggests that in a broad perspective innovation is the process of creation and social appropriation (via the market or not) of products, processes and methods that did not previously exist or that contain some new feature that is different from what existed before.

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The central argument in this analysis is that in the innovation process value is added not by the cost savings and productivity gains that are so characteristic of mass production and scale economies, but by the capacity to produce, pursue, reconfigure and negotiate knowledge continuously so as to create competitive advantages. Thus collaboration is required to stimulate competition (Freeman, 1992; Gibbons et al., 1994). It can be said, then, that the difference between recent and traditional forms of collaboration is slender and that it is time to take a less conservative view of the assets that must be kept within the limits of a given organization. Although knowledge is increasingly recognized as a strategic asset of great importance to guarantee competitive advantages, the significance of sharing is highlighted by the notions that the faster knowledge circulates the faster it grows, and that economies of scale and scope in knowledge production are positive and non-determinable. In other words, the division of labor is increasingly important to the innovation process. Other reasons associated with ideological claims, entertainment, vanity, rewards and learning are also present, but their importance is secondary. The main reason for the expansion of sharing and for its management and organization lies in the economies of scale and scope that derive therefrom, precisely because of an intrinsic feature of knowledge production, which is the indeterminacy of limits. The notion of collaboration found in open approaches originates in the concept of open science. Open science is a concept that reflects the emergence of a new ethos of scientific production in the late 16th and early 17th century (scientific revolution), valorizing a commitment to rapid dissemination of scientific findings in contrast with the previous ethos and its emphasis on secrecy (David, 2004). The commitment to disseminating scientific findings, which converges with the basic norms that characterize the Republic of Science (Merton, 1973), is justified by the possibility of results validation, less duplication of efforts, increased complementarity, and spillover effects indicating enhanced efficiency in the creation of knowledge. However, as the institutional evolution of knowledge creation becomes increasingly associated with the idea of the social appropriation of knowledge, and hence with the benefits derived from that appropriation, the idea comes into being (and is upheld to some

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extent) of a cultural and institutional approximation between the two normatively distinct research communities: the Republic of Science, initially characterized by the aim of maximizing the pace of growth in scientific knowledge and thus by the logic of open science; and the Realm of Technology, in which controlling knowledge by secrecy and/or exclusive property rights is necessary to the creation of economic benefits (David, 1998). The approximation occurs precisely in terms of the elements of appropriability for scientific findings, given that their dissemination becomes dependent on access to scientific publications. While the tension between open science in its original sense and proprietary science still characterizes contemporary relations between science, technology and innovation, as already noted a more radical movement toward openness is in progress which is reconfiguring the permeability of knowledge flows and is therefore reconfiguring these tensions. Open science in this direction acquires a broader meaning related to shared access to and development of science. Thus this broader meaning of open science includes the concepts of open access and open data: the former relates to access to scientific findings via the elimination of the property restrictions associated with the circulation of scientific publications; the latter relates to data transparency and to the pre- and post-publication discussions that stimulate collaboration among labs and research groups around the world in deciding the direction for a particular research project to take and how to distribute complementary activities (Salles-Filho et al., 2008). A view of open science that can be considered even broader includes the concept of open innovation. This concept, coined by Chesbrough (2003), is based on the idea that innovation processes require complementary contributions from different types of actors to become scientifically and technologically mature and commercially viable. Thus open innovation concentrates on using sources of ideas external to the organization to increase competitiveness in the creation of new technology and the pursuit of returns from the sale of ideas created in house when not related to the organization’s core competencies. However, open innovation does not rule out the importance of maintaining the internal competency of absorbing and adapting knowledge acquired externally so as to incorporate its value.

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It is beyond the scope of this article to develop a thorough exploration of experiences that illustrate such movements. However, it is important to note three points of convergence in open approaches. The first is information technology (IT), a cornerstone of any open approach, enabling individuals and organizations to develop forms of mass collaboration. Initiatives such as wiki platforms (which enable multiple users to create and edit web pages), portals, virtual networks and practice communities are some examples of how IT helps operationalize open models. The approximation of the two research practice communities – the Republic of Science and the Realm of Technology – to produce the current interweaving of science, technology and innovation is the second point of convergence characteristic of open approaches. This approximation promotes a mutual contamination between originally different kinds of ethos, with elements of appropriability permeating science and elements of dissemination (and openness) spreading in the realm of technology and innovation. However, it should be stressed that the elements that support traditional organizational and institutional forms of ST&I are both strongly grounded in the logic of collaboration and maintained by open approaches: the authorship of scientific publications is respected and property rights are appropriately managed in the sphere of technological development and innovation. The third point, which is especially relevant here, relates to the new structures of governance that are emerging from experiences with open approaches and are capable of handling more dynamic knowledge flows. According to Christensen et al. (2005), open models based on collaboration among large numbers of actors involve more complex planning and management structures than those used before these new organizational forms emerged. Thus it can be said that there are new elements alongside the traditional features of the dynamics of ST&I and that these new elements should be taken into account when analyzing recent trends in planning and management in this area. ST&I, organizations and institutions: the evolutionary approach and transaction cost economics The elements discussed in the previous section are crucial to an understanding of the processes of ST&I development based on the evolution of the organizational and institutional structures in which these processes are engendered. However, this is a macro approach, which characterizes broad concepts and movements without going more deeply 5

into the specificities of the organizations in which such processes take place and their relations with macro-institutional structures. Thus for a profound reflection on the concepts and instruments of ST&I planning and management, no less important than characterizing the fundamental elements that reveal the social nature of ST&I processes and recent trends relating to the greater openness and dynamism of knowledge flows in such processes is the pursuit of a conceptual framework capable of providing more general references on the behavior of organizations that carry out these processes and on how they make decisions and relate to each other and to other organizations and instances in the environment in which they are engendered. An attempt is made in what follows to expand this understanding by presenting and applying the contributions of the evolutionary and transaction costs economics approaches, which do not merely treat institutions as exogenous variables that affect economic behavior but go further by seeking to explain how the institutions that affect the behavior of economic actors arise, develop and are transformed. They do so by focusing on processes of change and on the different configurations that the actors and instances involved in the development of ST&I can acquire over time, configuring more or less general relations between ST&I and social and economic change. These approaches have been chosen mainly because of (i) the ability of the evolutionary approach to explore processes of change and the relations established between the behavior of economic actors (organizations and individuals) and the macro-institutional structures in which such actors are immersed in generating innovations and their effects on broader technological and economic changes; (ii) the ability of transaction cost economics (TCE) to discuss the mechanisms for regulating and coordinating transactions between different economic actors (understood as governance structures), a key aspect in any attempt to understand how distinctly collective and multi-institutional activities such as ST&I are conducted. While these approaches evidently do not encompass all the topics that need to be investigated in order to develop concepts and instruments relating to ST&I planning and management, as shown below they nonetheless comprise elements that help structure the conceptual framework that constitutes the key challenge for this proposal. It is also

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important to note that many of the concepts developed by these approaches are useful in every sense for organizations generally, whether they are public or private, and whether or not they are exclusively dedicated to scientific and technological activities. The evolutionary approach, whose foundations are consolidated in An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, published in 1982 (Nelson & Winter, 2005), focuses on an understanding of economic change as an evolutionary process. Although it does not significantly reformulate the premises of orthodox economic theory, this approach adopts a different perspective on rationality from the maximizing account of objective rationality, considering instead that organizations have certain capabilities and decision-making rules at any given moment and that these change over time as a result of deliberate efforts to overcome problems and random events. These organizations are also subject to selective instances over time, and these eventually determine which organizations are able to survive and grow (so that there are always organizations that survive and organizations that are eliminated). This approach conceptualizes organizations via their routines, i.e. their regular and predictable patterns of behavior in carrying out the full range of their activities. Thus routines are persistent and hereditary factors of organizations, albeit also molded over time by the characteristics of the context of which these organizations are part, which determine their possible behaviors and accumulate over time while also being permanently subject to a selective environment (Nelson & Winter, 2005). However, there are search processes that serve to modify the operating characteristics over time, i.e. routines that alter operating routines. Just as the idea of routines resembles the concept of genes in biological evolutionary theory, search processes are analogous to the concept of mutation. Search activities are non-random and occur under conditions of uncertainty, since their success is defined only after a selective instance (which may be the market or society). Moreover, they are irreversible and cumulative activities, necessarily entailing simultaneous learning processes (Rosenberg, 2006) and occurring on the basis of benchmarks (paradigms and technological trajectories) subject to path dependency and the risk of lock-in (Dosi, 1988). The selective environment (market or extra-market) in turn determines how the relative use of different technologies changes over time. The key

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concept that flows from these determinations in the evolutionary approach is that of dynamic search and selection processes whereby patterns of behavior in organizations and their results in the market and society are jointly determined over time (co-evolution). Application of the concepts of search and selection to the microeconomic study of technical progress entails important considerations regarding innovation processes. In particular, these processes take place in an environment of uncertainty in which conditions and results are unknown in advance, and which is influenced by factors relating to the nature of technology, objectively sought out by economic actors, and more or less dependent on learning and individual and collective technological capabilities (Salles-Filho, 1993). However, application of the concepts of search and selection is not confined to the microeconomic study of technical progress or even to the study of the firm as principal economic actor and the market as preponderant selective instance. Just as the configuration of technological trajectories can be derived from organizations’ search efforts, so can the interpretation of the dynamic processes whereby the other behavior patterns of organizations (not exclusively related to technological aspects) and institutions are jointly determined to configure evolutionary trajectories, henceforth called organizational and institutional trajectories (Dosi & Marengo, 1994, Salles-Filho et al., 2000). In sum, the evolutionary approach can be applied both in a micro-perspective that focuses on organizations’ search processes and their subjection to selective instances at a later stage, and in a macro-perspective oriented toward more general technological and institutional change. Thus the evolutionary approach is highly useful in analyzing not only the processes internal to organizations but also the role played in broader innovation processes (in which other actors participate) by the organizations involved in knowledge production, serving as an instance both of search via modification of patterns and of selection. This contribution, together with the idea that uncertainty is inherent in ST&I activities because innovation is established only after an instance of ex post selection, will be used later in discussing the specificities of ST&I planning and management. Moving on to transaction cost economics (TCE), originally developed by Williamson (1987), although this approach does not focus on technical progress (as does the 8

evolutionary approach) it is equally useful in analyzing the processes of decision making that lie at the core of ST&I development. Within the framework of new institutional economics (NIE), TCE starts from some elements developed by Coase (1994) to move forward in understanding the governance structures adopted by economic actors as a way to coordinate solutions to production problems or other types of problem that require interaction among various components of a system, especially economic transactions. TCE works with the perspective that the fundamental (albeit but not the only) goal of economic actors (defined broadly rather than only within the universe of firms) is to minimize transaction costs, i.e. the costs associated with relations of exchanging and contracting. Costs can be classified as ex ante (e.g. the costs of drafting, negotiating and safeguarding an agreement) or ex post (e.g. the maladaption costs incurred when transactions drift out of alignment with requirements, the setup and running costs associated with governance structures, or the bonding costs of effecting secure commitments). It is the need to minimize transaction costs, in conjunction with the fundamental conditions imposed by the environments external and internal to organizations, that justifies the adoption of different governance structures (hierarchy, market and hybrid) by economic actors. According to Williamson (1987), the existence of transaction costs is associated with two key elements: (i) contractual incompleteness due to bounded rationality (people have limited memories and limited cognitive processing power); and (ii) opportunism (incomplete or distorted disclosure of information, especially as a calculated effort to mislead or otherwise confuse). Variation in transaction costs is associated with transaction frequency, the uncertainty inherent in the environment in which transactions are carried out, and asset specificity. A rise in transaction costs entails increased safeguards or governance structures that enhance control (Williamson, 1987). As with the evolutionary approach, in this case too it is important to note that TCE is a theoretical framework that can be applied very broadly, since ultimately the make-or-buy choice is pertinent to any case in which interaction among the various components of a system is required. The application of TCE to the analysis of ST&I development processes

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complements the evolutionary approach insofar as it is a suitable framework for interpreting search processes in organizations, especially with regard to the choice of governance structures associated with knowledge production and development or acquisition of the complementary assets necessary for innovation, and hence with decisions on integration, contracting or cooperation/collaboration in developing knowledge creation and appropriation activities. In this case, the analysis of transaction costs and appropriate governance structures relates not only to market positioning via surplus production and profit appropriation but also to the optimal positioning of organizations in innovation systems so as to participate in them successfully and legitimately. Many authors explore the applicability of TCE to discussion of the forms of knowledge creation and social appropriation, especially with regard to the limits of in-house R&D (Teece, 1988; Pisano, 1990), the acquisition of complementary assets for innovation (Teece, 1986) or, more recently, the emergence of a movement of intense collaboration associated with knowledge creation (Benkler, 2002). The key idea to be retained from this literature for present purposes is that the criteria used to choose the best form of management for search processes, especially with regard to the governance structure best suited to ST&I, must be diverse and varied because they involve not only a trade-off between transaction costs and the costs of internal organization but also a great many organizational and institutional factors. It is in this sense that the concepts derived from TCE are fundamental to any analysis of the logic of ST&I planning and management. They provide a reference framework within which to understand how organizations position themselves in their institutional environment, i.e. what should be done in-house and to what extent, what to buy and to what extent, and what should be done through collaboration. Uncertainty is also a key element derived from TCE when analyzing ST&I planning and management — not uncertainty as an inherent condition of ST&I activities (because their results cannot be known beforehand) but the uncertainty this condition reveals in the establishment of contractual relations between the different actors involved in such activities, i.e. uncertainty associated with the bounded rationality of economic actors. Another element is the variety of governance structures that can be used in the development of these activities, entailing variety and possibly complexity in the mechanisms for managing such structures. 10

Planning and managing ST&I The preceding section outlines characteristics and analytical approaches of vital importance for an understanding of the logic of the activities relating to the creation and social appropriation of knowledge that drive ST&I processes and for an understanding of the behavior of the actors who engage in such activities. In what follows we use these approaches and concepts to answer three questions of particular importance for this study: (i) Why plan and manage ST&I processes? (ii) What are the elements that make ST&I planning and management different from other planning and management processes in the organizational sphere? (iii) What premises need to be taken into consideration when planning and management ST&I processes? Why plan and manage ST&I processes? The main answer to the first question reflects the fact that ST&I comprise the foundation for value creation in contemporary society insofar as they entail knowledge creation and appropriation.4 Understanding these activities as social processes and identifying their association with income generation and distribution entails pinpointing their relation to the enhanced competitiveness, growth and legitimacy of the organizations engaged in such activities, and to economic and social development in the broader sense. However, there are no guarantees a priori that the direction and shape of the different activities involved in such processes, or the structure selected to coordinate the interaction among the various actors (division of labor and knowledge flows), will produce more efficient and effective results that maximize the creation of value and benefits in the given institutional conditions. The element of intentionality and the non-random nature of such processes entail a need for the actors involved to use planning and management mechanisms, as a means of encouraging these activities and seeking the best way to perform them. It should be 4

In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), Schumpeter argues that the key aspect of capitalism is its dynamic and evolutionary nature linked to the innovation processes that culminate in the creation of new products and processes, penetration of new markets, development of new sources of raw materials and other inputs, and changes in the forms of industrial organization. In this sense organizations innovate in pursuit of competitive advantage (or to defend a competitive position), and by doing so they temporarily achieve a position from which they can obtain extraordinary profits (or other advantages) compared with their competitors. Thus competition via innovation becomes the most important type of competition that characterizes models of industrial organization (Schumpeter, 1984).

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stressed, however, that the optimal way to perform these activities must be understood within the context and taking into account the institutional limits in which such processes are engendered, as expressed at the micro level by routines and organizational habits, and at the macro level by the so-called “rules of the game” imposed by society. Nelson (1991) states that for an organization to become competitive on the basis of innovation it needs a reasonably coherent strategy that defines and legitimates the way in which it is organized and governed, so as to lay a legitimate foundation for decision making and bargaining for the resources required to create or acquire the competencies need to achieve such a position, and that this can be done by planning and management. Nelson (2006) complements the argument by presenting planning and management as means to avoid redundancy and waste while also stimulating the economies of scale and scope associated with ST&I processes. Although it is possible to justify the importance of ST&I planning and management at the micro level based on the above argument, it is important to note that from an evolutionary perspective innovation is a process that necessarily involves winners and losers. In the case of firms, the idea of winners and losers can easily be associated with the competitive game, so that the winners are seen as the firms that are most profitable and hence best fitted to survive, while the losers are less profitable and thus forced to change strategy or even quit the competition. In the case of other types of organization, such as public research institutions, the idea of winners and losers acquires a different meaning: indeed, innovation itself has a different meaning because it is not exclusively associated with a guarantee of competitiveness for such organizations, but rather with the fulfillment of their organizational mission. This differentiation, however, does not entail imagining that public research institutions are not permanently subject to a selective process in which they can evolve positively or succumb. Like any living organism, they are immersed in specific selective environments with specific criteria and indicators, albeit different from the criteria and indicators of a firm. In this sense, even if all the organizations that engage in such processes implement planning and management in search of an optimal strategy, some will succeed and others will fail. Thus regardless of the process used to coordinate planning and management

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activities, evolutionary environments permanently involve an intrinsic tension between the selective pressure for better resource allocation and the inevitable and necessary errors, failed attempts and duplicated search processes (Dosi & Orsenigo, 1988; Pavitt, 2006). Specificities of ST&I planning and management An answer to the second question requires a return to the components discussed in the preceding sections to test how far they indicate distinctive characteristics. Although they are obviously not all exclusive to ST&I processes, the difference is that together they are in fact specific. Three elements stand out: (1) indeterminacy; (2) the profile of the professionals involved in such processes and the organizational culture that derives from their activities; and (3) multi-institutionality. In what follows, each of these elements is described and analyzed in terms of its implications for ST&I planning and management. (1) Indeterminacy is the main element invoked to characterize the specificity of ST&I processes. Stokes (2005) argues that research proceeds by making choices and that these choices, which precede investment decisions, are guided by the goals set for the project rather than results (since the results are evidently not known beforehand). Thus they are decisions that meet planning requirements and must be based on ex ante assessments, whereas only ex post judgment is capable of indicating, with relative reliability and in a timely manner, which research projects have in fact contributed to general progress in a particular knowledge area or led to significant practical applications. The same interpretation can be applied to innovation processes, which are also characterized by countless choices guided by objectives. Thus, as already mentioned in outlining the evolutionary approach, despite the intentionality of the search processes and decisions that culminate in changes to routines in order successfully to appropriate new products, processes, methods or systems, appropriation and hence success actually takes place only after an ex post selection instance (Nelson & Winter, 2005). Kay (1988) indicates two important characteristics of ST&I processes that reinforce their indeterminate nature. The first is the non-deductibility of R&D, at the level of both product and firm, given that any particular research effort may lead to the creation of a variety of products as well as potentially creating externalities and hence problems relating to 13

property rights. The other characteristic indicated by this author is the existence of a time lag between research activities and commercial or social appropriation of the results. Kay (1988) and Coombs et al. (1989) argue that the indeterminacy inherent in R&D and innovation derives from technological and market aspects as well as equally unpredictable aspects characteristics of the overall economic context. In addition, these authors note that the level of indeterminacy is not uniform for all types of R&D and innovation but varies between the extremes of basic research and radical innovation (high indeterminacy), and incremental technical improvements (low indeterminacy). For present purposes, however, it is important to note that although indeterminacy is a key differentiator of ST&I processes, the uncertainty that gives rise to indeterminacy is intrinsic to any human activity, since what has yet to be done is by definition uncertain. The distinguishing feature of the indeterminacy in ST&I processes is that it arises from activities that have not yet been tested. In this sense, they can be considered more indeterminate than activities that have been carried out and tested before. Along the same lines, it can be said that ST&I basically involve assessment and decision making in conditions of uncertainty and high indeterminacy as to results, and that the decisions in question relate to the direction and form of execution of ST&I processes and to the structure of coordination that governs interactions among the various actors who take part. The discussion in Coombs et al. (1989) indicates that any choice that is part of the framework of initiatives in the planning and management of research and innovation involves an assessment based on a set of criteria that contemplate the variety and complexity characteristic of ST&I processes. Nelson & Winter (2005), for example, present relevant criteria for the determination of resource allocation in R&D projects for technological planning. However, according to these authors there does not seem to be a pattern in R&D allocation decisions, which obviously must attend both to factors on the demand side and to factors that influence the ease or cost of invention and generally relate to the required knowledge base. Several other authors (Freeman, 1982; Dosi, 1984; Coombs et al., 1989; Jain & Triandis, 1997; Phaal et al., 2004; Tidd et al., 2005) argue, like Nelson & Winter (2005), for the need 14

to include “S&T push” and “demand pull” in the criteria used for ST&I planning and management. Broadly speaking, this means considering the potential capability of a given research project to consolidate or structure a scientific and technological basis in the organization, even if a priori there is no pre-existing market for whatever results, as well as considering the expected pay-off from the project. The analysis of TCE as applied to ST&I presented in the previous section mentions some broader criteria commonly used to support decision making to determine the appropriate governance structures. These criteria are also important in distinguishing the direction of ST&I processes, which means they are also suitable for identifying the scientific problems to be addressed, the technologies to be explored, and the products, processes and methods to be developed. There is no such thing as a pre-determined list of criteria, of course. They will depend to a great extent on the specificities of the organization doing the analysis. Moreover, it is also worth stressing that the criteria change over time, along with the organizational and institutional structure in which the ST&I processes are engendered. Although the authors who discuss this topic focus on the various criteria that should be considered to deal with indeterminacy, as mentioned earlier, this is not a distinctive feature of this type of analysis since any assessment is always based on an interpretation of the attributes of an object according to established criteria (Zackiewicz, 2005). The distinctive feature of ST&I planning and management imposed by indeterminacy is the inherent impossibility of precisely measuring the relevant attributes of the various alternatives, which also makes it impossible to interpret them precisely in a set of criteria. The function of the criteria is merely to support decision making: their measurement and analysis cannot directly elicit a discernment regarding the best of a set of choices, given the intrinsic indeterminacy that makes imprecise any ex ante calculation on this subject. Thus decisions taken in the sphere of ST&I planning and management are always wagers, albeit supported by criteria (Howells & James, 2001). (2) The second element that differentiates ST&I planning and management from other planning and management processes in the organizational sphere is the profile of the professionals involved, as well as the culture shared by such professionals, which is strongly derived from the rules, norms and values associated with knowledge creation.

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According to Jain & Triandis (1997), researchers are highly qualified and socially distinct, in that they are highly creative and curious, and capable of taking their own initiatives, all of which are fundamental characteristics for intellectual activities that require a good deal of persistence. They are also intrinsically skeptical, as noted by Merton (1973), which makes them especially prone to question everything. As for the rules, norms and values derived from the ethos of scientific investigation and technological development, which are shared by the professionals involved in knowledge creation and characterize a differentiated organizational culture, two are of particular interest to a study of ST&I planning and management: (i) the imperatives of recognition in the sphere of scientific institutions; and (ii) the need for constant internal and external communication, both of which relate to the element of ideas generation strongly associated with scientific and technological activities. Scientists, understood as professionals who do basic and applied research, have a clear need to win recognition from the scientific community through publications, conferences and other meetings. Coombs et al. (1989) argue that reputation and satisfying their intellectual curiosity are more important to scientists than financial returns, for themselves or the organization. Thus according to these authors management structures in non-academic research organizations (industrial or public) should provide incentives that guarantee the recognition of their scientists by the community (allowing them to interact with their peers via the literature or face to face) or at least compensate them for a lack of recognition. This question is often treated from the perspective of the intrinsic discrepancy between scientists’ individual goals and the objectives of the organization (Jain & Triandis, 1997). The usual result is conflict between scientists and managers, with the former demanding respect for the principles of the scientific ethos, freedom to do research as they see fit and authority based on professional status, while the managers usually take more “utilitarian” views, require compliance with standards, and base their authority on bureaucratic positions and hierarchical power relations. In the case of engineers, the discrepancy is less pronounced because recognition of engineers is generally associated with the development and appropriation of new technology, an interest they share with managers.

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The need for internal and external communication that characterizes the ethos of scientific investigation and technological development shared by the professionals engaged in knowledge creation is also a very important element in the delineation of ST&I management structures. In the case of internal communication, the members of a project team or working group need to build strong relationships in order to assure the interaction and feedback characteristics of non-linear innovation processes, as well as the exchange of ideas required to resolve specific issues. Internal communication is particularly instrumental in avoiding redundancy, fostering new insights and promoting interaction between fundamentally distinct areas such as R&D, marketing and production, or between R&D and corporate planning, so as to minimize conflict (of the kind that frequently pits managers against researchers). In the case of external communication, this basically involves the establishment of channels through which to maintain relations with the scientific community, with users (Jain & Triandis, 1997), and with other organizations that may serve as sources of knowledge, consumers of the knowledge created, or partners in joint development. In the context of open approaches this type of communication becomes even more important, given the increased permeability of knowledge flows and more intense participation by different actors in the knowledge creation process. Although the profile of the professionals involved in ST&I is characterized above in terms of the ethos of scientific and technological development, emphasizing researchers’ specificities, the idea that innovation is not just technological and that it requires other types of activity in addition to those directly relating to R&D enables this notional profile to be broadened to include professionals associated with promoting innovation from a broader perspective. Analogously, however, this profile is also strongly associated with creativity and autonomy, and with the establishment of structures that foster communication to the detriment of structures that favor conflict, by avoiding or eliminating institutional lock-in and strengthening the ability to learn and promote change. Lastly, it should be stressed that although there are general characteristics of the profile of professionals involved in ST&I, especially the R&D component, and of an organizational culture appropriate for research and innovation indicating specific elements to be

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considered in planning and management, it is equally important to consider particular characteristics relating to the evolution of rules and internal standards in each organization and their co-evolution with broader institutional structures. (3) The third and last element that differentiates ST&I planning and management processes from other planning and management processes in the organizational sphere is multiinstitutionality, discussed above in connection with the collective logic underlying the execution of research and innovation activities, the recent tendency for increasing interorganizational collaboration, and the growing permeability of knowledge flows. The difference this makes is that an analysis of planning and management must take the external environment into account, not just in terms of the macro-institutional components but also considering at the micro level the relationships actually or potentially established between different organizations. Three main types of relationship are important in this context, with due consideration to their intersections: relationships established through governance structures to mediate the transactions associated with knowledge creation and appropriation (buying, selling, licensing, transfer, partnering etc.); relationships established on the basis of the institutionally delimited roles of different actors in the performance of specific functions in the sphere of ST&I systems; and relationships that derive from an understanding of the selective nature of this institutional environment. In sum, indeterminacy, the profile of the professionals involved and multi-institutionality raise the following main points for ST&I planning and management: the need to contemplate a variety of criteria such as support for analysis and decision making on the direction and form of execution of scientific and technological development and innovation processes, and the structure for coordinating the interactions among the various actors who participate in them; the capacity to deal with high levels of creativity, curiosity and autonomy of initiative on the part of researchers, to manage conflicts between researchers and managers, and to permit their insertion and adequate recognition in the scientific community; and the ability to create distinct structures of relationship between organizations and institutions in knowledge production and appropriation.

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Premises of ST&I planning and management Having defined the key elements that distinguish ST&I planning and management, the next step is to answer the third question, which relates to the premises to be taken into consideration when conducting such efforts. Broadly speaking, it can be said that the basic premise of ST&I planning and management is a combination of coordination and control with freedom: coordination and control so that organizations are capable of deploying their internal knowledge base as well as external knowledge bases in differing ways to seize new opportunities in an efficient and effective manner, in line with the organization’s general goals; and freedom to assure the necessary autonomy in creative environments and experimentation with new solutions (Betz, 1987; Jain & Triandis, 1997; Sapienza, 2004). Nelson (2006) questions the need for planned coordination and centralized control, arguing that these structures may impede the flexibility required for research and innovation. Thus it is not a matter of eliminating a decision-making structure but of keeping it decentralized and informal so as to guarantee speed and functionality (since a formalized process may be slower), and of keeping it associated with actions capable of restricting research to areas in which applications appear promising. Thus it is a matter of establishing a decision-making system for coordination and control that is compatible with the traditions of the scientific community (Nelson, 2006) and capable of promoting innovation, which according to Betz (1987) occurs within a structure that offers directions without rigidity. ST&I planning and management as evolutionary processes In sum, analyzing ST&I planning and management via the same approaches as those used to investigate the development of such processes means conceiving of these efforts as applied to search routines by organizations and also to the identification of their selective environments, enabling organizations to take decisions continuously on what to do and how to do it (and also on how much of it to do), based on the information available. The goal should therefore be to create the conditions to plan and manage research and innovation as an evolutionary process defined by attitudes internal to the organization (search routines) and by instances to which the organization is continuously subject (selection process).

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To assist in directing and executing search procedures, given the intention to succeed with the results of research innovation, planning and management must be capable of creating routines to identify opportunities (arising from the stimulus produced by the evolution of knowledge and scientific and technological development, and from the demands of society and the market), train people, design and execute projects, and interact with other actors, guaranteeing the physical, financial and human resources this requires. Particularly with regard to interaction, it is worth stressing the importance of defining more adequate governance structures, meaning those capable of minimizing transaction costs and guaranteeing the benefits associated with the values constructed by organizations in the institutionalization process. TCE is a highly useful framework for make-or-buy decisions in this context. Complementarily, the planning process must consider aspects relating to the social appropriation of research and of new products, processes and methods, creating routines to increase comprehension and operations in different markets, social segments and technical and economic systems, with their respective legal and regulatory frameworks, and to take the business opportunities that arise as well as exploring the conditions of appropriability of the knowledge developed and acquired. Thus although there is indeterminacy, economic actors should always look to the future and behave strategically, guided by the idea that their actions influence the world and that they can bring about expected changes through articulation with other actors. Concretely speaking, the task is to develop an evolutionary vision of the ST&I planning and management process. To take the concept proposed by Nelson & Winter, planning can be seen as an organized search procedure that together with management creates internal routines in organizations. If planning and management in general can be understood as instruments for dealing with evolving environments, there is all the more reason for planning and management in S&T to be based on the same principle. Integrated management of ST&I is the link that brings together planning and management of search procedures with market (or extra-market) selection, creating routines and methods to communicate, translate and interact with the different perspectives that make up the processes of ST&I development. Ultimately, inasmuch as ST&I planning and management

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involve assessment and decision making in conditions of indeterminacy, their results are the alternatives selected to orient the direction and form of execution of ST&I development processes, as well as coordination of the interaction among the various actors who take part in them. From this perspective it can be concluded that ST&I planning and management are also routines of the organization, with all the characteristics of routines, such as specificity, relations with learning processes, resilience and evolution. It becomes clear that just as ST&I processes in the organizational sphere result from certain organizational and institutional configurations which change over time, planning and management procedures are also characterized by this evolutionary component. The motivations capable of orienting search procedures regarding this type of organizational innovation are varied and necessarily include the identification of opportunities for growth, sustainability, visibility and legitimacy for the organization. The initiative of studying and internalizing existing practices or developing and/or adapting them can be taken by different areas of groups within the organization, out of an interest in changing the operating routines used in management to improve the operating routines used in development and production or as a result of a mandate containing this objective. As with technological innovation, the scope and level of formalization of planning processes as well as their organization in terms of management and the flow of decisions vary enormously. Hence the importance of ensuring not only that ST&I planning and management are suitable for dealing with specific and evolutionary processes increasingly characterized by intense forms of collaboration, but also that they are themselves understood as evolutionary processes continually subject to selective instances. The fundamental effort is therefore to identify structures and choose suitable methods and tools with which to operationalize them, while also striving to institutionalize this type of procedure in the organizational sphere so as to make this type of practice legitimate and resilient.

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