scienceandpublicpolicy.docVIP

Science and Public Policy Volume 43, Issue 2, April 2015 1. Title: Individual Inventors and Market Potentials: Evidence from US Patents Authors: Christos Agiakloglou, Kyriakos Drivas, and Dimitris Karamanis. Abstract: This paper examines the propensity for patents by individual inventors to be commercialized. By exploiting a peculiarity of the US patent system, concerning the different patent renewal fees paid in order to obtain small or large entity status, we are able to distinguish patents that become part of a large corporation’s patent portfolio. Using an extensive dataset of US patents, for both domestic and foreign individual inventors, we find that patent characteristics, size of research teams, prior patenting experience and past corporate patenting activity are positively associated with an increased likelihood of transferring patent rights to large corporations. 2. Title: The Magician’S Hat: Evidence and Openness in Policy Making Authors: Mike Porteous. Abstract: This paper focuses on evidence and openness in policy making, drawing primarily on hands-on experience in innovation and industrial policy in the UK. We suggest that much of the current debates use unhelpful juxtapositions and are insufficiently focused on what is happening in the darkness of the policy making ‘magician’s hat’. We use a post-positivist perspective to tease open key features of openness and evidence in policy making, showing similar and intertwined social processes at work in the supposedly distinct worlds of political, administrative officialdom and expertise. From there we map out a range of external influences on policy making, putting evidence, expert knowledge and other inputs into context. We then focus on knowledge generation and what we term the breadth and depth of policy definition to introduce a novel typology of policy making. This helps us to identify the different forms that openness and the use of evidence and expertise take. 3. Title: Aligning Innovation wit