روابط میان علم، فن آوری و بهره برداری صنعتی از آنها: تصویر سازی از طریق افسانه ها و واقعیت های به اصطلاح پارادوکس اروپا '

This paper discusses, first, the properties of scientific and technological knowledge and the institutions supporting its generation and its economic applications. The evidence supports the broad interpretation that we call the ‘Stanford–Yale–Sussex’ synthesis. Second, such patterns yield important implications with respect to the so-called ‘European Paradox’, i.e. the conjecture that EU countries play a leading global role in terms of top-level scientific output, but lag behind in the ability of converting this strength into wealth-generating innovations. Some descriptive evidence shows that, contrary to the ‘paradox’ conjecture, Europe's weaknesses reside both in its system of scientific research and in a relatively weak industry. The final part of the paper identifies a few normative implications: much less emphasis should be put on various types of ‘networking’, and much more on policy measures aimed at strengthening both frontier research and European corporate actors.

The present paper is intended to reappraise the tangled relationships between science, technologies and their industrial exploitation with reference to a popular interpretation concerning European weaknesses in industrial innovation known as the ‘European Paradox’. Such a paradox – which sounds quite similar to an earlier ‘UK paradox’ fashionable around 30 years ago – refers to the conjecture that EU countries play a leading global role in terms of top-level scientific output, but lag behind in the ability to convert this strength into wealth-generating innovations. We shall argue, first, that the paradox mostly appears just in the flourishing business of reporting to and by the European Commission itself rather than in the data. Second, both the identification of the purported paradox, and the many proposed recipes for eliminating it, seem to be loaded with several, often questionable, assumptions regarding the relationship between scientific and technological knowledge, and between both of these and the search and production activities of business enterprises. We begin by setting the scene and recalling what we consider to be the main properties of scientific and technological knowledge and of the institutions supporting its generation (Section 2). The proposed framework, we suggest, fits quite well with a series of robust ‘stylized facts’ (Section 3). Having spelled out the interpretative tools, we turn to the evidence supporting the existence of a ‘European Paradox’ (or the lack of it) (Section 4) and discuss European comparative performance in terms of scientific output, higher education characteristics, proxies for technological innovation, and actual production and exports in those lines of business that draw more directly on scientific advances. Here, one does not find much of a paradox. Certainly one observes significant differences across scientific and technological fields, but the notion of overall ‘European excellence’ finds little support. At the same time, one does find ample evidence of widespread European corporate weakness, notwithstanding certain success stories. This interpretation also has far-reaching normative implications (Section 5). If we are right, much less emphasis should be put on various types of ‘networking’, ‘interactions with the local environment’, or ‘attention to user needs’ – current obsessions of European policy makers – and much more on policy measures aimed at strengthening ‘frontier’ research and, at the opposite end, at strengthening European corporate actors.