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Limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5 °C will rely, in part, on technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. However, many carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies are in the early stages of development, and there is limited data to inform predictions of their future adoption. Here, we present an approach to model adoption of early-stage technologies such as CDR and apply it to direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS). Our approach combines empirical data on historical technology analogs and early adoption indicators to model a range of feasible growth pathways. We use these pathways as inputs to an integrated assessment model (the Global Change Analysis Model, GCAM) and evaluate their effects under an emissions policy to limit end-of-century temperature change to 1.5 °C. Adoption varies widely across analogs, which share different strategic similarities with DACCS. If DACCS growth mirrors high-growth analogs (e.g., solar photovoltaics), it can reach up to 4.9 GtCO2 removal by midcentury, compared to as low as 0.2 GtCO2 for low-growth analogs (e.g., natural gas pipelines). For these slower growing analogs, unabated fossil fuel generation in 2050 is reduced by 44% compared to high-growth analogs, with implications for energy investments and stranded assets. Residual emissions at the end of the century are also substantially lower (by up to 43% and 34% in transportation and industry) under lower DACCS scenarios. The large variation in growth rates observed for different analogs can also point to policy takeaways for enabling DACCS.

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Against the backdrop of a failing vaccine innovation system, innovation policy aimed at creating a COVID-19 vaccine was surprisingly fast and effective. This paper analyzes the influence of the COVID-19 landscape shock and corresponding innovation policy responses on the existing vaccine innovation system. We use document analysis and expert interviews, performed during vaccine development. We find that the sharing of responsibility between public and private actors on various geographical levels, and the focus on accelerating changes in the innovation system were instrumental in achieving fast results. Simultaneously, the acceleration exacerbated existing societal innovation barriers, such as vaccine hesitancy, health inequity, and contested privatization of earnings. Going forward, these innovation barriers may limit the legitimacy of the vaccine innovation system and reduce pandemic preparedness. Next to a focus on acceleration, transformative innovation policies for achieving sustainable pandemic preparedness are still urgently needed. Implications for mission-oriented innovation policy are discussed.

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Improved African pharmaceutical manufacturing has been on global and local agendas since the 1970s, yet the industry has been locked-in into low technologies for decades. What caused the technological and industrial stagnation for such a critical sector for local and global health security? What are the political economy roots of such long-running industrial underdevelopment lock-in? What do colonial extractive economic and political institutions and their setup and mixes have to do with the sector? This study considers how extractive economic and political institutions' architectures and infrastructures shaped the African pharmaceutical industry's underdevelopment. We argue that extractive economic and political institutions shaped contemporary institutions in former colonial countries, and these institutions persist for a long time. The pivotal argument of innovation systems is that technological change-driven innovation is important for building superior economic performance and competitiveness, and institutions are a vital component of the system. However, institutions are not value-neutral; they carry the political and economic objectives and aspirations of the agents who design them. Innovation systems theory needs to incorporate the analysis of extractive economic and political institutions and the role they played in locking-in the African pharmaceutical industries into underdevelopment.

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Sustainability innovations influence societal transformations through the development of new products, processes, organizations, behaviors or values. Although various research approaches have tackled technological innovations in the last few decades, the specificities and enabling conditions of individual sustainability innovations remain rather unknown. We therefore propose an analytical framework, built on learning from the social-ecological systems and transitions literature. The sustainability innovation framework features four dimensions: context, actors, process and outcomes, which are detailed in 31 variables. We use the sustainability innovation framework to analyze two case studies selected in the Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve, Germany. The first refers to technological and organizational innovation in mobility, while the second relates to social and organizational innovation in agriculture. As a result, we highlight commonalities and differences in enabling conditions and variables between the two cases, which underpin the influence of trust, commitment, resource availability, experimenting, learning, advocating, and cooperating for innovation development. The cases further demonstrate that sustainability innovations develop as bundles of interdependent, entangled novelties, due to their disruptive character. Their specificity thereby resides in positive outcomes in terms of social-ecological integrity and equity. This study therefore contributes to transitions studies via a detailed characterization of sustainability innovations and of their outcomes, as well as through a generic synthesis of variables into an analytical framework that is applicable to a large and diverse range of individual sustainability innovations. Further empirical studies should test these findings in other contexts, to pinpoint generic innovation development patterns and to develop a typology of sustainability innovation archetypes.

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It is widely known that the Global Innovation Index reports are of unique value for research purposes. The aim of this work is to provide a panel data file with all pillars of the Global Innovation Index from 2011 until 2022, covering all available economies (149 in total) by income level. After the secondary data was gathered, it was reshaped in an exhaustive process that involved directly importing it from databases or manual insertion. Based on successive Global Innovation Index reports and World Bank data, this work attempts to provide a whole set of data on the incomes of world economies by using Gross Domestic Product per capita based on purchasing power parity (constant 2017 international $ and current international $) and Gross National Income per capita in current U.S. dollars (Atlas method). A descriptive analysis is also provided of data and inferences drawn based on the income differences between economies. The data compilation shared here has a singular relevance as it makes a large amount of structured information easier to access. Moreover, data from subsequent years or even from new entries of economies in the Global Innovation Index reports could be added to the data file. As a practical implication, this work should be considered a reliable tool for quantitative research directly or indirectly related with innovation topics (policies, ecosystems, technologies, programmes, among others), as it reduces the time-consuming process of gathering data.

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The incorporation of public organizations is meant to improve their efficiency and contribution to national and local economies. In Japan, incorporation has been implemented at the national and local levels since the late 1990s. This process alters the incentive system comprising intellectual property (IP) ownership, managerial freedom, and rent sharing, which promotes IP commercialization. This study assesses the economic consequences of the incentive system reform, taking the example of a public innovation intermediary, Kohsetsushi. Unlike the incorporation of national universities, the incorporation of Kohsetsushi is at the discretion of local governments. Therefore, there should be a comparative advantage for both incorporated and unincorporated Kohsetsushi. A dataset representative of both types of Kohsetsushi was established to estimate the average treatment effects on the treated (ATT), identify the type of selection into incorporation, and discuss the economic consequences of endogenous selection by local governments. The counterfactual analysis of licensing income revealed a negative ATT of incorporation and negative selection into not choosing incorporation. Incorporated Kohsetsushi would have had higher licensing income had they not been incorporated. The evidence does not support comparative advantage. The unintended consequence might have been caused by the lack of harmonization between the incentive and evaluation systems.

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The study sought to: (1) evaluate agriculturalists' characteristics as adopters of IoT smart agriculture technologies, (2) evaluate traits fostering innovation adoption, (3) evaluate the cycle of IoT smart agriculture adoption, and, lastly, (4) discern attributes and barriers of information communication. Researchers utilized a survey design to develop an instrument composed of eight adoption constructs and one personal characteristic construct and distributed it to agriculturalists at an agricultural exposition in Rio Grande do Sul. Three-hundred-forty-four (n = 344) agriculturalists responded to the data collection instrument. Adopter characteristics of agriculturalists were educated, higher consciousness of social status, larger understanding of technology use, and more likely identified as opinion leaders in communities. Innovation traits advantageous to IoT adoption regarding smart agriculture innovations were: (a) simplistic, (b) easily communicated to a targeted audience, (c) socially accepted, and (d) larger degrees of functionality. Smart agriculture innovation's elevated levels of observability and compatibility coupled with the innovation's low complexity were the diffusion elements predicting agriculturalists' adoption. Agriculturalists' beliefs in barriers to adopting IoT innovations were excessive complexity and minimal compatibility. Practitioners or change agents should promote IoT smart agriculture technologies to opinion leaders, reduce the innovation's complexity, and amplify educational opportunities for technologies. The existing sum of IoT smart agriculture adoption literature with stakeholders and actors is descriptive and limited, which constitutes this inquiry as unique.

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This exploratory study adds to the under-developed literature on a Research Topic that laden with epistemological, philosophical, and ideological overtones, and that begs many questions. The literature on political economy generally, and that for Africa, enjoys full disciplinary status. In contrast the political economy of research and innovation remains an emerging interdisciplinary field that examines the overlap between innovation studies and political economy. The pursuit of "science and technology" was expected to play its part in the imperialist and colonial agendas, and in the post-colonial project, when science and technology policy was a strong element in advocacy for Africa's post-independence development. What have the policies achieved, and what explains the shortfalls? What indeed is the relationship between industrial policy and research and innovation policy? What is the social contract with research and innovation? The study commences with a general overview of the social contract for science before turning to Africa's post-independence modernizing agenda, and the roles ascribed to industrial policy and research and innovation policy. An eclectic methodology drawing on Cloutier (2021) is deployed to characterize and measure the social contract between research and innovation. The methodology adapts Cloutier (2021) to the functionality of national innovation systems. The responsiveness of STI policy is further probed using Martin, 2015 categorization of innovation policy informed by Theory of Change. Where possible reference is made to conventional STI indicators. Research and innovation policy is then assessed at continental and national levels, with attention given to the extent of linkages in national innovation systems. Further to tease out the various forms of social contract, five country-level STI policies are analyzed using the Martin categorization and Theory of Change methodology. It will be argued that a binding, social contract for inclusive research and innovation policy is largely absent, so that the prospects for attaining the SDGs remain elusive. Post Glasgow COP-26, donor pressure might be re-oriented to promote engagement with the Sustainable Development Goals, though the upholding research sovereignty could mitigate against this. Africa might rightly chide against such pressure, given her experience of what has been labeled as "vaccine apartheid."

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The launch of the Russian Sputnik vaccine in 2020 echoed the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite in 1957 and reminded the world once again that Russia is a sophisticated technological power. Most inventions in the Soviet Union were managed by the system of inventor's certificates which ensured open flows of knowledge among the scientific networks behind Russia's industrial development. Inventions in today's Russia are managed by the globalized institution of patents which can create high barriers to entry in innovation markets. This article argues that the globalized institution of patents has been compromised in Russia because the barriers to entry that patents create are not justified in the absence of well-functioning markets. The danger of the institutional mismatch is lost opportunities for Russia to grow knowledge and to diversify its economy. Western property rights in innovation in the hands of crony capitalists can magnify the social harms of the patent system leading to high concentration of ownership of knowledge.

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While the Global North is historically responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) are expected to overtake developed country emissions in the coming years. At the same time, NICs are climbing the ladder of the global economy, increasing their competitiveness on the global stage and catching up with technological competencies of developed economies. Against this background, this paper explores innovation and collaboration in Climate Change Mitigation Technologies (CCMTs) in NICs. The research question is whether the propensity to innovate and diffuse CCMTs is impacted by technological collaboration with two highly developed countries, Germany and The United States. The sample of NICs includes the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) plus Israel, Mexico, and Turkey, in a panel from 1995 to 2015. The empirical results suggest that collaboration with both Germany and the U.S. is highly significant for domestic CCMT innovation in NICs. These findings are important because, stepping beyond the literature on the merits and drawbacks of global climate governance tools such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and related UNFCCC processes, they show that collaboration for climate and environmental technologies could become a key tool to significantly improve the chances to stay in line with the Paris Climate Agreement. Finally, the policy advice for NICs and developing countries is to, above all else, focus on incubating strong technological innovation systems, including strengthening domestic Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), as well as to enhance technological collaboration with developed countries.

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Despite the emergence of unique opportunities for social-industrial growth and development resulting from the use of the Internet of Things (IoT), lack of a well-posed IoT governance will cause serious threats on personal privacy, public safety, industrial security, and dubious data gathering by unauthorized entities. Furthermore, adopting a systemic governance approach, particularly for the IoT innovation system, requires a precise clarification on the concept and scope of IoT governance. In this study, by employing the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach, the role of governance in the Iran IoT innovation system is investigated. Contacting respondents across the seven industries, including Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Healthcare, Transportation, Oil and Gas, Energy, Agriculture, and Banking over the course of three months, the authors performed statistical analysis on 319 fulfilled questionnaires using SPPS and Smart PLS software. Findings show that all IoT-related TIS processes have been affected by IoT governance functions. The main result of this study is the proposition of particular governance functions, including policy-making, regulation, facilitation, and service provision with more notable impact on the indicators of the key processes in the IoT-based TIS.

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Multiomics study designs have significantly increased understanding of complex biological systems. The multiomics literature is rapidly expanding and so is their heterogeneity. However, the intricacy and fragmentation of omics data are impeding further research. To examine current trends in multiomics field, we reviewed 52 articles from PubMed and Web of Science, which used an integrated omics approach, published between March 2006 and January 2021. From studies, data regarding investigated loci, species, omics type, and phenotype were extracted, curated, and streamlined according to standardized terminology, and summarized in a previously developed graphical summary. Evaluated studies included 21 omics types or applications of omics technology such as genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, epigenomics, environmental omics, and pharmacogenomics, species of various phyla including human, mouse, Arabidopsis thaliana, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and various phenotypes, including cancer and COVID-19. In the analyzed studies, diverse methods, protocols, results, and terminology were used and accordingly, assessment of the studies was challenging. Adoption of standardized multiomics data presentation in the future will further buttress standardization of terminology and reporting of results in systems science. This shall catalyze, we suggest, innovation in both science communication and laboratory medicine by making available scientific knowledge that is easier to grasp, share, and harness toward medical breakthroughs.

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Research and Technology Organizations (RTOs) have key roles in stories of national industrial development in many countries, and in various contexts they have transformed according to changes in their surrounding economic and policy environments. This paper proposes a conceptual framework of 'RTOs as super intermediaries' as they play multiple intermediary roles in the triple helix (government, research and industry), the overlap of industrial policy and research policy, and research-industry frontiers. The framework helps in understanding and advancing the role of RTOs in industrial development, particularly in developing countries. For a case study, the paper showcases research in Tanzania that explored possibilities of revamping RTOs and whether investing in them would help in spurring Tanzania's industrial development. Through key informant interviews and systemic literature review, a case study on the challenges and opportunities of RTOs was designed to examine their role and potential in industrial development and technology innovation processes. The study findings were overall in-line with two main lenses of inquiry: 1) that for RTOs to play their key roles in Tanzania, industrial policies shaped by the command economy era before the 1990s need to be reviewed and modified; and 2) that more investment in revamping RTOs will take place if policymaking processes acknowledge RTOs as super intermediaries. To organize policy lessons drawn, a multi-level policy map-micro, meso and macro-was utilized as an analytical tool.

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The current severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak demonstrates the potential of coronaviruses, especially bat-derived beta coronaviruses to rapidly escalate to a global pandemic that has caused deaths in the order of several millions already. The huge efforts put in place by the scientific community to address this emergency have disclosed how the implementation of new technologies is crucial in the prepandemic period to timely face future ecological crises. In this context, we argue that metagenomics and new approaches to understanding ecosystems and biodiversity offer veritable prospects to innovate therapeutics and diagnostics against novel and existing infectious agents. We discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with the science of metagenomics, specifically with an eye to inform and prevent future ecological crises and pandemics that are looming on the horizon in the 21st century.

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As a microcosm for future challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic exhibits increasingly transboundary dynamics, causing interconnected problems across multiple societal systems. To examine the role of innovations as a social mechanism to reconcile these arising challenges, we view the unfolding of the pandemic through the lens of a content analysis of 707 innovation projects that address the fundamental human needs of consumers and businesses. This study proposes a novel procedure to characterize large-scale innovative activities via text mining and employs a theoretical framework for identifying the pressing societal needs amidst crises. Our typology of rapid-response COVID-19 innovations exhibits a diverse set of domains ranging from technological innovations to what may be described as frugal and social innovations. We provide evidence for the growing prevalence of social needs beyond the basic notion of safety during the early months of the crisis. Our contributions show that a structural model of innovation activities and their latent drivers may help policy makers and innovators to move toward achieving a systemic reaction to such crises.

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The globalisation trend of the past few decades, driven to a large extent by the proliferation of GVCs, has led to a set of significant changes in patterns of technology upgrading and new modes of interaction between domestic technology efforts and external sources of technological knowledge. Whether this new dynamic will lead to continuing increase in the economic importance of emerging economies will ultimately depend on whether their productivity growth will be driven by technology upgrading, requiring active and coordinated activity orchestrated by a variety of state and non-state actors under diverse sectoral, regional and national innovation systems. The new dynamic also reinforces the focus on local-global interfaces which becomes ever more important once we recognize that in the 21st century technology upgrading challenges depend much more on improvements in connectivity and on the industrial ecosystem. Still, the globalization process experienced in the past few decades-reflected in this collection of papers-may need to be recalibrated in the face of the drastic geopolitical changes that the process itself has brought about.

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BACKGROUND: Food systems are associated with severe and persistent problems worldwide. Governance approaches aiming to foster sustainable transformation of food systems face several challenges due to the complex nature of food systems. SCOPE AND APPROACH: In this commentary we argue that addressing these governance challenges requires the development and adoption of novel research and innovation (R&I) approaches that will provide evidence to inform food system transformation and will serve as catalysts for change. We first elaborate on the complexity of food systems (transformation) and stress the need to move beyond traditional linear R&I approaches to be able to respond to persistent problems that affect food systems. Though integrated transdisciplinary approaches are promising, current R&I systems do not sufficiently support such endeavors. As such, we argue, we need strategies that trigger a double transformation - of food systems and of their R&I systems. KEY FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS: Seizing the opportunities to transform R&I systems has implications for how research is done - pointing to the need for competence development among researchers, policy makers and society in general - and requires specific governance interventions that stimulate a systemic approach. Such interventions should foster transdisciplinary and transformative research agendas that stimulate portfolios of projects that will reinforce one another, and stimulate innovative experiments to shape conditions for systemic change. In short, a thorough rethinking of the role of R&I as well as how it is funded is a crucial step towards the development of the integrative policies that are necessary to engender systemic change - in the food system and beyond.

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El carácter colaborativo de un Sistema Nacional de Innovación presupone la implantación de políticas públicas para la innovación, que deben orientar la acción y la interacción de los agentes de dicho sistema. En este contexto, la universidad asume un papel relevante porque es la gran responsable de la producción del conocimiento científico en las naciones. El objetivo general de la investigación se orientó al análisis de políticas públicas nacionales e institucionales y a los indicadores de innovación de Brasil y España en lo que se refiere a la producción y al intercambio del conocimiento científico. Se optó por una investigación de naturaleza cualitativa, integrada por el análisis bibliográfico y documental, y un estudio comparativo entre políticas e indicadores de CT&I vigentes en los ámbitos brasileño y español. Se concluye que los documentos analizados enfocan los conceptos y principios de la interacción, pero se hace necesaria la incorporación de aspectos que contribuyan a la efectividad de la actuación integrada y el intercambio de conocimiento entre los agentes de los respectivos sistemas nacionales de innovación(AU)

The collaborative nature of national innovation systems implies the implementation of public policies for innovation, intended to guide the action and interaction of the agents involved in the system. Universities play a relevant role in that context, being as they are major producers of scientific knowledge in countries. The general purpose of the study was to analyze national and institutional public policies and innovation indicators from Brazil and Spain related to the production and exchange of scientific knowledge. A qualitative study was conducted consisting in bibliographic and document analysis and a comparison between ST&I indicators and policies in place in Brazil and Spain. The documents analyzed were found to address interaction concepts and principles, but it is necessary to include aspects contributing to the effectiveness of integrated action and exchange of knowledge between the agents involved in the national innovation systems(AU)

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Agricultural innovation systems has become a popular approach to understand and facilitate agricultural innovation. However, there is often no explicit reflection on the role of agricultural innovation systems in food systems transformation and how they relate to transformative concepts and visions (e.g. agroecology, digital agriculture, Agriculture 4.0, AgTech and FoodTech, vertical agriculture, protein transitions). To support such reflection we elaborate on the importance of a mission-oriented perspective on agricultural innovation systems. We review pertinent literature from innovation, transition and policy sciences, and argue that a mission-oriented agricultural innovation systems (MAIS) approach can help understand how agricultural innovation systems at different geographical scales develop to enable food systems transformation, in terms of forces, catalysts, and barriers in transformative food systems change. Focus points can be in the mapping of missions and sub-missions of MAIS within and across countries, or understanding the drivers, networks, governance, theories of change, evolution and impacts of MAIS. Future work is needed on further conceptual and empirical development of MAIS and its connections with existing food systems transformation frameworks. Also, we argue that agricultural systems scholars and practitioners need to reflect on how the technologies and concepts they work on relate to MAIS, how these represent a particular directionality in innovation, and whether these also may support exnovation.

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This research note analyses the evolving geographies of coronavirus disease research before and during the first three months of the 2020 epidemic outbreak. An examination of global networks of scientific co-production highlights the increasing centrality and knowledge intermediation profile of Chinese organisations. It is argued that it is important to understand these global geographies and networks, as they may signal varying (and cumulative) abilities to generate, intermediate, and access relevant knowledge in the face of epidemic outbreaks.