Workplace Innovation and Technological Change. CEPS Special Report, September 2012

This paper explores the extent to which the illusive phenomenon of workplace innovation has pervaded workplaces in Europe and whether it could be one of the answers to Europe’s longterm social and economic challenges that stem from an ageing workforce and the need for more flexibility to stay competitive. Basic data drawn from European Working Conditions Survey conducted every five years by the Dublin-based European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions are supplemented by a series of case studies to look at the problems encountered in introducing workplace innovation and possible solutions. One set of case studies examines the following organisations: SGI/GI (Slovak Governance Institute (Slovakia), as representative of the world of small- and medium-sized enterprises; Oticon (Denmark) as representative of manufacturing companies; the Open University (UK), as representative of educational organizations; and FPS Social Security (Belgium) representing the public sector. Two final case studies focus on the country-level, one looking at of how a specific innovation can become fully mainstreamed (in the Netherlands and the ‘part-time economy’) and the other (Finland and TEKES) looking at how a government programme can help disseminate workplace innovation. These six case studies, together with the statistical analysis, constitute the main empirical value added of the report.

Promoting innovation and exceptional performance in the Scottish construction industry

Demonstration Projects are an initiative developed in response to demands presented in the 1998 Egan Report. Scotland has witnessed an attempt to keep the momentum and the so called Demonstration Projects Team at the University of Dundee was introduced in late 2003. The team’s responsibility was to revitalise and restructure Scottish Demonstration Projects. These are now a major initiative within the newly established Scottish Construction Innovation and Excellence Centre, a part of Scottish Construction Forum that is an umbrella organisation funded by the Scottish Executive through Scottish Enterprise Glasgow.

Plant variety protection, innovation, and transferability: Some empirical evidence

Under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, all member-countries of the World Trade Organization are required to provide an "effective" system of plant variety protection within a specific time frame. In many developing countries, this has led to a divisive debate about the fundamental desirability of extending intellectual property rights to agriculture. Empirical studies on the economic impacts of plant variety protection, especially its ability to generate large private sector investments in plant breeding and to facilitate the transfer of technology, have been very limited. This paper examines two aspects of the international experience of plant variety protection: (a) the relationship between legislation, research, and development expenditures and plant variety protection grants, i.e., the innovation effect and (b) the role of plant variety protection in facilitating the flow of varieties across countries, i.e., the transferability effect.

Technology trajectories, innovation, and the growth of biomimetics

Publication rate of patents can be a useful measure of innovation and productivity in science and technology. Patenting activity in new technological fields follows a sigmoid (S-shaped) path. Qualitative and quantitative models in management and economics literature explain why such patterns of productivity may occur. TRIZ analysis suggests that patents are generated in bursts during the evolution of a product and that they are at different levels of inventiveness. The tendency is for the inventiveness to reduce as the product is more mature. This makes it possible to guess at the lifetime stage of a product and gauge its maturity and profitability. An analysis of patenting activity and other measures of inventiveness in the emerging field of biomimetics was presented, and future trends in biologically-inspired innovation was discussed.