La centralità delle scuole di eccellenza nei network scientifico-tecnologici

Previous investigations showed that Italian university professors are the authors of a considerable share of the patents owned by firms in science-based technological classes. The analysis conducted in this paper of USPTO patents confirms those results. Moreover, we show that the realization of patents in the context of researches funded by firms involves undergraduate and PhD students, university fellows and technicians: thus, the role of the academy appears significantly augmented. It also appears that the cooperation between university and industry in patenting is concentrated in a few academic centres of excellence. Therefore, focusing on the field of electronics, we seek to identify and depict academic centres of excellence. By applying the methodology of Social Network Analysis, we are able to show their importance not only in the production of codified knowledge, but also in the transfer of know-how and tacit knowledge. Moreover, we confer analytical substance to the concept of invisibile college, measuring their dimensions and structural features. The centre of excellence, which is the core of the principal component of the network, gives rise to a real invisible college, in which the academic and the technological world are interpenetrated. And this interpenetration does not hinder purely scientific production, but rather it seems to favour it.

Margherita Balconi, Andrea Laboranti, La centralità delle scuole di eccellenza nei network scientifico-tecnologici in "ECONOMIA E POLITICA INDUSTRIALE " 120/2003, pp , DOI: