What role for social sciences in innovation?: Re-assessing how scientific disciplines contribute to different industries

Caroline Paunov, Sandra Planes-Satorra and Tadanori Moriguchi
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Sandra Planes-Satorra: OECD
Tadanori Moriguchi: Japan Patent Office

No 45, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: Knowledge transfer between industry and science is fundamental to innovation. There are important differences across scientific disciplines and sectors of activity in that, for instance, the financial and pharmaceutical sectors have different demands for science inputs. This paper reviews the data sources and associated methodologies available to measure different types of science-industry interaction. It applies these insights to re-assess the contributions of social sciences to industry and the disciplinary needs of the ICT sector. The paper finds that commonly used methodologies fail to shed light on a number of important industry-science interaction channels, and introduce biases in assessing connections. Using new evidence from labour force and university graduate surveys can help to some extent. The paper shows how these additional data allow to better capture the contributions of social scientists and the complexity of disciplinary demands of the digital economy. However, new data sources and methods should be further explored.

Keywords: academic disciplines; industry sectors; information and communication technologies (ICT); innovation; knowledge transfer; review of data sources and associated methodologies; Science-industry linkages; social sciences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-11-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict and nep-ino
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:stiaac:45-en

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