Productive interactions in basic research an enquiry into impact pathways at the DESY synchrotron

Henning Kroll, Hendrik Hansmeier and Miriam Hufnagl

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2022, vol. 175, issue C

Abstract: In recent years, the productive interactions approach has gained increasing prominence as a foundation for studying the socioeconomic impact of science. So far, however, it has been deployed primarily as a heuristic for analyses in the context of social sciences research at universities. The majority of impact studies of basic research infrastructures, in contrast, have remained focused on these facilities' long-term contribution to science, their role as economic agents or the learning effects induced through their collaboration with suppliers. This paper demonstrates that the array of productive interactions at basic research infrastructures can be substantially wider. First, it identifies a number of productive interactions relevant for this context based on workshops with diverse infrastructures' managements. Beyond qualified procurement, these include on-demand experiments, scientific collaboration with industrial partners, the provision of datasets, the development of technical equipment and external communication. Second, our survey of the DESY synchrotron's users reveals that productive interactions with external partners are prevalent and tend to be embedded in particular project types. Among such projects, we find those most associated with concrete impact that involve external partners in a formal manner.

Keywords: Research infrastructures; Socioeconomic impact; Synchrotron; Productive interactions; Basic research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162521008398
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:175:y:2022:i:c:s0040162521008398

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121408

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().