UNU-MERIT at 25 years: How doctoral training at UNU-MERIT contributes to the community of scholars in the economis of innovation?

Semih Akçomak, Abraham Garcia and Fernando Santiago
Additional contact information
Abraham Garcia: UNU-MERIT

No 2015-036, MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)

Abstract: This paper contributes to literature on the emergence of innovation studies as a scientific field. This area of research documents the mechanisms, interactions and meeting spaces that innovation scholars have developed to give substance and legitimacy to their work. What role is there for the training of young scholars in the development of this scientific field? Based on a web survey of UNU-MERIT's PhD alumni, we explore the ways in which doctoral training at a major research institute has contributed to the formation of young scholars in the broad field of innovation studies. In line with literature on the creation of science and technology human capital, we find that doctoral training grants PhD holders the technical knowledge and skills, together with the relational skills that sustain their membership and scholarly contributions to innovation studies. The evidence likewise suggests that the contribution of UNU-MERIT's PhD programme on the building of innovation research capacities in developing countries is constrained by postgraduate decisions to stay in the developed world. Young scholars follow a career development strategy of linking to mentors and key senior researchers, while scientific interactions with fellow students are more limited. Social interactions tend to be more prominent for maintaining relations with the research community.

Keywords: UNU-MERIT; Research institutes; innovation studies; doctoral training; social capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D85 I23 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-ino, nep-knm and nep-pke
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2015/wp2015-036.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: UNU-MERIT at 25 Years: How Doctoral Training at UNU-MERIT Contributes to the Community of Scholars in the Economics of Innovation? (2015)
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:unm:unumer:2015036

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ad Notten ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).