Global innovation cooperation and governance have become increasingly critical against the backdrop of rapid digital transformation and evolving international dynamics. The purpose of this special section is to examine the pivotal role of collaborative innovation frameworks amid the swift proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, emphasizing the importance of harmonized international regulations and institutional arrangements with evidance from China at the firm, industrial, and regional levels. By situating AI as both a driver of economic competitiveness and a potential source of regulatory challenges, the special section underscores the need for robust global partnerships and policy coordination. Such initiatives not only facilitate shared research and development efforts but also foster an environment conducive to ethical, transparent, and sustainable innovation. Drawing on recent advancements and ongoing policy debates, this special section provides a comprehensive overview of the mechanisms and strategies necessary to enhance cross-border collaboration. Ultimately, the findings highlight the imperative of building an inclusive, adaptable, and future-oriented governance system, ensuring that innovation and technological progress contribute to equitable and enduring global development.

In the era of innovation globalization, realizing technology catch-up poses a challenge to late-coming countries. This paper integrates the conceptual framework of the global innovation system (GIS) and the model of the innovation value chain (IVC) and takes the high-grade computer-numerical-control(CNC) machine tools' catch-up in China as a case study to analyze the characteristics and mechanisms for the catch-up of complex product systems (CoPs) in different globalization historical stages from the perspective of research and development (R&D), transformation, and commercialization. We find that strengthening the GIS-IVC-based resource integration of innovation for R&D, pilot and demonstration plants, and commercialization is the key factor in promoting the catch-up of CoPs in emerging economies, and effective guidance of innovation policies is essential for promoting the catch-up of CoPs in the global era.

Contract managers change contracts to respond to unforeseen events and to improve the likelihood of securing critical supplies. This study employs data from the General Service Administration's SAM.gov Data Bank on over 8,000 contracts to examine the prevalence, reasons for, and timing of contract modifications and terminations in federal purchasing of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the first year of the COVID-19 public health crisis. Results show that modifications that transform transactional contracts to more collaborative designs were utilized for some of the highest-risk contracts and were associated with increased obligations, indicating that collaborative designs led to more purchasing of PPE. Competitive selection increased the likelihood of termination, the rate at which terminations occurred, and deobligations, indicating that the approach increased the costs of administration without improving the likelihood of securing supplies. A substantial portion of modifications and terminations occurred within the first forty days of delivery, revealing how contract management capacity was needed in the early stages of critical supply acquisition.

Contract managers change contracts to respond to unforeseen events and to improve the likelihood of securing critical supplies. This study examines the prevalence, reasons for and timing of contract modifications and terminations utilized in federal purchasing of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the first year of the COVID-19 public health crisis. Modifications that transform transactional contracts to more collaborative designs were utilized for some of the highest-risk contracts and were not associated with terminations, indicating that collaborative designs may improve the securing of PPE. Competitive selection increased the likelihood of termination and the rate at which terminations occurred, indicating that the consideration of rival bids did not improve the likelihood of securing PPE and increased the costs of contract administration. Agency characteristics also explain why contracts were changed in the purchasing of PPE.

Funding scientific research requires adequate capabilities of funding entities to design and implement the instruments to channel those resources effectively. Furthermore, recipients of research funding must have the right attributes to use allocated resources in a way that achieves the objectives of the funding policies. The obviousness of these statements belies a relative lack of attention to the specific attributes and capabilities needed on both sides of the research funding equation. This chapter explores this issue by comparing four cases of emerging economy countries, two in South America and two in Central Europe. The cases show that, even in the presence of increased funding, the lack of proper capabilities and attributes of both funding and performing entities undermines their ability to achieve their scientific research potential. This challenge is also relevant to developed nations in their efforts to maintain their level of research performance.

The evaluation system is an important component of the institutional arrangements that may shape the career trajectories of researchers. Using logistic regression and recursive partition models, we analyze the resulting key individual level factors that seem to play an important role in the promotion of researchers through the research evaluation system of the Argentine National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) in two selected fields, namely, the basic and applied sides of the molecular biology and biotechnology fields. The data are from 599 researchers who are members of the scientific and technological “research career” of the Council. We analyze the promotion through the first two stages of the process, namely, promotion from “assistant investigator” to “adjunct investigator” and from the latter to “independent investigator” for the entire cohort of candidates eligible during years 2013 and 2014. We find that time in grade (a strong normative requirement of the system), a moderate number of publications of international quality, evidence of mentoring the future generation of researchers, and registered technological production are the main factors that predict researchers’ promotion. Conversely, the specific academic profile, early external funding, gender, time from graduation, and postdocs abroad do not have a significant effect.

Previous research highlights what managers perceive to be the purposes of public involvement in public-private partnerships (PPPs) and the need for addressing stakeholder concerns unique to PPPs. Yet, we have little evidence of how particular modes of participation benefit particular goals of participation in this context. Through canonical correlation analysis (CCA) of survey data collected in the U.S., this study examines the modes and sequencing of 14 public involvement activities in respect to 10 goals of public involvement in this context. The results indicate that selections among modes of participation are contingent upon when they are introduced. Respondents prefer widening stakeholder involvement early in the project development phase and during the contract implementation phase, but not during the later phases of contract design. Respondents also assign more value to engaging local citizens than their respective political leaders, particularly at mature stages of the PPP's implementation phase.

Timely completion of environmental reviews for transportation projects has been highlighted as a sore point for performance management by public agencies and industry alike. However, despite its importance, few academic studies investigate project-level performance during the environmental review and engineering design or examine which factors influence it significantly. In this study, we observed 560 transportation projects that the Georgia Department of Transportation completed from 2011 to 2015. We modeled distinct processes for three National Environmental Policy Act document typesprogrammatic categorical exclusion, categorical exclusion, and environmental assessmentand investigated detailed durations for environmental review activities associated with regulatory agency relation management, consultant relation management, and internal project management. Adopting task complexity theories, we then examined the influence of four dimensions of task complexity on project performance, measured by the overall durations of the environmental review and engineering design. By investigating performance empirically, this study contributes to methodological advancement and theory development in studies on environmental review. This research contributes to the body of knowledge through the creation of task complexity models to empirically examine the effects of different dimensions of task complexity on environmental review and engineering design durations.

This technical note analyzes international experiences and practices of public technology extension service programs. Technology extension services comprise varied forms of assistance provided directly to enterprises to foster technological modernization and improvement, with a focus on established small and mid-sized enterprises. The note discusses the definitions, rationales, and characteristics of selected technology extension service programs, drawing on examples from Europe, North America, and other regions. It presents four detailed case studies: the U.S. Manufacturing Extension Partnership; the National Research Council-Industrial Research Assistance Program in Canada; England's Manufacturing Advisory Service; and Tecnalia, an applied technology organization in Spain. The case studies address several program elements including the history and evolution of the program, structure, program scale, financing structure, services and clients, governance, personnel, monitoring, and evaluation. The analysis highlights common and distinctive characteristics as well as program strengths, weaknesses, and key practices. The note provides a framework for positioning technology extension services within the broader mix of policies for technology transfer, business upgrading, and innovation, and offers conclusions and insights to support efforts to strengthen technology extension services in Latin America.

International research collaborations are widespread, but few have studied those that reach the scale and scope of what we call international university research ventures (IURVs). In an IURV, a university sets up a formal and organizationally consolidated research relationship in a foreign country. This paper puts forward an institutionalization framework to explain the development of IURVs with different forms. Five case studies are presented of IURVs in the countries with the largest number of IURVs involving US universities: China and Singapore. The five cases are examined relative to the elements of the institutionalization framework: nominal, leadership, administrative support, multi-year funding, research targets, formal researcher-to-researcher exchange, visibility, evaluation, and supporting characteristics. The results show that the emergence of IURVs depends on the specific connections between the role of government and the availability of resources with the realization of mutual benefits, leading to different patterns of institutionalization. This variation is in part a function of the degree of involvement of the government agency or department providing the funding for the IURV, which influences retention of the knowledge produced by the IURV in the region through institutionalized mechanisms as well as the development of scientific and technical human capital in the host country. Institutionalization is not a benefit without limits; nevertheless, an institutionalized structure may be necessary if ambitious research-driven goals are to be achieved.

This study explores the communication of quality expectations between the Office of Environment Services (OES) and environmental consulting firms contributing to the Plan Development Process of the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT). The overall goal of this research is to improve efficiency in the review process for reports submitted by environmental consultants in terms of the duration of the review period, the number of errors identified by OES in the review process, and the number of revisions requested of consultants. Focus groups were conducted with representatives of the consulting community to review existing practices and alternative strategies for improving communications. The development of the focus groups was supported by case studies of project-level performance and reviews of consultant performance over a 5 year window of design projects. Across the focus groups, there was strong consensus regarding the challenges associated with producing high quality environmental reports as well as alternative strategies that could improve performance. The following approaches were recommended by the consulting community as the most promising for yielding improvements in document quality:• Manuals and templates maintained by the OES for environment reports need greater standardization and procedures to address frequent updating by federal and state regulatory sources.• Fast track the development of a standardized performance assessment form for consultant performance that is shared with the executive leadership of consulting firms as well as the GDOT’s procurement office.• Consider procedures for …

This article investigates the roles and impacts of public involvement in public- private partnerships (PPPs). Our findings contribute to the literature on public-private collaborations by demonstrating the ways that the facilitation of deliberative activities can provide administrative benefits to PPPs. The results suggest that although public involvement can improve support from citizens and political leaders for PPPs and improve the tailoring of project designs to local conditions, the processes have little effect on expediting project delivery or in addressing power imbalances between public and private sectors. We also find that a combination of in-person approaches and virtual approaches to public involvement can improve the achievement of performance standards in PPPs.

The Internet, both as a technological system and a set of social phenomena, has global reach. Its development is comparatively recent but the Internet has already become established as an ordinary feature of the everyday activities of people around the world. However, the very familiarity of this information infrastructure tends to obscure important dynamics of the process by which the current state of affairs was reached. This paper is the result of the confluence of two research efforts into the nature of this process in the United States and Bulgaria that began independently. The commonalities and differences between the two cases seemed to present a very compelling case for a comparative case study approach. The United States case had shown that the practice of science and its institutions played a central role in creating today's global Internet. The world of scientific research, with its institutions, policies and disciplinary distinctions, shaped the network and the way in which it spread to other sectors of society creating the conditions for contemporary activity toward the construction of a national information infrastructure1. At the same time, from interviews with the pioneers of Internet in Bulgaria2 it was found that the Bulgarian scientific community played a key role in establishing the patterns of subsequent development of Internet in the country. In spite of the many obvious differences between the two countries, the two cases reveal a significant common dynamic in the implementation of infrastructural information networks. The first implementation of such a system is a congealed version of certain social networks that deliver the computer network as a by-product of other goals and priorities internal to their existence.

This paper examines how funding patterns, career pathways and collaboration networks influence scientific recognition. We analyze these institutional factors in the early and middle phases of academic careers through comparison of a group of researchers recognized as creative by their peers with a matched group of researchers. Measurement of scientific recognition is based on survey nominations and research prizes in two growing, laboratory-intensive research domains: nanotechnology and human genetics. Curriculum vitae data is used to compare researchers based in the United States and Europe. In the early career model for the United States, we find that scientific recognition is associated with broad academic education, fast completion of PhD, and a record of independent postdoctoral research, while in Europe these factors are much less prominent. The mid-career model suggests that both in the United States and Europe fast job promotion within academia is a strong predictor of future recognition. However, there is a clear divide across the Atlantic regarding other mid-career factors: work experience inside and outside academia, research leadership, external grant income, and prizes from professional associations are connected to scientific recognition in the United States, but are less influential in Europe. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.