10 What knowledge does the
bioeconomy build upon?
Linn Meidell Dybdahl and Eric James Iversen
10.1 Introduction
Modern economies have long been characterised as ‘knowledge- based economies’ (e.g. David & Foray, 2002), whereby more advanced economies are
distinguished by their ability to generate, disseminate and use new scientific
and technological knowledge. Going forward, however, the ability of all our
economies to successfully address society’s daunting grand- challenges is recognised as something which is not solely about how to increase innovation in
firms, universities and research institutes; it is increasingly seen as being
related to improving the efficiency of innovation systems when leveraging
existing investments from different parts of the economy (Bessant & Venables,
2010).
This chapter focuses on the underlying ‘knowledge base’ in the formative
bioeconomy which extends across the established boundaries of different
sectors and encompasses a range of scientific and engineering disciplines. It
involves learning that takes place within organisations, but it also involves
learning processes at a higher level of aggregation, including those that take
place across different fields of science (agricultural science, engineering, biomedicine) and across different sectors of the economy (primary sectors, manufacturing, energy and research sectors). Although, we know something about
the research agenda in the bioeconomy, less is known about the ‘knowledge
bases’ that the bioeconomy builds on and, not least, how they are organised.
The contribution of this chapter is to provide an empirical look at how the
knowledge production process is organised in the formative bioeconomy and,
moreover, at which knowledge bases are involved in this important area. We
have chosen two levels of empirical analysis which address the following
related questions:
a How are the links and interactions (e.g. of researchers) organised in the knowledgebase? This question explores what we refer to as the ‘organisational
capital’ dimension of the knowledge creation process. Organisational
capital refers here to the way in which scientific and technological production are organised across organisations such as universities, research
bioeconomy build upon?
Linn Meidell Dybdahl and Eric James Iversen
10.1 Introduction
Modern economies have long been characterised as ‘knowledge- based economies’ (e.g. David & Foray, 2002), whereby more advanced economies are
distinguished by their ability to generate, disseminate and use new scientific
and technological knowledge. Going forward, however, the ability of all our
economies to successfully address society’s daunting grand- challenges is recognised as something which is not solely about how to increase innovation in
firms, universities and research institutes; it is increasingly seen as being
related to improving the efficiency of innovation systems when leveraging
existing investments from different parts of the economy (Bessant & Venables,
2010).
This chapter focuses on the underlying ‘knowledge base’ in the formative
bioeconomy which extends across the established boundaries of different
sectors and encompasses a range of scientific and engineering disciplines. It
involves learning that takes place within organisations, but it also involves
learning processes at a higher level of aggregation, including those that take
place across different fields of science (agricultural science, engineering, biomedicine) and across different sectors of the economy (primary sectors, manufacturing, energy and research sectors). Although, we know something about
the research agenda in the bioeconomy, less is known about the ‘knowledge
bases’ that the bioeconomy builds on and, not least, how they are organised.
The contribution of this chapter is to provide an empirical look at how the
knowledge production process is organised in the formative bioeconomy and,
moreover, at which knowledge bases are involved in this important area. We
have chosen two levels of empirical analysis which address the following
related questions:
a How are the links and interactions (e.g. of researchers) organised in the knowledgebase? This question explores what we refer to as the ‘organisational
capital’ dimension of the knowledge creation process. Organisational
capital refers here to the way in which scientific and technological production are organised across organisations such as universities, research