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Climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions pose tremendous challenges to policymakers, the economy, and society. In this context, the development of clean, low-emission technologies plays a crucial role in mitigating the negative impact of fossil fuels on the climate. Hydrogen is a promising energy carrier and fuel that, thanks to its versatility, can be used in many applications. However, the adoption of hydrogen technology requires sufficient trust in its safety. To proxy the development of hydrogen safety innovations, we provide an analysis along the three knowledge and technology transfer channels of publications, patents, and standards. Our results show that research on hydrogen safety has increased significantly in the last decades, with hydrogen safety patents experiencing a general upward trend between 1980 and 2020, just recently decreasing. However, an analysis of almost 100 international hydrogen and fuel cell standards shows only a small number of references to scientific publications. This apparently limited transfer of knowledge from publications points to the need to optimize the coordination of the three knowledge and technology transfer channels for the future development of hydrogen technology. Based on the exploration of this gap, we recommend that research on the three channels for hydrogen be intensified and that the impact of hydrogen safety technology research and development on their diffusion be investigated.
The services of Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs) are essential to provide for trust in and safety of digital products and services by demonstrating that requirements from standards are met. Thus, it is vital that CABs are ready to fulfil their tasks also in the digital transformation, having the necessary capabilities and resources. Our study is the first to comprehensively assess the digital maturity in the CA industry and to provide some insights into the readiness of the industry to support and at the same time benefit from the digital age. To this end, we developed and implemented a digital maturity model tailored to the CA industry. In this paper, we present first results from our survey among 354 accredited CABs in Germany. With our research we contribute to better understand the digital transformation and maturation of CABs along distinctive stages. The findings suggest that the transformation process in the CA industry is just at the beginning, with the majority of CABs still in early stages of digital maturity. Also, only a few of them already exploit the latest digital technologies and applications like artificial intelligence, blockchain or big data analytics. Nevertheless, CABs regard digitalization as a big
opportunity – for themselves and their industry.
Against the backdrop of the sustainability transition of economies worldwide, decarbonizing road traffic is high on the agenda. This has focused the interest of policymakers and automobile manufacturers on sustainable, zero-emission powertrain technologies. Among these technologies, hydrogen fuel cell (FC) vehicles have a positive climate impact, given that their hydrogen is produced from renewable energy. However, FC vehicles have not yet gained significant market shares. Therefore, based on the technological innovation systems (TIS) approach, this study analyzes how FC vehicles are influenced by EVs and internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles as their context structures. To operationalize the technology relations between our focal FC-TIS and its context structures, we use the sum of international publications, patents filed at the European Patent Office, and international ISO and IEC standards as indicators for each technology. Our results show that the FC-TIS is dominated by its context structures, especially regarding commercially relevant patents and international standards. Therefore, we conclude that the FC-TIS is in its formative life-cycle phase and identify the need for intensified patenting and standardization in relation to the competing EVs and ICE vehicles.
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Conformity Assessment: Insights from a Multinational Study
(2021)
The COVID-19 pandemic has posed new and manifold challenges to organizations and their operations worldwide. Conformity assessment bodies (CABs), such as testing or medical laboratories, certification, and inspection bodies, are also affected by the associated disruptions. Their situation in this crisis is highly relevant, as CABs are essential pillars of the quality infrastructure: Their activities ensure that products and services meet requirements as defined in standards and regulations, thereby contributing to their safety and reliability. Considering the roles and functions of CABs in economy, health, and innovation, the question arises how CABs and their operations were affected by the pandemic and how they responded. To this end, we present the results of an international survey of 986 CABs of all types in Germany, the UK, Italy, and New Zealand. Overall, CABs reported on average a negative development of demand during the pandemic, facing restrictions in all countries. In addition, the pandemic had overall negative impact on the CABs’ investment and innovation activities. However, investments in digital infrastructure were increased as countermeasure, with CABs reporting an increased need for digitalization. Resources relevant to organizational resilience were available to different extents, affecting the speed of response to the challenges of the pandemic. The paper highlights and discusses results from in-depth analyses, which are relevant for policy makers and industry alike.
In the wake of digitalization, organizations are increasingly exposed to risks associated with security breaches and must take measures to preserve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information, and to ensure business continuity. The international standard ISO/IEC 27001 assists organizations in setting up, maintaining and continuously improving their information security management systems. However, despite high growth rates, its international diffusion rates are quite heterogeneous. This paper explores why the diffusion of the international management system standard ISO/IEC 27001 differs across countries. We classify the adoption of ISO/IEC 27001 as a ‘preventive organizational innovation’ and draw from diffusion studies of other management system standards and information security research to develop a set of hypotheses. These relate to the impact of cultural dimensions and national ICT development. We use a negative binomial regression model with panel data covering 57 countries over a 12-year period from 2006 to 2017 to test our hypotheses. We find that the cultural dimensions future orientation, power distance, and institutional collectivism as well as high ICT development are driving factors for the diffusion of ISO/IEC 27001. We derive policy recommendations and avenues for future research.
In this paper, we explore the relationship between firms' approaches to open innovation and their decision to participate in Standardization alliances. Based on micro data of Dutch Companies surveyed in the Forth Community Innovation Survey we show that the importance of extemal knowledge is positively correlated with participation in Standardization. This suggests that firms aim to access the knowledge of other Companies and stakeholders in Order to increase their own knowledge base. The analysis also shows that firms cooperating with different actors are more likely to join Standardization. Due to the positive relationships with incoming knowledge spillovers and forms of Cooperation, we conclude that Standardization represents a specific form of collaborative knowledge-sharing and knowledge-creating strategy. In addition, we are able to show that absorptive capacity measured via Companies’ research intensity is promoting the involvement in Standardization. Besides the focus on knowledge and Cooperation variables, we explore the traditionally considered factors for alliances Formation and show that firm size, export activities and patent protection are positively correlated with participation in Standardization.
Despite the increasing relevance of cybersecurity for companies’ performance, there is limited research on the adoption of ISO/IEC 27001, an international information security management standard. The aim of our study is to expand this limited body of literature. First, we analyse the influence of companies’ networks on the adoption of ISO/IEC 27001 as an organisational innovation based on firm website data and their hyperlinks, using the entire population of ISO/IEC 27001 certified firms identified via web mining. Second, we validate the method of constructing and analysing companies’ “digital layer” following the call for new methodological approaches to study the organisational adoption of innovations. Our findings reveal that companies' decision to adopt ISO/IEC 27001 increases significantly with their number of linkages to other companies and to those having the same certificate. Finally, their cognitive and organisational distances to linked partners have the expected inverted u-shaped influence on their own adoption decision.
We examine the participation of public sector researchers in standardisation bodies. Whereas previous research emphasized on patents and publications as Outputs of research activities, we also consider standardisation in this study. The latter has not been adequately taken into account when measuring productivity, despite its contributions to technology transfer. Based on data of more than 600 researchers from the BAM Federal Institute of Materials Research and Testing, we perform multivariate regression to determine the influence of researchers' activities on the participation in standardisation. We make the assumption that basic research scientist publish their results mainly in high quality scientific journals, whereas applied research scientist concentrate more in technical and industry-oriented publications and patent applications. We find a difference between basic and applied research scientists regarding their probability of participating in standardisation committees and a significant influence of career qualifications in terms academic title.
The Impact of Publications, Patents, and Standards on International Trade - The Case of Hydrogen
(2022)
Hydrogen as a clean energy carrier has received increased attention due to climate change and the need to introduce new, low-emissions technologies to the market. However, the drivers of increased hydrogen use have been barely explored. Therefore, this research paper investigates the impacts of publications, patents, and standards on international hydrogen trade, an established technology diffusion channel. In a fixed-effects (FE) regression model covering 37 countries between 1995 and 2020, we demonstrate that publications, patents, and standards are associated with increased levels of hydrogen exports and imports. Furthermore, we test the technology gap theory and explore the meaning of our empirical results for the hydrogen technological innovation system (TIS). Among others, we show that publications, patents, and standards can contribute to a more developed hydrogen TIS.