Fernando Romero

This paper explores the role of public funding and policies in supporting research, development, and innovation (RD&I) across various national contexts, including both developed and developing countries. The analysis assesses the impacts of such policies on innovation capacity, economic growth, and the generation of positive externalities via integrated innovation systems. Challenges faced by National Innovation Systems (NIS)—such as fragmentation between the public and private sectors and limited technological absorption—are critically examined. The paper presents practical examples highlighting the value of public-private partnerships and long-term strategic agendas to enhance RD&I outcomes. The study concludes that a coordinated approach, integrating academia, government, and industry, is vital for promoting sustainable innovation and global socioeconomic development.

The fields of innovation systems and technology transfer (TT) have seen growing interest in recent years, especially in the context of open innovation. Private consultants, play a vital role in mediating and facilitating interactions among various stakeholders in the innovation process. However, the specific roles of private consultants as innovation intermediaries have received limited attention in the literature. This study presents a case analysis of a Portuguese consultancy firm involved in 219 TT projects between 2015 and 2021. The research identifies six key intermediary roles consistently played by the consultancy: funding and finance, project management, technology scouting, design and ideation, feasibility assessment, and marketing/business development. The study further reveals that the type of entity initiating the TT project may influence the roles performed by private consultants. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the evolving nature and significance of private consultants as intermediaries in technology transfer.

The fields of innovation systems and technology transfer (TT) have seen growing interest in recent years, especially in the context of open innovation. Private consultants, play a vital role in mediating and facilitating interactions among various stakeholders in the innovation process. However, the specific roles of private consultants as innovation intermediaries have received limited attention in the literature. This study presents a case analysis of a Portuguese consultancy firm involved in 219 TT projects between 2015 and 2021. The research identifies six key intermediary roles consistently played by the consultancy: funding and finance, project management, technology scouting, design and ideation, feasibility assessment, and marketing/business development. The study further reveals that the type of entity initiating the TT project may influence the roles performed by private consultants. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the evolving nature and significance of private consultants as intermediaries in technology transfer.

Collaboration in the digitalization era is of utmost importance, as it enables sustainable development in the Industry 4.0 (I4.0) context. In this paper, a general view over different approaches and application scenarios of collaboration, along with I4.0-oriented technology that has been put forward is explored, based on a systematic literature review. As a result, it was possible to realize that the wide worldwide portfolio of contributions in the literature can be grouped in seven main clusters, which, in turn, are further synthesized through a proposed framework including three main blocks about models, tools, and business approaches about collaborative manufacturing and management in I4.0. It was also possible to recognize that learning, and further, co-learning are key issues correlating collaboration with I4.0, along with the human factor, which assumes a central role in linking these two domains, which combined, are of utmost importance to enable companies to reach a sustainable development in the current digitalization era. Future open research questions should be explored in order to further analyse industrial understandings on the importance of the underlying communication, learning, and collaboration approaches, along with supporting methods, means, and tools, to properly approach collaboration issues in I4.0, for promoting sustainable development of companies.

O objetivo do artigo é apresentar uma proposta de instrumento de avaliação da gestão da atividade de inovação. Para construção do instrumento foi identificado como as atividades de inovação foram implementadas em 14 organizações de alto desempenho do Brasil, Chile, Espanha e Portugal, na percepção de seus especialistas e lideranças organizacionais. Também, foram considerados os requisitos de gestão da inovação presentes em oito prêmios e normas de inovação e nos modelos de excelência da gestão dos seguintes países: Argentina; Brasil; Chile; Colômbia; Estados Unidos; Europa; e, México. A pesquisa utilizou-se de abordagem qualitativa e quantitativa para gerar e validar a escala, com uso de análise documental, revisão da literatura, entrevistas, que foram submetidos à análise de conteúdo para gerar a versão inicial de 74 itens agrupados em oito dimensões. Adotou-se a validação de conteúdo (CVC) com sete juízes especialistas acadêmicos e/ou mercadológicos no construto, permitindo consolidar a proposta com 42 itens referentes a gestão da atividade de inovação. Como resultado é apresentado um instrumento validado de avaliação da gestão da atividade de inovação.

Collaborative engineering is not a new subject but it assumes a new importance in the Industry 4.0 (I4.0). There are other concepts frequently mismatched with collaboration. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to put forward a collaborative engineering concept, along its sub concepts, supported by an extensive systematic literature review. A critical analysis and discussion about the fundamental importance of learning, and the central human role in collaboration, in the I4.0, is presented, based on the main insights brought through the literature review. This study also enables to realize about the importance of collaboration in the current digitalization era, along with the importance of recent approaches and technology for enabling or promoting collaboration. Main current practices of human centered and autonomous machine-machine approaches and applications of collaboration in engineering, namely in manufacturing and management, are presented, along with main difficulties and further open research opportunities on collaboration..