Innovation and networks: method to identify the international collaborative network in bioenergy technological paradigm

Abstract

The study touches on the identification of the complex nature of technology flows in bioenergy: it is assumed that bioenergy is still in evolution and the areas of greater dynamism, which constitute its technological frontier, are increasingly formed by technologies with greater scientific and technological content, corroborating what other studies have pointed out in relation to biotechnology in general.The more emerging the knowledge of a given technological system is, the bigger its level of complexity will be, since the manner and the extent to which its evolution is manifested is unknown. The present project is based on the ideas, who use patents as measure and social network analysis (nodes and links) to represent the flows of knowledge as an interpretative structure, by means of measurements and analysis of structural changes in knowledge itself. This set of elements (nodes) and their interactions (links) in the network suggest that its structure is related to the manner by which knowledge flows among actors, which is characterized by a specific architecture (knowledge basis, forms of transmission, and forms close to the market) that can evolve over time. In turn, time is a decisive effect in the interactions among economic agents involved in the collective process of knowledge creation.In complex systems, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Overall, the properties of complex systems in knowledge network involve three dimensions: collective unity, functional organicity, and emerging property (Bueno, et al, 2018). From these dimensions, this project relies on complexity studies to understand the dynamic of networks: a) the areas of knowledge involved in knowledge flows are comprised of a set of interrelations among actors; b) the knowledge network exhibits a set of parts or subparts with internal individual relations connected to each other, thus forming a collective unity with its own dynamic, which is characteristic of a functional organicity; c) the interactions among knowledge areas that are required by the generation of innovation consist of an exteriorization of the network as a whole. This dynamic produces a set of unities that interact with each other and this set stands as a new level of evolution of the network, that is, it contains emerging properties. The general hypothesis of this study is that the subnetworks that have been found by the methodological procedures here adopted point to characteristics of greater scientific and technological content in bioenergy as an emerging property of this system Our results confirm what has been observed by patents studies: a rising degree of complexity in research and technological development activities in bioenergy results in greater interdependence of areas that are, in turn, characterized by greater scientific and technological content in relation to the ones that prevailed three decades ago. The results also show a more intense drive in patenting in specific areas, which indicates that some targets of industrial interest have begun to consolidate, not only related to the improvement and enhancement of productivity in traditional products, but also aiming at the protection of what is, at once, the frontier of knowledge and technological advancement. (AU)