Petra Ahrweiler

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany

This paper is about the ambiguous love-hate relationship people have with complexity in social decision contexts: There seems to be a tipping point where increasing complexity seen as exciting and satisfying turns to overwhelming and annoying nuisance. People tend to have an intuitive understanding about what constitutes a complex situation. The pa...

Journals, funders and scholars must work together to create an infrastructure to study peer review. Journals, funders and scholars must work together to create an infrastructure to study peer review.

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing a dramatic loss of lives worldwide, challenging the sustainability of our health care systems, threatening economic meltdown, and putting pressure on the mental health of individuals (due to social distancing and lock-down measures). The pandemic is also posing severe challenges to the scientific community, with sch...

While recent surveys show that most stakeholders recognise the importance of peer review to the publication process, there is a lack of systematic research on the topic. In a period of hyper-competition for resources, with perverse incentives that lead to academic capitalism and a “publish or perish” mentality, the lack of robust and cumulative res...

This paper describes a participatory approach to co-designing social simulation models with policymakers using a case study of modeling European Commission policy. Managing the collaboration of a wide range of individuals or organizations is challenging but increasingly important as policy making becomes more complex. A framework for a co-design pr...

EC policy reveals a strong conviction that CSO’s main function in EU-funded research and innovation projects is to take care of the ‘societal perspective’, which would not be adequately represented otherwise. With this, CSOs are supposed to be the main advocates of RRI in project consortia and are supported by all kinds of EC policy measures to ful...

Computational models are increasingly being used to assist in developing, implementing and evaluating public policy. This paper reports on the experience of the authors in designing and using computational models of public policy (‘policy models’, for short). The paper considers the role of computational models in policy making, and some of the cha...

Simulation Experiments of Real-World Experimental Policy – Gaining the Dimension of the Future in the computational Laboratory

Policymaking implies planning, and planning requires prediction—or at least some knowledge about the future. This contribution starts from the challenges of complexity, uncertainty, and agency, which refute the prediction of social systems, especially where new knowledge (scientific discoveries, emergent technologies, and disruptive innovations) is...

This paper presents the agent-based model INFSO-SKIN, which provides ex-ante evaluation of possible funding policies in Horizon 2020 for the European Commission’s DG Information Society and Media (DG INFSO). Informed by a large dataset recording the details of funded projects, the simulation model is set up to reproduce and assess the funding strat...

Using computer simulations in examining, explaining and predicting social processes and relationships as well as measuring possible impact of policies has become an important part of policy-making. This chapter presents a comparative analysis of simulation models utilised in the field of policy-making. Different models and modelling theories and ap...

This chapter deals with the assessment of the quality of a simulation. The first section points out the problems of the standard view and the constructivist view in evaluating social simulations. A simulation is good when we get from it what we originally would have liked to get from the target; in this, the evaluation of the simulation is guided b...

Dieser Beitrag gibt eine Übersicht über die wichtigsten Forschungslinien zum Thema Innovation sowohl in der Ökonomie als auch allgemein in den Sozialwissenschaften unter Berücksichtigung der historischen Wurzeln heutiger Ansätze. Leitende Aspekte, die durch den Text führen, sind dabei die Strukturen und Dynamiken des kollektiven Innovationsprozesse...

As a complement to Nelson and Winter's (1977) article titled “In Search of a Useful Theory of Innovation,” a sociological perspective on innovation networks can be elaborated using Luhmann's social systems theory, on the one hand, and Latour's “sociology of translations,” on the other. Because of a common focus on communication, these perspectives...

This paper presents an approach for designing and building a computational laboratory for research and innovation policy simulation, centred around the SKIN model. The aim of the paper is to bring together empirical and computational research for policy use. The SKIN model will be embedded in a workflow and an interfacing infrastructure that suppor...

In this introduction, we outline the theoretical background for the most important concepts of the Simulating Knowledge Dynamics in Innovation Networks (SKIN) model. We describe the basic model, which we understand more as a theoretical framework than as a piece of code and preview the following chapters, which apply the SKIN model to diverse indus...

Nanotechnology, the manipulation and control of matter at the scale 1–100 nm, proves to have an increasing socio-economic impact on its way to become the key-technology of the twenty-first century. It has already found applications in various industrial sectors such as information and communication technology, pharmaceuticals, materials and manufac...

This chapter is about a SKIN application to the world of EU-funded research networks in the area of information and communication technologies (ICT). The application was commissioned by the DG Information Society and Media (DG INFSO) as an impact assessment of the funding strategies in the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) and ex-ante evaluation of the...

This chapter is about a SKIN application to the world of EU-funded research networks in the area of information and communication technologies (ICT). The application was commissioned by the DG Information Society and Media (DG INFSO) as an impact assessment of the funding strategies in the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) and ex-ante evaluation of the...

The competitiveness of firms, regions and countries greatly depends on the generation, dissemination and application of new knowledge. Modern innovation research is challenged by the need to incorporate knowledge generation and dissemination processes into the analysis so as to disentangle the complexity of these dynamic processes. With innovation,...

This paper advances a framework for modeling the component interactions between cognitive and social aspects of scientific creativity and technological innovation. Specifically, it aims to characterize Innovation Networks; those networks that involve the interplay of people, ideas and organizations to create new, technologically feasible, commercia...

The Special Issue is started with the observation that the tension of mind and society, i.e. cognitive and sociological/cultural dimensions in knowledge production and innovation, is a well-known topic of academic discourse in Science and Technology Studies. The introduction mentions some historical hallmarks of the involved perspectives and discus...

As a complement to Nelson & Winter’s (1977) article entitled “In Search of a Useful Theory of Innovation,” a sociological perspective on innovation networks can be elaborated using Luhmann’s social-systems theory, on the one hand, and Latour’s “sociology of translations,” on the other. Because of a common focus on communication, these perspectives...

With the emergence of nanotechnology a new General Purpose Technology is shaping the evolution of many economies. Knowledge intensive industries such as nanotechnology evolve in innovation networks consisting of various actors. With their wide ranging applicability innovation networks of General Purpose Technologies differ greatly from other innova...

A multi-agent simulation embodying a theory of innovation networks has been built and used to suggest a number of policy-relevant conclusions. The simulation animates a model of innovation (the successful exploitation of new ideas) and this model is briefly described. Agents in the model representing firms, policy actors, research labs, etc. each h...

This position paper presents a framework for modelling theory communities where theories interact as agents in a conceptual network. It starts with introducing the difficulties in integrating scientific theories by discussing some recent approaches, especially of structuralist theory of science. Theories might differ in reference, extension, scope,...

Science is the result of a substantially social process. That is, science relies on many inter-personal processes, including: selection and communication of research findings, discussion of method, checking and judgement of others' research, development of norms of scientific behaviour, organisation of the application of specialist skills/tools, an...

Modern knowledge-intensive economies are complex social systems where intertwining factors are responsible for the shaping of emerging industries: the self-organising interaction patterns and strategies of the individual actors (an agency-oriented pattern) and the institutional frameworks of different innovation systems (a structure-oriented patter...

In this paper, we apply the agent-based SKIN model (Simulating Knowledge Dynamics in Innovation Networks) to university-industry links. The model builds on empirical research about innovation networks in knowledge-intensive industries with procedures relying on theoretical frameworks of innovation economics and economic sociology. Our experiments c...

Today’s knowledge-based economies are more than places where goods and services are bought and sold; they are the sites where complex logistic processes are coordinated, where innovation takes place, where knowledge is generated, communicated, re-combined and exchanged. In such competitive and knowledgeintensive environments characterized by price...

According to the organizational learning literature, the greatest competitive advantage a firm has is its ability to learn. In this paper, a framework for modeling learning competence in firms is presented to improve the understanding of managing innovation. Firms with different knowledge stocks attempt to improve their economic performance by enga...

An agent-based simulation model representing a theory of the dynamic processes involved in innovation in modern knowledge-based industries is described. The agent-based approach al-lows the representation of heterogeneous agents that have individual and varying stocks of knowledge. The simulation is able to model uncertainty, historical change, eff...

A comparison of the current structures and dynamics of UK and German biotech- nology-based industries reveals a striking convergence of industrial organisations and innovation directions in both countries. This counteracts propositions from theoretical frameworks such as the varieties-of-capitalism hypothesis and the na- tional innovation systems a...

What is the best method for doing simulation research? This has been the basis of a continuing debate within the social science research community. Resolving it is important if the community is to demonstrate clearly that simulation is an effective method for research in the social sciences. In this paper, we tackle the question from a historical a...

This contribution deals with the assessment of the quality of a simulation by discussing and comparing "real-world" and scientific social simulations. We use the example of the Caffè Nero in Guildford as a 'real-world' simulation of a Venetian café. The construction of everyday simulations like Caffè Nero has some resemblance to the construction pr...

An agent-based simulation model representing a theory of the dynamic processes involved in innovation in modern knowledge-based industries is described. The agent-based approach allows the representation of heterogeneous agents that have individual and varying stocks of knowledge. The simulation is able to model uncertainty, historical change, effe...

At the third European Meeting on Applied Evolutionary Economics in Augsburg almost 120 participants from all over Europe, North and South America, and South Africa discussed the latest developments in applied Evolutionary Economics. In addition to the nine keynote lectures covering a wide range of topics addressed to the conference theme, 72 papers...

In diesem Beitrag stellen wir ein Multiagenten-System vor, welches das Lernverhalten von Akteuren in sogenannten Innovationsnetzwerken simuliert (vgl. Gilbert/Pyka/Ahrweiler 2003). Die Akteure, in unserem Modell meist Firmen, versuchen, in Auseinandersetzung mit sich ständig ändernden technologischen und ökonomischen Umweltanforderungen ihre Innova...

A multi-agent simulation embodying a theory of innovation networks has been built and used to suggest a number of policy-relevant conclusions. The simulation animates a model of innovation (the successful exploitation of new ideas) and this model is briefly described. Agents in the model representing firms, policy actors, research labs, etc. each h...

Understanding innovation networks through simulation

This chapter outlines the history of a growing research community: the “invisible college” (Mullins 1973) of scientists who work on computer simulations in Science and Technology Studies (STS). Their common interest enables at least two possible research areas which are only just emerging.

Applying “social simulation” to the field of “social studies of science” is commonly thought to be a contradiction in terms2. Simulations have to rely on adequate “representations” of their targets; but this very reliability has been dismissed by social constructivism. This dismissal includes advice on how to avoid shortsighted perspectives: “Any s...

What is it about the structure and organisation of science and technology that has led to the spectacularly successful growth of knowledge during this century? This book explores this important and much debated question in an innovative way, by using computer simulations. The computer simulation of societies and social processes is a methodology wh...