Implications for practice

General outcomes

One of the objectives of this work and the AMICa project is to support data-driven decision making in industry and the public sector. As a result, this work is has implications for practitioners in both sectors. The following are some general implications that this project can have:

• The methodology applied to the biofuels research landscape serves as a tool that allows the understanding and characterization of any research area. It serves as a set of guidelines that will transform a database of technological assets into a characterization of the several units that make it, and how these are connected.

• The workflow applied during this thesis also allows, as demonstrated, to study a particular research area at different levels, macro, meso and micro.

• This thesis also provides an example of some of the many visualizations and characterizations that the AMICa pathfinder project can have, and bridges the gap between industrial mapping and the practical implications of such mapping.

Countries and International Organizations

For countries and international organizations, some of the main practical implications follow:

• This project provides answers to relevant international level questions related to the research ecosystem of biofuels. Through visualizations and quantifications, one can think of a multitude of other questions that could also be answered by the application of the same tools.

• Support of transparent decision making was mentioned as one of the main goals of the project. By developing this research, publishing it, and open sourcing the code that was developed, this framework can be used as a platform that not only helps countries in understanding the ecosystem but that also supports transparency in the decision making process. This because of the high quantitative degree of the analysis.

• By using the work developed in this thesis, countries can use the framework as a way of evaluating their political strategies. For example, the ‘similar and collaborating’ countries is proof that the European Union, to some degree, influences countries to collaborate: this research quantifies it.

• Finally, this project also allows for the discovery of untapped research areas and the raising of new questions about the research ecosystem and its functioning. This is critical for the sustainable development of research and the advance of the scientific field.

For organizations and industry

Some practical implications for organizations, the industry and researchers:

• The first practical implication is that organizations and businesses are now capable of quantifying and evaluating the success or insuccess of their innovation strategies. Similarly to what can be done with financial statistics, organizations and universities will now be able to see if collaboration or investment in a particular area actually materialized or not. Moreover, this project will allow institutions to really understand their capability DNA.

• This analysis will also allow organizations to develop market analyses that will allow them to elevate the knowledge on a particular research subject, such as biofuels. This contextualization is crucial to the development of new innovations in the field.

• Furthermore, as for countries, organizations and researchers will be able to find untapped areas where innovation is possible or new partners that suit a certain strategy. This work thus creates a sandbox for innovation exploration.

• Finally, this framework allows for the quantification of university-industry-government collaboration, and consequently gives a method to quantify it. This is one way in which this project allows a push for open innovation and industry wide collaboration.