Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This case study investigates the process of commercializing academic knowledge.The study focuses on a two-year commercialization project aimed at developing university-industry co-operation and generating a general commercialization model for the Science Faculty.The main objective is to analyze how the sense of commercialization is produced over time and how it unfolds and changes through social interaction.The board meetings of the project served as a key site where the interaction between various actors took place and where the meanings of commercialization were negotiated, created, and maintained.Karl E. Weick's sensemaking framework, extended by the critical sensemaking framework emphasizing context, power,and organizational rules, provided a heuristic for the analysis.The data for the study consisted of observations made in the board meetings, board member interviews, and project documents.The findings show how a sense of commercialization, guided by the meeting and project rules, substance experts' competence, and power relations between the board members unfolded and took shape as a plausible commercialization story.In the story, challenges in commercialization were caused by a number of factors external to the project.The plausible story condensed into a local rule influencing the unfolding understanding of commercialization.The study sheds light on sensemaking processes in commercialization and the centrality of plausibility in academic contexts.The findings outline how science-based knowledge and discourse guided the meanings of commercialization and the construction of plausible explanations for the challenges and outcomes of the project.
Author: Outi-Maaria Palo-oja
Language: Finnish
Subfield: Management of Technology and Innovation
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2891656970