Universities of Technology Driving Regional, National and Global Knowledge Networks: Patterns - Dynamics - Effects

学术研究人员为现代工业化社会的技术和经济发展做出了重大贡献。因此，我们通过研究以下相关问题将个人学术研究人员及其网络放在中心位置：首先，我们考察了学术研究人员的人力资本和社会资本如何影响知识和创新的使用、创造和传播，以及如何受到影响。其次，我们考察了它们在区域、国家和全球范围内的知识网络。第三，我们特别关注大学与产业互动的区域网络模式。第四，我们利用我们的研究结果对学者的研究活动进行了分类，超出了基础研究和应用研究的范畴。特别是，我们调查了技术学科的特征如何驱动研究目标和活动，从而影响学术研究人员知识和网络的方向和积累。我们采用比较的方法，对德国亚琛皇家理工大学和荷兰代尔夫特理工学院的情况进行对比分析。此外，我们还加入了我们的学科视角，即经济地理学和创新经济学，并结合了定量和定性的研究方法。这将使我们能够获得关于学术研究人员知识密集型网络的模式、动态和影响的新见解。我们的结果将远远超出单个大学的案例研究或单一学科或单一方法的方法。它们将对学术研究人员、大学管理以及政策制定者有用。

Academic researchers have been substantially contributing to the technological and economic development of modern industrialized societies. Therefore, we put individual academic researchers and their networks centre-stage by investigating the following related issues: First, we examine how human and social capital of academic researchers affect and are affected by the use, creation and dissemination of knowledge and innovation. Second, we look into their knowledge networks at regional, national and global scales. Third, we focus specifically on regional networking patterns of university-industry interaction. Fourth, we use our findings to classify the research activities of academic scholars beyond basic and applied research. In particular, we investigate how the characteristics of technical disciplines drive research goals and activities, thereby influencing the direction and accumulation of knowledge and networks of academic researchers. We use a comparative approach by parallely analysing the situation at the RWTH Aachen University (Germany) and Technische Universiteit Delft (The Netherlands). Moreover, we join the perspectives of our disciplines, i.e. Economic Geography and Economics of Innovation, as well as combine quantitative and qualitative research methods. This will enable us to derive new insights relating to patterns, dynamics and effects of knowledge-intensive networking of academic researchers. Our results will reach far beyond that of an individual university case study or a one-discipline or one-method approach. They will be useful for academic researchers, university management as well as for policy makers.