The Entrepreneurial Society

Helga Nowotny is Vice President of the European Research Council, and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Austria’s Vienna University. This slim text is a meditation on the interrelationship of scientific research and technological innovation, on the threats that societal influences pose to their successful continuation, and on the problem of reconciling the innovator’s need for freedom to follow where inquiry leads with society’s interest in defining the acceptable limits of such enquiry.

Nowotny’s central concern is with the dramatic change in the pace of scientific advance in recent decades and in the increasing tensions that result from what she terms the “privatization” of scientific research and the “democratization” of public attitudes to it. By “privatization” Nowotny means the increasing proportion of research activity accounted for by commercial and governmental (especially military) programs. By “democratization” she means the increasing involvement of the community at large, via the legislature and pressure groups, in decisions concerning the conduct and the acceptability of scientific experiment (e.g., in stem cell research), and new technologies such as genetic engineering.

Alongside this accelerating pace of innovation, there has been a striking change in the way we view the future. Nowotny contrasts the assumptions that underlay The Limits of Growth, the Club of Rome report that sold 30 million copies worldwide in the 1970s, with the very different attitude with which we approach such questions today. With an insouciance rooted in the apparent robustness of the new science of computer modeling, that report talked confidently about “The Future.” Just a generation later, with an awareness based on the still newer sciences of complexity and chaos, we no longer talk about “The Future”: We have had to learn the language of possible Futures.

Although Nowotny is concerned with the problems of the present and the immediate future, her argument gains perspective from her reflections on the positive characteristics of past societies that have proved successful nurseries of scientific discovery, and the negative qualities of others that were less productive of innovation.

Nowotny’s conclusions are unequivocal. There has been a permanent change in the social context of scientific enquiry and technological innovation. The tensions arising from the conflict between the drive for technological novelty and the need to guard against its possibly adverse consequences are more likely to increase than to abate, as innovation continues its headlong course. But that is no reason to erect barriers against the pursuit of the new. We need to preserve freedom of inquiry, with all its potential benefits, while increasing the vigilance with which we seek to anticipate its possibly deleterious side effects. We cannot stop the merry-go-round that began with the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century and the Industrial Revolution of the 18th. An accelerating rate of innovation is the defining characteristic of the society we have created, and we must find the nerve to live with it and devise methods of social control that will enable us to do so safely.

But in devising these controls, we need to protect researchers and designers from the narrowing influence of commercial sponsorship, with its preoccupation with short-term returns, and the stultifying effect of the tunnel vision that comes with political agendas. Nowotny’s most important insights are that as a consequence of these commercial and political pressures, too much present-day research activity is goal oriented, in a narrow sense; and that excessive concentration on goals is pernicious, because it militates against serendipity, those unexpected discoveries that open up new possibilities that could not have been envisaged at the outset of the program that produces them.

The book comes with endorsements from several respected American academics, and for those whose professional interests or public responsibilities lie at the interface between science, politics, and economics, it could be said to be required reading. But for those who do not usually swim in these waters, a word of warning is in order. Nowotny is no ivory-tower academic: Every page of the book bespeaks the breadth of her reading, her interests, and her understanding of the political and commercial realities underlying the issues she explores. But she is a philosopher, and her long involvement in what one might call the sociology of science shows in the occasionally too-dense language in which her arguments are phrased. This makes her book rather hard going for the nonspecialist, and those with only an amateur interest in its subject matter may find the reading of it an unrewarding experience.

Insatiable Curiosity: Innovation in a Fragile Future.

The social innovations have been together with the advanced technology in the 21st century, taking an essential role in social structures and their informatization processes. Information technology has become an indispensable factor not only in industry and service businesses, but also in governing systems at the micro (cities and regions) and macro (state and nations) levels. The information processes, which includes automation, have in the last few years an important impact on the transformation from “classical” governance into the “smart governance”. In the paper are presented the best practices which show how could social innovations, together with the advanced technology also lead to the several democratic changes in the urban environment. It can be concluded that it will in many ways reorganize public decision – makings, create changes in democratic processes that are in accordance with socioeconomic and technological development, and will represent the basis for the emergence of the so-called the smartest social community and the ensuing novel processes of organization and operation.

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Best Practices of the Social Innovations in the Framework of the E-Government Evolution

THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATON ON TAX REVENUE IN THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: A SYSTEMATISED REVIEW

The impact of digitalisation on tax revenue in the fourth industrial revolution : a systematised review

Bargaining is a fundamental characteristic of many markets and legal disputes, but it can be a source of inefficiency. Buyers often waste resources by searching for information about past prices, where a seller already holds that information. A second – and novel – source of social loss is that some buyers will avoid otherwise beneficial bargains because they recognize the seller’s advantage in any haggling match, and avoid sellers with negotiable prices. Similarly, parties might decline to accept settlement offers because they sense some disadvantage. This Article argues for mandated disclosure of past prices, and occasionally settlements, where these have been negotiable. The rule requires uniform or transparent pricing, where uniformity means that customers know that a price offered to them is the same as that offered to others, and transparency refers to the disclosure of past sale, or settlement, prices. The rule is applied to markets where consumers presently haggle with professional sellers, including the sale of medical services to hospital patients, law school merit scholarships offered to prospective students, and legal services sold to non-business clients. We additionally explore its potential in employment relationships, where it might be deployed to reduce male-female pay disparities.

A requirement of uniform or transparent transactions can limit a seller’s ability to price discriminate. There are a few markets in which price discrimination is desirable, sometimes to deliver important goods such as life-saving medicines and clean water. We demonstrate how those markets can be preserved alongside a requirement of transparency. Drawing on a variety of examples, including familiar disclosure rules in contracts, as well as compulsory licensing in copyright and the utmost good faith doctrine in insurance, this Article shows that law is conceptually equipped to address the social loss generated by duplicative search and other inefficiencies, and that pricing disclosure rules can be easily implemented, especially as markets increasingly digitize.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID3062794_code249436.pdf?abstractid=3062794&mirid=1

The End of Bargaining in the Digital Age

The main reference for twentieth century politics is the Nation-state, whose territory-citizens were the unique and only target of norm production. Furthermore, the function of norm production was commitment of public bodies, whose legitimacy – at least in democratic countries – depends on the ‘people’. i.e. the citizens that were the target of the law production itself. An important fact, is that national production of norms slowly shifted from the legislative to the executive power. Too many were the decisions to be made in a brief term, and too fast were people’s emotional reactions, to let this commitment to an impersonal and procedural institution like the legislative power. In a globalized world, things have changed under many aspects. The multiplicity of decisional levels, e.g.: on one side, supranational bodies and entity are more and more frequently assuming this function; furthermore, more and more frequently, national commitments have shifted towards more restricted levels, such as regi...

Legislative innovation. Towards a global law. Making process: the case of global citizenship policy modelling

The emerging globalization policies are underlining the key importance of international and supranational regulations and standards. Digitalization has reframed the free circulation of intangible a...

Giovana Camila Portolese

Papers

Legislative innovation. Towards a global law. Making process: the case of global citizenship policy modelling

Digitalization, IPRs and tax innovation