Projects

Project Profile: IPACST

The Role of Intellectual Property to Accelerate Sustainability Transitions

Who?

Principal Investigators: Elisabeth Eppinger, Freie University Berlin, Germany
Partners: Carsten Dreher, Freie University Berlin, Germany
Anjula Gurtoo, Indian Institute of Science, India
Nancy Bocken, Lund University, Sweden
Frank Tietze, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Vimalnath Partheeba, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Sponsors: Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany
Swedish Research Council, Sweden
Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom

What?

Full Project Title: The Role of Intellectual Property to Accelerate Sustainability Transitions
Full Call Title: T2S2016
Website:

Why?

Project Objective: IPACST aims to develop evidence-based insights into IP models and how they accelerate sustainability transitions. This enables stakeholders of sustainability transitions to select suitable IP models in different situations. To contribute to a comprehensive understanding of IP models for sustainability transitions we bring together the fields of sustainability, IP and innovation management, together with political sciences and engineering addressing the following questions:

1) Which IP models do exist of relevance for sustainability transitions and how can they be typologized (e.g. from closed to completely open)?

2) Which IP models are employed by sustainable businesses and how do they match with sustainable business models? What is the role (inhibiting, stimulating) of IP models in adopting sustainable business models?

3) How do different types of IP models and business models accelerate (or prevent) the development, adoption and diffusion of sustainable innovations? Under what conditions (technological, regulatory, cultural, demand-supply factors, infrastructures) do different IP models best accelerate sustainability transitions?

4) What can we learn from best practice in sustainable businesses? What successful models exist? What are ideal combinations of sustainable business models and underlying IP models?
Call Objective: Call Objective: T2S has two major objectives:

To develop understanding of and promote research on transformations to sustainability which are of significant social, economic and policy concern throughout the world and of great relevance to both academics and stakeholders;

To build capacity, overcome fragmentation and have a lasting impact on both society and the research landscape by cultivating durable research collaboration across multiple borders, disciplinary boundaries, and with practitioners and societal partners. This includes facilitating the development of new research collaborations with parts of the world which are not often involved in large-scale international research efforts, notably low- and middle-income countries.

Where?

Regions: Asia, Europe, North America
Countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States of America (USA)

When?

Duration: 48 months
Call Date: July 6, 2017
Project Award Date: April 26, 2018