关键词: 科技成果转化, 知识悖论

Abstract: The advent of the era of knowledge-based economy has put the interaction and relevance of scientific and technological knowledge and social economy under the spotlight, two spheres which we used to think that they kept each other at arm’s length for such a long history. While at the same time, the Knowledge-based Economy also unexpectedly resulted in and magnified the contradiction, which didn’t exist at all before, between knowledge production and knowledge consuming, both cognitively and practically. Transformation of scientific and technological achievements, also known as commercialization of scientific and technological knowledge, is an obviously effective and indispensable way to deal with knowledge paradox, to enhance technology transfer, and to promote social welfare. Nevertheless, as both empirical evidences and theoretical analyses indicate, keeping knowledge and human resources who embrace know-why and know-how floating, strengthening academic excellence of university are but just two imperatives if commercialization or transformation is to be achieved successfully.Knowledge paradox is a situation in which knowledge produced for public interest unexpectedly undermined social welfare at last due to the fact that knowledge produced hasn’t been fully taken advantage of in one way or another. Knowledge paradox was at first used to depict the situation of Sweden, but soon it was taken as a popular social phenomenon all around the world, including Europe, America and of course China. TheKnowledge paradox, specifically, is derived at least from two reasons as follows: On the one side, the role separation of knowledge producer and knowledge consumer led to uneven balance between knowledge producing and knowledge consuming; and on the other side, too much attention was paid to the economic value of scientific knowledge which contributed directly to the cognitive and practical contradiction of knowledge. Commercialization of scientific knowledge is a process in which knowledge produced by research institution is transferred to technology commercially, or transformed to the final creation of new products, new techniques, new materials and new industries -- all for the purpose of enhancing the real productive forces. Scientific knowledge, which is regarded as public good in terms of Paul Samuelson and having universal and disinterested ethos in terms of Robert Merton, has long been thinking as a way to satisfy individual researcher’s curiosity instead of an instrument to make money before the completion of the process of institutionalization of science. Yet this is not to say that scientific knowledge has never been used as way to promote social welfare by transferring it to new technology and new methods. In the long river of history of science and technology, generally speaking, most academic researchers all over the world felt disgusting on utilitarianism in their daily work. However, things changed dramatically when it comes to late 1970s, when America initiated Bay-Dole Act to promote commercialization of scientific knowledge in order to get rid of the burden of knowledge paradox. Vannivar Bush, the forefather of science and technology policy and the author of Science: The Endless Frontier, outlined the blueprint of process of science. But his nave linear model of development was refuted totally both theoretically and practically later on. Either National Innovation System, Triple Helix, or Mode 2 is indicating that the boundary of knowledge production, transmission and transferring is in flux and is always under construction all the time. In fact, non-linear development, interaction between knowledge producer and consumer may contribute to the prosperity of both science and society. So obviously, promoting commercialization of scientific knowledge by national policy intentionally is a necessary and promising way to enhance the capability of transforming and commercializing scientific knowledge in order to go beyond knowledge paradox. However, not all researchers and universities who want to commercialize their scientific knowledge really harvest their golden eggs as they wished. Mounting evidences imply that those star scientists who published more scientific papers than their peers in top journals, and those universities which are famous for their excellent original scientific research, are also pioneers in successful commercialization of scientific knowledge and in making profit from that commercialization. There is no doubt that it is too early to come to a general conclusion that everybody agrees upon about such an emerging thing as commercialization of scientific knowledge. But the truth is that whether you like it or not, once commercialization of scientific knowledge is initiated by one country successfully, any other countries will emulate fiercely in one way or another, just like what they did in every technological revolution we had experienced in our history. Nevertheless, it would be definitely wrong and totally harmful to put excessive emphasis on intellectual property protection and secrecy. By the same token, it would do no good to commercialization of scientific knowledge if commercialization itself gets focused exclusively, without paying the same attention to original innovation on science and technology. It is also obvious that there is no simple linear model between knowledge producing and profit making from that knowledge. Thus, a tentative conclusion is that it might be the greatest contribution to regional economy for universities to do to cultivate more potential scientists and technologists who harbor the commercial ethos in their mind while at the time would like to stick to the normative structure of science rather than make money themselves blatantly and intentionally.

Key words: commercialization of scientific and technological knowledge, knowledge paradox