SpinBook Project : crossing innovation boundaries through social interaction

In the last twenty years, scholarly research has extended its boundaries in order to reply to the increasing complexity of our society. Traditional scientific sectors and their research practices have become unsuitable especially for the production of new knowledge. In particular, the new knowledge creation is taking place also outside academic institutions (Nowotny, Scott & Gibbons, 2001), that have to enhance their relationship with Society: they are called to transfer their skills, competencies and research results to external actors in order to maximize their outcomes (European Commission, 2007). These processes are not unidirectional, but they are characterized by multidirectional interactions and try to match supply with demand. Many categories of actors are involved in research transfer activities, first of all researchers with their ideas, results or need for new research funds. Research institutions have to adapt themselves to new global, European or national research policies (e.g. societal impact assessment). Companies and private sector need new ideas and opportunities in order to overcome recession. Governments want to assess their investment in order to account for their policies. Various actors imply various needs, a heterogeneous system that needs to be coordinated. Until now, main channels for research results transfer have been the traditional patents databases, usually run by Intellectual Property Offices. These tools have some limits, especially their static structure that does not take advantage of potentialities of Web. Therefore, new instruments and environments for knowledge transmission are necessary: social media could answer to these requirements. Because of their features, scholarly community has increasingly employed social media in order to communicate their results in a better and faster way (Bik & Goldstein, 2013). Furthermore, studies about new metrics based on social media (Priem, Piwowar & Hemminger, 2012; Peters, Chen, Kaplan, Ognibeni & Pauwels, 2013) are developing. These existing tools are very useful for scholarly communication growth, but they might not be so useful for the interaction between science and industry. They are too much ‘generalist’ and, most of all, are plenty of information noise. Moreover, some of them focus on traditional research outputs, instead of research outcomes (e.g. Academia.edu or ResearchGate ). For this reason, a new social media focused on innovation and knowledge transfer could increase the communication between various actors of the whole innovation system. SpinBook, currently in beta version, is a new tool set up by IRCrES (Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth) within the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and Cultural Heritage of the National Research Council of Italy. It considers all types of actors involved in the innovation process, from researchers to companies, each one with a specific user profile. It is based on a solid data quality control and on a careful validation of users' profiles. Another important feature is the hour-by-hour updating of news about innovation topics. This project aims to set up a real network between the actors of the innovation process, giving them a suitable visibility and also giving a boost to new ideas and projects.