Technological platforms in the life sciences

Les plates-formes technologiques dans les sciences de la vie

Pascal Le Masson (1) , Anne Branciard (2) , Catherine Paradeise (3) , Franck Aggeri (1) , Ashveen Peerbaye (3)

1 CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3
2 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
3 LATTS - Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés

The collective management of technological platforms is one of the key-issue of life sciences policy in France. Technological platforms have been given two missions by public policies: contributing to knowledge production and realize technological transfer to the industry. The historical and empirical analysis of six different platforms reveals heterogeneous operations and performances, including a rapid obsolescence of equipments for some of them. How to explain this empirical heterogeneity? Why performances and operations are far behind initial expectations? To answer these questions, we have assumed that research and innovation dynamics are due, not so much to the economic properties of research, to the goods exchanged on platforms or to public incentives, rather than to largely unknown organizational and governance mechanisms. Based on the characterization of three models of organization and governance of platforms, we stress two key factors for success: the development of engineering capabilities within platforms enabling to absorb rapidly changing technologies; the building of new multi-level governance rules to address the co-evolution of platform activities and research programs.

Mots clés: Instrumentation; Science Policy; Organization; Research Governance

Domaines: Economies et finances

Pascal Le Masson, Anne Branciard, Catherine Paradeise, Franck Aggeri, Ashveen Peerbaye. Technological platforms in the life sciences: Public policies, organizations and performance. European Review of Industrial Economics and Policy , 2010, 1. ⟨hal-03468710⟩