Steven Casper, born in Los Angeles, California, USA, in 1967. Ph.D. from Cornell University, Ithaca. Research Fellow at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Socialforschung.
Fellow (1 September 1998 – 30 June 1999)
During my year at NIAS I worked on two projects.
Most of my time this year was spent on a large research project on developments in the German commercial innovation system, focussing in particular on the field of biotechnology. This project is probably unusual for NIAS in that it involved substantial field research during the year in addition to normal literature reviews and prolonged periods of writing. While at NIAS I was able to conduct several one to three-day trips to different bio-medical research and commercial biotechnology complexes in order to carry forth interviews with managers of German biotechnology firms. These interviews were organised and the research results synthesized while at NIAS.
During the year I was able to write three new articles based in large part on this field research, as well as revise an older article for submission to a refereed journal.
The second project is a comparative analysis of German and US business laws surrounding inter-firm contractual relationships and, again in relation to the NIAS theme group on innovation systems, an examination of the influence of these laws on the innovation strategies of firms across the two countries. I am currently synthesizing several years of prior research into a book-length project. I was able to make considerable advances in drafting or revising three chapters of this book while at NIAS.