Research Areas

innovation, governance of emerging technology, socio-technical systems

Walter Valdivia holds a PhD in Public Administration and an MS in Economics from Arizona State University where he worked at the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society. His research program has two arms. Walter's dissertation, entitled "Equity considerations in the assessment of the Bayh-Dole Act" (2011) investigated public values in technology transfer policy and the political economy of academic research commercialization. This work emphasized the allocation of political power among the actors of the system and the distributive effects of innovation. Walter is currently expanding this research program to better understand the role of the university in the innovation system and its impact in the distribution of political and economic power. The second program, on the governance of emerging technologies, focuses on the role of institutions in socio-technical systems. Walter is developing the notion of "institutional path dependence" to characterize how certain paths of institutional development lock-in along specific trajectories. The identification of these inflexibilities helps establishing a clearer institutional framework to which any given governance model must be adapted. Initial applications of this approach are focusing on nanotechnologies and renewable sources of energy.