KIBS as both innovators and knowledge intermediaries in the innovation process: Intermediation as a contingent role
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The role of knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) in innovation processes is often understood as that of knowledge intermediaries. Yet KIBS are innovators, and use external services: so what is their nature (or identity) and can it be distinguished from the roles they play? We conceptualize how KIBS can be understood simultaneously as innovators and intermediaries. We survey 407 KIBS innovators, and ask: what characterizes KIBS innovators that use KIBS intermediation? What factors are connected with different aspects of this relationship? Is the relationship conditioned by geographic context? The relationship varies with type of innovation introduced and with user characteristics, but not with geographic context.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.024 | 0.038 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.017 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".