A 2024 Gartner survey found 48% of R&D organizations have a formal technology scouting process.

Scouts bridge gaps between external startups and in-house teams to spark innovation. They source new ideas and knowledge from the outside world, helping companies create new and better products and make processes more efficient.

But new research from Francisco Polidoro Jr., professor of management at Texas McCombs, finds a hidden tension among knowledge scouts. A key part of their role — working with multiple divisions to foster collaboration — can actually make them less effective, not more.

Ten years ago, on 12 December 2015, the Paris Climate Agreement was signed at the UN Climate Conference. In order to limit global warming to well below two degrees, only a certain amount of CO₂ may be emitted worldwide. While the focus was originally on national emission targets, more than 200 subnational regions and almost 300 cities have now adopted their own targets. But how many emissions are they fairly entitled to? Researchers at the University of Graz have now developed transparent criteria for fair distribution at the subnational level for the first time and determined corresponding greenhouse gas budgets for all European regions. The distributive justice framework and analysis, published today in the scientific journal Nature Communications, may serve as a useful starting point, and can be operationalised for other countries, e. g. the USA or China.