Explore the vast range of titles available.

Ernest Solvay, philanthropist and organizer of the world-famous Solvay conferences on physics, discovered a profitable way of making soda ash in 1861. Together with a handful of associates, he laid the foundations of the Solvay company, which successfully branched out into other chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals. Since its emergence in 1863, Solvay has maintained world leadership in the production of soda ash. This is the first scholarly book on the history of the Solvay company, which was one of the earliest chemical multinationals and today is among the world's twenty largest chemical companies. It is also one of the largest companies in the field to preserve its family character. The authors analyze the company's 150-year history (1863–2013) from economic, political and social perspectives, showing the enormous impact geopolitical events had on the company and the recent consequences of global competition.

An offspring of a precocious large-scale humanitarian enterprise to save occupied Belgium from starvation during the First World War, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) Educational Foundation was established in 1919 as an exchange programme for Belgian and American university students. The CRB Educational Foundation was originally designed as a commemoration monument celebrating the relief drive and its main architects - the businessman and future president of the USA, Herbert Hoover, and its counterpart on the Belgian territory, the financier Emile Francqui. In a few years' time, the programme rapidly grew out from a successful private initiative to a political project corresponding to different needs. While Hoover saw in this transatlantic exchange programme the expression of a policy which in many ways anticipated the activities of 'cultural diplomacy' during the Cold War and allegedly promoted 'mutual understanding' in international affairs, Francqui conceived it as a purely domestic instrument enabling to alleviate Belgium's lagging scientific and academic position after the war. This paper attempts to show that this fundamental divergence of views contributed to make the exchange programme an unbalanced programme from the start whose success ultimately resulted from a fruitful misunderstanding, rather than from a common aspiration for 'mutual understanding'.

The interactions between industrial enterprises, uni-and the State in Belgium have constituted key mechanisms in the bunching of a national sci-enee policy, which strived to raise the level of indus-trial innovation. Against the perception of stable partners driven by common objectives and rational negotiations, this article argues that the origins of this policy lay rather in a series of informal interpersonal initiatives, channelled by technical-scientific «platversities, forms», which were eventually institutionalized after World War II. This awkward system, based on the dynamics and tensions of social networks, ended up by becoming the legitimate «default» model up to the early 1970s.

The question this article seeks to address relates to the strategies deployed by the chemical firms Solvay & Co. and Gevaert N.V.—two multinationals operating in a highly innovative sector and depending on Belgium's national system of innovation—by taking advantage from the research capabilities located in the surrounding academic landscape. The two companies adopted different methods to capture the knowledge produced in university laboratories, which corresponded best to the kind of research they wished to explore. It will be argued that, instead of conforming to any previous blueprint for linear innovation, industrialists and academics have sought to overcome their conflicting interests and cultural divergence by bringing out mutual opportunities that eventually led to unexpected forms of utilitarian cooperation. In the long run, informal linkages and social networks helped shaping the patterns of increasingly coordinated and elaborated procedures of innovation.

The question this article seeks to address relates to the strategies deployed by the chemical firms Solvay & Co. and Gevaert N.V.-two multinationals operating in a highly innovative sector and depending on Belgium's national system of innovation-by taking advantage from the research capabilities located in the surrounding academic landscape. The two companies adopted different methods to capture the knowledge produced in university laboratories, which corresponded best to the kind of research they wished to explore. It will be argued that, instead of conforming to any previous blueprint for linear innovation, industrialists and academics have sought to overcome their conflicting interests and cultural divergence by bringing out mutual opportunities that eventually led to unexpected forms of utilitarian cooperation. In the long run, informal linkages and social networks helped shaping the patterns of increasingly coordinated and elaborated procedures of innovation.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president of the United States in 1933, a succession of federal planning agencies helped to implement the economic and social policy characteristic of the New Deal. The intellectual experience of these experts fits into a context that transcends national differences, despite claims to exceptionalism and testifies to convergences between the United States and European countries before and after the Second World War.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president of the United States in 1933, a succession of federal planning agencies helped to implement the economic & social policy characteristic of the New Deal. The intellectual experience of these experts fits into a context that transcends national differences, despite claims to exceptionalism & testifies to convergences between the United States & European countries before & after the Second World War. Adapted from the source document.