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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2009‒09‒05
four papers chosen by Laura Stefanescu European Research Centre of Managerial Studies in Business Administration |
| By: | Sofka , Wolfgang; Grimpe, Christoph |
| Abstract: | Searching for external knowledge has frequently been characterized as crucial for firm success. However, little is known about how the direction of search strategies influences innovation performance. In this paper, we argue that firms need to specialize their search strategy and that its effectiveness is moderated by R&D investments and potential knowledge spillovers from a firm's environment. Based on a sample of more than 5,000 firms from five European countries, our results show that being open for innovation generally pays off. However, both moderating factors have a crucial role to play: On the one hand, in-house R&D investments are most effective when combined with a market-oriented search strategy. On the other hand, a technologically advanced environment requires firms to reach out to scientific knowledge sources in order to access novel knowledge and to enhance innovation performance. We develop targeted management recommendations based on these results. |
| Keywords: | Open innovation,search strategies,innovation management |
| JEL: | L60 O32 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:09016&r=knm |
| By: | Squicciarini, Mariagrazia |
| Abstract: | The paper focuses on the role of Science Parks (SPs) as seedbeds of innovation. It investigates whether and to what extent locating inside a science park relates to the innovative output of tenant firms. The simple assessment methodology proposed relies on count data models, uses patents as innovation performance indicators, and exploits original data regarding the Finnish science parks, their main characteristics, and the data of 252 SP tenant firms, including their patenting activity over the period 19702002. Among other results, the study suggests that both within and among SPs interaction and spillover effects exist, and points out the way in which they relate to firms' innovative output. Results are robust to controlling for the existence of innovation lags. Parks' first mover disadvantages also emerge, as well as non-negligible matching phenomena whereby firms' and parks' characteristics matter jointly. |
| Keywords: | Science Parks,knowledge spillovers,innovation,patents,firm performance |
| JEL: | L29 O32 O38 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:200932&r=knm |
| By: | Giovanni Dosi; Richard R. Nelson |
| Abstract: | This work prepared for B. Hall and N. Rosenberg (eds.) Handbook of Innovation, Elsevier (2010), lays out the basic premises of this research and review and integrate much of what has been learned on the processes of technological evolution, their main features and their effects on the evolution of industries. First, we map and integrate the various pieces of evidence concerning the nature and structure of technological knowledge the sources of novel opportunities, the dynamics through which they are tapped and the revealed outcomes in terms of advances in production techniques and product characteristics. Explicit recognition of the evolutionary manners through which technological change proceed has also profound implications for the way economists theorize about and analyze a number of topics central to the discipline. One is the theory of the firm in industries where technological and organizational innovation is important. Indeed a large literature has grown up on this topic, addressing the nature of the technological and organizational capabilities which business firms embody and the ways they evolve over time. Another domain concerns the nature of competition in such industries, wherein innovation and diffusion affect growth and survival probabilities of heterogeneous firms, and, relatedly, the determinants of industrial structure. The processes of knowledge accumulation and diffusion involve winners and losers, changing distributions of competitive abilities across different firms, and, with that, changing industrial structures. Both the sector-specific characteristics of technologies and their degrees of maturity over their life cycles influence the patterns of industrial organization ? including of course size distributions, degrees of concentration, relative importance of incumbents and entrants, etc. This is the second set of topics which we address. Finally, in the conclusions, we briefly flag some fundamental aspects of economic growth and development as an innovation driven evolutionary process. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, Technological paradigms, Technological regimes and trajectories, Evolution, Learning, Capability-based theories of the firm, Selection, Industrial dynamics, Emergent properties, Endogenous growth |
| Date: | 2009–08–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2009/07&r=knm |
| By: | Cassiman, Bruno; Veugelers, Reinhilde; Zuniga, Pluvia |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the diversity of the types of links of firms to science and their effect on innovation performance for a sample of Belgian firms. While at the industry level links to science are highly related to the R&D intensity of the sector, we show that there exists considerable heterogeneity in the type of links to science at the firm level. Overall, firms with a science link enjoy superior innovation performance, in particular with respect to innovations that are new to the market. At the invention level, our findings confirm that patents from firms engaged in science are more frequently cited and have a broader technological and geographical impact, but we show that it is crucial to distinguish between direct science links at the invention level and indirect science links at the firm level to encounter these distinct positive effects of science links. |
| Keywords: | Innovation,cooperation,patents,forward citation,science,industrial innovation |
| JEL: | O32 O34 L13 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:200930&r=knm |