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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2014‒08‒02
six papers chosen by Laura Ştefănescu Centrul European de Studii Manageriale în Administrarea Afacerilor |
| By: | Turkeli S.; Wintjes R.J.M. (UNU-MERIT) |
| Abstract: | Innovation serves many purposes. In this paper we study new varieties of innovation and innovation policy which address societal challenges in the largest cities in Europe. These metropolitan areas consistently show resounding characteristics in terms of multiplicities of innovation, governance and societal challenges. They serve as living labs and lead-markets for solutions to societal challenges. The identified and analysed cases of social innovation initiatives in these metropolitan areas organize for new resourceful interactions between the demand for social innovations and the capacities to generate multi-domain solutions. It is the context dependencies of these cases of social innovation that open up diverse interest-based possibilities. In this daily life-world context a multiplicity of actors select local-interactive processes. The broad range of actors includes government research labs, public sector, creative and other service industries, social entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, student platforms, and profession-linked open communities. Such interactions represent emerging transformative capabilities for addressing societal challenges, turning local-societal political/administrative; economic/ financial; technological/social solutions into multi-level regional, national, global opportunities, and a wider range of benefits. In metropolitan areas, these multi-domain and multi-level potentials are activated by organizing societal synergies between social participative creativity and economic innovative efficiency for any level. Existing concepts of innovation systems do not capture and explain these unique societal synergies, because they only focus on one specific type of innovation and one specific type of sectoral, technological, socio-technical, social or spatio-organizational national, regional system of innovation. It requires acknowledging that innovation and innovation systems are not only instrumental for economic benefits in a system-technocratic sense, but also for addressing societal challenges in a grassroots-communicative sense. Therefore we construct an overarching yet deepened concept the societal system of innovation, a theoretical-analytical framework based on empirical background. We do not add yet another type of innovation system, but acknowledge the overlaps and linkages between the existing types of innovation systems. The existing types are the special cases of the societal system of innovation with respect to the presence/absence of organizations, where organizational rules and interactional play between them. Over-embedded or lacking interactions among these special-case innovation systems cannot capture evolving contextuality life-world for innovation. This shortcoming provides a complementary policy rationale for being critical in the organization of widened interactions S2S, system-to-system; G2G, grassroots-to-grassroots and deepened contextuality S2G, systems-to-grassroots; and G2S, grassroots-to-systems under the concept, instruments, measurement/assessment of the societal system of innovation. |
| Keywords: | Technological Change; Research and Development; Intellectual Property Rights: General; Technological Change: Government Policy; Economywide Country Studies: Europe; |
| JEL: | O30 O38 O52 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2014040&r=knm |
| By: | Bas M.; Paunov C. (UNU-MERIT) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the heterogeneous impact of industrial liberalization policy, the dismantling of the License Raj in India, on firms innovation performance. Our results show that larger and more productive firms in liberalized industries were more likely to take up RD while the smallest and least efficient firms were less likely to do so. We also show that this inequality of effects was strongest in economically less developed Indian states and where financial development and the knowledge base are weaker. This suggests business conditions shape heterogeneous impacts of liberalization policies to the advantage of initially larger and more efficient firms. |
| Keywords: | Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis; Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology; Industrial Policy; Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives; |
| JEL: | O25 O14 O31 D22 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2014044&r=knm |
| By: | Simachev, Yuri; Kuzyk, Mikhail; Feygina, Vera |
| Abstract: | The study is focused on the cooperation of Russian companies with research organizations in implementing R&D projects during technological innovation. Taking into account behavioral changes, authors carry out a micro-level analysis based on empirical data of executive survey of over 600 Russian industrial firms (2011—2012) and about 350 research organizations and universities (2012). The authors emphasize the key factors of firms’ demand for outsourcing R&D reveal the main barriers to the development of university-industry cooperation and their particularities for different cooperation actors. The analysis shows that there is a positive relation between the size of a company and R&D outsourcing. As for the factor of age, the highest cooperation activity of Russian firms is observed among enterprises founded over 20 years ago. As far as concernes cooperation activity of research organizations, large ones are significantly more likely to cooperate with business. A common prerequisite for research organizations' R&D cooperation with business is sufficient academic ranking. Business and science evaluate differently various obstacles to effective cooperation. For firms, the main problems are the inflated costs of national R&Ds, insufficient research organizations’ orientation at company needs, and low quality of developments. As for representatives of research organizations, they mention as barriers primarily the lack of companies' receptivity to innovation and inadequate information about promising developments. Businesses are more optimistic about cooperation with science if they already have a relevant experience of interaction. In the case of research organizations we observe a different pattern: most problems seem more significant to organizations conducting R&D in business interests. |
| Keywords: | innovations; university-industry cooperation; barriers to research and development; firm behavior |
| JEL: | L20 O31 O32 |
| Date: | 2014–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:57503&r=knm |
| By: | Appel-Meulenbroek, Rianne; de Vries, Bauke; Weggeman, Mathieu |
| Abstract: | Purpose - In present day society, focused on innovation, knowledge sharing (KS) is essential. CREM needs to provide accommodation designed for people to meet more often and share both tacit and explicit knowledge. Most workplace descriptions do not provide quantitative information on how the design actually stimulates KS. They cannot be implemented straight into a design nor convince general management in budget discussions. This paper tests the suitability of spatial network methodologies to provide this proof.Design/methodology/approach - After developing a conceptual model from literature, the model is tested with a case-study of one large research driven organisation in the Netherlands. For each possible dyad between 138 employees (= 9453 dyads), several KS indicators and workplace aspects are studied with statistical analyses.Findings - KS is clearly related to the allocation of people to the rooms and workplaces in a research building. Bumping into each other does not appear the reason for this relation. Up to distances of 22 meters dyads share average or higher amounts of knowledge. It is ambiguous whether the spatial network analysis methodology is relevant for measuring added value of the workplace for KS. Originality/value - This paper provides empirical evidence on a 'softer' added value of the workplace, which is scarce. Previous studies relied mainly on qualitative descriptions of the workplace, while this paper tests a methodology to quantify the workplace in measurable aspects and correlate them statistically to organisational outcome measures. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arz:wpaper:eres2013_37&r=knm |
| By: | Rengarajan, Satyanarain; Hin, David Ho Kim |
| Abstract: | Throughout the OECD world and beyond, localised cluster based initiatives have increasingly being seen as the main industrial policy option to sustain regional competitiveness and economic prosperity (OECD, 2000). Industrialized nations in particular have come up with large scale plans to develop what is known in the literature as the 'Knowledge Based Urban Developments' (KBUD). This paper focuses on the urban design aspect of such large scale long term developments which has been given less importance in the planning literature. The paper discusses two important challenges related to land use design planning currently faced by planners of such specialized spaces. Firstly, Long term land use designs have become inefficient tools to guide development as they are constantly subjected to changing market forces. Second, design criteria for fostering interactive environments remains sketchy for such knowledge precincts. We discuss one possible design criteria with a primary aim to enhance 'knowledge interactions' between different participants and their relevance to progress of knowledge intensive communities. Using the unique criteria a new framework for a simple land use design model (LUDM-KBUD) is proposed using Agent Based Modelling (ABM) technique. Such a land use design model can help planners to develop physical planning guidelines in a continuous manner that would create a spatial design with the goal of maximizing knowledge/information interactions between participants. The research will provide planners with an alternative dynamic methodology to design such long term post-industrial mixed use developments. Future work in this direction and their ensuing implications on zoning practices of Knowledge Based Urban Developments (KBUD) and similar large scale urban developments will also be discussed. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arz:wpaper:eres2013_33&r=knm |
| By: | Paolo Seri (Department of Economics, Society & Politics, Università di Urbino "Carlo Bo") |
| Abstract: | The existence of strong complementarities between ICT diffusion, investment in human capital and organizational innovations has been recently stressed both by theoretical and empirical literature on industrial organization and economic growth. For many scholars, one of the reasons of the delay of Italian industries in addressing rising global competitiveness and improving productivity can be traced back to the inability to create the right environment for the synergetic coevolution of the three above-mentioned variables. This paper tests the hypothesis that the coevolution within the firm of the three variables, could have been influenced by the belonging of the firms to industrial districts’ environments. In particular it controls whether firms which have made more use of proximity in their activity express retards or even “lock-in” phenomena in organizational innovations with respect to the two other complementary variables. After discussing the issue of coevolution for the three variables and the role that district environments can play for the formation of phenomena of organizational inertia, we test the hypothesis of co-evolution between organisations, ICT, and human resources through a survey of 223 ‘district’ and ‘non-district’ Italian small firms. |
| Keywords: | Coevolution, ICT, Human Capital, Organizational Change, Geographical Proximity. |
| JEL: | R11 D21 O30 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:urb:wpaper:14_04&r=knm |