Reprint of: Social movements and free innovation

In this article, I explore innovation and diffusion from social movements as part of the phenomenon of free innovation in households. The article contributes to the literature on household innovation by illustrating how social movement motivations may differ from motivations examined in prior studies focused on self-rewards, as well as examining the implications for free innovations and diffusion patterns in this setting. Social movement innovators are typically motivated by a common cause (such as a quest for a new life order and societal change) and create innovations that address a cause and “system change” rather than individual goals. I identify and define three types of social movement innovation: behavioral, product, and symbolic innovation. The common-cause motivation also creates a new form of diffusion problem that can only be solved through the spread and consumption of new products, behaviors, or techniques by a sufficiently large crowd. Common-cause motivations should thus encourage innovation diffusion, thereby reducing the risk of the diffusion-failure problem usually observed in household innovation research.     

Societal trust and open innovation

While open innovation provides a new paradigm to sustain a firm’s competitive advantage, opening up to external knowledge also entails substantial risks of appropriation and opportunism. Building on this “open paradox” framework, this study investigates whether societal trust—a key aspect of informal cultural norms—serves as an effective mechanism in improving relational governance among partners, thereby leading to better collaborative outcomes. Using a novel panel data on co-owned patents across 29 countries, we show that firms in high trust countries are able to produce a higher level of joint output (i.e., co-owned patents). This effect is more pronounced when perceived opportunism is higher (i.e., firms in high-tech industries, or in countries with less disclosure transparency), and when formal contracts are less enforceable (i.e., in countries with relatively weak legal systems). We further show that open innovation is the channel through which societal trust promotes innovative efficiency. Overall, our study establishes societal trust as a key factor in influencing the efficiency of open innovation.     

Openness and innovation—Home and export demand effects on manufacturing innovation: Panel data evidence for Ireland and Switzerland

Recent studies in the tradition of Schmookler have re-emphasised the potential role of demand in stimulating innovation. Here, we reconsider the role of ‘home’ and ‘export’ market demand in stimulating manufacturing innovation using comparable panel data for two small open economies - Ireland and Switzerland. Our analysis is based on the estimation of reduced form innovation production functions using panel data estimators over the sample period 1994-2005. For a range of innovation indicators, however, we find little evidence of any significant market demand effects, with innovation performance instead determined largely by firm-level capability effects and characteristics. In policy and strategy terms this suggests the continued value of measures to improve innovation capability regardless of market demand conditions. In more methodological terms our results suggest the validity of the usual assumption implicit in modelling innovation outputs that supply-side factors predominate.     

创新系统功能分析模型构建及应用

文章探讨了创新的本质和内涵,构建了创新系统功能分析模型,并对我国风电产业创新系统进行了功能演化分析。研究认为,创新的本质是复杂的价值创造过程,创新系统的主要功能是创造新的价值,包括科学价值、技术价值、经济价值、社会价值和文化价值;创新系统构成、创新系统功能和创新政策之间存在内在的逻辑关系,形成一个闭环。风电产业创新系统功能演化分析结果显示,我国风电产业发展具有阶段性特征,并遵循政策路线和技术成长两条路线。     

用户赋能和服务创新对APP绩效的影响研究

移动应用程序APP是移动互联网时代企业创造价值的重要渠道。尽管APP市场具有巨大的商业价值，但也出现了不少绩效较低的现象：互联网创业夭折、成交转化率低下、APP卸载率较高等等。研究APP的绩效问题有助于发现影响APP绩效的关键因素，帮助企业找到提高APP绩效的新方法。本文从服务主导逻辑出发，识别出了影响APP绩效的两大关键策略--用户赋能和服务创新，论述了这两大策略对APP收入绩效的影响机理。本文使用自然观察法跟踪和分析中国（N=200）和美国（N=206）两个样本中的APP个体，发现两个样本产生出来的结果较为一致：APP若选择赋予用户更多的权力，让用户主导平台的价值创造活动，那么它的收入绩效往往比较好；企业如果较为注重服务创新，持续地为APP开发出新特征或新服务，APP的收入绩效一般较好。本研究也可以给APP企业带来实践上的启示：首先，企业应分析APP的定位和作用；其次，企业应重视用户在价值创造中的重要作用，还要意识到用户不仅仅是APP的接受者和使用者，还是生产者和价值创造者；再次，企业应按照APP的定位，再决定是否将价值创造的主导权赋予广大用户；最后，企业应当重视APP的服务创新，持续地推出新功能和新特征，为用户提供更加便捷、易用的服务。     

A symbolic interactionism perspective of using social media for personal and business communication

Achieving the anticipated business benefits of a social medium is important as organizations diligently invest in different social media platforms. While much previous research assumes that social media helps organizations to communicate with customers, less is known about whether customers embrace using social media to interact with organizations. It is important to understand the role of social media for business communication from the customers’ perspective, as this may significantly deviate from the organizations’ own communicative intentions. In this exploratory case study of the Moon Struck hotel in China, we investigate both how customers interpret the hotel’s use of WeChat official account for business communication and how customers respond to messages received from Moon Struck’s WeChat account. Adopting a symbolic interactionism perspective, we surprisingly find that WeChat personal accounts and Moon Struck’s official account offer radically different meanings to followers. Specifically, WeChat personal account symbolizes a sociality-oriented meaning (e.g., relationship and image building), while Moon Struck’s WeChat official account symbolizes information broadcasting-related meaning (e.g., selling, advertising, and branding). Both technological features and the distance of relationships among users contribute to the constructed symbolic meaning of technology, subsequently affecting users’ WeChat use patterns. The theoretical implications of this study are discussed and recommendations are made for future research and practice.     

网络众包模式的协同自组织创新效应分析

网络众包(Crowdsourcing)模式开启了微观个体参与创新的时代,突显了大众智慧的商业价值,通过移动互联端到端的连接方式搭建了大众参与的创新平台,实现了协同自组织的新型网络工作环境。本文通过与传统组织形式的比较,基于"RPV模型"(Resource,Process,Value)理论的组织特点,分析了网络众包模式中互补共生的运营方式和基于知识服务的协同自组织过程,使个体在协同创新的系统中找到参与的位置,通过系统协调形成多目标经济活动的次优组合,并探讨分析了个体与利益相关者如何通过协同的方式和途径创造群体价值,实现"产消合一"的服务体系,塑造众包数字化生存和信息时代全新的工作形态。     

Long-term research on technology innovation in the form of new technology patents

Recent changes in innovation development are related to the new technological revolution (Industry 4.0), pandemic, economic crises, and new legislation. These trends provide new opportunities for the improvement of production materials, construction, processes, and capacities. Innovative technologies improve the processes of business analyses and forecasting, as well as new product development, order processing, logistics, production automation, quality control, and marketing. Modern technologies are gradually replacing ergonomically demanding and dangerous occupations. Such innovations are particularly necessary for the transformation of problem companies and regions, as they often have a significant impact on economic development. This study is part of our long-term research on the technology innovation of problem companies and regions. Its primary goal is to methodically emphasize the importance and role of technology innovation management, mainly in problem companies, and analytically compare the innovation success of regions and countries from a global perspective. The study was carried out from 2015 to 2021. The time scope of the analyzed data is 2000–2018. The results show a certain Asian dominance in technology innovation management, in terms of the number of technology patents as well as of the growth dynamics and the ability to overcome the pandemic and crises in general.     

Advancing innovation in the public sector: Aligning innovation measurement with policy goals

There is sufficient evidence, drawn from surveys of innovation in the public sector and cognitive testing interviews with public sector managers, to develop a framework for measuring public sector innovation. Although many questions that are covered in the Oslo Manual guidelines for measuring innovation in the private sector can be applied with some modifications to the public sector, public sector innovation surveys need to meet policy needs that require collecting additional types of data. Policy to support public sector innovation requires data on how public sector organizations innovate and how a strategic management approach to innovation can influence the types of innovations that are developed. Both issues require innovations surveys to delve deeply into the innovation processes and strategies that are used by public sector managers. Implementation of the measurement framework proposed in this paper would open up opportunities for a new, policy-relevant research program on public sector innovation.     

Convergent designs in fine fashion: An evolutionary model for stylistic innovation

In this paper we propose and test an evolutionary model of stylistic innovation, that is the change in the aesthetic and symbolic elements of products and services. Style is an increasingly relevant phenomenon in many industries and our goal is to develop a model of how styles get introduced and adopted. We build on existent literature on technological change to frame the dynamics of how style changes across time. In the model we propose, companies face periods of ferment with relevant stylistic variations and periods of convergence on a single trend—that is the stylistic convergent design versus the technologic dominant design. We identify the drivers of convergence in stylistic innovation. We test the model with a longitudinal empirical study (1984-2002) in the fine fashion industry, explaining the main differences between a stylistic and a technological evolutionary model.     

Innovation in the service sector: The demand for service-specific innovation measurement concepts and typologies

There is evidence that the notion of innovation, well established in the manufacturing sector, cannot simply be transposed to the service sector. This article deals critically with existing measurement concepts derived from manufacturing, and introduces a new typology with a view to obtaining a better understanding of innovation in services. Selected results from the German innovation survey are analysed in order to support the conceptual findings and to identify potential improvements. Special attention is directed towards the inclusion of knowledge-intensive business services that are of particular importance for innovation processes.     

Boundary spanning innovation and the patent system: Interdisciplinary challenges for a specialized examination system

This article discusses the importance of boundary spanning innovation, demonstrates the drawbacks of popular metadata based boundary spanning measures, and proposes a new full text semantic similarity measure of boundary spanning. It subsequently uses the semantic distance boundary spanning measure to demonstrate that boundary spanning innovation has become more common in recent decades, and show that these boundary spanning inventions pose challenges for the traditional specialized-examiner patent examination model. Examining the applications for inventions that span technical boundaries takes longer and requires more back-and-forth with the patent office than their comparatively simple peers. Finally, this article discusses potential reforms to the patent examination system to help address these challenges.     

Persistence and learning effects in design innovation: Evidence from panel data

This paper explores persistence and learning effects in the aesthetic and symbolic dimensions of design innovation. By combining insights from innovation economics and design studies, we discuss design innovation as the result of firm-specific cumulative learning. We then conceptualise design and product innovation as complementary processes whose interplay may lead to learning effects across different dimensions of knowledge creation. We provide quantitative evidence for these insights applying dynamic probit and bivariate probit models to a longitudinal dataset of manufacturing firms based in Spain for the period 2007–2016. Our findings confirm the presence of persistence effects in design innovation, offering novel evidence in support of the view whereby design is an iterative process shaped by the knowledge generated through firms’ previous engagement with design. In addition, the results contribute to our understanding of the role of design beyond its functional dimension, pointing to mutually reinforcing effects between aesthetic and symbolic design and product innovation.     

数字创新发展经济体系：框架、演化与增值效应

数字化时代,数据作为新的要素进入到创新发展经济体系中,改变了原有的要素构成和主体关系,急需健全数字化背景下创新发展经济体系研究的理论基础。本文提出数字创新发展经济体系的概念及其分析框架,并从“围绕数字自身创新发展形成的经济体系（Ⅰ型）”和“创新发展经济体系的数字化（Ⅱ型）”两个相互融合增值的体系出发,来界定和理解数字创新发展经济体系的内涵。本文认为,在数字化时代,数字技术不断升级突破、知识生产方式不断优化、创新要素关系不断增强、创新主体边界不断扩大、制度和条件不断完善为数字创新发展经济体系的演化提供了动力支撑。最后,本文在数字化背景下拓展了熊彼特的创新发展经济理论,指出数字创新发展经济体系通过投入创新数字化、产品创新数字化、工艺创新数字化、市场创新数字化、组织创新数字化等五类渠道实现价值增值。     

创新数量、创新质量对外贸出口影响效应研究

从创新数量、创新质量角度分析创新对外贸出口的作用机制与效应具有重要意义。本文认为创新数量的微观作用机制包括提高企业竞争优势、降低产品生产成本,宏观作用机制包括加强国际贸易基础设施建设、培养创新人才、培育创新文化等。创新质量的微观作用机制包括有利于企业形成蓝海战略、企业创新成果的良性反馈效应,宏观作用机制包括催生新兴产业、提升全球价值链、改善国家贸易环境等等。在此基础上,基于中国高技术产业统计年鉴数据,采用面板数据模型和面板门槛回归模型分析了创新数量、创新质量对外贸出口的影响效应。研究结果表明：创新数量对外贸出口呈现U型曲线。并且具有外贸出口门槛效应,即随着外贸出口门槛水平增高,创新数量贡献的弹性增大;创新数量存在“U型陷阱”与“低外贸出口”效应;创新质量水平较低,与外贸出口无关。     

职业教育和培训与创新

本文主要论述了职业教育和培训与创新过程的关系,认为创新需与教育结合,而教育本身也在经理创新的过程,指出了导致后现代科学现代化压力的发展趋势及其对教育和培训体系的挑战.针对这种现状,文章重点考察了德国职业教育和培训体系,分析了德国体系的特点和结构以及近三十年来的主要危机与改革的措施.文章指出每次危机的发生都带动了创新和改革的发展,特别介绍了今年来最重要的改革发展步骤,即所谓的"实地学习概念",文中详细介绍了教学模块创新的基本思想和原则.     

Systemic technology innovation management and analysis of other forms of IP protection

Industry 4.0 and the pandemic have caused recent changes in innovative development, economic situations, and restrictions in various companies and regions of the world, with new stricter legislation related to working conditions, hygiene standards, and health requirements. New technologies are a challenge to the transformation of problem companies and regions, as they often significantly impact economic development. Technological emissions, growing information on dementia among young people, cyber risks, and the risks of so-called advanced technologies (e.g., bio- and nanotechnologies, Industry 4.0 tech) may raise societal concerns about technological progress. This study is part of our long-term research into technological innovation in different companies and regions. Its primary goal is to methodically emphasize the importance and role of the systemic management of technological innovation in companies and regions and analytically compare the innovation success of differently developed regions from a global perspective¹. This research deals with an important aspect of technology management, namely, the processes of technological identification and the protection of related intellectual property (IP). The primary research question is: How has technological development been distributed across different regions over the last two decades? We hypothesize that Asian countries are increasingly moving away from Europe and North America in terms of technological innovation, other forms of technological IP protection, and overall access to innovation, while the focus is on the development of three non-patent forms of technological innovation protection: industrial designs, trademarks, and utility models. The results of our study reveal a significant difference in the approach to technological innovation management and the form of IP protection between so-called advanced and problem companies and regions. This study was conducted between 2018 and 2022.     

Human capital and innovation: the importance of the optimal organizational task structure

Management literature has identified high-skilled human capital as a crucial dimension of innovation processes at the firm level. In this study, we introduce an alternative view of human capital based on the tasks that firms’ workers perform. We propose a measure of cognitive analytical and interpersonal tasks: the degree of abstractism. We argue that the level of abstractism of a firm has an effect on a firm's propensity to innovate and on its product innovation performance. We hypothesize that while the degree of abstractism has a linear positive relationship with the propensity to innovate, the relationship between abstractism and product innovation performance follows an inverted u-shaped relationship. We find partial support to our hypotheses using data from more than six thousand Portuguese firms. We discuss how these results change our understanding of the relationship between human capital and innovation at the firm level.     

Evaluations of innovation programmes in selected European countries

The incorporation of an evaluation procedure in a growing number of innovation policy programmes has now become an accepted feature in the public management of many countries. There already exists substantial experience on the conduct of such evaluations. The purpose of this paper is to present some sample evaluations of measures to promote innovation in a number of European OECD countries (Federal Republic of Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden). Reference will be made to four of them to illustrate the diversity of the evaluative approaches applied to the wide spectrum of measures to promote innovation. Each of these examples will be studied in detail in order to identify their characteristic features, particularly with attention to their causes, performance and their use in political decision processes.A conceptual framework will be presented in order to propose a typology of various forms of evaluation and to characterize the four case studies. It shows that concept and process of evaluations are strongly influences by the specific context and consensus or dissent on objectives and resources. The case studies give a clearer insight into the factors determining the use of results of evaluations; and to what extent the role of evaluations varies from pure legitimation to a systematic and rational basis for decision making in the area of technology policy.Innovation policy consists of government actions towards technological developments and their implementation in the economy. Innovation, in this case, is defined as the development of technologically new or improved products or techniques and their commercialization in the market or implementation within production. Often evaluation means the examination and assessment of the mode of action and of the effectiveness of government innovation policy. However, finding a general interpretation of the expression “evaluation of an innovation policy” presents greater difficulty, and here wide divergences are evident. In the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands, the term encompasses all forms of monitoring and assessing the operation and/or the effectiveness of an innovation policy. In Sweden, evaluation usually means performance of the a posteriori analysis of a measure. The terms “ex ante evaluation” and “follow-up evaluation” are respectively used for the explicit designation of prospective and retrospective analyses. In France, the term “evaluation” is associated with the notion of value. It often carries the connotation of a value assessment with the full monitoring implications of that expression.     

Using patent citation patterns to infer innovation market competition

We propose an empirical strategy to estimate competition in innovation markets. Our method relates firms’ market return on equity to information about patent citation patterns. Two innovations are implemented in the methodology. First is the application of daily abnormal stock returns rather than annual measures of Tobin's q. Second is the creation of citation patterns related to the area of science a firm patents in as represented by the detailed patent classification system. We find that markets positively reward firms when patents are granted. We further find that firm's market value increases when its patent portfolio is cited. We find evidence of competition in innovation markets. The market reacts at the time that the citation occurs and does not anticipate future citations at the time of patenting. Holding this effect constant, we find that citations from patents in the same area of science tend to reduce market value. We interpret these findings as consistent with more citations indicating more valuable intellectual property but citations from competing technologies decreasing it.