Patent systems for encouraging innovation: Lessons from economic analysis

Economic theory views patents as policy instruments aimed at fostering innovation and diffusion. Three major implications are drawn regarding current policy debates. First, patents may not be the most effective means of protection for inventors to recover R&D investments when imitation is costly and first mover advantages are important. Second, patentability requirements, such as novelty or non-obviousness, should be sufficiently stringent to avoid the grant of patents for inventions with low social value that increase the social cost of the patent system. Third, the trade-off between the patent policy instruments of length and breadth could be used to provide sufficient incentives to develop inventions with high social value. Beyond these three implications, economic theory also pleads for a mechanism design approach: an optimal patent system could be based on a menu of different degrees of patent protection where stronger protection would involve higher fees, allowing self-selection by inventors.     

Innovation policy making in a federalist system: Lessons from the states for U.S. federal innovation policy making

Most observers argue that, in comparison with other advanced industrial nations, the U.S. has failed to develop a coherent and effective set of policies for industrial innovation. In contrast, in the 1980s, U.S. states forged ahead of the federal government in the development of technology policies. Yet, while some states have found the wherewithal to spend relatively large sums of money on an appropriate mix of well-designed policies; others, facing similar situations, have done little. Research conducted on the state policy-making process found that this variation was caused by a number of procedural factors. In fact, in the course of the research, two models of policy making were discovered. One was associated with well-funded and well-designed policies, the other was not.Significantly, the federal innovation policy-making process appears remarkably similar to the process of policy making followed in states doing the least. This article suggests that it is precisely because the federal policy-making process is so similar to the process in these latter states, that the U.S. has yet to develop a well-funded and well-designed innovation policy effort. This article outlines a reformulated federal policy-making process, closer to that used by the most successful states, which would significantly improve the innovation policy effort.     

Science, technology and innovation for economic growth: Linking policy research and practice in ‘STIG Systems’

This paper reflects on the relevance of “systems-theoretic” approaches to the interdependent policy issues relating to the dynamics of science, technology and innovation and their relationship to economic growth. Considering the approach that characterizes much of the current economics literature's treatment of technology and growth policies, we pose the critical question: what kind of systems paradigm is likely to prove particularly fruitful in that particular problem-domain? Evolutionary, neo-Schumpeterian, and complex system dynamics approaches are conceptually attractive, and we examine their respective virtues and limitations. Both qualities are readily visible when one tries to connect systems-relevant research with practical policy-making in this field.     

科技创新、产业结构升级与经济增长

本文基于地理空间的视角，采用多种空间计量技术以及面板门槛技术，探讨了科技创新、产业结构升级与经济增长之间的关系。结果显示，(1)空间关联是科技创新与产业结构升级促进经济增长过程中不能忽略的重要因素。(2)科技创新、产业结构升级影响经济增长的机制不同，前者对经济增长始终存在显著的正效应，而后者对经济增长则呈负向影响。二者的协同效应对经济增长的影响显著为正，表明科技创新有利于化解产业结构升级过程中的负效应；(3)进一步的门槛效应分析表明，科技创新与产业结构升级的经济增长效应均存在门槛，只有当二者相互匹配、协同发展时，二者对经济增长的促进作用才能更好的发挥。     

R&D, innovation and microeconomic growth: a case study

Although Rollei's camera sales grew as a result of postwar increases in income, its traditional product lines came under competitive pressure in international markets in the mid-1950s from lower-priced Japanese cameras of the same type, and from the newly-developed 35mm camera. By 1964, Rollei's sales and exports were stagnating and profits had disappeared. However, the policy of new management began in 1965 to widen and renew the company's product range through a vigorous programme of R&D, and a strong marketing effort. By 1971, 84% of Rollei's sales were products which had not existed in 1965, and these new products enabled Rollei to remain competitive in the critically important export market.     

科技创新政策、创新能力与企业创新

摘要：将科技创新政策归纳为六种类型,建立三阶段通径模型,以上海市为案例进行实证分析,研究了科技创新政策对企业不同创新阶段能力及企业创新的影响。研究结果表明,六类创新政策对于企业创新产业化实现的路径影响存在异质性,财政政策、外部规范性政策只对创新基础投入能力产生直接正向影响,金融政策对创新基础投入能力及创新中间转化能力产生直接正向影响;知识产权政策对创新基础投入能力及创新产业化实现能力产生直接正向影响;税收政策、人才政策对创新成果产业化三个阶段均产生直接正向影响。且六类创新政策对于促进企业创新成果产业化的政策效应大小依次是创新投入能力、创新中间转化能力、创新产业化实现能力。     

Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy

This paper attempts to explain why innovating firms often fail to obtain significant economic returns from an innovation, while customers, imitators and other industry participants benefit Business strategy — particularly as it relates to the firm's decision to integrate and collaborate — is shown to be an important factor. The paper demonstrates that when imitation is easy, markets don't work well, and the profits from innovation may accrue to the owners of certain complementary assets, rather than to the developers of the intellectual property. This speaks to the need, in certain cases, for the innovating firm to establish a prior position in these complementary assets. The paper also indicates that innovators with new products and processes which provide value to consumers may sometimes be so ill positioned in the market that they necessarily will fail. The analysis provides a theoretical foundation for the proposition that manufacturing often matters, particularly to innovating nations. Innovating firms without the requisite manufacturing and related capacities may die, even though they are the best at innovation. Implications for trade policy and domestic economic policy are examined.     

企业成长与创新视角下的产业链升级研究

产业链升级是中国企业摆脱跨国公司低端锁定的重要途径。以企业成长与企业创新理论为基础,讨论了企业在不同成长阶段入嵌产业链的程度。研究发现青春期企业创新投入越强入嵌程度越低,吸收能力越强入嵌程度越高。新创期入嵌产业链程度较低,而青春期较高。创新投入与入嵌程度之间关系受到新创期负向调节。同时,吸收能力与入嵌程度之间关系受到新创期的负向调节、青春期的正向调节。研究结论对中国企业产业链升级具有理论贡献与实践启示。     

珠海经济特区自主创新政策体系实效评估暨优化

为进一步完善和优化珠海市现行自主创新政策法规体系,使之更加适应于新形势下自主创新的需要,首先探讨和设计了对自主创新政策法规体系的实效进行评估的多角度方法,又根据这种方法对珠海市现行自主创新政策法规体系的实效情况作出了评估,最后根据评估结论,针对性地提出了进一步完善、优化自主创新政策法规体系的对策措施.     

产业积聚、持续创新与区域经济增长内在关联性分析

分析了产业集聚、持续创新和经济增长三者间的内在关系。认为产业集聚促进持续创新,持续创新推动区域经济增长,区域经济增长呼唤产业集聚。并由此得到启示,产业集聚和持续创新是解决开发园区“二次创业”、推动中小企业发展以及缓解资源供给稀缺性现状的有效路径选择。     

海洋产业结构升级、海洋科技创新与海洋经济增长——基于省际面板数据PVAR模型的实证研究

为促进我国海洋经济实现高质量发展,基于2006-2015年的省际面板数据,运用PVAR模型对海洋产业结构升级、海洋科技创新与海洋经济增长之间的动态关系进行实证分析,研究结果表明:海洋产业结构升级对海洋经济增长具有显著的影响,海洋经济增长对海洋科技创新具有显著的影响;从短期来看,海洋经济增长对海洋产业结构升级的正向效应不明显,从长期来看,海洋经济增长能够促进海洋产业结构的优化;海洋科技创新对海洋经济增长的正效应逐渐减弱;海洋产业结构升级对海洋经济增长的贡献率高于海洋科技创新对海洋经济增长的贡献率;海洋产业结构升级是海洋经济增长的格兰杰原因,海洋经济增长是海洋科技创新的格兰杰原因。     

Technology, security, and policy implications of future transatlantic partnerships in space: Lessons from Galileo

Policy makers seek to identify an institutional framework that facilitates the commercialization of publicly funded R&D, while simultaneously addressing innovation market failure. In the space industry, the formation of such a framework is complicated by national security considerations and the fact that numerous sovereign nations are often included in the commercialization process. This paper analyses how multi-public partnerships with industry can promote commercially viable space programs, resolve market failures, and address transatlantic security concerns. The benefits and policy implications of the formation of such transatlantic multi-public-private partnerships (TMP³) are illustrated based on a case study of the design of a major European public-private project in the space industry: the Galileo space-based navigation system.     

中国创新发展的区域关联及空间溢出效应研究——基于中国经济创新转型视角的实证分析

随中国经济创新转型的大力实施及市场化改革的不断深入,当创新服务需求因转型而不断加大时,一省区极有可能因满足外部的创新服务需求而获得自身的创新发展。论文不仅使用探索性空间数据分析工具研究了1999-2010年中国各省区创新专利产出的空间分布格局与特征,并以一个表征市场潜能对地区创新发展影响的新经济地理学模型为基础,运用空间误差面板数据方法,考察了外部潜在的创新服务需求即市场潜能给地区创新发展带来的直接空间溢出效应。结果发现,中国创新发展存在随时间推移而日益加大的正向溢出性,并且市场潜能因素对中国各省区的创新发展及相互溢出具有重要影响,只不过由市场潜能所引致的创新空间溢出存在随地区间隔距离增大而减小的地理特性。     

Government policies towards industrial innovation: a review

Existing economic theories show that continuing innovation, diffusion, and technical and managerial improvement are necessary for economic growth and international competitiveness in the industrially advanced countries. But knowledge of why, where and how governments should intervene in the processes of industrial innovations stems more from trial and error than from systematic empirical information of the nature and extent of the hindrances to economically and socially desirable innovations, and of the effectiveness of alternative government policies to remove them. Nonetheless, past empirical studies do offer some clues.Differences amongst industrial sectors. The sources of new technology vary widely amongst inustrial sectors: in the costs of innovation, in the relative importance of outside suppliers of equipment and materials, of large and small firms, and of full-time R & D departments as compared to part-time innovative activities (sect. 7, 8). Similarly, the conditions for successful innovation vary amongst sectors (sect.6). Thus, government policies designed to influence innovation are likely to act with different intensities in different industries.The management of innovation. Nonetheless, there are some features common to innovation in different industries. Considerable costs beyond R & D are often necessary before the innovations reach commercial use (sect.4). And the following managerial characteristics are in general associated with successful innovation: a deliberate policy of seeking innovations; close and careful attention to customer requirements; good personal communications both within the firm and with outside sources of relevant knowledge; a style of management that is ‘organic’ and ‘participatory’ rather than ‘hierarchical’ and ‘authoritarian’; strong project leadership; and a strong engineering capability (sect. 6).R & D managers are still unable to predict the outcome of R & D projects to a useful degree of accuracy and, in the literature on methods of project selection, very little attention is paid to market uncertainties. Furthermore, a greater use of conventional investment appraisal criteria in deciding on R & D projects may re-inforce the already observed tendency in industry towards short-term, low-risk projects, to the neglect of longer-term, high-risk projects (sect. 5).Governments should therefore examine whether the benefits of policies towards education and management advisory services for innovation might outweigh their costs. They may also have a significant role to play in financing longer-term research that is basic to the development of industrial technology (subsect. 12.5).The nature of market and production demands. The direction of industrial innovation is often very sensitive to market and production demands (sect. 3). This fact, together with the high degree of market uncertainty facing innovating firms (sect. 5), suggest that governments can potentially influence both the pace and the direction of industrial innovation through their influence on the scale of industrial, consumer and public service demands. However, this potential influence will become real only if users of innovations are able to specify the innovations that they need, or to evaluate those that they get. This is generally the case for industrial demand, but not in consumer and public service markets, where fashion, insensitivity to users' needs and lack of technical competence often prevail. Government-funded technological institutes and laboratories are ideally placed to provide such technical competence (sub-sect. 12.3).Economic incentives and rewards for innovation. A whole range of economic factors are said to influence the resources, the incentives and the rewards for innovation: for example, the degree of monopoly or the degree of competition, the patent system, the level of profits, the level of taxation, and the level of demand. The empirical evidence on the effects of most of these factors on industrial innovation is either inconclusive or non-existent. However, in the USA a close relationship has been observed between growth of industry sales and growth of industry-financed R & D activities (sect. 10). The rate of growth of demand is also one of the key factors influencing the rate of diffusion of innovations amongst their potential population of users (sects. 11, 12.2).The government-financed scientific and technological infrastructure. Scientific and technological knowledge from outside of innovating firms is often crucial to the completion of successful innovations, and three UK studies show that a significant proportion of this outside knowledge comes from government-financed technological institutes and laboratories, and from the universities (sect. 3). If the same is true in other countries, it should be an essential feature of any government policy towards industrial innovation to know how effectively government-funded laboratories and universities provide supportive knowledge to industry, and how government laboratories should be organised and financed (subsect. 12.4).Direct government-financing of innovative activities in industry. Governments specifically finance R & D activities in industrial firms, although these expenditures are less than those for general industrial development (sect. 13). These R & D activities in industry are relatively more important in France and UK, than in F.R. Germany and the Netherlands.In the four countries, more than 70% of all civilian government R & D activities related to industry are spent on aircraft, space, nuclear energy and electronics (subsect. 14.4). In all these high technologies, governments attempted in the 1960's to implement ‘policies for innovation’, involving government procurement, industrial mergers and attempts at European co-operation, in addition to the financing of R & D (subsect. 14.5). Government expenditures on civilian R & D related to other industrial sectors are very much smaller in all four countries (subsect 14.4).Where should governments intervene? A, number of attempts have been made to develop a formal framework of criteria to assist governments in deciding where they should intervene in industrial innovation. They all run into the following difficulties: dealing with multiple policy objectives; assessing national costs and benefits; comparing with alternative policies, choosing appropriate policy instruments (sect. 17).How should governments intervene? Very little information is available on the effectiveness of various policy instruments that have been used by governments in order to promote innovation in industry. Although it is often possible to measure the inputs into such policies, the measurement of their outputs (or results) is more difficult. Nonetheless, detailed studies would enable some such measurements to be made, and internationally comparable studies would increase the range of experiences and the number of cases that could be examined (sect. 18).Why should governments intervene? A full appreciation of the nature and scale of hindrances to industrial innovation, on which governments should act to remove, requires direct information on what innovations are (or are not) being introduced by industry, and why they are (or are not) being inyroduced. This information can best be obtained from analyses of the behaviour of industrial firms. They would differ from most existing innovation studies that concentrate on asking how firms must behave in order to make successful innovation, by asking what innovations are attempted, and why firms are stimulated to attempt them (sect. 19).     

Deploying information technologies for organizational innovation: Lessons from case studies

Organizations must innovate if they are to survive in today's fiercely competitive marketplace. In this paper, we explore how leading organizations are using emerging technologies to enable novel forms of ideation that can radically increase the sheer volume of ideas they explore. In addition, we outline how organizations use technologies to cost effectively manage this increased volume of ideas by optimizing generation, mobilization, advocacy and screening, experimentation, commercialization, and even the diffusion and implementation of ideas. Critical to this is the management of knowledge during the innovation process.     

Non-technological regulatory effects: Implications for innovation and innovation policy

This paper considers the link between public policy and innovation and contributes to the notion that public policies that do not directly address innovation carry along important implications for it. It explores the role of regulation for innovation and innovation policy by emphasizing the importance of non-technological regulatory effects for innovation and their potential as an input for innovation policy. The output of in depth interviews with stakeholders from the detergents industry is combined with various sources of secondary data and reveals a variety of non-technological novelties attributed to regulation that are relevant to innovation. These results are then matched against the objectives of innovation policy, an exercise that gives better insights on the policy links between regulation and innovation policy and concludes on the domains of complementarities between the two. We find that that regulatory policy can contribute to the achievement of targets set by innovation policy while innovation policy measures can facilitate the compensation of negative regulatory implications for innovation.     

创新作用于经济增长的一般机理研究

本文作者1993年提出,创新植入增长是高质量经济增长最为根本的源泉。作为对于这一思想的进一步阐释,本文先是解释了创新植入增长的一般过程,其后讨论了制度条件对于创新植入增长的调节机理。本文认为,率先创新对于经济增长起着引擎的作用,模仿创新对于经济增长具有扩张作用;但在不同制度条件下,创新对于经济增长的实际作用是不同的。     

广东省科技创新效率与经济增长的实证研究

运用协整理论和Granger因果检验方法,分别对广东省1991-2007年间三大引文系统收录的文章篇数、专利申请量、技术市场成交额与经济增长之间的因果及定量关系进行研究,阐明了经济增长和科技创新及转化效率之间的作用关系.研究结果显示,广东省创新产出效率与经济增长的协整和单向因果关系并不成立,创新效率对经济增长的影响作用有限,产出效率对经济增长的推动作用不显著.创新转化效率与经济增长之间虽然不具备长期稳定的均衡关系,但却是经济增长的Granger成因,对经济增长具有显著的正向推动作用.依据对广东省有效数据的分析,探讨其现有科技发展模式的缺陷,对加快粤港澳三地的科技合作有重要的借鉴与启示作用.     

Higher growth through the Blue Ocean Strategy: Implications for economic policy

Higher growth is a key goal of companies, governments, and societies. Economic policies often attempt to attain this goal by targeting companies of certain sizes that operate in specific industries and focus on a specific business activity. This approach to policy making has considerable shortcomings and seems to be less than fully effective in increasing economic growth. We suggest a new approach to policy making that stems directly from the entrepreneurial perspective. This approach examines a successful business strategy framework - the Blue Ocean Strategy - to discover conditions for high growth. We test the propositions on empirical data for two cases of successful high-growth business, namely Slovenian gazelles and Amazon.com. The results reveal a gap between the macro level of economic policy making to achieve higher growth and the micro level of business growth. The findings call for a change in the focus of economic policies on specific size companies, industries, and business activities to intraindustry cooperation, collaboration between companies of different sizes, value innovation, and creation of uncontested markets.     

Three frames for innovation policy: R&D,systems of innovation and transformative change

Science, technology and innovation (STI) policy is shaped by persistent framings that arise from historical context. Two established frames are identified as co-existing and dominant in contemporary innovation policy discussions. The first frame is identified as beginning with a Post-World War II institutionalisation of government support for science and R&D with the presumption that this would contribute to growth and address market failure in private provision of new knowledge. The second frame emerged in the 1980s globalising world and its emphasis on competitiveness which is shaped by the national systems of innovation for knowledge creation and commercialisation. STI policy focuses on building links, clusters and networks, and on stimulating learning between elements in the systems, and enabling entrepreneurship. A third frame linked to contemporary social and environmental challenges such as the Sustainable Development Goals and calling for transformative change is identified and distinguished from the two earlier frames. Transformation refers to socio-technical system change as conceptualised in the sustainability transitions literature. The nature of this third framing is examined with the aim of identifying its key features and its potential for provoking a re-examination of the earlier two frames. One key feature is its focus on experimentation, and the argument that the Global South does not need to play catch-up to follow the transformation model of the Global North. It is argued that all three frames are relevant for policymaking, but exploring options for transformative innovation policy should be a priority.