Managing external knowledge flows: The moderating role of absorptive capacity

In this paper, we argue that those firms with higher levels of absorptive capacity can manage external knowledge flows more efficiently, and stimulate innovative outcomes. We test this contention with a sample of 2265 Spanish firms, drawn from the Community Innovation Surveys (CIS) for 2000 and 2002, produced by the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE). We find that absorptive capacity is indeed an important source of competitive advantage, especially in sectors characterized by turbulent knowledge and strong intellectual property rights protection. The implications for management practice and policy are also discussed.     

International scientist mobility and the locus of knowledge and technology transfer

Despite the growing interest of scholars and policymakers to better understand the determinants for researchers in public science to transfer knowledge and technology to firms, little is known how temporary international mobility of scientists affects both their propensity to engage in knowledge and technology transfer (KTT) as well as the locus of such transfer. Based on a sample of more than 950 German academics from science and engineering faculties, we investigate how the duration and the frequency of scientists’ visits at research institutions outside their home country affect KTT activities. We find that most mobile scientists engage in KTT to firms both in the host and in their home country, suggesting that KTT activities to firms abroad do not substitute or crowd out, but complement KTT to firms in the home country. We further find that the longer research visits abroad are, the higher the likelihood that scientists engage in KTT to firms, again both in the host and the home country. However, the more frequently scientists visit institutions abroad, the more likely they are to engage in KTT to firms only in their home country. Our results therefore provide evidence for the benefits of “brain circulation”. The article contributes to the growing strand of the literature on scientist mobility and on the determinants of industry-science linkages at the individual level.     

The effect of financial constraints, absorptive capacity and complementarities on the adoption of multiple process technologies

This paper investigates the factors affecting the multiple adoption of new process technologies in manufacturing. We focus our attention on the effect of both financial resources and absorptive capacity on the decision to introduce the technology. We argue in favour of a negative effect of financial constraints and provide reasons for a differential effect of internal and external R&D on innovation adoption. Additionally, the methodology allows us to consider the possible complementarities arising when firms adopt several new process technologies. Our results show that financial constraints are dependent on the technology analyzed, whereas only internal R&D investments are strong predictors of adoption. We are also able to present evidence that the three technologies analyzed (numerically controlled machines, computer aided design and robotics) are, to some extent, complementary.     

Scientific knowledge dynamics and relatedness in biotech cities

This paper investigates the impact of scientific relatedness on knowledge dynamics in biotech at the city level during the period 1989–2008. We assess the extent to which the emergence of new research topics and the disappearance of existing topics in cities are dependent on their degree of scientific relatedness with existing topics in those cities. We make use of the rise and fall of title words in scientific publications in biotech to identify major cognitive developments within the field. We determined the degree of relatedness between 1028 scientific topics in biotech by means of co-occurrence of pairs of topics in journal articles. We combined this relatedness indicator between topics in biotech with the scientific portfolio of cities (i.e. the topics on which they published previously) to determine how cognitively close a potentially new topic (or an existing topic) is to the scientific portfolio of a city. We analyzed knowledge dynamics at the city level by looking at the entry and exit of topics in the scientific portfolio of 276 cities in the world. We found strong and robust evidence that new scientific topics in biotech tend to emerge systematically in cities where scientifically related topics already exist, while existing scientific topics had a higher probability to disappear from a city when these were weakly related to the scientific portfolio of the city.     

Technology and the generation of international knowledge spillovers: An application to Spanish manufacturing firms

In the continuing debate about the positive versus negative effects of inward investments in a host economy, a new perspective has arisen from new firms’ strategy nowadays to internationalise their activity. One aspect is that knowledge that is not completely appropriable by foreign affiliates abroad may spill over into domestic firms. In the absence of conclusive evidence, two questions can be put forward: the first concerns the role played by technology in the generation of those external effects; the second, the micro-assessment of the dynamics of technological spillovers. In this paper, results show that benefits for domestic firms in Spain differ across industries by their technological content. The hypothesis of spillover dynamics is tested and supported by the availability of panel data for manufacturing firms in the 1990s.     

Resolving the knowledge paradox: Knowledge-spillover entrepreneurship and economic growth

The knowledge paradox suggests that high levels of investment in new knowledge do not necessarily and automatically generate the anticipated levels of competitiveness of growth. In particular, knowledge investments do not automatically translate into balanced growth and competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to explain why knowledge investments are inherently unbalanced, so that the competitiveness and growth ensuing from knowledge are not equally spread across individuals, firms, and spatial units of observation, such as regions and countries. Based on a data set linking entrepreneurial activity to growth within the context of German regions, this paper shows that entrepreneurship serves a conduit of knowledge spillovers.     

Brave old world: Accounting for ‘high-tech’ knowledge in ‘low-tech’ industries

‘Lower-tech’ sectors are still commonly regarded as unusual suspects in the modern process of innovation and economic change. In this paper we try to understand better how organisations specialising in traditional businesses have been transformed by a period of paradigm-shift such as the one that characterised the final decades of the twentieth century. We focus on a population of nearly 500 of the world's largest innovative companies to assess the extent to which companies belonging to ‘old-economy’ sectors have been developing cutting-edge knowledge about clusters of new technologies such as ICT, new materials and biotechnology. We find that ‘non-high-tech’ corporations transformed their patent portfolios in a non-trivial way. Companies in mature trades contributed significantly to the development of technologies that are at the core of the so-called Third Industrial Revolution.     

Performance of Spanish universities in technology transfer: An empirical analysis

This paper investigates the performance of universities in the transfer of technology using a unique university-level dataset for Spain. The results suggest that universities with established policies and procedures for the management of technology transfer perform better. Universities with large and experienced technology transfer offices (TTOs) generate higher volumes of contract research, but the TTO characteristics appear to matter less for university performance in terms of licensing and creation of spin-offs. Furthermore, universities with a science park perform better than those without, which suggests that the agglomeration of knowledge close to universities has a positive effect on universities’ technology transfer performance.     

Intra-plant diffusion of new technology: Role of productivity in the study of steel refining furnaces

This paper examines intra-plant diffusion of new technology in the Japanese steel industry. The introduction of the basic oxygen furnace (BOF) was the greatest breakthrough in steel refining in the last century. Using unique panel data, the paper estimates total factor productivity by technology type, and associates the estimates with intra-plant diffusion. The paper finds that intra-plant diffusion accounts for about a half of the industry productivity growth. Large plants are likely to adopt the new technology earlier, but retain the old technology longer, than their smaller counterparts.     

Regional knowledge spillovers: Fact or artifact?

The explanation of different levels of innovation and their spatial distribution represents the central focus of the analysis. The empirical literature documents the incidence of spatial autocorrelation in patenting activities and interprets them as evidence for knowledge spillovers. Alternatively, the authors propose the spatial pattern of input variables in innovation processes as driving forces of patenting autocorrelation. They analyze 51 Nuts 1 regions in Europe and find that the high degree of spatial autocorrelation exhibited by patent applications can be explained comprehensively by the spatial location of the input factors in the knowledge production function. These are traditional indicators on R&D investments and human capital from Eurostat and proxy variables on social capital from the European Values Study. This finding has important implications for the scope of an autonomous regional innovation policy.     

Multinational firms, global value chains and the organization of knowledge transfer

This paper combines insights from different streams of literature to develop a more comprehensive framework for the analysis of knowledge transfer via value chain relationships. We integrate the existing literature in three ways. First, we consider value chain relationships as a multi-facet process of interaction between buyers and suppliers, involving different modes of knowledge transmission and development. Second, we assess whether and to what extent value chain relationships are associated with the presence of multinationals and with their embeddedness in the host economy. Third, we take into account the capabilities of local firms to handle the technology as a factor influencing knowledge transfer through value chain relationships. Using data on 1385 firms active in Thailand in 2001-2003, we apply a multinomial logit model to test how the nature and intensity of multinational presence and the competencies of local firms affect the organization of international knowledge transfer. We find that knowledge intensive relationships, which are characterized by a significant transmission of technical and organizational competencies along the value chains, are positively associated with the presence of global buyers in the local market, with the efforts of MNCs to adapt technology to local contexts, and with the technical capabilities of domestic firms. By contrast, the age of subsidiaries and the share of inputs purchased locally appear to increase the likelihood of value chain relationships with a lower technological profile.     

Creating competition?: Globalisation and the emergence of new technology producers

This paper studies the role of globalisation (through trade, inward FDI and international migration) in the emergence of new countries as contributors to technology generation in the world economy. Increasing FDI is a factor causing the emergence of newer countries with the more sophisticated technology generation associated with patenting, but not in the recent surge of newer countries with the basic capabilities needed to become licensors in the world economy. Yet increases in the international spread of subsidiary research efforts in MNCs have tended on average to reinforce the position of established centres of higher grade technological activity.     

The skill bias effect of technological and organisational change: Evidence and policy implications

Previous studies have suggested that technological change is the main cause of the recent increase in demand for highly skilled workers in developed countries. However, a more recent strand of literature has also introduced the “Skill Biased Organisational Change” hypothesis, according to which the increasing diffusion of new organisational practices within firms plays a role in the increasing demand for skilled workers. We estimate a SUR model for a sample of 400 Italian manufacturing firms, showing that upskilling is more a function of reorganisational strategy than a consequence of technological change alone. Moreover, some evidence of superadditive effects emerges, which is consistent with the notion that technology and organisation jointly affect the demand for labour.     

The structure and evolution of industrial clusters: Transactions, technology and knowledge spillovers

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between location patterns, innovation processes and industrial clusters. In order to do this we extend a transactions costs-based classification into a knowledge-based taxonomy of clusters, along the lines suggested by a critical revision of the main assumptions underlying most of the existing literature on spatial clusters. Our arguments show that the transactions costs approach and the innovation and technological regimes framework are broadly consistent, and that real insights into the microfoundations, nature, and evolution of clusters can be provided by these classification systems.     

University-industry collaborations in Japan: The role of new technology-based firms in transforming the National Innovation System

This paper examines the role of new technology-based firms in university/industry collaborative (UIC) activities in Japan. UIC activities have been widely diffused into small startup firms over the past 5 years, according to quantitative analysis of RIETIs UIC Survey. In this paper, it is found that these smaller firms achieve higher productivity through UICs than large firms. In light of the findings of this paper, it appears that UICs are gaining momentum and are likely to play a strong role in reducing the dependence of Japan's system of innovation on in-house R&D conducted within large corporations.     

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.     

R&D offshoring and the productivity growth of European regions

The recent increase in R&D offshoring has raised fears that knowledge and competitiveness in advanced countries may be at risk of ‘hollowing out’. At the same time, economic research has stressed that this process is also likely to allow some reverse technology transfer and foster growth at home. This paper addresses this issue by investigating the extent to which R&D offshoring is associated with productivity dynamics of European regions.     

From knowledge to added value: A comparative, panel-data analysis of the innovation value chain in Irish and Swiss manufacturing firms

The innovation value chain (IVC) divides the innovation process into three separate links or activities: knowledge gathering, knowledge transformation and knowledge exploitation. Here, we report a comparative panel data analysis of the IVC in Ireland and Switzerland. Both economies are small, very open and depend significantly on innovation to maintain competitive advantage. In recent years, however, R&D and innovation growth in Ireland has been markedly stronger than that in Switzerland. We investigate these differences through the ‘lens’ of the IVC. Significant similarities exist between some aspects of firms’ innovation behaviour in each country: strong complementarities emerge between external knowledge sources and between firms’ internal and external knowledge. And, in both countries, in-house R&D and links to customers prove important drivers of innovation. Innovation drives productivity growth in different ways in the two countries, however, through product change in Switzerland and through process change in Ireland. Other differences in the determinants of innovation performance linked to ownership and firms’ institutional context emphasise the systemic nature of innovation and the legacy of past patterns of industrial development.