The renewal of regional capabilities : Experimental regionalism in Germany

The innovativeness of a region depends on its ability to recombine technological, organisational and scientific capabilities. This recombination can be facilitated by regional policies. In the past, these policies provided a stable set of “local collective competition goods” supporting interorganisational patterns of cooperation, communication and competition. Given the increasing uncertainties of an internationalised knowledge society, these stable regional orders are challenged by new, more open-ended and experimental patterns of regional policies. These policies treat regions as social fields whose political and economic boundaries, identities, dominant coalitions and governance structures are constructed in bargaining and exchange relations. Also the type of collective competition goods required and their target groups are the result of negotiations involving not only political actors and business associations but also enterprises and trade unions. This shift to a discursive renewal of regional capabilities, as well as the difficulties and limitations encountered by such “experimental regionalism”, is illustrated on the basis of an East and a West German region. Leipzig had to create a new economic and business structure and to integrate the existing firms into regional networks in order to enhance its innovative capabilities. In Leipzig, these two challenges were met by separate, newly created institutions thus hampering the regional integration and innovativeness of the recently recreated industrial basis. In Nuremberg, the transformation of a traditional industrial region into a technology and service-based one was facilitated by a common vision, regional networks, new research facilities and favourable conditions for start-up activities. In this case, a new regional “steering committee” facilitated the integration and renewal of formerly isolated regional capabilities thus demonstrating the potential of a discursive renewal of regional innovation systems.     

Do firms in clusters invest in R&D more intensively? Theory and evidence from multi-country data

This study aims to evaluate whether firms located in clusters invest more intensively in research and development (R&D) than their non-clustered counterparts. Specifically, it proposes a model of firm R&D and tests empirically its implications for the effect of being located in a cluster on firm R&D intensity. The key ideas underlying the theory are as follows: (1) due either to natural excludability or to a high degree of stickiness of R&D-opportunity-bearing technological knowledge, geographical proximity per se is limited in the (automatic) spillover of knowledge with promising R&D opportunities to nearby firms; (2) geographical proximity may, however, help enhance the effectiveness or efficiency of knowledge exchange through market mechanisms (e.g., through contract R&D, R&D collaboration); (3) potential advantages (or disadvantages) in firm R&D of being located in a cluster also depend on the degree of asymmetry in technological competence among firms located in the cluster. The key ideas are supported by an empirical analysis of a multi-industry, multi-country data set compiled by the World Bank. In particular, the results show that being located in a cluster per se actually has a negative effect on firm R&D intensity, which is in contrast to the conventional wisdom of pure or automatic localized knowledge spillovers, as far as firm R&D intensity is concerned.     

Professional guilds, tension and knowledge management

Scientific research is a crucial success factor for knowledge intensive firms and is often a joint effort of scientists and managers. However, scientists and managers belong to different “professional guilds,” subscribing to different belief systems and valuing different types of incentives. These differences give rise to tension between scientists and managers. We integrate a large body of literature from knowledge management to develop a new theoretical model predicting that this organizational tension is affected by environmental factors such as the degree of industry munificence, firm-specific factors like knowledge-management policies, and the individual roles of boundary spanners within the firm. Further, we argue that this tension can lead to positive or negative outcomes.     

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.     

Geographical clustering and firm growth: Differential growth performance among clustered firms

This paper investigates the effect of being located in a cluster on firm growth. In particular, it focuses on the differential growth effect of being located in a cluster, or a growth divide among clustered firms, based on the idea that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, advantages of geographical clustering are not randomly or equally available to clustered firms. Due to the intense competition among clustered firms for resources such as creative talent, firms who are more attractive to the resources are more likely to entice better resources and hence achieve higher growth. Our empirical analysis of firms in nine industries across six countries shows that being located in a cluster per se does not have a positive effect on firm growth and that domestic technological leaders with a sufficient technological distance to the global technological frontier show differentially higher growth due both to the attractiveness to promising resources and to the opportunity for incoming knowledge spillovers from global technological leaders.     

Protecting knowledge: How legal requirements to reveal information affect the importance of secrecy

Most firms use secrecy to protect their knowledge from potential imitators. However, the theoretical foundations for secrecy have not been well explored. We extend knowledge protection literature and propose theoretical mechanisms explaining how information visibility influences the importance of secrecy as a knowledge protection instrument. Building on mechanisms from information economics and signaling theory, we postulate that secrecy is more important for protecting knowledge for firms that have legal requirements to reveal information to shareholders. Furthermore, we argue that this effect is contingent on the location in a technological cluster, on a firm’s investment in fixed assets and on a firm’s past innovation performance. We test our hypotheses using a representative sample of 683 firms in Germany between 2005 and 2013. Our results support the moderation effect of a technological cluster and a firm’s investment in fixed assets. Our findings inform both academics and managers on how firms balance information disclosure requirements with the use of secrecy as a knowledge protection instrument.     

集群企业知识分享行为影响因素的实证研究

 基于计划行为理论,构建了集群企业知识分享行为意向分析模型,对某纺织产业集群进行问卷调查,用结构方程模型方法对该有关假设做了验证。实证结果表明集群企业的知识分享态度和知识分享行为控制力对知识分享行为意向具有显著性正向影响,集群企业间的合作关系可以促进知识分享,集群企业间的竞争对企业知识分享态度有消极影响,而知识分享能力在所有因素中对知识分享行为的影响程度最大。     

The French defence industry in the knowledge management era: A historical overview and evidence from empirical data

In the defence industry the recent development of a ‘market for technology’, the creation of new European high-technology companies as well as transformations in government agencies have driven firms to reposition their technological and organizational skills. Our objective is to show that the transformations that have occurred in the past 10 years have not only redefined skills and the organization of production, but also have given a more strategic place to knowledge management (KM) practices. We provide a contextual and historical overview based on qualitative interviews, in order to better understand the relation between KM and innovative behaviour in this industry. We build an original industrial and technological database comprising various samples that provides quantitative information concerning KM and innovative practices. The results of the statistical analysis reveal the specificity of firms in this industry. Taking account of the size of these firms and their technological intensity, we show that the behaviour of defence industry firms in terms of KM practices, differs from that of other firms. This is evident from their technological performance, and innovation and patenting intensity. This structural tendency is explained as an innovative behaviour in the French national innovation system rather than merely a ‘trend’.     

R&D cooperation and failures in innovation projects: Empirical evidence from French CIS data

The second French Community Innovation Survey (CIS) indicates that 14% of R&D collaborating firms had to abandon or delay their innovation projects due to difficulties in their partnerships, an outcome which we term “cooperation failures”. Controlling for sample selection on the cooperation decision, our estimates show that firms collaborating with competitors and public research organizations (PROs), especially when they are foreign, are more likely to delay or stop an innovation project because of difficulties encountered in their R&D partnerships. More surprisingly, firms collaborating with their suppliers also face a higher risk of “cooperation failures”. At least for PROs, firms can reduce the risk of “cooperation failures” through previous experiences in partnerships. Larger firms and group subsidiaries are less likely to face “cooperation failures”, and so do firms in industries with a strong appropriability regime.     

Knowledge diffusion, market segmentation and technological catch-up: The case of the telecommunication industry in China

This paper examines the growth of technological capability in the telecommunication industry in China. We apply a modified version of Lee and Lim's [Lee, K., Lim, C., 2001. The technological regimes, catch-up and leapfrogging: findings from the Korean industries. Research Policy, vol. 30.] model of technological learning and catching-up. Using the three cases of the Shanghai Bell, the CIT-led R&D consortium, and indigenous companies such as Huawei, we analyze how the catching-up in the telecommunication industry occurred. We find that the important factors in the catch-up are the strategy of “trading market for technology,” the knowledge diffusion from Shanghai Bell both to the R&D consortium and to Huawei, and industrial promotion by the government. As a condition for successful catch-up, the paper points out that the technological regime of the telephone switches is featured by a more predictable technological trajectory and a lower cumulativeness. These conditions and strategies helped the Chinese firms to achieve a stage-skipping catch-up, namely, by skipping the stage of analogue electronic switches to jump to digital electronic switches.     

Managing competences in entrepreneurial technology firms: a comparative institutional analysis of Germany, Sweden and the UK

Innovating firms in new industries face a number of technological and market risks, especially appropriability and competence destruction. However, the relative significance of these varies between different sub-sectors, and so do managerial ways of dealing with them. These in turn are influenced by institutional frameworks, particularly those governing skill formation systems and labour markets. Consequently, the relative success of firms in fields with different appropriability and competence destruction risks is likely to vary between countries with contrasting patterns of labour market organisation. In the biotechnology and computer software industries, there are major differences in the dominant risks faced by innovating firms such that we would expect their relative success to differ between Germany, Sweden and the UK. While the UK and, to a limited extent, Sweden, have developed institutions similar to those found in the US that help govern “radically innovative” firm competences, Germany has invested in institutional frameworks associated with “competency enhancing” human resource practices that give its firms an advantage in more generic technologies in which organisational complexity is higher. While the distribution of public companies across sub-sectors broadly follows these expectations, Sweden has developed considerable strength in middleware software. This results from changing property rights and personnel policies at Ericsson.     

How much should society fuel the greed of innovators?: On the relations between appropriability, opportunities and rates of innovation

The paper attempts a critical assessment of both the theory and the empirical evidence on the role of appropriability and in particular of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) as incentives for technological innovation. We start with a critical discussion of the standard justification of the attribution of IPR in terms of “market failures” in knowledge generation. Such an approach, we argue, misses important features of technological knowledge and also neglects the importance of non-market institutions in the innovation process. Next, we examine the recent changes in the IPR regimes and their influence upon both rates of patenting and underlying rates of innovation. The evidence broadly suggests that, first, IPRs are not the most important device apt to “profit from innovation”; and second, they have at best no impact, or possibly even a negative impact on the underlying rates of innovation. Rather, we argue, technology- and industry-specific patterns of innovation are primarily driven by the opportunities associated with each technological paradigm. Conversely, firm-specific abilities to seize them and “profit from innovation” depend partly on adequacy of the strategic combinations identified by the taxonomy of [Teece, D., 1986. Profiting from technological innovation: implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy. Research Policy 15, 285-305.] and partly on idiosyncratic capabilities embodied in the various firms.     

Outside directors on the board and innovative firm performance

We investigate how outside directors on supervisory boards influence innovative activities of the firms they advise and monitor. Based on panel data on the largest German companies, the econometric analysis shows a positive influence of external executives on innovative firm performance, measured by patent applications. Differentiating between outside directors from innovative and non-innovative companies reveals that only outside directors from innovative firms increase patenting activities at the firms they advise and monitor. This effect increases with the technological proximity between the appointing firm and the outsider's home firm. Outside directors from non-innovative firms are negatively associated with the appointing firm's innovativeness. The results indicate that external executives with an appropriate professional background can provide valuable specific knowledge and expertise to the board.     

Catching up and leapfrogging in a high-tech manufacturing industry: towards a firm-level taxonomy of knowledge accumulation

Latecomer firms from emerging economies upgrade their technological capabilities by providing original equipment manufacturer (OEM) services to multi-national enterprises from advanced countries and extend their role across the global value chains. Existing firm-level taxonomies of knowledge accumulation cannot explain why most latecomer firms fail to transit to advanced levels in high-tech manufacturing industries. The proposed framework combines firm-level taxonomy of knowledge accumulation with catch-up trajectory to argue that, under the knowledge regime of a high-tech manufacturing industry, latecomers’ learning experience differs from those as posited by previous studies. Using the integrated circuit industry as the empirical anchor, this paper shows that firms undergo ‘critical transition’ in learning which involves sustainable innovative capacity and momentum-generation to reach the advanced level. It shows how OEMs build knowledge to leapfrog incumbents without competing with their branded customers. Throughout the process, inter-firm collaboration and open innovation are critical sources of knowledge.     

The diffusion of ADSL and costs of switching Internet providers in the broadband industry: Evidence from the French case

The innovative broadband Internet industry is characterised by inertia phenomena in terms of technology choice, as well as selection of Internet service providers (ISPs). Within the set of firms providing the Internet, very often in Europe the incumbent operator has the lion's share of end-customers and supplies the dominant technology. Focusing on the French case, this paper shows that although inertia on the supply side (partly due to the regulation process itself), helps to explain the technology mix reached to date, a more complete picture of the inertia can be obtained when we consider the existence of costs faced by customers when switching between ISPs. We calculate these so-called “switching costs”. The closing section of this paper derives several implications in terms of policy.     

Do knowledge conditions make a difference?: Investment, finance and ownership in German industries

This paper examines the impact of industry knowledge conditions, the mode of corporate control and firm size on tangible investments and its financing. Based on a large panel data set of German firms we investigate whether financing constraints exist for tangible investment and whether there is systematic variation across firms engaged in activities reflecting different knowledge conditions. In particular, we compare the extent of financing constraints for firm in knowledge intensive (hi-K) industries with those in less knowledge-based (lo-K) industries. This distinction is important because knowledge-based economic activity tends to be subject to high degrees of uncertainty, asymmetric information and spillovers of newly created knowledge, making access to external sources of finance difficult. Our surprising empirical finding is that firms in hi-K industries are less finance constrained than are their counterparts in lo-K industries. However, the mode of corporate control and firm size play an important role. After controlling for firm size and manager versus owner control, we observe that the small manager-controlled firms in both hi-K and lo-K industries are most finance constrained. By contrast, no financing constraints seem to exist for the smaller owner-controlled firms in hi-K industries. This latter result contrasts sharply with results of Anglo-Saxon studies.     

产业集群促进创新的边界条件解析

 基于知识交换是集群知识创造能力的核心点这一观点,系统分析了产业集群内知识交换的前因、使能和效率的影响因素,在此基础上归纳出集群知识创造能力的生成机制的框架,认为集群并不必然导致创新能力的提高。进而分析了集群知识创造失败的几种类型,结合我国制造业产业集群的实际,认为集群产品知识宽度过窄、过度模块化、缺乏基于通用核心技术的关联产业、缺少合作导向的领导企业及相应的制度化规则,以及由此引发的同质化竞争与合作的限制效应等,是抑制我国制造业集群创新能力提升的重要瓶颈。     

Founders’ human capital and the growth of new technology-based firms: A competence-based view

In this paper, we analyze empirically the relation between the growth of new technology-based firms and the human capital of founders, with the aim of teasing out the “wealth” and “capability” effects of human capital. For this purpose, we take advantage of a new data set relating to a sample composed of 506 Italian young firms that operate in high-tech industries in both manufacturing and services. In accordance with competence-based theories, the econometric estimates show that the nature of the education and of the prior work experience of founders exerts a key influence on growth. In fact, founders’ years of university education in economic and managerial fields and to a lesser extent in scientific and technical fields positively affect growth while education in other fields does not. Similarly prior work experience in the same industry of the new firm is positively associated with growth while prior work experience in other industries is not. Furthermore, it is the technical work experience of founders as opposed to their commercial work experience that determines growth. The fact that within the founding team there are individuals with prior entrepreneurial experiences also results in superior growth. Lastly, we provide evidence that there are synergistic gains from the combination of the complementary capabilities of founders relating to (i) economic-managerial and scientific-technical education and (ii) technical and commercial industry-specific work experiences. We conclude that the human capital of founders of new technology-based firms is not just a proxy for personal wealth.     

Profiting from innovation and the intellectual property revolution

This paper reviews the contribution of Teece's article [Teece, D., 1986. Profiting from technological innovation: implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy. Research Policy 15, 285-305.]. It then re-examines the core concept of appropriability in the light of recent developments in the business environment. Whereas twenty years ago the appropriability regime of an industry was exogenous and given, today they are often the product of conscious strategies of firms. And as open source software and other industries show, advantageous appropriability regimes are not always “tight” or characterized by strong intellectual property protections. The strategies adopted by firms that have successfully profited from their innovative activities cast into new light old questions about the impact of intellectual property protection on the rate and direction of innovation.     

Measuring patent assessment quality—Analyzing the degree and kind of (in)consistency in patent offices’ decision making

We argue that consistent decision making in judging a patent's validity and basing this on its underlying technological quality are important elements of patent office service (“assessment”) quality. To understand which level of assessment quality patent offices (can) provide, particularly in new technological areas, we study the concordance of the European Patent Office's (EPO) granting and opposition decisions for individual patents. Using the biotechnology industry in the 1980s (an emerging patenting area then) as an example, we find no empirical evidence that the EPO provided maximal or optimal assessment quality as far as can be told from bibliographic indicators. We discuss research limitations and consequences of this first empirical analysis, and suggest ideas for refinements in future work.