Design and environmental technologies: Does ‘green-matching’ actually help?

This paper investigates whether a green kind of design helps firms increase their capabilities for inventing in the environmental domain and whether it does so more than ‘standard’ design. It also investigates whether the effect of ‘green-matching’ between new design and technologies is conditional on firms’ innovative capabilities, as reflected by their R&D expenditure. We address these research questions with respect to the world's top R&D investors, looking at their intellectual property rights at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and proposing an original textual identification of green designs and trademarks. We find that green design increases environmental inventions by top R&D investors, and to a greater extent than non-environmental ones. Standard design also stimulates environmental inventions, but to a lesser extent than green design. The ‘green-matching’ actually helps, but internal innovative capabilities are required to make it effective: a green-tech ‘prize’ emerges from green design, but only once a minimum threshold of R&D expenditure has been reached.     

What do growing early-stage digital start-ups look like? A mixed-methods approach

Digital entrepreneurship is one of the most important and impactful forms of entrepreneurship. However, the majority of digital start-ups fail to scale, despite their potential to achieve growth. Moreover, what constitutes growth is significantly different for start-ups as compared with established firms: they have limited financial performance, and their growth cannot be accurately measured by metrics such as customers, revenues, profits, and turnover at the early stages of the new venture creation process or before the start-up has reached sustainability. Therefore, the first objective of this research is to contribute to the definition of growth by examining less tangible dimensions of growth. Moreover, the second objective is to identify the characteristics of early-stage digital start-ups experiencing growth. Based on a mixed-methods approach, which combines an adapted Delphi study, a questionnaire-based survey, and a comparative case study, our results suggest that growing digital start-ups exhibit a set of characteristics that include: an agile culture combining clan with adhocracy; the ability to nurture their absorptive, innovative, and adaptive capabilities effectively; and a human capital with adequate entrepreneurial skills, emotional attachment to and fitness with the start-up.     

Suppliers versus start-ups: Where do better innovation ideas come from?

In the innovation process of firms, suppliers increasingly play a key role as external sources of ideas. Although the beneficial impact of supplier integration has been acknowledged, there is also evidence that not all such innovation efforts are successful, particularly regarding the identification of truly innovative solutions. Therefore, in recent years, large firms have begun to move beyond their existing supply base, drawing on innovation ideas from start-ups, that is, with young firms with whom they have no pre-existing bonds. Yet there is no empirical evidence regarding whether start-ups’ ideas actually outperform those of established suppliers. We address this question by presenting a unique, real-world comparison of 314 supplier and start-up ideas – ideas that were identified, evaluated, and followed up over the course of an open innovation initiative conducted by a large automotive manufacturer. We find that start-ups’ ideas are characterized by a higher degree of novelty and to some extent higher benefit for end customers but, on the downside, are less likely to be implemented than suppliers’ ideas. Overall, our study adds new dimensions to the discourse on open innovation and provides valuable insights regarding the outcome of supplier and start-up involvement in the front end of the innovation process.     

Spatial differences in the quality of university patenting: Do regions matter?

This paper uses patent citation data to analyze the quality of university technology across European regions. The empirical analysis draws on a panel dataset of 4580 European university-owned patents classified by 202 European regions over the period 1998-2004. The methodology involves a multilevel framework to identify the effects of factors at three hierarchical levels (individual, university, and regional) on the quality of university patenting. The results suggest that regional factors, such as the level of development, industrial potential, and regional higher education R&D expenditure, do not play any significant role in determining the quality of European university patents. We instead find that the factors affecting patent quality stem from their specific characteristics. We also find that university size does not explain the quality of patents. However, there is significant unobserved heterogeneity at the university level in all models, suggesting that differences in other university characteristics explain a substantial part of the variance in patent quality.     

Does history count?

The Census of Marine Life is an international and inter-disciplinary collaboration that seeks to map ocean life of the past, present and future. From the Arctic to the abyssal zones, it is producing a stream of newsworthy science, literally pushing the study of biodiversity to new depths. This fascinating and far-reaching endeavour offers a rich set of insights that can illuminate our changing ideas about the oceans. But one section of the Census deserves special attention--the History of Marine Animal Populations. It provides a unique focus for debates about collaboration and big science, about historical methods and about the study of current science by historians of science.     

Do tax incentives and direct funding enhance innovation input and output in high-tech firms?

Tax incentives and direct funding are two different public support instruments used to facilitate the formation and growth of firms. Limited empirical evidence has compared the effectiveness of two different policies and their interactions for firms. In this paper, we investigate the main and interaction effects of these interventions on high-tech firms. Since large and small firms innovate in different ways, we compare the use of both incentives by Iranian high-tech SMEs and large firms through a factorial design technique. This paper presents significant differences both across instruments and across firm size. Results show that for SMEs, tax exemption has a significant effect on R&D investment, and funding has a significant effect on R&D investment, R&D employees, and new products. However, there aren't any interaction effects between instruments. For large firms, funding is an effective instrument for R&D investment. Also, there is an interaction effect between tax incentives and direct funding on new products. These findings indicate that funding is a more effective instrument than tax exemption, especially for SMEs, but suggest some changes in supporting policies of high-tech firms in Iran.     

Technology and employment: Mass unemployment or job creation? Empirical evidence from European patenting firms

This paper explores the possible job creation effect of innovation activity. We analyze a unique panel dataset covering almost 20,000 patenting firms from Europe over the period 2003–2012. The main outcome from the proposed GMM-SYS estimations is the labor-friendly nature of innovation, which we measure in terms of forward-citation weighted patents. However, this positive impact of innovation is statistically significant only for firms in the high-tech manufacturing sectors, while not significant in low-tech manufacturing and services.     

Does income redistribution impede innovation?

Economic inequalities have increased in many countries since the 1980s, provoking calls for more income redistribution. One argument against increased redistribution is that it could hamper innovation and technological progress. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that empirically investigates the relationship between government redistributive policies at the top of income distribution and innovative activity using new, high-quality, cross-country comparable panel data on income redistribution from the Distributional National Accounts. This study analyzes data from 34 advanced and emerging countries between 1980 and 2010. We find that redistribution has no negative impact on innovation in the cross-country setting. This result is robust to various measures of income redistribution and patent-based indicators of innovation, including patent counts, patent citations, and patent originality.     

The elixir (or burden) of youth? Exploring differences in innovation between start-ups and established firms

Despite the widely acknowledged role of start-ups in economic development, little is known about their innovative activities compared with those of established firms. Drawing on a sample of 12,209 UK firms, we differentiate between services and manufacturing firms and, using a matching estimator approach, demonstrate that start-ups differ significantly from established firms in their innovation activities. We find that in services, being a start-up increases the likelihood of product innovations. However, in manufacturing, we find no significant differences in the likelihood of product innovation between start-ups and established firms. When examining the returns to innovation, we find that start-ups have a significant advantage both in services and in manufacturing. We explore the implications of these results for theory and policy.     

Allocative efficiency in public research funding: Can bibliometrics help?

The use of outcome control modes of research evaluation exercises is ever more frequent. They are conceived as tools to stimulate increased levels of research productivity, and to guide choices in allocating components of government research budgets for publicly funded institutions. There are several contributions in the literature that compare the different methodological approaches that policy makers could adopt for these exercises, however the comparisons are limited to only a few disciplines. This work, examining the case of the whole of the “hard sciences” of the Italian academic system, makes a comparison between results obtained from peer review type of evaluations (as adopted by the Ministry of Universities and Research) and those possible from a bibliometric approach (as developed by the authors). The aim is to understand to what extent bibliometric methodology, which is noted as relatively inexpensive, time-saving and exhaustive, can complement and integrate peer review methodology in research evaluation.     

A theoretical look at firm performance in high-tech organizations: what does existing theory tell us?

This paper looks at the changing nature of work for workers in knowledge-intensive high-tech firms. Four theories (institutional theory [IT], resource-based theory, game theory, and agency theory) are examined and propositions formulated as to how each theory helps explain the existence of intellectual cooperation and knowledge sharing within high-tech firms. The paper examines the usefulness of existing theory and suggests new research propositions, constructs, and methods to focus on building an empirical approach towards organizational research in the high-tech arena.     

Do low-skilled workers gain from high-tech employment growth? High-technology multipliers,employment and wages in Britain

Do low-skilled workers benefit from the growth of high-technology industries in their local economy? Policymakers invest considerable resources in attracting and developing innovative, high-tech industries, but there is relatively little evidence on the distribution of the benefits. This paper investigates the labour market impact of high-tech growth on low and mid-skilled workers, using data on UK local labour markets from 2009–2015. It shows that high-tech industries – either STEM-intensive ‘high-tech’ or digital economy – have a positive jobs multiplier, with each 10 new high-tech jobs creating around 7 local non-tradeable service jobs, around 6 of which go to low-skilled workers. Employment rates for mid-skilled workers do not increase, but they benefit from higher wages. Yet while low-skilled workers gain from higher employment rates, the jobs are often poorly paid service work, so average wages fall, particularly when increased housing costs are considered.     

How patenting informs VC investors – The case of biotechnology

In the presence of asymmetric information, economic agents need to communicate their quality to investors and other parties. This paper investigates how information generated during the patenting process affects the ability of new ventures to attract VC financing. While much of the literature on information asymmetries focuses on patent applications, we argue that the entire examination process should be considered, including information that emerges in the course of patent examination and review. We test several hypotheses using a sample of British and German companies that seek venture capital. We find that the filing of patent applications is positively related to VC financing. Moreover, the examination process at the patent office generates valuable technological and commercial information via search reports, citations and opposition procedures which affect the likelihood of VC financing. Our results suggest that the patenting process supports investors in updating their expectations regarding the quality of new ventures.     

Does gender matter in computer ethics?

Computer ethics is a relatively young discipline,hence it needs time both for reflection and forexploring alternative ethical standpoints in buildingup its own theoretical framework. Feminist ethics isoffered as one such alternative particularly to informissues of equality and power. We argue that feministethics is not narrowly confined to women's issues but is an approach with wider egalitarianapplications. The rise of feminist ethics in relationto feminist theory in general is described and withinthat the work of Gilligan and others on an ethic of care. We argue for the need to connect theory toempirical evidence. Empirical studies of gender andbusiness and computer ethics are reviewed. We noteconcerns with surveying a student audience, the issueof how far questionnaires and interviews can get tothe heart of ethical beliefs and problems ofperforming statistical analyses of quantitative data.Although we recognize them, our own small surveycannot avoid all these problems. Nevertheless byrefining our scenarios we are able to offer analternative reading of a hacking problem in terms ofan ethic of care thereby pointing a way forward forfuture research in computer ethics inspired byfeminist theory.     

Does fake news affect voting behaviour?

We study the impact of fake news on votes for populist parties in the Italian elections of 2018. Our empirical strategy exploits the historical variation in Italian-speaking and German-speaking voters in the Italian region of Trentino Alto-Adige/Südtirol as an exogenous source of assignment to fake news exposure. Using municipal data, we compare the effect of exposure to fake news on the vote for populist parties in the 2013 and 2018 elections. To do so, we introduce a novel indicator of populism using text mining on the Facebook posts of Italian parties before the elections. Our findings support the view that exposure to fake news favours populist parties regardless of prior support for populist parties, but also that fake news alone cannot explain most of the growth in populism.     

Does education help “old dogs” learn “new tricks”? The lasting impact of early-life education on technology use among older adults

Technological progress is often at the heart of improvements in quality of life. The development of personal computers (PCs) and the Internet are among the most important technological advances of the last century. PCs and the Internet have profoundly changed the way we access information, shop, view media, communicate, socialize, and spend our time. Despite the many benefits of computer and Internet use, certain population groups – especially low-educated and older consumers – have not yet fully adopted computer technology and the Internet in their daily lives. This paper estimates the effects of early-life education on computer and Internet use among older Italians. Using data on early-life educational attainment and computer and Internet use of older adults from the 2013 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we exploit a historical increase in compulsory schooling in Italy as an instrumental variable for education to estimate the effects of early-life education on the adoption of PCs and on current use of the Internet. We find large and statistically significant effects of early-life education on later-life technology use among older persons who obtained additional education due to increased schooling requirements. In our benchmark estimations, one additional year of schooling resulted in an eight percentage point increase in the probability of having ever used a computer and in a 12 percentage point increase in the probability of reporting to have at least good computer skills. Individuals affected by the reform were also six percentage points more likely to have used the Internet in the last week. These findings are robust across different sample selection and model specification strategies. Our analysis also suggests that occupational choice and computer use at work are important channels through which education affects the adoption and use of computers and the Internet. Our findings thus highlight the likely importance of early-life education for later-life computer and the Internet use and perhaps technology adoption more broadly.     

Does green public procurement trigger environmental innovations?

Green public procurement has gained high political priority and is argued to be an effective demand-side policy to trigger environmental innovations. However, the empirical evidence on its innovation impact is limited. We construct a novel firm-level dataset to investigate the effect of winning public procurement tenders with additional environmental award criteria on firms’ introduction of environmental innovations. Employing cross-sectional difference-in-differences methods, we find that winning public procurement awards with environmental selection criteria increases a firm's probability of introducing more environmentally friendly products on average by 20 percentage points. We show that this effect is driven by small and medium-sized firms and is not statistically significant for larger firms. Furthremore, there is no statistically significant effect on the introduction of more environmentally friendly processes.     

Do instant messaging interruptions help or hinder knowledge workers’ task performance?

The modern workplace environment is filled with interruptions due to the necessity of coworkers to communicate with each other. Studies have revealed that interruptions can impact task performance (TP). Communication interruptions are due, in part, to the unavoidable side-effect of using technology to facilitate these interactions. This experimental case study reports about an investigation we conducted on the role of instant messaging interruptions (IMI) and its implications on knowledge workers’ TP in a workplace environment. We have gathered data from knowledge workers engaged in an e-learning activity. The case study included a total of 60 experimental observations and analysis of the 120 records revealed that the time to complete a task (TPtct) for certain types of tasks, was significantly affected by IMI. This case study addressed gaps in IM interruption research and practical knowledge about the role of instant messages in the organization. Previous research has been conducted in a laboratory environment with interruptions generated by means other than actual IM. This case study used IMI with participants working in their normal workplace. Findings were used to provide a set of lessons learned recommendations for managers when it comes to the use of IM in the workplace.