R&D Subsidies as Dual Signals in Technological Collaborations

We investigate the influence of public R&D subsidies on a firm’s likelihood to form technological collaborations. Using signaling theory, we conceptualize the award of a subsidy as a pointing signal (i.e., indicating a quality attribute that distinguishes the signaler from its competitors), and the monetary amount raised through a subsidy as an activating signal (i.e., activating the quality attribute of the signaler). Drawing on the attention-based view, we investigate whether the relative salience of these signals varies between two types of signal receivers: academic and corporate partners. Using a panel sample of Spanish manufacturing firms, our results indicate that the two types of receivers attend to the two signals differently: while academic partners attend to pointing signals only (sent by the award of a selective subsidy), corporate partners react to the richer information that activating signals provide (sent by the monetary value of both selective and automatic subsidies). Our results are stronger for SMEs vis-à-vis large firms, and hold after controlling for endogeneity, selection bias, simultaneity, attrition, inter-temporal patterns in technological collaborations, and the substantive effects of subsidies. The theorized and tested dual nature of subsidy-enabled signals and their different salience to distinct partner types hold interesting implications for research on alliances, innovation policy, and signals.     

Socio-cultural framing during the emergence of a technological field: Creating cultural resonance for solar technology

This paper depicts how cultural resonance for novel technologies is constructed as a gradual, interactive process. We adopt a cultural framing perspective and strive to understand how actors assign meaning to the novel technology and determine its appropriateness for the local context. Existing research has largely focused on the strategic and political aspects of field framing processes through depicting conscious framing struggles between protagonist and antagonist actors. In addition to such strategic framing activities, we examine how other socio-cultural factors, such as changes in actor positions, interaction between framing activities, and the cultural “repertoire” of frames interact in producing cultural resonance. For our empirical case study, we followed the emerging technological field of solar energy during an intensive period of change. Our study contributes to the growing number of studies that draw attention to the creation of cultural resonance as an interactive multi-actor process by offering in-depth understanding of the multifaceted interactions that constitute the meaning-making process for an emerging field.     

技术创新提升高技术产业竞争力的路径——以湖北省为例

探究技术创新与湖北省高技术产业竞争力之间的关系,分析技术创新影响高技术产业竞争力提升的具体路径;利用2002-2016年湖北省高技术产业细分行业数据,基于结构方程模型并使用AMOS软件,对技术创新提升高技术产业的整体路径进行检验,并计算了各具体路径的效应值。研究发现：技术创新对于湖北省高技术产业竞争力的提升具有积极的正向作用,市场需求结构提升路径的作用最为显著,规模实力提升路径的作用次之,生产效率提升路径的作用最小,竞争结构提升路径的作用不显著。     

The long march to catch-up: A history-friendly model of China’s mobile communications industry

This paper develops a history-friendly model of the process of catch-up by Chinese firms in the mobile communications industry. It aims to explain how the sectoral environment in terms of segmented markets and generational technological change facilitated the catch-up of domestic firms with respect to foreign multinationals. Segmented markets provided a nurturing environment in peripheral markets for the survival of domestic firms starting with low level capabilities in their infant stage. Generational technological change opened windows of opportunities for domestic firms to catch-up with foreign multinationals in new product segments. Segmented markets and generational technological change allowed domestic firms to leverage their initial advantages in peripheral markets to catch-up in core markets. Counterfactual simulations highlight that the process of catch-up was facilitated by relatedness across technological generations. This paper contributes to the literature on catch-up and industry evolution by illustrating the role of technological change and market regimes in the process of catching-up.     

Accounting for change in national systems of innovation: A friendly critique based on the U.S. case

This paper advances a friendly critique of the national systems of innovation approach and offers some suggestions for its future development. I argue that the approach has difficulty accounting for bounded change in national systems. I review three recent changes in the U.S. innovation system - the Internet boom and bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the acceleration of productivity growth since the mid-1990s - in order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the framework in this respect. Future research might be enriched, at least in the case of large national innovation systems, by absorbing concepts developed in other strands of institutionalist literature, such as “intercurrence” and “embeddedness”.     

Do ‘liberal market economies’ really innovate more radically than ‘coordinated market economies’?: Hall and Soskice reconsidered

In Varieties of Capitalism; The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Peter A. Hall and David Soskice (H&S) argue that technological specialization patterns are largely determined by the prevailing “variety of capitalism”. They hypothesize that “liberal market economies” (LMEs) specialize in radical innovation, while “coordinated market economies” (CMEs) focus more on incremental innovation. Mark Zachary Taylor [Taylor, M.Z., 2004. Empirical evidence against varieties of capitalism's theory of technological innovation. International Organization 58, 601-631.] convincingly argued that Hall and Soskice's empirical test is fundamentally flawed and proposed a more appropriate test of their conjecture. He rejected the varieties of capitalism explanation of innovation patterns. We extend and refine Taylor's analysis, using a broader set of radicality indicators and making industry-level comparisons. Our results indicate that Hall and Soskice's conjecture cannot be upheld as a general rule, but that it survives closer scrutiny for a substantial number of industries and an important dimension of radicality.     

Why are some independent inventors ‘heroes’ and others ‘hobbyists’? The moderating role of technological diversity and specialization

Despite a substantial body of research investigating the market significance of inventions by independent inventors, relatively little attention has been devoted to understanding their technological significance. A recent study conducted by [Dahlin, K., Taylor, M., Fichman, M., 2004. Today's Edisons or weekend hobbyists: technical impact and success of inventions by independent inventors. Res. Policy 33, 1167-1183] on the tennis racket industry shows that independent inventors are a heterogeneous group which includes both “heroes” who contribute substantially to technological progress and “hobbyists” who make only a marginal contribution. What is not asked - and therefore not explained - is why this distinction arises. In this paper, we focus on the type of prior technological knowledge (in terms of technological specialization and diversity) applied by independent inventors and their corporate counterparts as a factor explaining differences in technological impact. Our empirical setting is the field of medical equipment technology. We find that independent inventors are more sensitive to the negative effects of technological diversity than their corporate counterparts. Furthermore, our study reveals that technological specialization pays off more for independent inventors than for their corporate counterparts. Therefore, those independent inventors who apply low degrees of diversity and high degrees of specialization are capable of reaching the same level as or even outperforming their corporate counterparts, thus becoming “heroes”. Based on our findings, we discuss implications for research and corporate practice.     

超厚涂层水基锆英粉涂料在大型铸钢件中的应用

通过合理的涂料西方研制出具有较好工艺性能的超厚涂层水基锆砂粉涂料,用于大型铸钢件生产取得了较好的经济效益和环保效果。     

The power of integrality: Linkages between product architecture, innovation, and industry structure

A substantial literature stream suggests that many products are becoming more modular over time, and that this development is often associated with a change in industry structure towards higher degrees of specialization. These developments can have strong implications for an industry's competition as the history of the PC industry illustrates. To add to our understanding of the linkages between product architecture, innovation, and industry structure we develop detailed product architecture measurements based on a previously proposed method [Fixson, S.K., 2005. Product architecture assessment: a tool to link product, process, and supply chain design decisions. Journal of Operations Management 23 (3/4), 345-369] and study an unusual case in which a firm - through decreasing its product modularity - turned its formerly competitive industry into a near-monopoly. Using this case study we explore how existing theories on modularity explain the observed phenomenon, and show that most consider technological change in rather long-term dimensions, and tend to focus on efficiency-related arguments to explain the resulting forces on competition. We add three critical aspects to the theory that connects technological change and industry dynamics. First, we suggest integrating as a new design operator to explain product architecture genesis. Second, we argue that a finer-grained analysis of the product architecture shows the existence of multiple linkages between product architecture and industry structure, and that these different linkages help explain the observed intra-industry heterogeneity across firms. Third, we propose that the firm boundary choice can also be a pre-condition of the origin of architectural innovation, not only an outcome of efficiency considerations.     

国内外生物制药产业技术创新管理模式比较研究

从比较管理的视角,通过对不同管理情境下国内外生物制药产业间技术创新管理模式的显著差异及其影响因素与形成机理进行比较,揭示不同国家或地区生物制药产业技术创新管理模式的基本特征、生成与演进机理,分析中国与美、日发达国家生物制药产业技术创新管理模式的具体差异,以期为我国生物制药产业在全球竞争中形成具有自身特色的技术创新管理模式与产业链、提高产业技术创新能力奠定一定理论基础,提供管理思路和对策。