Beyond institutional voids and the middle-income trap: The emerging business angel market in Malaysia

Emerging economies are characterized by the presence of institutional voids which challenge and constrain the behavior of economic agents. In this paper we report on one set of agents, angel investors, in Malaysia, which investors fear is experiencing a middle-income trap whereby economic growth and new venture formation stalls due to persistent institutional voids. This research addresses this question through interviews with 19 Malaysian business angel investors in 2015, utilizing a mixed-methods approach. Results indicate that business angels in our sample generated strong returns, though they did find it a challenge to invest in and monitor new ventures in a highly uncertain and competitive environment where there is high political uncertainty, weak legal and financial support for investors and SMEs. In order to overcome weak institutional support, business angel investors develop informal institutions by co-investing and networking with family members and government officials. They also conduct careful due diligence before investing and closely monitor their investee companies after investing. This research provides several theory and practice contributions with respect to business-angel investing in emerging economies with weak formal institutional regimes.     

The Collaboration of Innovation Intermediaries and Manufacturing Firms in the Markets for Technology

Many manufacturing firms have opened up their product innovation processes and actively transfer knowledge with external partners in the markets for technology. However, the markets for technological knowledge have remained inefficient in comparison with the markets for most products. To reduce some of the market inefficiencies, manufacturing firms may collaborate with innovation intermediaries, which are defined as organizations that act as agents or brokers in the innovation process between two or more parties. These innovation intermediaries comprise different service providers ranging from consulting companies to Internet marketplaces for technology. In light of an increasing importance of intermediary services in the context of open innovation, this paper specifically focuses on the collaboration of manufacturing firms and innovation intermediaries, which may be critical for the success of intermediary services. Based on new interview data from 30 innovation intermediaries and 30 European manufacturing firms, this paper examines the question of how innovation intermediaries and manufacturing firms collaborate concerning the following issues, which emerged as the key themes from the interviews: potential of intermediation, roles of intermediaries, types of intermediation, drivers of intermediation, complementarity of intermediation, compensation of intermediation, and the importance of repeated collaborations. The findings indicate how manufacturing firms may reduce their transaction costs in technology markets by collaborating with intermediaries. However, intermediary services can only be regarded as a complement rather than a substitute of manufacturing firms' internal activities of managing technology transfer. Thus, manufacturing firms need sufficient internal capabilities for managing technology transfer, such as absorptive capacity and desorptive capacity.     

How entrepreneurs leverage institutional intermediaries in emerging economies to acquire public resources

Research summary: Governments in emerging economies often use institutional intermediaries to promote entrepreneurship, and bridge the void between ventures and public funding. While prior literature describes what institutional intermediaries do, it leaves open how intermediaries support different types of entrepreneurs. By comparing science park and non‐science park firms in Beijing and across China, we distinguish which entrepreneurs benefit from certification versus capability‐building through the introduction of two new constructs: skill adequacy and context relevance. Broadly, our study adds insights at the nexus of emerging economies and entrepreneurship research, and to the tie formation and institutional intermediaries literatures. Managerial summary: A key dilemma facing entrepreneurs is how to finance their ventures. While entrepreneurs in developed economies can seek VC or angel investment, entrepreneurs in emerging economies often need to pursue potential government funding opportunities. Our study highlights three strategies for acquiring government funding. Well‐connected entrepreneurs can leverage their political ties to acquire such funding. Less‐connected entrepreneurs can leverage science parks that in emerging markets are designed to help governments to identify promising ventures. For returnees whose ample experience abroad may not fit with local ways of doing business, gaining science park admission can certify quality and so ease the path to government funding. For technically skilled local entrepreneurs who lack business skills, science parks can help build such skills, which then ease the path to government funding. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

产业分工细化与经济中介组织的发展

经济中介作为产业分工细化的产物是产业链上重要的一环，这种制度安排有利于分工利益的获取。本文运用经济学的专业化分工理论分析经济中介从产业分工中内生的原因及条件，讨论专业化分工产生的中介服务的特点以及分工网络对经济中介业发展规律的影响，并试图对经济中介的产生和现代经济中介业的市场结构提供理论解释。     

Institutional and resource configurations associated with different SME foreign market entry modes

This study explores the different configurations of internal and externally sourced resources utilized by SMEs, as well as host and home country institutional influences (hereafter abbreviated to ‘internal and external resources’, and ‘host and home country institutions’, respectively) across different foreign market entry modes in a B2B setting. Specifically, this research illustrates the different relative representations of internal vs external resources and host vs home institutions associated with different entry modes, including non-investment/contractual and early-stage investment modes. The different configurations resulting from our study are tentatively explained in the context of prevailing theoretical perspectives, namely, the resource-based view, institutional theory, and SME internationalization. Our research extends the existing literature on SME internationalization by identifying that different resource-institutional configurations are associated with different foreign market entry modes.     

Technical information,technical assistance,and technology transfer—the need for a synthesis*

In the literature and often in practice, technical assistance, technical information, and technology transfer are treated as three separate activities. This paper discusses the relationship between them. Illustrations are given of the inability of overspecialized systems to effectively serve a broad range of needs. Some suggestions are made for research that is needed in this area. to help improve the design of systems and institutions and the training of people to carry out these functions. Some experimental ideas are presented which can help to resolve some of the policy and design problems in this area.     

人民币国际化热中的冷思考

对人民币国际化的必要性和可能性,以及当前推动人民币国际化的若干举措进行了分析。认为,从目前来看,人民币国际化还缺乏基本的经济条件与制度支持,也不存在合理的必要性,盲目推动可能会得不偿失。加快我国金融制度和金融体系发展,推动人民币汇率和利率形成机制的改革,实现中国经济可持续增长和结构优化才是目前最为关键的问题。     

The dark side of institutional intermediaries: Junior stock exchanges and entrepreneurship

Research Summary : Our study shows how institutional intermediaries established to foster the creation of new firms might hinder new firm growth instead. We show that intermediaries can reduce new firm growth rates due to institutional conflict. To analyze this idea, we examine the setting of junior stock exchanges, which are commonly formed to facilitate entrepreneurial growth. The introduction of these exchanges focused investment into new technology firms, reduced investment in other sectors, and led to diminishing new firm growth. Our findings demonstrate how institutional conflict causes unintended effects and reveals the complexity of influencing entrepreneurship with institutional intermediaries. Managerial Summary : Investors and entrepreneurs face uncertainty when deciding what firms to start and fund. We show that an intermediation effort to make entry easier for entrepreneurs increases the uncertainty that entrepreneurs and investors face. For investors, the enthusiasm for technology firms engendered by the new exchange can motivate investment in marginal firms to maintain as desired deal flow. However, lower firm growth and less liquidity in the future is likely. For entrepreneurs, our results indicate that it is more challenging to manage technology firm growth as well as there is potential opportunity to investigate other industries. Finally, for policy‐makers and supporters of the new exchanges, our results imply that investment flows are altered as intended, but unless listing standards remain high, the virtuous cycle of investment upon which a healthy entrepreneurial climate rests may be disrupted, muting the intended effects of the new exchange.     

From laboratory to clinic: science commercialization within university-centered entrepreneurial ecosystems

The commercialization of scientific discoveries within the university-industry nexus is multifaceted and complex, characterized by dynamic interactions between multiple agents, organizations, and institutions. These interactions support a university-centered entrepreneurial ecosystem (UCEE). Our study investigates agent-institution dynamics within the UCEE to explore how individual agents seek to commercialize their scientific discoveries. Specifically, relying on 47 narrative interviews, we explore how UCEE agents across three UCEEs in the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia respond and adapt to institutional commercialization mandates during commercialization of their stem cell-based regenerative medicine discoveries. Our findings emphasize the bi-directional relationship between individual agents and institutions within a UCEE, facilitating a much-needed multi-level perspective on academic entrepreneurship research. We extend recent frameworks that propose how the formative stages of the entrepreneurial process – opportunity evolution – influences ecosystem emergence. Specifically, by investigating the latter stages of the entrepreneurial process – how (science-based) opportunities are commercialized within UCEEs – we reveal distinct behavioral responses to science commercialization mandates, which underscore how UCEEs evolve. Furthermore, by explicating the importance of UCEE agent behavior during science commercialization, our study shines an important spotlight onto the microfoundations of science commercialization and UCEEs. Our research imparts important policy implications for institutions tasked with commercializing scientific discoveries and policy makers challenged with developing high growth, sustainable UCEEs.     

Innovation search of new ventures in a technology cluster: the role of ties with service intermediaries

In this study, we examine the relationships between new ventures' ties with service intermediaries (i.e., technology service firms, accounting and financial service firms, law firms, and talent search firms) and their product innovation in the context of a technology cluster. Because service intermediaries sit at the intersection of many firms, organizations and industries, they maintain extensive networks in a cluster. We propose that new ventures' ties with service intermediaries enable the ventures to plug into these networks and contribute to the ventures' product innovation by broadening the scope of their external innovation search and reducing their search cost. Moreover, we argue that the positive relationships between new ventures' ties with service intermediaries and their product innovation will become stronger when search in the networks in the cluster is more important to the ventures' product innovation. Based upon a sample of new ventures in a technology cluster in China, our results support these arguments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reaching through the fog: Institutional environment and cross‐border giving of corporate foundations

Research Summary : Corporate philanthropy has long been recognized as an important part of multinational strategy, yet we know relatively little how charitable giving is allocated across countries. Using a sample of 208 U.S.‐based corporate foundations from 1993 to 2008, we find that the foundations give more in countries with opaque institutional environments, but they do so through international intermediaries. They also give more when the funding firms have new entries in countries with weak institutions—hence greater needs for the social license to operate—or when their operations require stronger connections with local suppliers or customers. These findings point to the use of corporate philanthropy as part of corporate diplomacy when the local institutions are ineffective and the importance of reaching out to local constituents is high. Managerial Summary : Corporate foundations play an important role in firms' charitable giving across countries. This article analyzes how foundation giving is associated with the funding firm's need to navigate the local business environments. Using a sample of 208 U.S.‐based corporate foundations from 1993 to 2008, we find that foundations give more in countries characterized by weak rule of law and high levels of corruption, and when the funding firms have newly established subsidiaries or stronger need to connect with local stakeholders there. However, donations to countries with weak institutions are more likely to go through international intermediaries to avoid potential liabilities. The results are consistent with the view that corporate foundations support corporate diplomacy and help obtain the social license to operate in the host countries.     

Bricoleurs and boundary riders: managing basic research and innovation knowledge networks

A major focus of national and institutional research policies during the 1990s has been on improving linkages between publicly funded research activities and industry for the purpose of advancing economic and other national objectives. The transfer of scientific knowledge, however, within and between public research institutions, universities and other innovative organizations is taking place within rapidly changing organizational environments. The emergence of new organizational structures that transcend institutional boundaries, scientific disciplines and the boundaries between basic and applied research are all contributing to as well as responding to changes in the ways science intersects with industrial innovation.
Recent international evidence suggests that innovative organizations during the next decade will depend more on their ability to maintain quite complex organizational research linkages than on their internal organizational research capabilities. Case studies of the organizational approach adopted by companies and commercial-research agency consortia in China and Australia lead to a discussion of a typology of academic-industry alliances. The typology provides insights into different collaborative R&D management strategies associated with different forms of science-industry alliance.     

技术创新、金融创新与经济增长——基于中国省际面板数据

本文从实证分析层面对金融创新、技术创新与经济增长之间的作用关系进行探讨。基于我国 2000~2015 年省级面板数据,采用GMM估计方法,利用动态面板模型进行实证检验。结果表明：技术创新对经济增长的影响显著为正,单独的金融创新对经济增长起抑制作用,二者的交互作用则对经济增长起显著性正向作用。脱离实体经济的金融创新将抑制经济增长,也会间接阻碍技术创新对经济增长的影响。本文结合当前经济形势,从金融机构与创新企业相接轨共同提高创新水平、培养创新型人才等角度提出建议。     

Knowledge Management, Research Spinoffs and Commercialization of R&D in Australia

This paper proposes that transfer of tacit knowledge is a factor that should be considered by research organizations when they consider technology transfer. It uses a study of spinoffs arising from research of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organization (CSIRO) to discuss the existing theories of establishment rationale, selection process and support mechanisms which are provided to spinoff firms. It suggests that there are three components to technology transfer and that one of these, the transfer of tacit knowledge, helps to increase survival of these firms. It presents a model which takes account of both institutional and company factors in spinoff establishment.     

Mitigating the Challenges of Partner Knowledge Diversity While Enhancing Research & Development (R&D) Alliance Performance: The Role of Alliance Governance Mechanisms

This article explores the answers to the following unresolved research question: How do firms mitigate the collaboration challenges associated with partner knowledge diversity and enhance alliance performance? The study provides an alliance performance enhancing framework by identifying two types of partner knowledge diversity: (1) technology base diversity and (2) R&D process experience diversity, and links them with R&D alliance performance. Additionally, the moderating effects of the two types of alliance governance mechanisms (i.e., interactive and contractual mechanisms) were examined to investigate which alliance governance mechanism is conducive to mitigate the collaboration challenges and enhance alliance performance. Using a data set of 316 alliances in the biopharmaceuticals industry, the study found that a moderate degree (not too low or high) of technology base diversity between alliance partners contributes more to R&D alliance performance. Similarly, there was also an inverted U-shaped relationship between R&D process experience diversity and alliance performance; too much diversity in R&D process experience may increase the likelihood of partner opportunism, and therefore negatively affect alliance performance. Additionally, the results showed that alliance governance mechanisms played different roles in alliance collaboration; while the contractual alliance mechanisms help reduce relational uncertainty (e.g., opportunism), the interactive mechanisms promoting a more intensive interaction between partners mitigates task difficulty and facilitates complex technology activities. These findings extend the knowledge-based view (KBV) of strategic alliance and advance research on alliance governance design.     

Critical resource: An institutional economics of the Internet addressing-routing space

This paper links the analysis of IP address policy to the established vocabulary and concepts of institutional economics. Internet addressing and routing are usually discussed in technical terms, yet embedded in this highly technical discourse are a number of critical economic concepts, such as scarcity, externalities, common pool resources, tragedy of the commons, and conflict over the distribution of costs. To solve these problems, governance institutions native to the Internet have evolved. Yet despite the centrality of addressing and routing to Internet governance, there is very little research literature that bridges economic, institutional and technical discussions of IP addressing and routing. This paper connects the techno-economic discussion to analysis of institutions and governance arrangements.     

Exploring the contribution of innovation intermediaries to the new product development (NPD) process: a typology and an empirical study

In the ‘knowledge economy’ upheld by the European Lisbon strategy, knowledge‐intensive services are considered a key driver for innovation and competitiveness. A category of knowledge‐intensive services that has become of utmost importance in the last few decades is new product development (NPD) services, which interconnect distant knowledge domains with the client firms. In addition to NPD service providers, web‐based innovation intermediaries have started to help innovative firms access dispersed bodies of knowledge. Despite the heterogeneity of their characteristics, however, a clear typology of the strategies used by traditional NPD service providers and web‐based intermediaries to interact with their knowledge sources and with their clients is missing. This typology would be very useful for those firms that are willing to collaborate with innovation intermediaries because it could highlight the typologies of NPD problems different intermediaries are apt to address and the managerial challenges that working with them entails. Developing such a classification framework is the main goal of this paper. The typology proposed in this paper suggests that innovation intermediaries should be distinguished based on the following: (1) the way they access their distributed knowledge sources and (2) the way they deliver value to their clients. By combining these two dimensions, four categories of innovation intermediaries are identified, which are named brokers, mediators, collectors and connectors. A multiple case study analysis involving four innovation intermediaries and 12 of their clients is presented in the paper. The analysis provides exploratory insights into (1) the typologies of NPD problems that each class of intermediaries addresses and (2) the managerial challenges that working with each of them entails. These preliminary findings call for further theoretical and empirical research into the complex interaction among innovation intermediaries, their dispersed sources of knowledge and their clients.     

Angel investors’ selection criteria: A comparative institutional perspective

Despite the important role of angel investors as critical financial providers for new ventures, little is known regarding how the institutions present in very different institutional environments impact their investment decisions. While angel investors might be expected to make decisions based on similar selection criteria, they are also embedded within and affected by different institutional settings in which they invest, and as a result they give these criteria weight that are different from those of other investors. We compare angel investors’ selection criteria in China and Denmark utilizing a comparative institutional perspective. Utilizing a policy-capturing approach to understanding their decision criteria, we find that angel investors in China, embedded within relationship-based institutions, tend to rely more on strong ties such as family and friends in the management team. They also give risks less weight as compared with angel investors in Denmark, which operate within more rule-based institutional contexts. As with venture capitalists, angel investors modify their decision criteria to fit the local institutional conditions.     

Skills and Industrial Relations in Coordinated Market Economies — Continuing Vocational Training in Denmark,the Netherlands,Austria and Switzerland

This article offers the first systematic study of the institutional and political conditions under which collective agreements finance and organize continuing vocational training (CVT). Combining Mill's methods of agreement and difference with pattern matching, it identifies proactive small and medium enterprises, proactive public policies, proactive trade unions, and links between CVT and wage bargaining as probable conditions for CVT by collective labour agreement. The most important finding is that the research on the development of political–economic institutions in coordinated market economies has to analyse more carefully how state activities and the behaviour of small and medium‐sized firms affect the coordination of economic activities in skills formation.     

Technology transactions: networks over markets

There is a widespread belief in the business community that firms can rely on the market for buying and selling technological opportunities. The argument is: with so much technology development going on in the world, ‘there must be somebody somewhere who has the technology we need.’ According to this belief, acquiring new technology just boils down to finding the supplier, possibly with the help of a specialized intermediary. Several large firms have indeed developed ambitious mechanisms for acquiring the needed technological know-how as they proceed to make and market a new product. We contend that this concept of the technology transfer process is erroneous, as it conflicts with actual practice. The very high transaction costs entailed leave considerable room for opportunistic behavior and are more likely to occur when the parties do not know each other. An effective way to reduce transaction costs, therefore, is to limit technology transfers to the firm's partners, i.e. organizations with which the firm has already interacted in the past. Our research provides evidence that successful technology transfers typically take place between suppliers and buyers who had business relationships before considering a technology agreement. In addition, we report findings that companies using intermediaries (technological opportunities catalogues, databases, fairs, etc.) have been disappointed in their attempts to find new technologies from unknown sources. Because of the high risk of opportunistic behavior, it is practically impossible to assess the value of a technology without knowing who sells it. Similarly, the technology transfer capabilities of a company are difficult to appraise without prior knowledge through business interaction. To a certain extent, it may be better to buy any technology from a partner that one knows well than to buy a supposedly good technology from a firm with which one has had no experience. To put it bluntly: the identity of the partner may actually matter more than the technology being traded! Consequently, the relevant framework for technology transfer is built on a ‘network concept’ rather than the ‘market concept’. Firms wishing to acquire new technology should turn first to their network of trusted business partners, looking for available technological opportunities instead of trying to buy technology from unrelated organizations.