Indigenous technological capabilities,emerging market firms and the aerospace industry

While emerging market economies have developed significant technological capabilities and increased their share of global value-added in aerospace, they have done so largely through utilising foreign direct investment (FDI) and offset arrangements to enter supply chains that remain dominated by European and American firms. The paper examines whether emerging markets are developing indigenous technological capability in aerospace technologies. Drawing on patent data from the Thomson Innovation database, the study seeks to understand whether anchor tenant capability is indeed forming in emerging markets. A tech-mining method is applied. The study suggests that China, in particular, has dramatically increased its innovative capacity in the area. However, the data also demonstrate the significant advantages enjoyed by incumbent firms from Europe and the USA, suggesting that the complexity of aircraft R&D remains a formidable barrier that can only be surmounted by determined government policies and anchor firms equipped with substantial innovation capabilities.     

Seize the state, seize the day: state capture and influence in transition economies

Data from the 1999 Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey is used to examine state capture and influence in transition economies. We find that a capture economy has emerged in many transition countries, where rent-generating advantages are sold by public officials and politicians to private firms. While influence is a legacy of the past inherited by large, incumbent firms with existing ties to the state, state capture is a strategic choice made primarily by large de novo firms competing against influential incumbents. Captor firms, in high-capture economies, enjoy private advantages in terms of more protection of their own property rights and superior firm performance. Despite the private gains to captor firms, state capture is associated at the aggregate level with social costs in the form of weaker economy-wide firm performance. Journal of Comparative Economics 31 (4) (2003) 751–773.     

Sources and directions of technological accumulation in France: a statistical comparison with FR Germany and the UK

Technological activities are an important determinant of national economic performance. Data on R&D and on the national origins of patenting in the USA show that, compared to those of FR Germany and the UK, French technological activities have the following characteristics: (1) a relatively high rate of growth over the past 20 years in aggregate activity; (2) concentration of technological strength in sectors dominated by state procurement and related R&D funding, rather than in “core” technologies; (3) stronger performance in fast-growing technologies in defence, electrical products and fine chemicals, than in electronics and motor vehicles; (4) a relatively stable and speialized sectoral pattern of technological strengths and weaknesses; and (5) sectoral patterns of trading strengths and weaknesses that broadly reflect those in technology. These characteristics of France's technological activities cannot be explained by their greater or lesser concentration, which is very similar to that found in both FR Germany and the UK, both in aggregate and in specific sectors. As in the other two countries, a few large firms have a major influence on national technological activities, especially in R&D-intensive sectors and automobiles. These results are on the whole consistent with the recent assessment by INSEE and CEPII of France's competitive position in international markets. However, they do show a strong Franch “niche” in technologies linked to state markets, and they do suggest certain advantages in long-term stability, rather than rapaid change, in technological priorities.     

在位企业如何开拓新技术市场:商业模式与组织身份共演视角

新技术带来了新机遇,在位企业能否成功把握成为生存关键。采用单案例研究方法,以软件企业为案例研究对象,探索在位企业如何通过商业运营实现新技术市场开拓。研究发现:(1)商业模式与组织身份共演过程中,涌现了惯性思路-身份转移、整合思路-身份延伸、修补思路-身份增补3种演化形式;(2)战略导向变化是商业模式与组织身份演化的动因,出现了由内向外、混合导向和由外向内3种变化;(3)演化中组织身份匹配于商业模式,表现为嫁接匹配、重塑匹配和扩充匹配3种机制。扩展了在位企业应对技术变化的研究视角,丰富了组织身份的动态变化研究,深化了商业模式与技术发展间关系的研究,可为在位企业商业实践提供借鉴。     

Are environmental concerns drivers of innovation? Interpreting Portuguese innovation data to foster environmental foresight

The relationship between environmental concerns and innovation is analyzed in the context of Portuguese manufacturing firms, with the ultimate goal to foster measures of environmental foresight.Based on data from the Community Innovation Survey in Portugal, simple statistical tests, including Chi², t, and Levene's tests and contingency tables (adjusted standardized residuals), were used to study the relationship between firms' characteristics and the introduction of innovation aiming to reduce environmental damage. Environmental foresight is discussed based on three groups of variables that allow considering the industrial context that frames firm's actions, the economic performance of the firm and its innovation patterns.Results show that the development of innovation due to environmental concerns is positively associated with the firm's size and exports share, and negatively associated with its technological content. Moreover, it is shown that the firms that introduced innovations due to environmental concerns are likely to belong to an economic group, to have performed continuous R&D, or received public support. It is also shown that “lack of organizational flexibility” and “lack of receptivity by customers” are the two most relevant innovation barriers for these firms.     

Capabilities, Structures and Strategies Re-Examined: Incumbent Firms and the Emergence of Complex Product Systems (CoPS) in Mature Industries

This paper re-examines theories about firm capabilities, industrial co-ordination and competitive strategies in the context of Complex Product Systems (CoPS). In particular, it looks at the applicability of concepts of technological and organisational capabilities, transaction and governance cost analysis and industry lifecycle models to the performance of mature industries under conditions of technological change. It does so in the light of empirical evidence from one sector of a mature but fast-changing industry in which CoPS are currently emerging: offset lithographic print and publishing technologies—the capital goods and systems used to produce printed mass media, particularly newspapers. In this sector of the graphic arts industries, three major incumbent producer firms which were previously similar had each begun to pursue different capabilities, structures and strategies, with apparent success. The complexity of CoPS and of the organisational arrangements for their design, development and commissioning are capable of supporting a wide variety of firm capabilities, structures and strategies.     

Arrested development: the experience of European hard disk drive firms in comparison with US and Japanese firms

This paper analyses how US, Japanese, and European HDD firms responded to technological shifts in the hard disk industry from 1973 through 1996. Leading incumbent US HDD firms were frequently forced out of the market. Leading Japanese incumbent firms in the same industry, however, were not displaced by these changes. US startup firms thrived under these technological shifts, displacing US incumbent firms. Japanese startups did poorly. European firms encountered the worst of both worlds: its incumbent firms were frequently displaced by technological changes, as were US firms; while startup firms (with one exception) performed as poorly as those in Japan.     

On the joint effect of technological and management innovations on performance: increasing or diminishing returns?

Most studies on innovation are aimed at covering technological innovation, neglecting other modes of innovation based on non-technological drivers. The latter, referred to as management innovation, consists of the implementation of new management practices, processes or organisational tasks. This work advances knowledge on the topic by exploring the joint effect of simultaneously introducing technological and management innovations on performance. Based on an analysis of 12,563 Spanish firms drawn from CIS data, our findings suggest that firms frequently pursue the simultaneous or joint introduction of both technological and management innovations and that integration impacts positively on a firm’s performance, evidencing an inverted U-shape that suggest positive but diminishing returns. A theoretical framework using the capability-based view embraces the emerging conversation on management innovation issues and its relationship with the well-researched technological one.     

Gales of creative destruction and the opportunistic incumbent: The case of electric vehicles in California

This paper explores the introduction of electric vehicles in response to Californian regulatory pressures as an example of a disruptive technology. The central thesis is that this disruption may open the automobile market to new entrants but only if they collaborate with incumbent automobile manufacturers. This appears to support Schumpeter's argument that large incumbent firms possess innovation advantages over the small entrepreneurial entrant. However, these innovatory advantages lie in the downstream complementary assets required for success in the automobile market.     

Capabilities,Structures and Strategies Re-Examined: Incumbent Firms and the Emergence of Complex Product Systems (CoPS) in Mature Industries

This paper re-examines theories about firm capabilities, industrial co-ordination and competitive strategies in the context of Complex Product Systems (CoPS). In particular, it looks at the applicability of concepts of technological and organisational capabilities, transaction and governance cost analysis and industry lifecycle models to the performance of mature industries under conditions of technological change. It does so in the light of empirical evidence from one sector of a mature but fast-changing industry in which CoPS are currently emerging: offset lithographic print and publishing technologies—the capital goods and systems used to produce printed mass media, particularly newspapers. In this sector of the graphic arts industries, three major incumbent producer firms which were previously similar had each begun to pursue different capabilities, structures and strategies, with apparent success. The complexity of CoPS and of the organisational arrangements for their design, development and commissioning are capable of supporting a wide variety of firm capabilities, structures and strategies.