Beyond product innovation: deciphering process-oriented innovators,complementarities and performance effects

Relatively little attention has been paid to the understanding of process innovation, compared to the well-researched product innovation. This paper contributes to improve our understanding of process innovation and its specific process capabilities and performance by exploring, across many industries, 4,608 process-oriented innovators. Process innovation is defined as adoption of technologically new or significantly improved production methods, including changes in equipment, organisation or methods of product delivery. Process-oriented innovators or process seekers are those firms which usually only introduce process innovation, and no product innovation. These have received less attention by scholars. Results show that process innovation without also organisational innovation complements constrains innovative performance. Complex process-based innovation complementarities result from the simultaneous development and integration of new machinery and organisational innovations.     

投资组合网络、竞争性网络联结与技术创新

本文以我国2009—2016年中小板与创业板上市公司为研究样本,研究了以风险投资机构为信息桥构建的投资组合网络的创新作用机制与效果。研究结果表明:企业的技术创新水平随着其建立的网络联结数量的增长而得到了显著提升;企业在投资组合网络中感知到的竞争威胁主要通过竞争性网络联结传导,竞争性网络联结数量的增长会损害企业的技术创新;风险投资机构的联合投资行为可以减弱竞争性网络联结的负向影响。考虑到企业技术创新活动的异质性将其划分为渐进式创新与突破式创新后,发现突破式创新较少受到投资组合网络内竞争性信息泄露的负面影响。     

基于人力资本的嵌入式开放创新:理论内涵与政策启示

在对以院士专家工作站为代表的新型产学研合作开放创新模式进行深入观察的基础上,集成开放创新理论、人力资本理论和社会嵌入理论,提出了基于人力资本的嵌入式开放创新理论,阐述了其内涵和外延,构建了其理论框架,探讨了该理论的政策启示。     

STATE OWNED ENTERPRISES AS INSTRUMENTS OF INNOVATION POLICY

This article expands the literature on the rationales and governance of state owned enterprises (SOEs). We show that SOEs could be seen as instruments of innovation policies and change agents within broader innovation systems that can overcome many of the conventional challenges of innovation policy and its implementation, from coordination and implementation of policies and innovation system actor networks to financing innovation. We review the existing literature on the rationales of SOEs and extend it to include innovation as a central rationale. Thereafter we provide a taxonomy that reveals the necessary policy and managerial conditions and constraints for using SOEs as instruments of innovation policy. We place some of the better‐known innovation‐oriented SOE successes and failures into this taxonomy and show that this approach will allow in future research to explore different SOE practices and potential for using SOEs as innovation policy instruments across countries.     

政策性金融创新探究--论政策性银行和社会保险可能的融合

本文的创新之处在于首次将社会保险纳入政策性金融的范畴,论证了社会保险的本质决定了它与政策性银行一样同属于政策性金融.进而认为社会保险可通过政策性银行业务进行某种形式的融合以发挥政策金融的整体优势,使国家信用在二者之间融会贯通,充分运用,减少国家信用外溢.在当前相互独立的政策性银行和社会保险之间构架联系的桥梁,使政策性资金在政策性金融机构进行体内循环,以解决当前政策性银行面临的资金来源的困境和社会保险基金管理及运用中存在的一些不容忽视的问题.较为详尽地论证了政策性金融进行融合的必要性和可行性,并在此基础上对政策性金融融合的方式进行了探讨.     

Intellectual property rights and quality improvement

This paper explores why theories about the effects of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection on foreign direct investment (FDI) and innovation have reached mixed conclusions. In our model, Northern firms innovate to improve the quality of existing products and may later shift production to the South through FDI. Southern firms may then imitate the products of multinationals. We find that imitation can increase FDI and innovation for quality improvements, whereas the opposite occurs when innovators develop new varieties. Hence, stronger IPR protection, by reducing imitation, may shift innovation away from improvements in existing products toward development of new products.     

Steindl on instability and stabilization policy

Steindl worked all of his life to intergrate the explanation of cycles and trends. In his most elaborate model, stochastic innovations trigger off a dynamic process among innovators and their competitors acting through multiplier distribution of income, accumulation of profit and utilization of capacities. History and institutions find ample room in this model and so stabilization policy becomes a complex process. Demand management appears secondary to income policy, competition policy, technology policy and to stabilization of expectations. Steindl refused to give direct policy advice, but indirectly the Austrian policy of Austrokeynesianism heavily learned from Steindl.     

Reconciling different truths about isomorphic pressure and distinctive behavior at European cooperative banks: Back to the future with Raiffeisen's principles

This article employs a new approach to address a key question in an expanding literature on European cooperative banks: are they still distinctive and sources of social innovation or did they suffer from organizational isomorphism throughout their history? First, we go back to the time when Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen (1818–1888) formulated his principles for the forerunners of many contemporary cooperative banks. Subsequently, we identify areas where major adaptations to the archetypical model of cooperative banks have taken place or are still taking place today. We integrate a detailed explanation of the backgrounds and motivations of these steps with an analysis of isomorphic consequences and loss of distinctiveness that have allegedly emanated from these adjustments. Against the latter common opinion, we place an equally well‐founded dissenting view and formulate recommendations to stay on or return to the cooperative track. Thus, we reconcile conflicting assessments in scientific publications and present a balanced view on the current peculiarity of cooperative banks, substantiated by up‐to‐date figures. With the economic disruption caused by the coronavirus outbreak, we argue that, now more than ever, cooperative banks could demonstrate their solidarity, long‐term orientation and local anchoring—namely bringing Raiffeisen's principles back to the future.     

Evolutionary policy targeting: towards a conceptual framework for effective policy intervention

This special issue reflects on innovation and industrial policy from the premise that economic growth can be based on the permanent transformation of an economic system via the emergence and/or transformation of multi-agent structures and their inherent competences and knowledge base. The process of emergence or transformation is conceived as being the result of entrepreneurial effort, or entrepreneurs reacting to external stimuli in a way that takes advantage of an evolving knowledge base. The same process, however, can be undermined by both market and institutional failures. Past research has clearly indicated the importance of institutional structures for innovation, but also that structures as they exist may not be ideal: some institutions involved in innovation may provide the wrong incentives, faulty information, or allocate insufficient resources to accomplish their goals or mandates; and they may fail to reduce uncertainty. The paper asks whether and how a targeted, co-evolutionary approach can help overcome a lack of dynamic coordination and other failures that originate in coincidence with the emergence of a complex form of industrial organisation, be it an innovation system, cluster or a new industrial sector. More specifically, it builds upon the extended industry life cycle (EILC) model and the notion of evolutionary targeting to explore the potential benefits (and drawbacks) of targeting biotechnology innovation systems (BISs).     

Regional innovation environment and innovation efficiency: the Chinese case

The main goal of this paper is to analyse the connotation of ‘regional innovation environment’ and explore the relationships between the regional innovation environmental components and innovation efficiency (IE). Three regional environmental factors were extracted, namely, economic infrastructure (EI), the quality and structure of innovators (QSI) and regional openness (RO). The relationships between the regional innovation environmental components and innovation efficiency present a chain structure as RO–EI–QSI–IE. Only the QSI component affects IE directly, and all of the effects are positive. Based on these results, the characteristics of Chinese regional innovation systems were analysed, and the implications on science & technology policy were discussed.     

我国促进社会创新的政策现状与问题分析

随着全球社会问题日益严峻,社会创新成为了解决社会问题的重要途径。以往针对社会创新的研究大多聚焦于微观层面,较少从宏观政策层面出发。本文首先界定了社会创新的概念,进而以十八大以来颁布的科技创新政策为分析对象,从创新主体激励、社会利益增进、创新机制变革三个层面梳理了我国在促进社会创新方面的政策现状,最后提出存在的问题及未来展望,旨在为科技部门及其他部门进一步制定和完善相关政策提供思路。     

Young leading innovators and the EU's R&D intensity gap

Europe's innovation gap relative to the USA is often attributed to its industrial structure in which new firms do not play a significant role, especially in high-tech sectors. This view of a structural European Union (EU) innovation deficit is popular in European innovation policy discussions, but has received little or no thorough empirical investigation. This article aims to address this ‘evidence gap’. Using industrial R&D Scoreboard data from leading world innovators, we find that compared to the USA, the EU has fewer young firms among its leading innovators. Using a decomposition analysis, we show that having fewer young firms accounts for about one-third of the EU–US differential in R&D intensity, while 55% of the differential is due to the fact that young leading innovators in the EU are less R&D intensive than their US counterparts. Further analysis shows that this is almost entirely due to a different sectoral composition. We thus confirm that the EU–US private R&D gap is indeed mostly a structural issue.     

The Climate Policy Hold‐Up: Green Technologies,Intellectual Property Rights,and the Abatement Incentives of International Agreements

The success of global climate policies over the coming decades depends on the diffusion of “green” technologies. Using a simple model, we highlight a conflict between international environmental agreements (IEAs) on emissions reductions and international systems of intellectual property rights (IPRs) on abatement technologies. When IPRs are strong and global, IEA signatories anticipate rent extraction by innovators. This hold‐up effect reduces abatement, potentially to levels below those of non‐signatories, and it reduces the number of signatories to self‐enforcing IEAs. We explore policy options that respect existing property rights, but avoid the strategic interaction between signatories to an IEA and innovators.     

Heterogeneous agent modelling of technology adoption in competitive agricultural markets

Slow adoption rates of innovation in rural settings are a source of frustration for technology advocates. Adoption decisions consume two valuable but limited resources: (1) time, and (2) capacity to integrate new information. We explore the structural sociological factors using a heterogeneous agent programming model (HAM) to understand the mechanics of socio-economic linkages of diffusion in rural settings. Diffusion constraints are introduced in the form of network-threshold values that reflect the cumulative effects of experience and observation of peers’ experiences. We test a range of confounding factors and find that strong social pressures dramatically increase both innovation diffusion penetration and irregularity. Clustering is caused by strong social pressures and the aggregation of buyers near innovative firms which creates a pattern of buying explosions. As competition between innovators increases, the resulting diffusion process becomes more variable and irregular and is highly likely to result in innovation monopolies in rural areas.     

Technology licensing under optimal tax policy

This paper examines the role of government policy in technology licensing decision. We show that both the outside and the inside innovators license a new product (or drastic process innovation) to all potential licensees in the presence of tax/subsidy policies. An implication of our analysis is that a monopolist producer may prefer technology licensing in a homogeneous goods industry. Our results also provide a rationale for franchising to multiple sellers.     

基于政府公共管理的政策工具创新

随着我国经济体制的改革,政府失灵现象出现,人们开始关注政策工具的创新及"新政策工具"的运用.政策执行者也呼吁采用新政策工具,对新政策工具的关注、分析、引进可以看作是对社会经济发展的一种积极回应,是加快建立社会主义公共服务体制,建设和谐社会的内在要求.政策工具的转变和创新对我国提高政府管理的绩效具有重要的意义.     

社交电商平台颠覆性创新的触发机制研究——基于拼多多的案例研究

以社交电商平台拼多多为研究对象，开展探索性单案例研究，将其颠覆性创新分为切入下沉市场、侵蚀主流市场两阶段，分析其通过技术创新和商业模式创新匹配共演实现颠覆性创新的路径，在已有研究基础上，构建颠覆性创新触发机制模型。结果表明：第一，在颠覆性创新过程中，技术创新和商业模式创新是匹配共演的，二者在匹配共演下形成螺旋上升的循环链。第二，颠覆性创新要分阶段实现，其触发机制包括前置条件、突破口及驱动因素；在不同阶段，技术创新和商业模式创新分别作为前置条件和突破口，内外部环境作为驱动因素。第三，在颠覆性创新过程中，企业必须充分考虑内外部环境的驱动作用，注重内部技术创新能力、企业战略及外部市场竞争、市场需要。     

社会网络、资源拼凑与新创企业的创新绩效

基于资源拼凑理论,建立了社会网络、资源拼凑与新创企业创新绩效的理论模型,探究了社会网络对资源拼凑行为的激发效应以及对企业创新绩效的影响。利用164家成立时间在8年内的新创企业的调研数据,对理论模型和研究假设进行了实证分析。结果表明:新创企业社会网络的网络规模和网络强度均对其资源拼凑产生显著的正向影响;资源拼凑对新创企业的创新绩效具有显著的正向作用,且资源拼凑在社会网络与新创企业创新绩效之间起完全中介作用。研究结果提示:丰富的社会网络关系可以激发新创企业的资源拼凑行为,对现有资源重构和整合的拼凑行为会促进新创企业创新绩效的提升。     

Paradoxes in the diffusion of a rapidly advancing technology: The case of solar photovoltaics

The economic approach to technological diffusion identifies several paradoxes that may hinder innovation. The anticipation of rapid technical improvement may be a self-defeating prophecy, as potential innovators wait. The propositions are exemplified by residential solar photovoltaic systems. While systems appear profitable in two sites in the mid-1980s, the optimal delay in adoption may be as long as ten years. A policy for accelerating diffusion is suggested.     

数据包络分析方法在我国区域技术创新能力研究中的应用

本文利用DEA理论与方法,在计算机的支持下,通过理论分析、实证研究和比较分析,提出了基于数据包络分析的区域技术创新能力评价模型和评价指标体系;并利用相关数据,分析研究了我国区域技术创新的现状,并提出了我国各大区域的发展策略。