Cloud computing in high tech startups: evidence from a case study

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the implementation of cloud-based systems in startups to answer how and why hi-tech startups use cloud computing, an overlooked question to date. Thus, referring to an extended version of Ross and Blumenstein [2015. “Cloud Computing as a Facilitator of SME Entrepreneurship.” Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 27 (1): 87–101] framework, encompassing issues of context and culture following Spanò et al. [2019. “Context, Culture and Control: A Case Study on Accounting Change in an Italian Regional Health Service.” Journal of Management and Governance. doi:10.1007/s10997-019-09458-0], we analyse cloud adoption in startup firms and rely upon a case study of an Italian hi-tech startup. The case study allowed us to tap into the main issues relating to cloud implementation that is increased opportunities, reduced costs, scalability, access to global markets, and access to international venture capital. The results offer interesting insights to the literature on cloud computing, and also have some managerial implications in that they better unfold the effects played by context and culture.     

“To Own or Not to Own?” A Study on the Determinants and Consequences of Alternative Intellectual Property Rights Arrangements in Crowdsourcing for Innovation Contests

Firms are increasingly engaging in crowdsourcing for innovation to access new knowledge beyond their boundaries; however, scholars are no closer to understanding what guides seeker firms in deciding the level at which to acquire rights from solvers and the effect that this decision has on the performance of crowdsourcing contests. Integrating property rights theory and the problem‐solving perspective while leveraging exploratory interviews and observations, we build a theoretical framework to examine how specific attributes of the technical problem broadcast by firms affect the seekers’ choice between alternative intellectual property rights (IPR) arrangements that call for acquiring or licensing‐in IPR from external solvers (i.e., with high and low degrees of ownership, respectively). Each technical problem differs in the knowledge required to be solved as well as in the stage of development of the innovation process and seeker firms pay great attention to such characteristics when deciding about the IPR arrangement they choose for their contests. In addition, we analyze how this choice between acquiring and licensing‐in IPR, in turn, influences the performance of the contest. We empirically test our hypotheses analyzing a unique dataset of 729 challenges broadcast on the InnoCentive platform from 2010 to 2016. Our results indicate that challenges related to technical problems in later stages of the innovation process are positively related to the seekers’ preference toward IPR arrangements with a high level of ownership, while technical problems involving a higher number of knowledge domains are not. Moreover, we found that IPR arrangements with a high level of ownership negatively affect solvers’ participation and that IPR arrangement play a mediating role between the attributes of the technical problem and the solvers’ self‐selection process. Our paper contributes to the open innovation and crowdsourcing literature and provides practical implications for both managers and contest organizers.     

¿Hacia dónde evoluciona el tejido social contemporáneo? Nuevas tecnologías y viejas tendencias socioeconómicas

En este artículo se investiga si las sociedades asisten a una nueva revolución industrial, y cuál es la repercusión del cambio tecnológico en el tejido socioeconómico, principalmente con respecto al empleo, la distribución de la renta, las condiciones de trabajo y las relaciones laborales. Los autores sostienen que los procesos de innovación y la expansión de lo que denominan «automatización inteligente» tienden a exacerbar los actuales patrones de desigualdad de poder y de renta, que ya estaban presentes mucho antes la aparición de las tecnologías en cuestión. A tenor de esos procesos, proponen algunas recomendaciones para la formulación de políticas.     

The political economy of trade and migration: Evidence from the U.S. Congress

We compare the drivers of U.S. congressmen's votes on trade and migration reforms since the 1970s. Standard trade theory suggests that trade reforms that lower barriers to goods from less skilled‐labor abundant countries and migration reforms that lower barriers to low‐skilled migrants should have similar distributional effects, hurting low‐skilled U.S. workers while benefiting high‐skilled workers. In line with this prediction, we find that House members representing more skilled‐labor abundant districts are more likely to support trade and migration reforms that benefit high‐skilled workers. Still, important differences exist: Democrats are less supportive of trade reforms than Republicans, while the opposite is true for migration reforms; welfare state considerations and network effects shape votes on migration, but not on trade.     

Market integration and market efficiency: The case of 19th century Italy

This paper examines market integration in Italy in the 19th century, focusing on wheat. Wheat prices converged well before political Unification (1859-1861) but the process halted during the 1860s only to resume in the 1870s and 1880s. The first wave of integration was caused mainly by improvements in market efficiency while the second wave owed much to a reduction in transport costs.     

Learning,market selection and the evolution of industrial structures

Industrial economics is a rich source of puzzles for economic theory. One of them — certainly the most discussed — regards the co-existence of firms (and plants) of different sizes, displaying rather invariant skewed distributions. Other puzzles, however, concern the sectoral specificities in industrial structures, the persistence of asymmetric corporate performances and the dynamics of entry and exit. The paper reports some preliminary results on evolutionary modeling of the links between the microeconomics of innovation, the patterns of industrial change and some observable invariances in industrial structures.First, the paper reviews a few of these empirical regularities in structures and in the patterns of change. Second, the paper discusses the achievements and limits of interpretations of the evidence based on equilibrium theories. Finally, it presents a model where these regularities are explained as emergent properties deriving from non equilibrium interactions among technologically heterogeneous firms. Moreover, simulation exercises show that also the intersectoral variety in the observed industrial structures and dynamics can be interpreted on the grounds of underlying specificities in the processes of technological learning — which is called technological regimes — and of the processes of market interactions — i.e. market regimes.This research has undertaken within an on going project sponsored by the Italian Research Council (CNR, Progetto strategico,Cambiamento tecnologico e sviluppo economico). Support by the Consortium on Competitiveness and Cooperation Centre for Research in Management, University of California at Berkeley is also gratefully acknowledged.     

EMU Stability: Direct and Indirect Risk Sharing

Our paper aims to analyze the effectiveness of different risk-sharing mechanisms in providing stability to a monetary union. We select two stylized tools with extreme and opposite features. The first is an expansionary but conventional monetary policy that is used to help EMU’s most fragile member states manage their public debts; the second is a centralized fiscal policy that allows for the transfer of a portion of these public debts from EMU’s most fragile member states to those considered EMU’s “core”. By a stylized periphery-core model of a monetary union, we compare the strengths and weaknesses of these two tools in order to reach some welfare implications in terms of union stability.     

THE EFFECTS OF FISCAL POLICY SHOCKS IN SVAR MODELS: A GRAPHICAL MODELLING APPROACH

We apply graphical modelling (GM) theory to identify fiscal policy shocks in SVAR models of the US economy. Unlike other econometric approaches – which achieve identification by relying on potentially contentious a priori assumptions – GM is a data based tool. Our results are in line with Keynesian theoretical models, being also quantitatively similar to those obtained in the recent SVAR literature à la Blanchard and Perotti (2002) , and contrast with neoclassical real business cycle predictions. Stability checks confirm that our findings are not driven by sample selection.