Configurations of innovation: predictable and maverick modes

This study reports on an investigation of modes of innovation in 43 firms in six industrial sectors: (i) pulp and paper; (ii) computer. services; (iii) pharmaceucticals; (iv) apparel; (v) metallic products; and (vi) financial brokerage services. A model incorporating context, process, strategy, organization and performance variables was built to serve as a base to identify empirical conjfigurations of models of innovation. Configurations are gestalts of variables that describe particular modes of innovative behaviour. The model includes uariables representing context, process, strategy, organization and performance. Modes of innovations were found to he highly sector-specific. In fact, most firms innovate in predictable ways, in conformity with the logic of innovation in their industrial environment. A significant minority of firms, however, adopt maverick behaviours, similar to modes of innovation that prevail in other industries. Modes of innovation thus cut across industry lines as a result of firm's combetencies, competitive situationes or managerial preferences. A taxonomy of modes of innovation cutting across industry lines is presented. The configurations which emerged from the data analysis were: science-based product innovators; (ii) entrepreneurial fast-track experimenters; (iii) global cost leaders; (iv) lethargic reliance on information technology and (v) on process adaptation.     

Study on the modes of metropolitan innovation system

Building regional innovation system has become the important means to upgrade competence of both country and region. Based on comparatively analysis of the metropolitan innovation systems of major innovation centers in the world, this paper concludes four modes of metropolitan innovation system, which are comprehensive knowledge innovation, venture entrepreneurship, learning and overtaking, and Science Park as a carder. According to the four modes and tri-spiral theory of RIS, this paper designs the mode of Shanghai innovation system of overtaking by learning, emphasizing composite innovation player combined firm, university and government, and the strategic aim to build regional and even international innovation center through knowledge innovation, systemic innovation, organizational innovation, cultural innovation and effective control.     

Sunspots and predictable asset returns

This paper uses a stylised asset-pricing model to show that sunspots may cause asset returns to be predictable, a widely documented feature of many speculative markets. This result parallels and extends previous works showing that sunspots render asset prices excessively volatile.     

国家创新政策在全球经济中的互动模式探究

通过分析三种经典的国家创新政策互动模式及四种新型模式,探讨全球化背景下国家创新政策如何利用彼此之间的互动模式,提高政策作用效果、扩大政策影响。结果表明,不同模式的预测结论不尽相同。目前,国际上仍缺少从中斡旋的专业机构,而各国之间的战略互动又鲜有涉及创新政策,致使国家间创新政策难以协同发挥作用。因此,需要从全球战略互动角度,重新审视国家创新政策。     

以功能为主线的征信体系模式及其制度配置——理论与实证

文章基于Merton等提出的金融体系的"功能—结构"思想,提出了以功能为主线的征信体系模式分类的理论,并以世界银行全球征信体系调研数据及其TT指数值为基础展开实证研究,基本印证了该理论,得到了四种主流功能模式,即惩戒型、惩戒监管型、促进型、监管促进型。文章采用验证性因子分析的方法,确定了制度主轴中关联性最大的8个指标,结合典型国家对不同征信模式在结构、内容和规则三个维度上的配置进行了实证性和描述性分析,总结出不同模式的典型制度配置。最后,文章给出了三点启示。     

Rethinking Political Process in Technological Change: Socio-technical Configurations and Frames

The political process perspective has done much to enhance our understanding of the organizational effects of technological change as a negotiated outcome reflecting the political and power dynamics of the adopting context. In so doing, we suggest, technology has been marginalized as an analytical category and the problem of change agency, although better understood, remains largely unresolved. This article addresses these issues through the articulation of the concepts of socio-technical configurations and technological frames and explores their utility in understanding change agency through an action research project. The project sought a novel form of 'socio-technology' transfer, taking ideas and concepts of 'human-centered' manufacturing embodied in team-based cellular manufacture from a European context into three firms in Australia.     

Rethinking Political Process in Technological Change: Socio-technical Configurations and Frames

The political process perspective has done much to enhance our understanding of the organizational effects of technological change as a negotiated outcome reflecting the political and power dynamics of the adopting context. In so doing, we suggest, technology has been marginalized as an analytical category and the problem of change agency, although better understood, remains largely unresolved. This article addresses these issues through the articulation of the concepts of socio-technical configurations and technological frames and explores their utility in understanding change agency through an action research project. The project sought a novel form of 'socio-technology' transfer, taking ideas and concepts of 'human-centered' manufacturing embodied in team-based cellular manufacture from a European context into three firms in Australia.     

Systems of innovation and innovation ecosystems: a literature review in search of complementarities

This paper aims to clarify to what extent the emerging theory of innovation ecosystems (IE) and the theory of systems of innovation (SI) are complementary and then identify how its communities could benefit from cross-fertilization. We performed a critical literature review of both topics using meta-synthesis as method to identify, analyze and compare the two theories. Using a framework, this paper explores the elements belonging to each theory’s domain, in order to identify the key factors necessary to compare the two theories. The results of this analysis show that both theories involve the assessment of three key aspects: the understanding of innovation activities, the role of the agents involved, and the interaction and resulting networks among them. A similarity was found showing that these two different theories are applications of System Thinking approach. Another finding, which has not been mentioned in previous research on the topic, is that the construction of the initial concepts of the IE theory was originally rooted in several SI elements. Finally, we found key factors that may be the cross-fertilization link between the two communities that represent each theory.     

Accelerated radical innovation: Theory and application

Radical innovation has been responsible for some of society's greatest advances over the past hundred years in fields as diverse as transportation, power, information technology, and medicine. But as scholars have found, it is such a long-term, chaotic, meandering, unpredictable process that promising radical innovation concepts are often never undertaken, to society's detriment. Does it need to be this way? Or can radical innovation be accelerated so that it is manageable within modern society's economic and political time horizon? This question prompted the organization of the Accelerated Radical Innovation (ARI) project five years ago. In this paper we summarize the ARI methodology as it currently stands and then report the results of an empirical verification with a radical medical innovation project that is currently under way — monochromatic X-rays for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Several conclusions were drawn. First, by and large, the ARI model tracked closely with the reality of this innovation, offering confirmation of its grounding in the real world of innovation. Second, the model offered a rationale and framework for this innovation process that could be more widely adopted. Third, the ARI model exposed critical issues whose early resolution could have accelerating the innovation cycle. Fourth, the application of a core principle of ARI, Systematic Competitive Intelligence, could have provided early warning on a competing technology that emerged suddenly. Last, the use of another core ARI concept, accelerated innovation prototyping, might help the innovator overcome the key barrier facing the innovation — the necessity of a long, expensive, high-risk clinical trial. Overall, the verification study confirms the potential of the ARI model to put the radical innovation process on a faster, lower-cost, better-managed track.     

Evolution: complexity,uncertainty and innovation

Complexity science provides a general mathematical basis for evolutionary thinking. It makes us face the inherent, irreducible nature of uncertainty and the limits to knowledge and prediction. Complex, evolutionary systems work on the basis of on-going, continuous internal processes of exploration, experimentation and innovation at their underlying levels. This is acted upon by the level above, leading to a selection process on the lower levels and a probing of the stability of the level above. This could either be an organizational level above, or the potential market place. Models aimed at predicting system behaviour therefore consist of assumptions of constraints on the micro-level – and because of inertia or conformity may be approximately true for some unspecified time. However, systems without strong mechanisms of repression and conformity will evolve, innovate and change, creating new emergent structures, capabilities and characteristics. Systems with no individual freedom at their lower levels will have predictable behaviour in the short term – but will not survive in the long term. Creative, innovative, evolving systems, on the other hand, will more probably survive over longer times, but will not have predictable characteristics or behaviour. These minimal mechanisms are all that are required to explain (though not predict) the co-evolutionary processes occurring in markets, organizations, and indeed in emergent, evolutionary communities of practice. Some examples will be presented briefly.     

试议国家创新体系中技术创新与制度创新的相互关系

建立在熊彼特的创新思想基础上的技术创新经济学和制度创新经济学,从经济运行角度来看,对于在市场经济条件下的国家创新体系建设无疑具有重要的科学指导意义。文章在总结前人研究成果的基础上,对国家创新体系中技术创新与制度创新的关系提出新的研究视点。     

Unions,innovation and investment: Australian evidence

Machin and Wadhwani have produced evidence indicating that trade unions encourage investment in the UK. This paper uses comparable data to ascertain whether their finding holds with respect to Australia. In general, and contrary to the UK study, the net effect of unions on investment in Australia is found to be negative. Nevertheless, investment levels at workplaces where unions were active were above the levels at non-union workplaces, offering support for the union-voice hypothesis which Machin and Wadhwani use to explain their results.     

Young firms and innovation: A microeconometric analysis

This paper discusses the sources of product innovation in young innovative companies (YICs), here defined as firms engaged in product innovation and with less than 8 years of activity. In particular, we look at in-house and external R&D and at the acquisition of external technology in its embodied and disembodied components. These input–output relationships are tested on a sample of 2713 innovative Italian firms. A sample-selection approach is applied to study both the determinants of product innovation and the factors affecting the intensity of innovation.Results show that in-house R&D is linked to the propensity to introduce product innovation both in mature firms and YICs; however, innovation intensity in the YICs is mainly dependent on embodied technical change from external sources, while in-house R&D does not play a significant role.