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.     

Knowledge search modes and innovation performance: The moderating role of strategic R&D orientation

Prior studies implicitly assume that knowledge search modes are homogeneous, and little is known about the impacts of specific search modes on innovation. Drawing upon the knowledge search literature, we differentiate among four types of search modes and analyze their impacts on innovation performance. Moreover, we enrich the theoretical framework by recognising the moderating role of strategic R&D orientation in affecting the relationship between specific types of search modes and innovation performance. Using a unique dataset of 418 Chinese firms, we find that, except for inward licensing, value chain search, capital search, and industry-university-research institute collaboration (IUR collaboration) exert positive effects on innovation performance. Moreover, the empirical results indicate that a strategic R&D orientation amplifies the positive effects of value chain search and IUR collaboration while it mitigates the negative effect of inward licensing on innovation performance.     

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。     

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.     

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。     

Persistence of product innovation: comparing breakthrough and incremental product innovation

In this paper we examine whether and to what extent breakthrough and incremental product innovation is persistent at the firm level. Drawing on a panel database created from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) we find that lagged breakthrough product innovation ‘new to the market’, has a significant and positive influence on firms’ ability to develop current breakthrough innovation, while this is not the case for incremental-product innovation ‘only new to the firm’. Our findings show that the dynamics of innovation persistence differ across types of (product) innovations.     

Baltic freight futures: Random walk or seasonally predictable?

Ocean freight futures, the only futures contract on a service, began trading on the BIFFEX Exchange in 1985. The Chow and Denning (1993) refinement to the Lo and MacKinlay (1989) variance ratio methodology is used to examine daily BIFFEX price, volume, and index quotes for randomness. Results suggest the possibility of seasonality in the index values between 1985 and 1989. Evidence of seasonality in the index suggests the possibility of the potential for exploitation by some market participants. However, evidence of randomness in the futures contract prices, suggests that index seasonality has not here-to fore been exploited.     

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.     

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.     

Firm persistence in technological innovation: the relevance of organizational innovation

Organizational innovation favors technological innovation, but does it also influence persistence in technological innovation? This paper empirically investigates the pattern of technological innovation persistence and tests the potential impact of organizational innovation using firm-level data from three waves of French Community Innovation Surveys. The evidence indicates a positive effect of organizational innovation on persistence in technological innovation, according to the various measures of organizational innovation. Moreover, this impact is more significant for complex innovators, i.e. those who innovate in both products and processes. The results highlight the complexity of managing organizational practices with regard to the technological innovation of firms. They also add to understanding of the drivers of innovation persistence through the focus on an often forgotten dimension of innovation in a broader sense.     

The relationship between innovation network and innovation capability: a social network perspective

The key for acquiring innovation capability is knowledge transmission which is primarily based on the closer and tighter connections among businesses and other actors within innovation networks. Previous literature of patent analysis based on social network only explains the most influential corporations within an industry through social network indicators, but did not investigate the impact of these indicators on a firm’s innovation capability. This study uses social network perspective ‘centrality, cohesion and density’ to investigate the relationship between innovation network and innovation capability in the global semiconductor industry. Two purposes of this study are: (1) to investigate the innovation network relationship within the semiconductor industry at different periods and its evolution and (2) to study whether network position occupied by a firm in innovation network influences innovation capability. The empirical results show that firms with higher centrality and higher density have stronger innovation capability, but the weaker innovation capability with closer connection of sub-cluster (cohesion).     

Knowledge resources and innovation performance: the mediation of innovation capability moderated by management commitment

This paper examines the process that links knowledge resources to innovation performance. We propose that this relationship is mediated by innovation capability and that management commitment moderates this mediation effect. To measure innovation performance, we create an indicator that summarises the impact of innovation activities on products, processes and sustainability. The sample comprises 9432 firms in different sectors included in the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). The results confirm that knowledge resources not only have a direct positive effect on innovation performance but also an indirect effect by improving the firm's innovation capability. We also confirm the moderating role of management commitment, but with limitations. This research, therefore, throws light on how firms can leverage their knowledge resources to gain a competitive advantage based on innovation.     

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.     

农业制度变迁路径依赖及创新

所谓路径依赖,是指在制度变迁中存在着报酬递增和自我强化的机制。这种机制使制度变迁一旦走上了某一条路径,它的既定方向会在以后的发展中得到自我强化。路径依赖意味着历史的重要性,人们对过去作出的选择决定了他们现在可能的选择。沿着既定的路径,经济和政治制度的变迁可能进入良性循环,也可能顺着原来的错误路径往下滑,甚至被锁定在低效的状态,陷入恶性循环而不能自拔。同时,路径依赖还常常将制度创新牵引到旧的轨道上来,使新制度中搀杂大量旧的因素,甚至成为旧制度的变种。     

Sources of technological innovation: Radical and incremental innovation problem-driven to support competitive advantage of firms

A fundamental problem in the field of management of technology is how firms develop radical and incremental innovations that sustain the competitive advantage in markets. Current frameworks provide some explanations but the general sources of major and minor technological breakthroughs are hardly known. The study here confronts this problem by developing a conceptual framework of problem-driven innovation. The inductive study of the pharmaceutical industry (focusing on ground-breaking drugs for lung cancer treatment) seems to show that the co-evolution of consequential problems and their solutions induce the emergence and development of radical innovations. In fact, firms have a strong incentive to find innovative solutions to unsolved problems in order to achieve the prospect of a (temporary) profit monopoly and competitive advantage in markets characterised by technological dynamisms. The theoretical framework of this study can be generalised to explain one of the sources of innovation that supports technological and industrial change in a Schumpeterian world of innovation-based competition.