Evaluating innovation networks in emerging technologies

Interorganisational innovation networks are increasingly important for innovation in emerging technology fields. The performance of such networks can have a large impact on the future development of emerging technologies. A useful framework for the evaluation of innovation networks however does not yet exist. In this paper, such a framework is developed, using elements of the social network analysis literature and the resource-based view. This framework is subsequently applied to compare two policy-driven innovation networks: 1) the Center for Translational Molecular Medicine; and 2) the BioMedical Materials program. Based on this first empirical exploration of the framework implications for management and further policy development are formulated.     

The knowledge management strategy and the formation of innovative networks in emerging industries

This paper presents an agent-based simulation model with local network externality to analyze strategic interactions over investment on new economic knowledge. R&D knowledge flows and spillovers are the results of non-cooperative games played between neighboring agents in the model. The model demonstrates a situation where no agents have incentives to hide their economic knowledge, a situation that is observed in open source software development projects. The likelihood of obtaining a stable situation where new economic knowledge is openly shared is increased when heterogeneity of agents is introduced.      

Inventor networks in emerging key technologies: information technology vs. semiconductors

This paper analyzes the development of the German knowledge base measured by co-classifications of patents by German inventors and relate this technological development to changes in the structure of the underlying inventor networks. The central hypothesis states that technologies that become more central to the knowledge base are also characterized by a higher connectedness of the inventor network. The theoretical considerations are exemplified in a comparative study of two patenting fields—information technology and semiconductors. It turns out that information technology shows the highest increases in patents, but only a moderate move towards the center of the knowledge base. By contrast, semiconductors develops towards a key technology, despite a moderate increase in the number of patents. The dynamic analysis of inventor networks in both fields shows an increasing connectedness and the emergence of a large component in semiconductors, but not in information technology, which is in line with the expectations.     

Editor's introduction: Distributional consequences of emerging technologies

Emerging technologies have a great potential to exacerbate inequalities. The papers in this special section represent case studies of the ways five different technologies interacted with particular national contexts to produce distributional effects. A central hypothesis of the study was that the same technological project would have different distributional consequences under different national conditions; this was confirmed. Public interventions shaped the trajectories of the technological project through intellectual property and anti-trust provisions as well as regulations, much more than through the research agenda itself. These technologies were not associated with large gains or losses in jobs, but rather with modest shifts downward in numbers and upwards in skill requirements. Price was not the only determinant of how far the technologies diffused; skills and infrastructure were also important. In sum, distributional consequences take many forms. “Diffusion” consists of both push and pull, need and absorptive capacity. The relevant decision makers are in both the public and private sectors, and a broad range of policies affects this process, not just science, technology, and innovation policies. There are many options for public intervention, but no one size fits all countries.¹     

Emerging technologies in emerging markets: Introduction to the special section

Emerging technologies have significant implications and profound consequences for firms, markets, government policy, and society as a whole. In emerging markets, however, social uncertainties are as important as technological and market uncertainties, and moreover are somewhat more complex. The papers in this special section offer views of how these important social uncertainties can be considered concurrently with technological and market uncertainties, particularly because they play a relatively larger role in emerging markets than in more advanced markets.     

Factors affecting the take-off of innovative technologies: evidence from digital cameras

While technological innovations are important for many industries, take-off sales for innovative products can have long lead times due to a variety of factors. This article identifies the main parameters affecting digital camera take-off sales in the US between 2001 and 2004. The study constructs an empirical model for film and digital camera shipments and finds that digital cameras primarily served as a substitute for low-end film compacts rather than high-end film Single-Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras. Also, growth in household PC ownership and Windows XP market share were the main contributing factors to the decline of film cameras, with PC penetration rate as the most important factor for digital camera diffusion.     

Forecasting emerging technologies: Use of bibliometrics and patent analysis

It is rather difficult to forecast emerging technologies as there is no historical data available. In such cases, the use of bibliometrics and patent analysis have provided useful data. This paper presents the forecasts for three emerging technology areas by integrating the use of bibliometrics and patent analysis into well-known technology forecasting tools such as scenario planning, growth curves and analogies. System dynamics is also used to be able to model the dynamic ecosystem of the technologies and their diffusion. Technologies being forecasted are fuel cell, food safety and optical storage technologies. Results from these three applications help us to validate the proposed methods as appropriate tools to forecast emerging technologies.     

Tracking emerging technologies in energy research: Toward a roadmap for sustainable energy

Science and technology for renewable and sustainable energy are indispensable for our future society and economics. To meet the goal of sustainable energy development, there is a growing body of research efforts world wide. The planner of energy research has to grasp the broader coverage of scientific and technological research, and make decisions on effective investment in promising and emerging technologies especially under circumstances of limited resources. In this paper, we track emerging research domains in energy research by using citation network analysis. Our analysis confirms that the fuel cell and solar cell are rapidly growing domains in energy research. We further investigate the detailed structure of these two domains by clustering publications in these domains. Each citation cluster has characteristic research topics, and there is a variety of growth trends among the clusters. By using citation network analysis, we can track emerging research domains among a pile of publications efficiently and effectively.     

The use of DRCs to evaluate indigenization programs: The case of the ivory coast

The DRC methodology is extended to evaluate education programs for purposes of indigenization. Such programs can be likened to an import-substitution activity in which local labor is produced to replace previously imported skilled foreign labor. The method is then applied to the problem of expatriate labor replacement in the Ivory Coast.     

Accessing and producing tissue cultured banana plantlets in Costa Rica and Jamaica: Insights on the distributive consequences of emerging technologies

This paper analyzes the distributive dynamics associated with production, access to, and use of tissue-cultured banana plantlets in Costa Rica and Jamaica. In particular, it studies the research, commercialization, and production strategies undertaken in these two countries. It identifies the actors involved, the mechanisms implemented to produce and improve access to tissue cultured plants, as well as barriers to broad-based adoption. The discussion is framed by the concept of absorptive capacities and more particularly, by a revised perspective that differentiates between potential and realized capacities. In so doing, it emphasizes the dynamic aspects behind the process of moving from potential to realized capacities. Inherent aspects of tissue culture technology overlap and interact with socio-economic conditions; and become key to the dynamics of knowledge advancement, production, and distribution of benefits. In this context, policy choices play a major role in directing the dynamics towards a more distributed technological development.     

Characterizing the emergence of a technological field: Expectations, agendas and networks in Lab-on-a-chip technologies

In this paper we develop and use mapping tools to investigate emerging technological fields by studying the dynamics of expectations, agenda building and early networks. In our approach, expectations describe shared beliefs with regard to prospective entities and positions. Agendas are sets of priorities present to guide the actors in their work. The structure that arises as a result of the actions and interactions of actors is the emerging network. For emerging technologies these processes are susceptible to change and the technological paths that may arise are still easy to influence. We propose that not only looking at expectation dynamics, but also including agenda setting and networks dynamics is essential in order to successfully capture the complexities of the emergence of technological paths. A major challenge for this work lies in unveiling the socio-technical dynamics leading to path emergence. For this purpose we investigate the phenomena of irreversibilities that emerge during the ongoing interactions of researchers, institutes, policy makers and firms. With these aspects in mind, we will use a broadened view of expectation dynamics in order to arrive at an improved understanding of the building blocks of path emergence. We illustrate our approach with a case study of Lab-on-a-chip technology for medical and pharmaceutical applications.     

The effect of output growth volatility on output growth: empirical evidence from Turkey

This article assesses the effect of output growth volatility on output growth within a stochastic-volatility-in-mean model with a time-varying framework for an open small economy: Turkey. Until now, the empirical evidence on industrial production mainly reveals that this relationship is negative. However, in further examining different sectors and sub-sectors of industrial production, we find the sign of the relationship changes depending on the sector. Moreover, there is limited evidence that the sign of the relationship changes over time. Thus, the evidence reveals that the nature of the output growth volatility–output growth relationship is not uniform across sectors.     

Structural and geographical patterns of knowledge networks in emerging technological standards: evidence from the European GNSS industry

The concentration and dispersion of innovative activities in space have been largely explained and evidenced by the nature of knowledge and the geographical extent of knowledge spillovers. One of the empirical challenges is to go beyond this by understanding how the geography of innovation is shaped by particular structural properties of knowledge networks. This paper contributes to this challenge, focusing on the particular case of global navigation satellite systems at the European level. We exploit a database of R&D collaborative projects based on the fifth and sixth European Union Framework Programs, and apply social network analysis in economic geography. We study the properties both of the network of organizations and the network of collaborative projects. We show that the nature of the knowledge involved in relationships influences the geographical and structural organizations of the technological field. The observed coexistence of a relational core/periphery structure with a geographical cluster/pipeline one is discussed in the light of the industrial and geographical dynamics of technological standards.     

The final frontier: nursing in the emerging health-care environment

The final frontier heralds a new era in which nursing finally assumes its rightful place as the leader in the health-care delivery industry through a systematized body of knowledge, new nursing technologies, and the final assumption of power through modern management techniques. Nursing is the agent of change for moving health care from a cottage industry to a full-fledged business enterprise--a business with compassion, empathy, and quality.     

The more contagion effect on emerging markets: The evidence of DCC-GARCH model

The paper aims to test the existence of financial contagion between foreign exchange markets of several emerging and developed countries during the U.S. subprime crisis. As a result of DCC-GARCH analysis, we find the evidence of contagion during U.S. subprime crisis for most of the developed and emerging countries. Another finding is that emerging markets seem to be the most influenced by the contagion effects during U.S. subprime crisis. Since financial contagion is important for monetary policy, risk measurement, asset pricing and portfolio allocation, the findings of paper may be interest of policy makers, investors and portfolio managers.     

The role of WiBro: Filling the gaps in mobile broadband technologies

This paper analyzes WiBro, one of the emerging wireless technologies for portable Internet services (PIS), which are designed to enable mobile broadband access. Based on an empirical examination of consumer preferences for mobile broadband technologies and an estimation of the future demand for WiBro, this study proposes that WiBro should fill the gaps between competing mobile broadband technologies, such as 3G and WLAN.     

The determinants of international reserves in the emerging countries: a nonlinear approach

In this article, we adopt a nonlinear approach to examine the dynamics of the international reserves holdings by the emerging economies. To do so, we estimate the demand for international reserves with a Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) model that loosens two restricting hypotheses, homogeneity and time-stability. We find evidence for the presence of a nonlinear behaviour in the demand for international reserves, a result that is new to the literature. The coefficients are found to change smoothly, as a function of two threshold variables – out of five candidates tested in total. Our specification accounts for the acceleration of foreign exchange reserves accumulation that the linear specifications fail to explain.     

The J-curve in the emerging economies of Eastern Europe

Devaluation or depreciation of a currency worsens the trade balance before improving it, resulting in a J-curve pattern. A new definition of the hypothesis implies a short-run deterioration combined with the long-run improvement. By using monthly data over the January 1990–June 2005 period from 11 east European emerging economies, most of which are the new European Union (EU) members or the EU candidate countries, this article uses the bounds testing approach to cointegration and error-correction modelling and finds empirical support for the J-curve hypothesis in three countries of Bulgaria, Croatia and Russia. The results have important implications for policymakers involved in economics in terms of using exchange rate policy as a policy device to achieve real convergence toward EU standards.     

Tyranny of kindness: Dismantling the welfare system to end poverty in America Theresa Funiciello

The Comment on Wrenn’s article “What is Heterodox Economics?” suggests that the inability of heterodox economists to define their field arises from an as yet unrecognized and different metaphysical foundation than that of orthodox economics.