Beyond the “Innovation's Black-Box”: Translating R&D outlays into employment and economic growth

The emergence of the so-called “European Paradox” shows that increasing Governmental R&D Investment is far from being a ‘panacea’ for stagnant growth. Surprisingly, Governmental R&D Employment does not contribute to ‘mass-market’ employment, despite its important role in reducing Youth-Unemployment. Despite the negative side-effect of Governmental R&D Employment on economic growth, University R&D Employment appears to have a quite important role in reducing Unemployment, especially Youth-Unemployment, while it also does not have a downside in terms of economic growth. Technological Capacity enhancement is the most effective instrument for reducing Youth-Unemployment and is a policy with a quite robust effect regarding sustainable economic development.     

Barriers to innovation and public policy in Catalonia

The present paper analyses the link between firms’ decisions to innovate and the barriers that prevent them from being innovative. The aim is twofold. First, it analyses three groups of barriers to innovation: the cost of innovation projects, lack of knowledge and market conditions. Second, it presents the main steps taken by Catalan Government to promote the creation of new firms and to reduce barriers to innovation. The data set used is based on the 2004 official innovation survey of Catalonia which was taken from the Spanish CIS4 sample. This sample includes individual information on 2,954 Catalan firms in manufacturing industries and knowledge-intensive services (KIS). The empirical analysis reveals pronounced differences regarding a firm’s propensity to innovate and its perception of barriers. Moreover, the results show that cost and knowledge barriers seem to be the most important and that there are substantial sectoral differences in the way that firms react to barriers. The results of this paper have important implications for the design of future public policy to promote entrepreneurship and innovation together.

Inside the high-tech black box: A critique of technology entrepreneurship policy

Promoting new technology-based firms is the cornerstone of technology entrepreneurship policies in advanced industrial economies. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative empirical evidence from the UK, this paper provides a critique of these policy frameworks. The aggregate analysis shows that vast majority of these firms are micro firms, a small minority of whom grow rapidly. The paper then highlights the incongruence between the nature of these firms and the public sector technology policies designed to support them. The qualitative data reveals that typically these firms are corporate rather than university spin-offs; most do not undertake large amounts of in-house R&D; most do not have protected IP; and only a small minority are VC-backed. Most derive their main competitive advantages from open innovation sources such as relationships with end-users and customers. The paper offers suggestions for how policy could be recalibrated to better reflect the requirements of local entrepreneurial actors and the types of support required by most high-tech SMEs.     

Innovation policy within private collectives: Evidence on 3GPP׳s regulation mechanisms to facilitate collective innovation

This article provides insights on how to manage collective innovation in the digital economy, an innovation regime which is riddled with complex regulatory challenges and increasing litigation over intellectual property rights. Private collective organizations face two main challenges: (1) to promote collective innovation while preserving the private interests of the firms within the collective, and (2) to ensure that collective innovation does not weaken healthy competition. Through a case study of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), an exemplary private collective federation of organizations composed of standardization bodies, industry consortia and technology producers, we identify organizational solutions to these challenges. We find that a combination of specific IP rights instruments is key to manage these trade-offs. We also find that the combined policies of essential patenting, FRAND, and maximum royalty rate help overcome the specific challenges associated with collective innovation within competitive contexts. Finally we discuss the implications of our findings for managers and for policy.     

Intangible assets as drivers of innovation: Empirical evidence on multinational enterprises in German and UK regional systems of innovation

The sources of value creation are increasingly relying on intangible assets (IAs). IAs are the lifeblood of knowledge-intensive industries where the new value added is disproportionally based on specialized, non-repetitious activities. However, while the role of IAs is recognised as central to sustain the competitiveness of firms and innovation systems, the understanding of the mechanisms through which IAs display their effects has not yet been fully grasped.By focussing on the processes through which investments in IAs occur, this paper aims to explore the key dimensions through which two specific IAs - organisational and network capital - are enhanced and contribute to the innovativeness and embeddedness of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in regional innovation systems. On the basis of over forty in-depth interviews to leading staff of German and UK flagship MNEs operating in the automotive, life science and ICT sectors, the paper shows that MNEs adopt rather distinctive strategies to develop IAs; that MNE degree of local embeddedness is strictly related to both the kind of IA strategy and the local environment; and that causation mechanisms are at work between MNE embeddedness and regional creation of IAs.     

Mapping the benefits and costs associated with process innovation: The case of RFID adoption

The successful implementation of any innovation requires an understanding of its benefits and costs. This study examines the changes in the magnitude of costs and benefits associated with technology process innovation adoption as the innovation diffuses across different industries. Using RFID as an exemplar technology, the study shows that the magnitude of benefits and costs associated with technological process innovation adoption within different industries varies as technology diffuses beyond early adopters to the early majority. During the early stages of technology evolution, the development cost, the cost of capital, ethical costs and simple direct implementation costs (in the form of the cost of tags) predominate. As a dominant design emerges the profile of costs changes with the emphasis on initiation costs, more holistic direct implementation costs and indirect implementation costs. A similar change in the emphasis of benefits is observed, with a shift from direct to indirect benefits being noticeable as the technology moves from early adopters to early majority adopters. Our findings help to explain the difficulties in consistently measuring innovation outcomes observed in the innovation implementation literature, and emphasize the need to take into consideration the stage of technology development as a significant factor that influences the realised outcomes from innovation implementation.     

基于新一代信息技术的创新评估方法研究

创新是国家经济发展的动力,如何评估创新效率一直是研究热点。本文对国内外创新评估及创新调查的发展历程和发展现状进行了分析,在对创新评估原理和基本原则进行总结的基础上,基于新一代信息技术,详细分析了国内外现行的较为有效的创新评估方法。并采用创新调查技术中较为典型的DEA方法对我国20家不同领域的企业进行创新效率的比较分析。最后,针对基于新一代信息技术的创新调查方法的改善提出了建议。     

Government policy and technological innovation—a suggested typology

Reports on the effects of government's role in stimulating technological development provide a mixed picture. Some policies have had the expected, stimulating effect and other policies have not. We suggest that specific characteristics of technologies that government has sought to stimulate have not been taken into account when governments formulated and implemented innovation policies. While technologies can be characterized according to more dimensions, we focus on two highly relevant characteristics. Technologies either develop in a discrete manner, independent of what specific knowledge has been developed in the past, or develop cumulatively. In addition, network effects may be present or absent in the market anticipated for the products for which a technology is used. A 2×2 typology of technological development ensues. We suggest that governments should consider developing policies to stimulate technological change keeping these characteristics in mind.     

How do firms perceive policy rationales behind the variety of instruments supporting collaborative R&D? Lessons from the European Framework Programs

The main objective of the paper is to analyze to which extent participation in public programs supporting collaborative R&D meets the goals pursued by policy makers when setting up such instruments. Theoretically, these policy instruments are designed to overcome a set of failures (market and systemic failures) impeding the innovation process. We use as an example in the empirical part the European Framework Programs (FP) 5 and 6, which include a large and representative range of instruments. Each of these FP instruments is characterized according to the set of failures it is supposed to solve, its objectives and characteristics, and we discuss how these aspects are perceived and exploited by participating companies. Using data collected in the Innoimpact survey, involving thousands of FP5 and FP6 project participants, we compare the motivations of firms in choosing these instruments with our theoretical predictions. We find that the motivation to participate in a FP project does not differ greatly from one instrument to the other and the characteristics of the projects do not exhibit major differences. The paper concludes with some policy recommendations.     

The interaction of multiple champions in orchestrating innovation networks: Conflicts and complementarities

In networked or open innovation processes, so-called innovation communities have been identified in the innovation champion literature, in which innovation champions from different levels in the innovation system supposedly act as a team. It has however not been studied in detail to what extent and how different champions in innovation communities complement each other and act as a team. Applying the concept of innovation network orchestration to analyze the role and position of different kinds of champions as brokers in innovation networks, the purpose of this paper is to unravel the interaction between champions and what this entails in terms of role complementarities and conflicts as regards innovation network orchestration. This is done by using an explorative multiple case study approach in which three innovation journeys are analyzed. The results indicate that a distinction can be made between primary innovation communities, who act as aggregated orchestrators of the overall innovation network, and who in turn orchestrate secondary innovation communities in certain sub-networks. Here different kinds of champions complement each other and act as a team, but these complementarities are not a given: they are negotiated over time in interaction, and lack of reflection on each other’s roles may result in role conflicts. The main conclusion is that an oversimplified notion of innovation communities as a unified team of champions should be avoided: innovation communities themselves need a form of orchestration.     

欧洲三国创新政策的实践及对中国的启示

创新政策影响创新发展和传播的全过程。本文选取欧洲三个创新型国家,对比分析其创新政策实践。研究表明,英国创新政策注重可持续发展,政府投资信托企业和\"中间型\"研发机构有效促进变革型创新;瑞典聚焦提升企业主体创新能力,成立国有风投公司支持早期创新企业;德国创新政策围绕产业集群,构建创新系统,降低科研成本。中国应借鉴上述创新型国家可持续创新、强化产业集群等经验,确立企业主体地位,提高自主创新能力。