Technological start-ups in the innovation system: an actor-oriented perspective

The functional approach of the Technological Innovation System (TIS) has become important in innovation theory to understand the dynamics of technological innovations. Until now, TIS has mainly been applied top-down from a policy perspective. The aim of this study was to investigate whether TIS can be used in the management domain, from an actor-oriented perspective, to explain the dynamics in which technological start-ups are involved when developing innovations. We interviewed the founders of 24 technological start-ups about their experiences with the developmental processes of their innovations. Our results highlight that the functions of TIS provide a useful framework to structure the interactions of technological start-ups. Especially the functions ‘Resource Mobilisation’ and ‘Legitimation’ appeared to be important functions for start-ups when developing an innovation. Our findings show that TIS is a promising framework for the strategic management domain that can offer guidance in the development of innovations.     

CSD water partnerships: Privatization, participation and legitimacy

Public-private partnerships have been presented as an opportunity to improve the input and output legitimacy of global environmental governance, and they were endorsed by intergovernmental agreement at the Johannesburg Summit in 2002. However, their potential to contribute substantially to these aims has also been questioned. For partnerships working in the water sector, the implications of private sector participation for legitimate water governance have been disputed, for example regarding whether public-private partnerships can provide water that is affordable and accessible to all, and whether they provide opportunities for local stakeholder participation. In this article, these discussions are examined with respect to several examples of public-private partnerships registered with the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. The analysis indicates that these partnerships partially address these criticisms, but also have their own shortcomings.     

依托高新带深化带动西部大开发

依靠高新技术产业驱动区域经济发展是当今国内外落后地区实现跨越式发展的必由之路,也是深化带动西部大开发的内在要求。西部重点经济带具有较强的科技实力和较好的技术创新基础,已逐步形成了具有相当规模的陕西关中和成—绵—渝两条高新技术产业开发带,对推动西部高新技术产业和经济社会全面协调发展发挥了强大的辐射带动作用。提出应确立依托西部高新带深化带动西部大开发的新的发展战略。     

我国高技术产业投资环境研究与评价

高技术产业在我国各个省、自治区、直辖市之间的发展极不平衡,其差距远远超出了各地区经济发展水平之间的差距.本文在对我国各地区高技术产业的发展水平进行聚类分析的基础上,吸收已有的投资环境研究成果,并依据高技术产业的特点,对高技术产业投资环境的影响指标进行了筛选,并进一步对各地区的高技术产业投资环境做出了评价.     

世界高技术及其产业发展对我国的影响和启示

当前,高技术及其产业发展已成为国际竞争的焦点,本文归纳了世界主技术产业发展的主要模式,分析了世界高技术及其产业发展对我国的产业结构高速,国家安全,人才培育体系等方面的影响,针对我国的实际情况,提出了政策建议。     

偏离-份额法与西安高新技术优势产业及其竞争力分析

偏离 -份额法是一个在国外区域经济和产业结构分析中被普遍使用的方法 ,具有较强的综合性和动态性。本文运用该方法在对西安高新技术产业发展现状做出科学评价的基础上 ,确定了西安未来具有发展潜力和竞争优势的高新技术产业     

Consultations and the ECB as prudential regulator: enhancing legitimacy?

ABSTRACT

This paper examines whether the ECB’s consultations, imposed by the SSM Regulation, enhance legitimacy in terms of openness, transparency, inclusiveness, efficacy and judicial accountability. The paper argues that the ECB has, in general, established a solid consultation practice. However, although there is a need for efficacy, the lack of a profound feedback statement, the low participation rate of groups other than the sector actors, and weak judicial review can be considered to constitute its Achilles’ heel. Thus, while in theory the consultation obligation leads to more throughput legitimacy, reality has turned out to be far more complex.     

How governments seek to bridge the financing gap for university spin-offs: proof-of-concept,pre-seed,and seed funding

University spin-offs often develop early-stage technologies characterised by long development paths and uncertain commercial potential. Private financiers, such as banks, informal investors, and venture capital firms, are reluctant to invest in these ventures at an early stage. To bridge this financing gap, governments have set up specialised programmes, but few studies have examined the rationale and organisation of different types of programmes. We analyse government schemes in six countries and identify three main categories of funding initiatives. Proof-of-concept (PoC) schemes aim to reduce the technological uncertainty. Pre-seed schemes aim to reduce the organisational uncertainty and make the nascent venture attractive to investors. Seed funding schemes provide early-stage equity financing. The seed funding initiatives seek to improve the supply of funding, while there seems to be an increasing number of pre-seed and PoC schemes seeking to bridge the financing gap from the demand-side by increasing the attractiveness of the spin-offs towards investors.     

Organisational regulatory legitimacy,entrepreneurial orientation,and SME innovation: an optimal distinctiveness perspective

The optimal distinctiveness perspective argues that firms face competing pressures to be both ‘like’ and ‘different from’ their peers. On the one hand, institutional scholars assert that firms need to be similar to peers in order to gain legitimacy. On the other hand, strategy scholars insist that firms need to strive to be different to gain competitive advantage. In order to enrich the optimal distinctiveness perspective, the present study builds a conceptual model that addresses the relationships among organisational regulatory legitimacy, entrepreneurial orientation, and SME innovation under the context of China’s transition economy. Our empirical results show that organisational regulatory legitimacy has an inverted-U relationship with SME innovation. Further, entrepreneurial orientation strengthens this inverse-U shaped relationship. That is, entrepreneurial orientation magnifies both the positive and the negative effect of organisational regulatory legitimacy on SME innovation. This study echoes to the call to conduct broader optimal distinctiveness research by integrating institutional theory and strategic management. Furthermore, our findings provide new evidence for the strategic balance perspective of optimal distinctiveness.     

高技术企业人力资本产权化对企业产权结构和绩效的影响分析

本文以人力资本的产权特征为逻辑主线，着重剖析了高技术企业中掌握核心技术的高管人员的人力资本对企业治理结构和绩效的特殊影响，并结合我国高技术企业中技术资本和人力资本产权化现状，提出要通过人力资本产权文化的培育，建立人力资本评价体系，完善人力资本产权化的法律法规等，让人力资本从不同方面进入高技术企业的制度安排；通过强化科技成果界定的科学性，扩大无形资产评估的范围，推行无形资产界定的契约化、市场化，以实现技术资本产权主体的激励与约束；通过创业板的设立，解决风险资本的退出问题，加速风险资本的积累，为高技术企业的发展提供金融支持。     

Academia-industry collaboration,government funding and innovation efficiency in Chinese industrial enterprises

This article uses a stochastic frontier model to elaborate how academia-industry research and development collaboration and government funding influence the innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises through a panel dataset from 2009 to 2015, including 30 provinces in China. We find that the research institute-industry collaboration promotes innovation efficiency of enterprises, while university-industry collaboration is adversely associated with innovation efficiency. Government funding plays a positive role on innovation efficiency across the board. Next, we divide the sample into three clusters according to enterprises’ innovation ability. In the first cluster, which has the least innovation ability, research institute-industry collaboration, university-industry collaboration and government funding have no significant effect on enterprise innovation efficiency. In the second and third clusters, university-industry collaboration exerts a negative impact on innovation efficiency but government funding improves innovation efficiency. At the same time, we investigate the interaction effects of enterprise R&D personnel and academia-industry collaboration and government funding on innovation efficiency. We find some heterogeneity in the full sample and the three sub-samples.     

A model of the innovation-adaptation mechanism driving economic dynamics: a micro representation

The model that this paper sets out is based on a combination of the Schumpeterian creative destruction and the neo-Austrian notion of market process. It gives a formalization of the succession innovation-structural organization and its endogenous mechanism, crucial to explain economic growth and development. More in particular, the essay gives an explanation of innovation, endogenous uncertainty and describes the way equilibrating and disequilibrating processes are intertwined and operate. It also shows that a representation of this dynamic competition process cannot do without some appropriate development on entrepreneurship and its links with uncertainty. Finally, some simulations with the proposed model are providedJEL Classification: M13, O31, D80, E32, O12I am indebted to C. R. Wymer for his advice and for the computer programs that have permitted the simulation of the model in this paper, including choice and substitutions of variables and specification of inequality conditions. These programs form part of the WYSEA (System Estimation and Analysis) package.     

Government grants,private R&D funding and innovation efficiency in transition economy

Although the development of the high-tech industry is part of the national agenda of many countries, particularly transition economies, few studies have analysed innovation efficiency in countries with environments unfavourable to high-tech industry development. This study explores the relationships of government grants, private R&D funding and innovation efficiencies of the high-tech industry in China. We use a stochastic frontier analysis model to study the roles of government and market mechanisms in high-tech industry innovation from 1995 to 2008. Findings show that government grants do not crowd out private funding, but stimulate private R&D expenditure. Private R&D funding has positively influenced innovation in the Chinese high-tech industry, and efficiency potentials are widely under-exploited. Additionally, government grants are observed to negatively impact innovation by large firms in the Chinese high-tech industry. Furthermore, we reveal that human capital can promote the innovation performance of high-tech firms, excepting those of medium scale. The findings provide insightful perspectives on China's high-tech industry.     

Industry structure,entrepreneurship, and culture: An empirical analysis using historical coalfields

There is mounting evidence demonstrating that entrepreneurship is spatially clustered and that these spatial differences are quite persistent over long periods of time. However, especially the sources of that persistence are not yet well-understood, and it is largely unclear whether persistent differences in entrepreneurship are reflected in differences in entrepreneurship culture across space as it is often argued in the literature. We approach the cluster phenomenon by theorizing that a historically high regional presence of large-scale firms negatively affects entrepreneurship, due to low levels of human capital and entrepreneurial skills, fewer opportunities for entry and entrepreneurship inhibiting formal and informal institutions. These effects can become self-perpetuating over time, ultimately resulting in persistent low levels of entrepreneurship activity and entrepreneurship culture. Using data from Great Britain, we analyze this long-term imprinting effect by using the distance to coalfields as an exogenous instrument for the regional presence of large-scale industries. IV regressions show that British regions with high employment shares of large-scale industries in the 19th century, due to spatial proximity to coalfields, have lower entrepreneurship rates and weaker entrepreneurship culture today. We control for an array of competing hypotheses like agglomeration forces, the regional knowledge stock, climate, and soil quality. Our main results are robust with respect to inclusion of these control variables and various other modifications which demonstrates the credibility of our empirical identification strategy. A mediation analysis reveals that a substantial part of the impact of large-scale industries on entrepreneurship is through human capital.     

Investment and Finance in de novo private firms: Empirical Results from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland

In this paper we use a survey of 281 Czech, Hungarian and Polish newly-established small private firms in order to shed some light on the constraints these firms face in the credit market. The results of our survey show that imperfections in capital markets in Central European economies do not seem to actually inhibit the growth of new private firms. Credit markets do exist for de novo private firms in the three Central European transition economies studied, and they provide quite a large amount of financing from an early stage of the existence of firms. Financial intermediation works reasonably well as far as de novo private firms are concerned: loss-making de novo firms have a lower probability of getting credit than profitable ones. Banks protect themselves against the risk of a deteriorating pool of borrowers by requiring collateral for their loans. We do not find convincing evidence concerning the existence of adverse selection. Loss-making firms are not ready to pay higher interest rates than profitable firms and are not more likely to ask for credit than profitable firms.     

Bank ownership type and temporal evolution of long‐term bank funding in the period 2005–2017

This study uses a large panel dataset of Western European banks to examine the determinants of bank funding stability. Banks are divided into three categories by bank ownership type; the ownership types in this study are commercial banks, cooperative banks and savings banks. Three sources of stable bank funding are investigated: customer deposits, equity, and long‐term liabilities. Furthermore, the sum of these funding components is used as a proxy variable for a bank's total available stable funding (ASF). A special focus is on the temporal evolution of these funding types. The regression results show that commercial banks’ funding became much more stable in the period 2005–2017. However, that funding remains, on average, less stable than does cooperative and savings banks’ funding. In addition, funding stability has remained at the pre‐crisis level in cooperative and savings banks, despite a steep dip in cooperative banks’ ASF during the sovereign debt crisis. Furthermore, banks substantially decreased financing from long‐term liabilities after the financial crisis, replacing it with customer deposits and equity.     

New product and service launching in new ventures: a multilevel approach to innovation antecedents

Macro-economic policies such as public financing seek to push the development and introduction of innovations; however, entrepreneurs also need support in their ‘day-to-day’ activities to improve their capability to launch innovations. As this micro-level perspective is rarely studied, we analyze both the micro and macro levels by examining the effects of the entrepreneurs’ individual intention to innovate and public financing. Additionally, we include the meso level, representing entrepreneurs’ network. Entrepreneurs are embedded in social spheres in which they capture resources and identify opportunities. But not all entrepreneurs are equally well supported, and some tend to be completely isolated. We thus focus on multilevel factors explaining new product or service launching in new ventures. Drawing on data of 48,251 French new ventures, we reveal that innovation intention and public financing positively impact new ventures’ product and service innovation launching, while entrepreneurs’ isolation has a negative effect. We also highlight two interaction effects that enhance the multilevel effects of innovation antecedents.     

拨开农业创业失败复兴迷雾：失败学习与创业能力的共演过程

农业创业赋予我国乡村振兴和农业高质量发展以无穷活力,但在实践中农业创业失败率却一直居高不下,创业者遭遇失败后究竟该如何复兴值得探索。选取央视《致富经》栏目中14个典型败后复兴的农业创业案例,运用扎根理论分析法,探究败后复兴过程中失败学习和创业能力演化规律。研究发现：①失败学习主要表现为归因学习、经验学习和迭代学习3种学习方式,能够作用于败后复兴过程中的创业能力形成;②创业能力主要包括机会能力、技术能力、市场能力及运营能力,对败后复兴起推动作用;③在败后复兴的3个具体阶段,失败学习通过填补知识空白、经验知识内化和知识体系革新3个关键机制与创业能力互动,能够有效促进创业能力演化,在败后复兴过程中起决定性作用。     

The newer antipsychotics: evidence for cost-effectiveness and policy implications

SUMMARY

The current reluctance in some health authorities to provide full funding for the use of the new generation of antipsychotics is not in the best interests of patients or the National Health Service. Schizophrenia is a complex and costly disease, which relies too much on hospital care because of funding shortages elsewhere.

New research attitudes are required to assist health policy decisions. Economic evaluations using evidence solely from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are insufficient and give a partial and potentially misleading picture. The complexity of the illness and its outcomes in schizophrenia as well as the social influences on hospital admission and discharge exaggerate methodological difficulties arising from the nature of RCTs. The long-term, relapsing nature of the disease in many patients means that long-term evidence must be considered from non-randomised observational studies.

This paper discusses recent reviews and major publications in order to examine the economic arguments for newer atypicals as a class. The economic data published to date consistently suggest that these newer agents should not increase the direct costs of treating schizophrenia and may in fact reduce them. As there are undoubted patient benefits, not least a reduction in side effects, especially extrapyramidal symptoms (EPS) with the potential to improve compliance and reduce relapse, the range of atypicals might be made available and the clinician allowed to make a choice based on clinical not economic grounds.

The funding of these newer agents, although they are ultimately of benefit to patients and to the NHS, stretches already sparse resources. The likely freeing up of beds previously blocked by patients on older 'conventional' treatments will allow them to be used by those patients who currently escape the net. This will further increase funding requirements as more patients present for treatment. There are ethical, clinical and political grounds for increasing funding for the treatment of schizophrenia to take advantage of the biggest revolution in antipsychotic therapy since the launch of the first neuroleptics.