Incentives for employed inventors: an empirical analysis with special emphasis on the German Law for Employee's Inventions

This paper evaluates the use of incentive systems in R&D to stimulate the motivation potential of R&D personnel. Special emphasis is given to the German Employee's Inventions Act, enacted in 1957 which is applicable to all enterprises under German law and provides guidelines for a mandatory compensation of employed inventors. The law's major content, its advantages and disadvantages are presented and discussed in detail. It is shown that the general consensus in industry is unfavourable to the German Act. A significant time lack between the invention and it's compensation, the lack of transparency of the compensation guidelines, the calculation of an adequate compensation level, and a high administrative effort of calculating the compensation are only some of the drawbacks of this law. The consequences of these problems are the encouragement of secrecy among R&D professionals and the negative impact on their individual motivation potential. We also report on an experiment that measures the individual preferences of R&D personnel for different incentive variables. The method of conjoint measurement is applied to this area, it's technique is described and assessed. It is found that different segments of respondents with different preferences exist. The empirical findings also indicate the need to increase the flexibility of existing incentive systems in German industry.     

Social Innovation in an Interconnected World: Introduction to the Special Issue

This introduction provides an overview of the special issue and identifies the need for continued work in the area of social innovation, which seeks to create social value and progress and engages multiple stakeholders. Our special issue highlights various levels and stakeholders involved in the process and outcomes of social innovation. While mainstream innovation, which has been traditionally driven by profit maximization motivations, tends to create winners and losers, social innovation that focuses on redistribution of knowledge, discovery, and cocreation changes the key assumptions and logics of the conventional innovation theory. This introduction first briefly outlines current social innovation literature, presents the contributions created in this special issue, and concludes with the identification of three priorities (or needs) for social innovation researchers.     

基于文化自觉的非物质文化在服饰设计中的创新与应用研究——以温州为例

为了促进温州地区非物质文化遗产的传承与保护,通过文献、书籍、网络等渠道对温州地区的非物质文化遗产项目资源进行搜集、整理,提出将非物质文化遗产引入服饰设计中,本文以服饰艺术设计为切入点,以点带面,进行深度研究与开发,给以非物质文化遗产为主题的服饰品产品研发提供行动指南。     

Welfare Changes in the Cournot Setting with an Empirical Application to the Telecommunications Industry

I characterize the efficiency of the Cournot equilibrium and provide bounds for the loss in consumer surplus, producer surplus and welfare when the number of firms in the market changes. I only assume that demand is decreasing in price and costs increasing in the quantity produced as long as equilibrium exists. I show how price, demand and average cost, before and after the number of firms in the market changes, can be used to compute these bounds. I apply these bounds to the Portuguese wireline market and conclude that welfare increased significantly when the monopolist was split in 2007.     

A Treatment Effect Method for Merger Analysis with an Application to Parking Prices in Paris

We propose a method of building control groups for retrospective merger evaluation. The procedure involves two parameters: a distance or radius, and an ‘order of exposure’ reflecting the notion that a merger can affect an outlet in a more or less direct way. We implement the method of estimating the price effect of a merger in the Paris parking market and illustrate the consequences of including indirectly exposed outlets in the control group. The methodology applies to any industry with spatial competition and allows one to check the sensitivity of the results to the choice of the control group.     

Open Innovation in Practice: Goal Complementarity and Closed NPD Networks to Explain Differences in Innovation Performance for SMEs in the Medical Devices Sector

Cooperation with other organizations increases the innovation performance of organization, especially for small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) as they encounter liabilities of “smallness” (e.g., limited financial resources, and manpower). In the medical devices sector, collaboration with external partners for NPD becomes increasingly important due to the complexity of the products and the development process. About 80% of companies in this sector are SMEs. These companies operate in a highly regulated sector, which affects the organization of the external network required for the new product development (NPD) process. SMEs are practicing extensively open innovation activities, but in practice face a number of barriers in trying to apply open innovation. This paper examines multiple network characteristics simultaneously in relation to innovation performance and thereby aligns with and builds further on configuration theory. Configuration theory posits that for each set of network characteristics, there exists an ideal set of organizational characteristics that yields superior performance. In this research, the systems approach to fit is used. Fit is high to the extent that an organization is similar to an ideal profile along multiple dimensions. This ideal profile represents the network profile that the 15% highest performing companies use. It is argued that the smaller the distance between the ideal profile and the network profile that is used, the higher the performance. The objective of this research is (1) to examine the relation between the ideal profile and innovation performance and (2) to examine which organization of the network profile is related to high innovation performance. Quantitative survey data (n = 60, response rate 61.9%) form the core of this research. The quantitative results are clarified and have been triangulated with qualitative interview data (n = 50). Our findings suggest the presence of an “ideal” NPD network profile (in terms of goal complementarity, resource complementarity, fairness trust, reliability trust, and network position strength): the more a company's NPD network profile differs from this ideal profile, the lower the innovation performance. In addition, the results of our study indicate that the NPD network profiles of successful and less successful SMEs in the medical devices sector significantly differ in terms of “goal complementarity,” while this is less the case for trust and resource complementarity labeled distinctive by previous research. Finally, results show that a relatively closed, focused, and consistent “business‐like” NPD networking approach, which is characterized by result orientation and professionalism, is related to high innovation performance. It is recommended that SMEs in the medical devices sector aiming to distinguish themselves from competitors in terms of innovation performance focus on goal complementarity while adopting such a business‐like attitude toward their NPD network partners.     

Demand for ecolabeled seafood in the Japanese market: A conjoint analysis of the impact of information and interaction with other labels

The use of seafood ecolabels is expanding in the world marketplace, but so are labels indicating other product attributes, such as country of origin and wild vs. farmed. The interactive effects of these labels and attributes in evaluating consumers’ preferences for ecolabeled seafood are relatively unexplored. In this paper we investigate (1) the direct and interactive effects of seafood ecolabels with other common fish labels, and (2) how consumers’ perceptions about the state of marine stocks and the valuation of ecolabels may be affected by different information. We find moderate interactive effects between ecolabels and country of origin labels, whereas the valuation for seafood ecolabels is fairly high. In terms of information, we find that consumers’ perceptions about fish stock levels changed (negatively) after receiving information on declining stock levels, and more sensationalized information led to increased change. However, valuation for a seafood ecolabel increases only when the information was perceived positively (credible/interesting); whereas exaggerated information (which was also perceived less credible) had insignificant effects on WTP.     

论技术创新对钢铁产业的推动作用——以70—90年代浦项钢铁厂为例

通过对70—90年代浦项钢铁厂发展过程的回顾,发现技术创新是推动钢铁产业发展的核心力量,建议通过提高设备生产力、整合研发系统以及建立产业内部和产业间合作,有效地提高我国钢铁企业的核心竞争力。     

Beta distributed market shares in a spatial model with an application to the market for audit services

We show that if firms locate on a circle according to a uniform distribution, their market shares will be beta distributed. The result implies that concentration ratios will be skewed. We apply the result to the market for auditing services in the US and show the beta distribution outperforms other relevant distributions.     

When the Former CEO Stays on Board: The Role of the Predecessor’s Board Retention for Product Innovation in Family Firms

Understanding product innovation in family firms is an important research endeavor given the economic predominance of those firms, their idiosyncrasies, and the importance of constant renewal for those firms to achieve transgenerational survival. Recently, family firm research has highlighted the role of next-generation chief executive officers (CEOs; i.e., successors) who are often seen as drivers for innovating a family firm’s products. However, prior research has typically neglected that predecessors, who are often portrayed as less willing to introduce product innovation, frequently remain involved postsuccession through occupying board positions and thus still substantially influence the decision-making processes and outcomes of family firms, such as product innovation. As a result, our understanding of the role of predecessors and their postsuccession involvement in family firms’ product innovation remains unclear. Building on stakeholder salience theory and on insights from the literature on innovation and succession in family firms, we develop hypotheses about how and under which conditions the predecessor’s board retention affects product innovation in family firms after succession. Building on more than 200 family firm CEO succession cases in small- and medium-sized, privately owned family firms, our results reveal that the predecessor’s board retention negatively affects product innovation. This negative effect is strengthened with increasing involvement of the predecessor in the successor selection process, and it is offset in the case of family succession. Our findings contribute to the emerging stream of research on family firm succession and product innovation and provide important implications for practice.     

电路及电子电路中相位关系的研讨——兼对PAL制解码器原理电路中三个90°相移电路的分析

本文从最基本的电路及电子电路概念出发,由浅入深地阐述了电路及电子电路中相位的分析方法。就电子电路而言,诸如放大、振荡、移相、反馈等,所涉及的除幅度问题外,难以处理的也常是相位问题。文中以 PAL 制解码器原理电路中三个90°相移电路为典型,作了简要地分析。