A comparative study of innovation behaviour in Singapore's KIBS and manufacturing firms |
| |
Authors: | Poh Kam Wong Associate Professor Zi-Lin He Lecturer |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. Business School and Director, Centre for Entrepreneurship , University of Singapore , 14 Prince George's Park, Singapore , 118412;2. Department of Management , University of Otago , P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand |
| |
Abstract: | While most services innovation studies are concentrated on the OECD or EU countries, research on services innovation in the non-OECD context is still rare. This study investigates innovation behaviour of a certain group of services – knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), compared with the manufacturing sector in Singapore. The main findings of this study are: (1) KIBS firms have higher innovating ratio than manufacturing firms, but innovating manufacturing firms are more likely to do R&D than innovating KIBS firms; (2) KIBS firms have higher human capital intensity, training spending intensity, innovation spending intensity, and R&D spending intensity than manufacturing firms; (3) KIBS firms and manufacturing firms have similar innovation objectives, although some delicate nuances do exist; (4) KIBS firms are less likely to have overseas partners for innovation collaboration than manufacturing firms; (5) there is a U pattern of innovation collaboration with geographic distance for both KIBS and manufacturing firms; (6) social capitals are important for KIBS firms' successful provision of innovation support to manufacturing clients; (7) the importance of spatial proximity varies over different phases of innovation support. |
| |
Keywords: | |
|
|