The role of openness in explaining innovation performance in a regional context

We investigate the role of search strategy in shaping firms’ innovation performance. Firms use a wide range of external actors and sources to help them achieve and sustain innovation. In particular, the extension (breadth) and the relevance (depth) of such sources determine firms’ ability to extract and exploit knowledge and new ideas and, thus, to be innovative. Using a sample of firms in a regional context active in R&D, we built separate measures of breadth and depth for local (on a regional scale) and global (outside the regional context) search. This allows us to investigate whether localized or global knowledge spillovers are in place. We find that a wider set of partners increases coordination costs, while greater depth in search strategies contributes to innovation. We find that a more diversified search strategy at the local level (greater breadth of search) results in significant payoffs in terms of innovation, while diversifying the partnership with Italian partners has a smaller, although still positive, effect. In contrast, the benefits of depth of innovation are greatest at the global level. In addition, a broader set of information sources for R&D projects has a significant positive effect on innovation. Finally, firms that resort to R&D subsidies are less innovative.     

The engaged university

Universities play a unique role in society, providing a community of experimentation and innovation. Even so, leaders around the world have had to push for university primacy to retain competitiveness in the global economy. This paper examines efforts taken by universities in the United States to evaluate their contribution to economic development. An emerging role for universities is one of active neighborhood involvement, in which they are engaged in projects with local communities. These projects include providing assistance to local firms and policy advice to state and local government, and getting involved in community outreach. In this role and in an unprecedented manner, universities are engaging on a wide range of topics with local communities, using these communities as labs to test new ideas and find better ways to achieve social and economic goals. This is precisely why it is important to consider the larger role of universities’ in economic and social development.     

Reframing the Role of Universities in the Development of Regional Innovation Systems

The role of universities in regional innovation has evolved over the last 20 years. This evolution has seen the emergence of a third role of universities that has re-shaped and transformed their two traditional functions of teaching and research. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for analysing variation in the roles performed by universities in the development of regional innovation systems. This framework is based on the triple helix model of university, industry, government relations, the literature on university engagement and the innovation systems literature, more generally. The framework is applied to a comparative study of three non core-metropolitan universities in Australia. A number of insights and issues are drawn in regard to conceptualising the role of universities in regional systems.     

Regional Innovation Systems: General Findings and Some New Evidence from Biotechnology Clusters

This paper focuses on interactive innovation. It starts by operationalising Regional Innovation in the context of multi-level governance. It shows how regional and external innovation interaction among firms and other innovation organizations is important for regional innovation potential. The ability to access and use funding for innovation support for regional firms and organizations is crucial for regional innovation promotion. Equity investment funding is more important than public funding, which tends to be cautious and otherwise risk avoiding, except in circumstances of market arrest or failure to develop. Regional systems of innovation are broader than single sectors or clusters but some of these will be strategically privileged recipients of policy support because of their growth performance or potential, rather than, as in the past, their uncompetitiveness. The paper devotes space to exploring biotechnology clustering from a regional innovation systems viewpoint, as an instance of rather strong sectoral, regional innovation systems capabilities, though integrated also to global knowledge supply and markets. Illustration is provided of the way such sectoral innovation systems work at local regional level by reference to cases from Cambridge, Massachusetts and Cambridge, England.     

Commercializing biomedical science in a rapidly changing “triple-helix” nexus: The experience of the National University of Singapore

Since the late 1990s, the Singapore government had embarked on a significant push to develop the city-state into a major life-science R&D and industrial cluster in Asia. Although a major focus of this new thrust involves attracting leading life science companies overseas to establish operations in Singapore and developing new public life science research institutions to attract overseas life science research talents (Finegold, Wong, and Cheah (2004)), the local universities are expected to play an important role as well. In particular, the National University of Singapore (NUS), the leading university in Singapore, has also started to pursue major strategic change to become more “entrepreneurial”, and identified life science as a major focus for technology commercialization as well. Adapting the “Triple-Helix” framework of Etzkowitz, Webster, Gebhardt, & Terra (2000), this paper examines the significant changes in the university-government-industry “Triple-Helix” nexus for life science in Singapore, and their consequent impact on life science commercialization at NUS. Implications for universities in other late-comer countries seeking to catch up in the global biotech race are discussed.      

Towards a Policy Framework for the Use of Knowledge in Innovation Systems

Policies meant to stimulate knowledge intensive innovation, should be based on a sound and realistic view how knowledge, especially scientific and technological, is used in innovation processes, and the workings of the innovation system and the complex flow of knowledge within it. Report is given on recent attempts in the Netherlands to formulate a policy framework that avoids basic assumptions of linear models of innovation. Instead, the framework is based on the interactive and cyclical ways knowledge is used in innovation systems. In case studies it is shown that application of the framework may help in analytical clarification. It is argued that it is important to introduce the framework on an intermediary level in policy making for two main reasons. Firstly, it enables to abstract from the institutions in the research infrastructure and to bring the discussion on such a level that the philosophy behind those institutions can be questioned. Secondly, the framework brings coherence in the discussions what should be done and why. The latter particularly applies to strategic discussions, such as resource allocation between science inspired by ‘science itself’ or ‘science inspired by society.’     

Entpreprenerial Universities and Technology Transfer: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Knowledge-Based Economic Development

This paper offers a framework to illuminate the role of universities in systems of innovation. The framework attempts to incorporate economic, social, and political influences that affect the ability of universities to both create new knowledge and deploy that knowledge in economically useful ways and thereby contribute to economic growth and prosperity. The objective of this paper is to build a more general understanding of university–industry relationships and their role in knowledge-based innovation systems.     

Public sector innovation: the effect of universities

A growing literature in public management has identified the key role that innovation can play in enhancing agency efficiency, effectiveness, performance and legitimacy. However, considerably less is known about the actual sources of knowledge generating innovative activity in the public sector. This paper fills this crucial gap in the literature by explicitly analyzing the link between a key source of knowledge and ideas, universities, and the innovative activities of public organizations. By utilizing a new source of data, this paper is able to show that not only do universities play a key role in generating innovative activity in public organizations, but the nature of innovations and their impact on public sector performance are related to the role played by universities. The findings suggest that universities play a key role in generating innovative activity in public organizations as doing so can increase the quality of public services, employee job satisfaction, and interagency collaboration.

     

浅论提升吉林省科技创新能力

党的十八大报告指出：科技创新是提高社会生产力和综合国力的战略支撑,必须摆在国家发展全局的核心位置.同样,提高科技创新能力也是促进区域经济可持续发展的重要动力源泉.目前,吉林省正处经济转型发展的关键时期,因此,加大政府对科技创新的支持力度、充分发挥企业自主创新的主体作用、建立产学研合作体系等是提升吉林省科技创新能力的重要途径.     

Knowledge transfer in academia: an exploratory study on the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome

Today??s society is often claimed to be the ??knowledge society??. Knowledge transfer plays a pivotal role in the whole economic system, influencing innovation management in its very core. This study deals with one of the barriers that might hamper knowledge transfer: The Not-Invented-Here Syndrome (NIH). Until now, this phenomenon was mainly analyzed in an industrial context. However, as the universities play an increasingly important role in the knowledge society, the time seems ripe to analyze this barrier of knowledge transfer in an academic context. This paper examines the influence of the research discipline, the scientific output, the attitude towards basic science and the project experience on NIH by analyzing a sample of 166 Austrian professors from the fields of physics and engineering. While we cannot find a significant impact of the first two aspects, we can demonstrate that the latter two do have a significant influence on NIH. Summing up, this study supports results from the existing literature on NIH and sheds light on new aspects providing deeper insights into the comprehension of this complex phenomenon.     

The effects of biased technological changes on total factor productivity: a rejoinder and new empirical evidence

The paper by Ji and Wang (J Technol Transf, 2013) calls new attention on the analysis of the effects of the direction of technological change. The aim of this paper is to better articulate and test the theoretical arguments that the direction of technological changes has specific effects on the efficiency of the production process and to study the incentives and the processes that lead to its introduction. The decomposition of total factor productivity growth into the bias and the shift effects enables to articulate the hypothesis that the types of technological change whether more neutral or more biased reflect the variety of the innovation processes at work. The evidence of a large sample of European regions tests the hypothesis that regional innovations systems with a strong science base are better able to introduce neutral technological changes while regional innovation systems that rely more upon learning processes and tacit knowledge favor the introduction of directed technologies a form of meta-substitution that aims at exploiting the opportunities provided by the most intensive use of locally abundant factors.     

Regional Innovation Systems: The Integration of Local ‘Sticky’ and Global ‘Ubiquitous’ Knowledge

The paper examines how firms in three regional clusters in Norway dominated by shipbuilding, mechanical engineering and electronics industry, respectively exploit both place-specific local resources as well as external, world-class knowledge to strengthen their competitiveness. From these case-studies we make four points: (1) Ideal-typical regional innovation systems, i.e., regional clusters surrounded by supporting local organisations, is rather uncommon in Norway. (2) External contacts, outside of the local industrial milieu, are crucial in innovation processes also in many SMEs. (3) Innovation processes may nevertheless be regarded as regional phenomena in regional clusters, as regional resources and collaborative networks often have decisive significance for firms' innovation activity. (4) Regional resources include in particular place-specific, contextual knowledge of both tacit and codified nature, that, in combination, is rather geographically immobile.     

The role of national intellectual property laws in promoting innovation,scientific and technological development

This paper examines the role which intellectual property rights can play in stimulating innovation for sustainable development. It provides an overview of the international intellectual property regime and its relevance to innovation, technological and scientific development. It considers the role of national intellectual property laws in the context of innovation by focusing on a number of key areas, including the protection of traditional knowledge and genetic resources, and the diffusion of environmentally sound technologies. The paper highlights areas of intellectual property law and system reform and strengthening that may be a focus for Commonwealth member countries.     

我国区域推动创新国际化的路径与对策研究

在经济全球化程度日益提高的今天,创新国际化显得尤为重要.针对我国地方创新国际化存在的诸多不足,政府和有关部门应当审时度势,根据各自区域资源与创新优势,通过产学研战略联盟、知识产权保护及政府财政支持等措施,促进区域的自主创新及其国际化进程.     

Technology Transfer in European Regions: Introduction to the Special Issue

Regions can be considered as “regional innovation systems,” but the question of whether and to what extent technology transfer is taking place at this or other (e.g., national and global) levels remains empirical. The theme issue contains a number of case studies of “regional innovation systems” within the European Union. Other papers elaborate on the pros and cons of the systemic approach to the technology transfer processes involved, or make comparisons across regions. In this introduction, the editors discuss the relations between regional policies, technology and innovation policies, and the integration of these different aspects into (potentially regional) systems of innovation. Under what conditions can “technology transfer” be considered as a mechanism of integration at the regional level?     

SMEs in Regional Innovation Systems and The Role of Innovation Support--The Case of Upper Austria

In the past large firms were regarded as the main driving forces for innovation, but, more recently, the interest has shifted to SMEs as well as networks of firms. It has been recognized that SMEs innovate in a specific way and that they face size-specific barriers. To be able to rely on innovation partners and to be involved in regional or national innovation systems seems to be of critical importance for SMEs. This paper presents the empirical results of a firm survey in Upper Austria, a region with a long industrial tradition in Austria, investigating the extent to which SMEs are actually engaged in innovation networks and the role of public innovation support in this context. The findings show that SMEs which have received innovation support are more successful innovators than those which have not, and that innovation cooperations are rather rare. Most external relations are with other firms and within the region, very few with knowledge providers from science and technology. At present, innovation support instruments do not sufficiently target the deficits of non-innovative SMEs and the problems in linking up with innovation networks and broadening firms' relations beyond the region.     

Contextualising Regional Innovation Systems in a Globalising Learning Economy: On Knowledge Bases and Institutional Frameworks

In order to advance the understanding of which types of regional innovation system represent effective innovation support for what kinds of industry in different regions analyses must be contextualized by reference to the actual knowledge base of various industries as well as to the regional and national institutional framework, which strongly shape the innovation processes of firms. Of special importance is the linkage between the larger institutional frameworks of the national innovation and business systems, and the character of regional innovation systems. In making the arguments about a general correspondence between the macro-institutional characteristics of the economy and the dominant form and character of its regional innovation systems a link is provided to the literature on ‘varieties of capitalism’ and national business systems.     

Organizational structures of Knowledge Transfer Offices: an analysis of the world’s top-ranked universities

Universities are central actors in the production and delivery of new knowledge, and they play a unique role in National and Regional Innovation Systems. Almost all research universities have established Knowledge Transfer Offices (KTOs) to pursue their so-called ‘third mission’. This paper analyses the organizational structure of KTOs by discussing how universities organize their knowledge transfer activities, and by considering what factors may impact on the choice of specific organizational structures. We examine the KTO structures of the top 200 ranked universities in the world and highlight the presence of three knowledge transfer organizational models (internal, external, and mix) and six configurations of these models.     

区域创新体系建设的国际比较及启示

区域创新是区域发展的必由之路,创新能力和创新体系建设正成为一个区域获取竞争优势的决定性因素。早在20世纪80年代,西方各国就争相把建立区域创新体系作为提升其国际竞争力的一项国家战略。通过分析美国、日本、韩国、印度等国家在区域创新体系建设中的科技资源配置、政府管理模式和创新体系建设等方面的做法,全面总结其经验和模式,为我国区域创新体系建设和管理提供有益的借鉴。     

The role of universities in the location of innovative start-ups

Start-ups increasingly find the prospect of university–industry collaborations to be a powerful driver of innovation and entrepreneurship activity. Moreover, at the geographical level, they are attracted by teaching and research institutions, either public or private. This paper focuses on the role played by universities. Our hypothesis is that geographical proximity favors the transfer of knowledge and technology from universities to industries and, consequently, represents a positive factor for regional economic development. Results show that university spillovers are positively correlated with the creation of innovative start-ups. Furthermore, the presence of human capital (graduates) exerts a significant influence on the location decisions of start-ups, being a source for competitiveness for firms close to universities. Research quality, especially in the social sciences area, attracts innovative start-ups, while third-mission activities have a weak impact on locational choice.