Slack resources,exploratory and exploitative innovation and the performance of small technology-based firms at incubators

This paper aims to contribute (1) to the understanding about how small technology-based firms in spite of being constrained by limited resources, can still perform exploratory and exploitative innovation and (2) to extend knowledge about the role of slack resources in the context of small technology-based firms in facilitating those innovation activities. Herein, we focus on two types of slack resources: internal slack, resources that are available within the firms and external slack, additional resources that are gathered through the facilitation of external sources such as business incubators. Using a sample of 141 small technology-based firms located at incubators, this study combined two streams of research on incubator studies and innovation to construct some hypotheses examining the role of slack resources and innovation activities in enhancing the performance of small technology-based firms operating in incubator setting. Our findings demonstrate that neither slack resources nor innovation activities alone explain firm performance. Instead, small technology-based firms fit their innovation activities to their slack resources. While the relationship between internal slack and performance is mediated by exploitative innovation, exploratory innovation plays a role as a mediator for the relationship between external slack and performance.     

Interactive Relations Between Universities and Firms: Empirical Evidence for Austria

In recent years interaction between universities and the business sector and the role of these collaborations in fostering innovation has received greater attention. This paper analyzes different types of interactions between the two sectors from the perspectives of universities and firms. The three major research questions address the frequency of different types of interactions, the benefits that companies derive from interaction with universities and determinants of interaction for both sectors.Two different surveys form the empirical base for this paper: One among innovative firms in Austria, one among all Austrian university departments. The methodologies we use are analyses of variance and logistic regressions. Our results demonstrate that the main channel of knowledge transfer from universities to the business sector still occurs through the mobility of human capital. The major barriers of interaction lie in the differences between cultures of the two spheres as well as lack of information at the side of firms.     

Technology transfer practice in japanese corporations: Meeting new service requirements

Japanese corporations are undergoing radical transition: they have begun to reassess the role, organization, and management of their internal R&D and technology commercialization activities in response to changing market, business, and technical conditions. From large consumer electronics firms such as Matsushita and Sony to the semiconductor and computing conglomerates such as Fujitsu and NEC, these organizations are under considerable pressure to both invent and innovate more rapidly and cheaply than ever before. As technologies become more complex and integrated—such as the convergence of electronics, computing, video, and broadcast television—it is no longer practical to assume that all of a firm's R&D needs can be met internally. This paper looks first at how major Japanese corporations have embraced technology transfer mechanisms such as licensing, joint collaboration, and the outsourcing of R&D to manage these changes dynamically and effectively. Secondly, this paper looks at why Japanese firms' record of managing collaboration and licensing, particularly on an international basis, has been disappointing because of a number of problems and barriers. These difficulties, which are compounded by the further externalization of research and technology and by increased licensing activity, have given rise to a need for new technology transfer services which, until recently, have not been available either within the organization or through local consulting firms in Japan. This paper concludes by outlining strategic and operational guidelines for managing licensing and collaboration arrangements between U.S. and Japanese firms which are also applicable in the general case. These insights are based on the experiences of managing licensing and collaboration programs between Japanese and U.S. organizations from the dual perspectives of two licensing firms—Innovation Partners, kk. in Japan and Competitive Technologies, Inc. of the United States.     

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.     

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.     

When Social Norms and Pressures Are Not Enough: Environmental Performance in the Trucking Industry

Why do some business firms and not others work hard to advance regulatory values such as environmental protection and comply with regulations? Previous research indicates that business firms are influenced in that regard by a number of variables—not merely the perceived likelihood of legal punishment but also the risk of negative reactions by societal actors (which we call “social license pressures”) and the intensity of managers' commitment to norms of law‐abidingness and environmentalism. This article reports on a study of control of diesel emissions in the trucking industry, a highly competitive market with many small firms, mobile pollution sources, expensive “best control technologies,” and weak regulatory demands. In contrast to findings in studies of large firms, we found that social license pressures on small trucking firms are minimal. Trucking companies' environmental performance—good and bad—flows from managers' economic choices, which are influenced by their particular market niche. In such highly competitive, small‐firm market contexts, these findings imply, significant improvement in environmental performance is not likely without strong direct regulatory pressures.     

Never mind the quality feel the width: University–industry links and government financial support for innovation in small high-technology businesses in the UK and the USA

In this paper we use a size and industry matched sample of over 1,900 UK and US businesses for the period 2004–05 in the manufacturing and business services sectors to analyse the relative “strength” of the university–industry ecosystems in which these firms operate in the two economies. Our analysis shows that in both countries universities per se play a quantitatively smaller role as a source of knowledge for business innovation than either the business sector itself or a variety of organisations intermediating between the university and business sectors. Our analysis reveals a much more diffuse university–industry ecosystem in the UK in which a higher proportion of businesses claim links external to themselves in their pursuit of knowledge for innovation and a higher proportion report directly connecting with universities. US firms are more likely to access knowledge through a combination of business and intermediary sources and are less likely to have established formal collaborative or partnership agreements in the 3 years prior to the survey. We also find, however, that a higher proportion of US firms place a very high value on the connections they have with universities and are much more likely to commit resources to support such innovation related university interactions. A similar pattern of diffuse but weaker links characterise the supply of public sector financial assistance for innovation in our sample firms. UK firms are more likely to be in receipt of assistance, but receive far less per firm in absolute terms and relative to their R&D expenditures. It appears that the UK university–industry ecosystem is characterised by a greater width than quality of interaction.     

Innovation strategies of firms: What strategies and why?

This paper analyzes various innovation strategies of firms. Using five waves of the Community Innovation Survey in Sweden, we have traced the innovative behavior of firms over a 10-year period, i.e. between 2002 and 2012. We distinguish between sixteen innovation strategies, which compose of Schumpeterian four types of innovations (process, product, marketing, and organizational) plus various combinations of these four types. First, we find that firms are not homogenous in choosing innovation strategies, instead, they have a wide range of preferences when it comes to innovation strategy and some of the innovation strategies are “commonly” used among firms. Second, using Transition Probability Matrix, we found that firms also persist to have such a diverse innovation strategy preferences. Finally, using Multinomial Logit model, we explained the determinant of each and every innovation strategies, while we gave special attention to the commonly used innovation strategies among firms.     

Technological Strengths in Mature Sectors--An Impediment or an Asset for Regional Economic Restructuring? The Case of Multimedia and Biotechnology in Baden-Wurttemberg

Baden-Württemberg's innovation system, which is characterised by a high degree of institutionalisation as well as a predominance of incremental innovations and medium technology finds itself in a profound process of transition. The paper discusses whether Baden-Württemberg's strength as an industrial district dominated by mature industries is an impediment or rather an asset with regard to developing new promising technological sectors in the region. The paper focuses on two newly emerging sectors: multimedia and biotechnology. Because of the strong orientation of actors in Baden-Württemberg to established companies in the core industries and the dominance of established organizational networks there is a lack of stimuli for developing new industries. Thus, institutional innovation and new networks are required to speed up the growth of the new industries. Baden-Württemberg can be expected to cope with the transition to the extent that it builds a close connection between its existing sectoral strengths and the new growth industries.     

The emergence of the rule of law in Russia

This paper challenges an empirical claim about the commercial courts (arbitrazhnye sudy) made by Kathryn Hendley and her co-authors in their paper “Law, Relationships and Private Enforcement: Transactional Strategies of Russian Enterprise” in Vol. 52, No. 4, Europe-Asia Studies in 2000. Basing their case on a quantitative survey of Russian firms, they conclude that economic actors in the 1990s relied on ‘the law and legal institutions’ because the commercial courts were relatively effective. In order to test this claim about the link between individual behaviour and the judiciary, I ask: What type of belief about corruption was held by Russian economic actors who trusted the commercial courts for conflict resolution at the end of the 1990s? The data set is drawn from a survey of 227 Russian firms made in 1997. I use self-reported data on economic actors’ preference for using or not using the commercial court (in case of a hypothetical conflict about a considerable amount of money) as a proxy for trust. A binary logistic regression model shows that economic actors who accepted corruption as a fact of life at the time of market entry were three times more likely to trust the commercial courts for conflict resolution than economic actors who rejected corruption. This finding contradicts any reasonable definition of the rule of law and suggests that the neo-liberal reformers should have paid more attention to the content – rather than merely to the speed – of reform.     

The impact of local linkages, international linkages, and absorptive capacity on innovation for foreign firms operating in an emerging economy

This study analyzes the impact of local linkages, international linkages, and absorptive capacity on firm innovation for firms based in one emerging economy while operating in another emerging economy. Testing research hypotheses derived from the institutional and organizational learning perspectives on a sample of 102 Taiwanese manufacturing firms operating in China, we find that the impact of international linkages is greater than that of local linkages, while both local and international linkages have a positive impact on innovation. Further analysis confirms that absorptive capacity has a stronger moderating effect on the relationship between local linkages and innovation than it does on the relationship between international linkages and innovation.     

Innovation and internationalization: the case of Italy

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of international activities on knowledge output. For this purpose, we employ a dataset containing exclusively qualitative information about a sample of small and medium Italian manufacturing firms. In the econometric analysis, a probit model is used. The results of the estimations highlight that firms active in international markets generate more knowledge than their counterparts which sell in the national market only. There are two possible explanations of this result. First, globally engaged firms employ more knowledge inputs, such as higher innovation expenditures. Second, international firms are more innovative because they can access to a larger flow of ideas from external sources.     

The influence of the Regional Coordinating Unit of the Abidjan Convention: implementing multilateral environmental agreements to prevent shipping pollution in West and Central Africa

The Regional Coordinating Unit of the Convention for Co-operation in the Protection and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment for West and Central Africa (the Abidjan Convention) has under its wings several multilateral environmental agreements including those addressing shipping pollution. Shipping, potentially, has negative impacts on marine fauna and flora and air quality, with implications for public health. The Regional Coordinating Unit seeks to strengthen implementation of the Abidjan Convention by party-states through co-operation with state actors using various pathways based on its internal resources and competencies but the Unit is also starting to explore engagement with potential non-state actors. The ability of the Unit to exert influence on implementation is constrained by domestic politico-administrative institutions. This paper seeks to understand the influence of the Regional Coordinating Unit on the implementation of the Abidjan Convention in the field of shipping pollution. It uses three theoretical perspectives for the analysis: the influence of international environmental bureaucracies, domestic regulatory-politics and transnational governance. The paper shows how these theories are complementary because the influence of international bureaucracies such as the Regional Coordinating Unit cannot be adequately understood through factors internal to their organisation alone but needs to be analysed in relation also to external factors, both domestic politico-institutional ones in states that international bureaucracies work with, and the role of relevant non-state actors in the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements. It is concluded that, although influence cannot be measured directly, it is likely that Regional Coordinating Unit’s influence through its autonomy-centred efforts are quiet strong but negatively constrained by the traditional state-centric responsibility for implementation of international legal instruments where domestic regulatory-politics lack sufficient political will and support from and engagement with non-state actors.     

Industry Self-regulation Under Government Intervention

Industry actors (organizations, associations) can influence the way in which firms comply with regulations. This study examines how this influence process is affected by government intervention. Using official, anonymized data from the entire industry of financial intermediation in the Netherlands (N = 8655 firms), we examine how firms’ affiliations with industry actors relate to (1) voluntary actions aligned with improving regulatory compliance (e.g., requesting audits, attending workshops), and (2) law violations. Industry actors are distinguished between trade associations and the industry’s self-regulatory organization (SRO), which is subject to more government intervention. The analysis employs Poisson regressions to explain count variables, and bootstrapping to assess indirect associations. A series of robustness tests focus on relevant sub-samples, employ exact matching to address possible self-selection, and incorporate lagged dependent variables. The association between affiliations with industry actors and law violations is negative and significant. This association is more indirect for trade associations than for the SRO (i.e., it is more strongly mediated by the voluntary actions firms take and which help to improve compliance). These findings go in line with the theory that government intervention makes industry-self regulation more mandated and less voluntary. Under less government intervention, industry actors may promote more voluntary efforts to comply.     

Who decides on the future of data protection? Role of law firms in shaping European data protection regime

Drawing on theories of European integration and governance and sociological studies on the influence of elite law firms on rule-setting, this paper shows that law firms (a) operate in the area of data protection that is of extreme complexity and requires expert knowledge; and (b) display characteristics similar to other actors who succeeded in influencing agenda-setting and the results of policy-making despite having no formal competence to do so. This article proposes a hypothesis of the influence of elite law firms in EU data protection rule-setting. It argues that the EU data protection sector is prone to such influence as it is by definition transnational and, at some technical and some core points, inadequate to reflect the real data processing practices and therefore is entrenched with uncertainty. Therefore, the research into politics of data protection in Europe cannot disregard the role of these actors in shaping the European data protection regime.     

Competing with MNEs: developing manufacturing capabilities or innovation capabilities

A challenge facing local firms in China is the selection of effective technology strategies to compete against MNEs in the era of globalization. The existing literature suggests two alternatives, developing strong manufacturing capabilities or developing innovation capabilities, but provides no clear answer to the question of how to select one strategy or the other. This paper explores this issue by introducing two concepts: “barriers to appropriability” and “opportunities for improvement.” We develop four propositions to specify the boundary conditions for local firms to choose their technology strategies and analyze two local firms’ technology strategies to illustrate two of the propositions. We find that development of strong manufacturing capabilities will not necessarily be an effective strategy for local firms competing against MNEs. If there are opportunities for improvement, it might be possible for local firms to compete against MNEs by developing innovation capabilities and core technologies.     

Drivers for international innovation activities in developed and emerging countries

This paper aims to shed light on firm-specific drivers that lead firms to internationalise their innovation activities. The paper paints a comprehensive picture of driving forces by including firm capabilities, characteristics of the firm’s competitive environment and the influence of innovation obstacles in the home country. In particular the influence of potential driving forces on the probability to carry out different innovative activities abroad is assessed (R&D, design/conception of new products, manufacturing of innovative products and implementation of new processes). In a second stage these driving forces are observed with regard to their impact on the decision to locate innovation activities in various countries and regions (China, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and North America) as well as in groups of countries with similar levels of knowledge (“country clubs”). The analysis is based on the Mannheim Innovation Panel survey which represents the German CIS (Community Innovation Survey) contribution. Two survey waves have been combined, resulting in a sample of about 1,400 firms. The results show that the decision to perform innovation activities abroad is mainly driven by organisational capabilities such as absorptive capacities, international experience and existing technological competences of the respective firm. Innovation barriers at the German home base such as lack of labour and high innovation costs prompt the set-up of later-stage innovation activities abroad while the lack of demand demonstrates a barrier to the internationalisation decision for the development and manufacturing of new products. Location decisions receive the strongest influencing effects from the international experience of the firm. Firms which innovate in developing countries seem to require a more extensive level of international experience through international R&D cooperation.     

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.     

Managing Complex Collaborative Projects: Lessons from the Development of a New Satellite

This paper examines the case of a Complex Product System (CoPS)—a new satellite—and the combination of international firms and agencies that contributed to its development. Despite many political, organisational and interpersonal tensions, divergent objectives and strategic misjudgements, the satellite was successfully launched in 2002. It was found that a number of factors contributed to the successful conclusion of the project, including the evolution of organisational structures between different actors as the project progressed, the use of a range of innovation management tools accompanied by personnel with significant discretion and judgement, and a unifying methodology for satellite production called the Small Satellite Philosophy (SSP), which helped provide an approach for its effective integration. The paper describes the satellite project and the problems of technology transfer it confronted, then examines whether the solutions adopted could be appropriate for other complex innovative projects, particularly those involving joint public–private investments. It also describes the interaction between development time, mission cost, risk and return in reduced resource CoPS. Although the satellite itself was a technical success, government policy objectives for the project were not realised and the paper considers mismatches between policy objectives and mechanisms in complex projects.