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To enable you to remain competitive in future, you must already start to focus your company on the task of meeting the challenges that are emerging from development trends stretching back over several years and which are becoming more apparent all the time. These trends are leading to increasing levels of complexity, dynamism and uncertainty in the corporate environment. This paper is an attempt to highlight these technological and structural developments, frequently referred to as megatrends: changes of a fundamental nature with far-reaching implications for the economy and society with attendant opportunities and threats to industry. One focal point of this paper will therefore be the fundamental developments in the microelectronics sector and their wider implications, which will necessarily lead to a consideration of the technologies of IT and telecommunications. Another aspect receiving attention here will be the problems facing industry in the wake of structural change of this magnitude as well as the key measures adopted to enable industry to cope with these problems successfully. This will demonstrate that structural change is not due solely to the increasing level of globalization of world business. Indeed, it will be shown that other significant influencing factors are to be found in the trend moving us from an information society to a knowledge society, and in the transition from an industrial society to one based on services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green technology innovation (GTI) is an important driver for national green development and a strong fulcrum for the clean production of companies. This paper focuses on the impact of top management team's (TMT's) inherent characteristics on GTI from the perspectives of TMT heterogeneity and text tone in management discussion and analysis (MD&A), as well as the moderating role of executive compensation incentives and financial constraints. The results reveal that: a) the TMT heterogeneity has different effects on companies' GTI; b) the tone in MD&A can significantly promote the companies' GTI; c) both executive compensation incentives and financial constraints significantly adjust the relationship between the TMT heterogeneity or the tone in MD&A on GTI but in different directions. Moreover, the basic conclusions suitable for non-state-owned companies yet differ in state-owned companies considering the property heterogeneity. Thus, this paper constructs a new integrated framework of TMT heterogeneity, tone in MD&A, executive compensation incentives and financial constraints to stimulate the enthusiasm and initiative of companies to develop GTI, which has an important practical significance on accelerating the sustainable development of green production in developing countries. Finally, this paper offers corresponding policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the perspective of signalling theory, this paper examines the impact of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on competitors' innovation. Using the unbalanced panel data of Chinese listed pharmaceutical companies from 2014 to 2018, this paper examines how cross-border M&As affect competitors' innovation inputs and analyses the moderating effect of tax incentives. The results find that after cross-border M&As, the competitors of the merging firms significantly increase their R&D investment. Cross-border M&As transform competitors' innovation types, and competitors turn to high-risk exploratory R&D. Tax incentives weaken the role of cross-border M&As on competitors' innovation. The paper provides implications for firms to re-examine and adjust cross-border M&As and R&D strategies, and provides references for the government's innovation encouragement policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The virtual agglomeration of manufacturing realises the ubiquitous connection and efficient allocation of technological innovation resources, and becomes a new driving force for improving the technological innovation efficiency of enterprises and building a strong manufacturing country. This paper constructs a theoretical framework to investigate the impact of the specialised and diversified virtual agglomeration of manufacturing on the efficiency of enterprise technological innovation. This paper uses the adjusted location entropy and the Herfindahl-Hirschman index to measure the level of specialised and diversified virtual agglomeration of manufacturing. Using Chinese manufacturing data (2008–2021), empirical tests confirm that the specialised and diversified virtual agglomeration of manufacturing can improve the efficiency of enterprise technological innovation. Additionally, the mechanism test results show that the specialised virtual agglomeration of manufacturing improves the technological innovation efficiency of enterprises through competition and knowledge spillover, and the diversified virtual agglomeration improves the technological innovation efficiency of enterprises through knowledge spillover. However, the effect of specialised virtual agglomeration of manufacturing on the efficiency of enterprises` technological innovation will be adjusted by the age of enterprises. These results are pivotal for understanding the realistic path of virtual agglomeration of manufacturing to improve the technological innovation efficiency of enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Economics of Innovation & New Technology is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper uses knowledge base as an intermediary variable and takes Chinese A-share manufacturing listed companies from 2010 to 2018 as the research object to examine the impact of technological mergers and acquisitions on corporate innovation performance. The study found that: (1) Technology acquisition plays a significant role in promoting the innovation performance of enterprises, indicating that for every 1% increase, the technological innovation of manufacturing enterprises will increase significantly by about 0.44%. Using different core variable metrics, different regression samples, and different estimation methods, the results still exist, indicating that this finding is robust. (2) The nature of enterprise property rights, the level of economic development, and the level of technological development have led to the heterogeneity of technological mergers and acquisitions in driving enterprise innovation. (3) The scale of the knowledge base is the key intermediary variable. The findings of this paper are helpful to understand the internal dynamic mechanism of Chinese innovation-driven strategy, and pro-vide policy inspiration for the transformation of high-quality economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the influence of subcontracting on innovation and its impact on the performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Onitsha, Nigeria. The paper adopted a number of methods comprising of field observations, reference to relevant literature, and a questionnaire survey of 113 SMEs. Regression, mean and standard deviation were used to analyse the data. In line with the literature, this paper identified seven (7) dimensions of subcontracting assistance from large scale industries to small business firms. The paper found that subcontracting relationship between large scale industries and SMEs is inclined to production and product-related cooperation where the contractors are concerned with meeting fluctuation in demand and shortening long delivery times. This paper concluded by suggesting that subcontracting relationship between SMEs and large scale industries should not be restricted to production, purchase, finance and marketing assistance. It should also be extended to human resource development and organisational-know-how. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using panel data for Spanish firms, this paper examines the role of firms' regional knowledge environment for commitment to innovation of innovation active firms. The empirical results show that a stronger regional knowledge environment increases the likelihood that an innovator engages continuously in R&D as opposed to occasionally. This positive relationship with the regional knowledge environment is robust and significant in manufacturing and specifically for small firms and for technology-intensive firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology-sourcing mergers and acquisitions (M&As) has become an important instrument for enterprises to acquire new knowledge and build technological ability. To achieve technology innovation improvement, the choice of integration strategy is vitally important. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between integration and innovation in technology-sourcing M&As. To verify our hypotheses, we conduct a comparative empirical study based on the data of overseas and domestic M&As of Chinese enterprises from 2000 to 2019. We find that for overseas M&As, the influence of integration degree on technology innovation depends on the resource characteristics of the two merging parties. In cases of high resource similarity and low resource complementarity, the degree of integration positively affects technology innovation, while in cases of low resource similarity and high resource complementarity, the degree of integration negatively affects technology innovation. In comparison, for domestic M&As, the degree of integration positively affects technology innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from all the listed high-tech enterprises in China, from 2013 to 2018, as the samples employed to study the impact of government subsidies on the innovation of high-tech enterprises, as well as the subsidy mechanism. The mechanism is analysed mainly from the perspectives of resource effect and signal transmission effect. In the theoretical analysis, from the perspective of resource effect, the capital guiding role of government subsidies is considered. In addition, this study creatively discusses the impact of rent-seeking behaviour in combination with China's anti-corruption practice. From the perspective of signal transmission, government subsidies are no longer only interpreted as positive signals of the government being in favour of enterprise financing. This study further believes that government subsidies transmit a signal to the public, encouraging them to strengthen their supervision of subsidised enterprises. A multiple regression model and mediating effect model indicate that government subsidies achieve the purpose of stimulating enterprise innovation. The stimulating effect of government subsidies through financing constraints and signal transmission is 9.48% and 10.16%, respectively. These results are consistent with the positive externality theory and the signal transmission theory. At the end of the paper, several relevant suggestions are presented, according to the current developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of the knowledge economy, how to resolve the paradox of openness so as to realise open innovation and promote the development of indigenous innovation has become an urgent problem for enterprises to solve. This study selects Huawei Hisilicon as the research object to conduct an exploratory single case study and draws the following conclusions: (1) open paradox has stages and the main paradox problems are different at varying stages; (2) enterprises should adopt different open-innovation modes to promote indigenous innovation and different strategies to solve the paradoxes at different development stages. In addition, this paper divided inbound open innovation into dependent and dominant types and revealed the specific forms of the paradox of openness, which have important theoretical and practical value for enterprises to resolve the paradox of openness and realise open innovation to promote the development of indigenous innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprises often acquire technologies from external sources which are geographically dispersed. Although previous literatures have discussed the role of external technology acquisition (ETA) in enterprises' innovation performance, how innovation is affected by the breadth and depth of ETA is less investigated, and little is known about how geographical distance (GD) is involved. Therefore, this paper first analyses the relationship between the breadth, depth of ETA and enterprises' innovation performance with patent transaction data of listed manufacturing enterprises in China. Then we further investigate how GD moderates the relationship. Results show that both the breadth and depth of ETA positively affect enterprises' innovation performance. GD has no moderating effect on the relationship between the breadth of ETA and enterprises' innovation performance, but negatively moderates the relationship between the depth of ETA and enterprises' innovation performance. Our results have implications for enterprises' ETA strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the panel data of listed shipbuilding enterprises from 2010 to 2021 all over the world, this paper empirically studies the impact of Research & Development investment on new orders received by shipbuilding enterprises using the panel fixed effect model and the threshold regression model. The results show that R&D investment has a positive impact on the new order of high-tech and high-value-added ships in shipbuilding enterprises. R&D investment has a time lag effect on the new orders and a non-linear relationship with the newly received orders. The 1-year lagged R&D investment has a single threshold effect on the newly received orders of liquid tankers. When the R&D investment intensity exceeds the threshold, the positive impact on the newly received orders is weakened. To be specific, when the excessive R&D investment intensity does not match the scientific research capacity of shipbuilding enterprises, enterprise resources will be mismatched. Therefore, shipbuilding enterprises should increase their investment in R&D if they want to build more high-tech and high-value-added ships. At the same time, enterprises should also pay attention not to blindly strengthen the R&D investment, but to keep it within a reasonable range, so that resources can be allocated appropriately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the missing consensus on how corruption relates to firm innovation, this paper empirically studies the relationship between petty corruption and product, process, marketing and organisational innovations in the former Soviet Union region. Exploiting cross-sectional firm-level data from the fifth round of the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey, the paper argues that institutional context has utmost importance when approaching this link. Probit estimations for a full sample of former Soviet Union countries indicate a positive link between bribes and firm innovation. Considering variations in institutional development levels, the paper distinguishes three clusters of countries within the region with respect to the quality of institutional structures based on Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) data from the World Bank. The results reveal that the grease-the-wheel effect of bribery on firm innovation strongly remains in countries with weak institutional quality. To explore this link further, this paper made several additional estimations and robustness checks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section discusses various notable papers and articles related to technology published in different journals. In their report, researchers Ashlish Sood and Gerard J. Tellis argued that the appreciation of innovation in the stock market can be estimated through the total market returns from an innovation project. Two Harvard Business School professors analyzed how companies that want to innovate can do more with less during the economic downturn. Another paper highlighted the issues tackled at the World Economic Forum held in Davod in January 2009.

Copyright of Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This present paper studies the relationship between the industrial development environment (IDE) and the innovation efficiency (IE) of China’s high-tech industry. First, drawing upon insights from research on regional innovation systems and sectoral innovation systems, the paper proposes a definition of the IDE within which China’s high-tech industry exists. Then, by a factorial analysis, three main components reflecting the IDE are obtained: regional development conditions, regional consumption potential, and interactions between innovation actors. Furthermore, the impacts of various facets of the IDE on three kinds of IE are investigated through the DEA-Tobit regression approach. Based on the results, our analysis can provide information for policymakers to create a favourable environment for China’s high-tech industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the dynamic nature of contemporary markets and the importance of innovation driving new sources of revenue, it is essential for firms to manage innovation to gain an advantage. However, the innovation process is complex and presents multiple strategies for success with little support for managers in selecting the most appropriate strategy. In this paper, a decision making grid (DMG) was developed for selecting between four strategies of closed, open, incremental and radical innovation, based on two time-dependent indicators of Mean Time to Innovate (MTTI) and Mean Time between Innovations (MTBIs). The two indicators were defined, weighted, and allocated to the cells of DMG using a heuristic method. Questionnaire responses from 106 knowledge-based companies were received in 2018 and the firms were positioned in the developed DMG. The companies' strategies were determined as 31 firms with closed, 16 open, 14 incremental, and 10 radical innovation strategies. Five different combined strategies were used by 35 companies. The DMG can be used by a technology park or incubator to assess and support companies or by managers seeking to enhance their innovation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the relationships between eco-innovation and business performance by exploring the role of external collaborations as a potential factor explaining the persisting heterogeneity of economic effects of eco-innovation. Basing on a large survey of 3,000 Italian manufacturing firms, the study investigates to what extent collaborations with supply chain and quadruple helix actors, including public institutions, universities and civil society, contribute in sustaining firm's growth by improving the effectiveness of different types of eco-innovations. We find that the relationship between eco-innovation and business performance is moderated by both supply-chain and quadruple helix collaborations. However, external collaborations with actors of the quadruple helix show a pronounced heterogeneity. While process eco-innovation may in particular benefit from establishing collaborations with public institutions, product eco-innovation relies more on interactions with civil society suggesting that market-driven factors still exert a main role in influencing the market success of this type of eco-innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to a special issue of EINT surveys a collection of ten papers that study various aspects of innovation and knowledge management and their impact on performance at the firm level for a number of countries. These studies have been conducted using data drawn from innovation surveys combined with data from a number of other sources. The issue illustrates the value of these surveys in improving our understanding of innovation in firms and raises a number of questions for future work in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how firms in an emerging economy cope with resource challenges by implementing compensation strategies for incremental product innovations. The model is empirically tested using firm-level survey data from 497 South African manufacturing firms. Results show that higher diversity among a specific set of external knowledge sources is associated with a higher likelihood of incremental product innovation. Stronger embeddedness in non-domestic inter-organisational networks increases this likelihood as well. The positive effect of external knowledge diversity is more positive for higher levels of localised ties. Recommendations to enhance incremental product innovation concern the development of external relationships with domestic and international partners while limiting knowledge source diversity to a specific actor set. This paper shows that in an emerging economy firms have agency with which they can use contact learning leading to product innovations tailored to local market needs and opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely accepted in innovation management literature that a firm can increase its competitive advantage by recombining knowledge and that knowledge recombination requires engagement in external sourcing activities. What is less known, however, is how a firm's external sourcing strategy – notably its propensity to engage in acquisitions or alliances – is influenced by its internal knowledge base. In this paper, we examine how two critical characteristics of a firm's knowledge base, namely, scientific orientation and technological diversity, influence the extent to which it engages in alliances or acquisitions. We find that both explanatory variables increase firms' likelihood of engaging in external technology sourcing and favouring alliances over acquisitions. Our analyses are based on a sample of European firms operating in the biopharmaceutical industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to analyse the impact of public funds for innovation on firm's capabilities, innovative dynamics and economic performance. A large stream of literature about the evaluation of public funds is focused on testing the existence of additionality effects on investments and results. This paper aims to provide evidence about other dimensions of the firm that public policy can alter, with focus on the time window between the treatment and the impact, and the role of the Matthew effect (recurrence) in this process. The empirical exercise is based on a dynamic panel data made of 1465 firms (3337 observations) that applied to the Argentinean Technological Fund (FONTAR), which is the main public fund for innovation in Argentina, between 2007 and 2016. Results show short-term effects of accessing to FONTAR on firms' capabilities, medium-term effects on innovation efforts and long-term effects on productivity. Even though the effect on productivity is larger among recurrent firms, the differences among recurrent and non-recurrent firms are not conclusive in case of capabilities and innovation efforts. All in all, this research provides evidence about the 'when' of public policy and the need to look beyond input additionality effects when analysing its impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interorganizational business process reengineering is a logical extension of discussions of the potential for interorganizational systems to fundamentally redefine relationships among buyers, sellers, and even competitors within an industry. This paper presents a model of the relationship between technological and process innovations and describes the interdependence of these two forces. This model is used to explain the inconsistency in the literature regarding the benefits of EDI and other interorganizational systems, which are described as providing strategic competitive advantage in some papers and as providing little or no benefits for implementing firms in other articles. The framework describes the importance of merging technological and process innovations in order to transform organizations, processes, and relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes the China high- and new-technology enterprise (HNTE) program implemented in 2008 as a quasi-natural experiment. Difference-in-differences (DID) estimate with matching data from the China Industrial Enterprise Database, the China Customs Database and the HNTE Certification Database for 2006–2010 is used to study the impact of HNTE certification on enterprises' export product quality. The results show that, overall, HNTE certification promotes the upgrading of export product quality. Moreover, the improvement of innovation ability brought by HNTE certification is an important channel to promote such upgrades. A series of robustness tests also confirm the above conclusions. In addition, heterogeneity analyses are conducted based on the enterprise size, ownership and trade mode, respectively. The results show that the mechanism by which HNTE certification policy promotes export product quality through the improvement of enterprise innovation ability is more significant in non-SOEs and general trading enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The firm survival risk is essential to intellectual property strategy implementing in China, however only a few studies focus on this problem. The paper investigates the effect of intellectual property rights protection system (IPR) on survival risk. Specifically, we use an event history analysis to track 8486 firms entering the market from the year 2000, and employ computing methods of the time-dependent Cox model. One important finding from this study is that the survival risks of R&D firms can be reduced approximately 22.57% by every additional unit of intellectual property, and the marginal effect raises to 28.33% with the exclusion of the administrative factors. Another important finding is that the relationship between IPR protection and survival risk is affected by R&D revenue. Finally, the survival risk for all those firms with substantive innovation rather than strategic innovation can be greatly affected by IPR system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The innovation efficiency of an enterprise is subject to the behavior of the innovation subject, while the equity pledge behavior of the controlling shareholder not only brings convenience for innovation investment and financing, but also brings risks which has an impact on the innovation output of the enterprise. In this paper, we investigate how equity pledge of controlling shareholders affect the enterprise innovation efficiency using the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2020, and examine the effect of property right structure on the relationship between them from the two dimensions of equity nature and equity concentration. We find that equity pledge of controlling shareholders are signifcantly negatively related to innovation efficiency, meaning that equity pledge inhibits the innovation behavior of enterprises and reduces the innovation efficiency. We further provide evidence to show that the impediment effect of equity pledge of controlling shareholder on enterprise innovation efficiency is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises and decentralized equity enterprises. Moreover, our analysis shows that different equity concentration levels have different effects in the process of equity pledge affecting enterprise innovation efficiency and the effect of concentrated equity enterprises is lower than that of decentralized enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the incomplete contracts model to study an optimal banking structure corresponding to different levels of technological development from the perspective of technological innovation. The findings indicate that, with the development of technology, there exists an optimal banking structure that matches the real economy and has a dynamic evolution in different stages of economic development. At the same time, an optimal banking structure depends on the level of technological development, which seems to render invalid the argument that one structure is absolutely better than the other. Finally, the paper empirically analyzes the impact of banking structure on technological innovation using the data of China's industrial enterprises from 2005 to 2009. The empirical results show firstly that, with economic development and technological progress, an optimal banking structure that promotes technological innovation is biased towards a monopoly structure. Secondly, from the perspective of the sub-regional level of technological progress, a competitive banking structure is more conductive to technological innovation in low-tech areas but, in medium- and high-tech areas, a monopolistic banking structure will further promote technological innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decade of the nineties has seen considerable attention devoted to the application of information technology to the sales force. This paper reports on an empirical investigation into the factors that relate to the acquisition and effective use of sales force automation. Several correlates relating to the firm's acquisition of sales force technology were identified. In contrast, relatively few variables appear related to whether or not the organization will realize any actual benefits from such investments. A key determinant appears to be whether the firm anticipates that sales force automation is likely to have an impact on areas of the organization extending beyond the sales force itself. The paper concludes with some implications of the findings of the investigation and some suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the relationship between human capital and firms' innovation in emerging economies. Most papers consider the formal knowledge developed in R&D laboratories as a major source of innovation. However, a critical portion of knowledge required for innovation resides in human resources and is created outside any formalised R&D activity. We consider that, to improve their technological capabilities, firms should invest in different forms of human capital, namely highly educated workforce and experienced managers, but also in strategic human resource (HR) practices aimed at developing human capital by increasing employees' firm-specific technical skills and competences. Besides looking at the type of innovation outcomes, we place greater emphasis on the strategies of innovation development, as these should signal an improved firms' ability, not just to innovate, but to put their own creative effort in the development of innovation. Our results contrast with the traditional view of firms in emerging economies as mainly relying on the external acquisition of innovations, by showing their actual ability to develop new technologies. In this respect, HR practices aimed at fostering employees' learning and autonomy at work appear more important than the educational attainment of workers, whilst the experience of managers does not seem effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the use and effectiveness of patents and trade secrets designed to protect innovation. While previous studies have usually considered patents and trade secrets as substitutes for one another, we investigate to what extent and in what situations the two protection methods are used jointly. We identify protection strategies for single innovation firms and hence overcome the assignment problem of existing empirical studies, that is, whether firms using both protection methods do so for the same innovation or for different innovations. Employing firm panel data from Germany, we find fairly few differences between the determinants for choosing secrecy and patenting. Single innovators that combine both strategies, 39% of the group, tend to aim at a higher level of innovation and act in a more uncertain technological environment. Firms combining both protection methods yield significantly higher sales with new-to-market innovations, providing some evidence for a complementarity of the two protection methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of a country's natural resource endowment on the innovation propensity of firms in Africa. It was expected that firms in resource-rich countries have less incentive to innovate than firms in resource-poor countries due to the destructive effects of large resource rents on supportive institutions and political order. The data used for the empirical analysis were obtained from the World Bank's enterprise surveys global development indicators and the African Economic Outlook reports. The hierarchical nature of the analysis called for a multilevel mixed effect modelling strategy. Results suggest that firms in resource-rich countries are not necessarily less innovative than firms in resource-poor countries. High natural resource endowment appeared to reduce firm-level innovation only if associated with poor institutional and technological capabilities. The innovativeness of firms in resource-rich sub-Saharan Africa countries was found to be lower than that of firms in North African countries. The negative effect of poor institutional quality appeared to be dampened among firms with better innovation capabilities. The findings imply that building effective institutional environments and enhancing firm-level innovative efforts would help mitigate the 'resource curse' which, in turn, is dictated by the resulting types of political settlements in resource-rich African countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has experienced a surge in innovation output in which state-owned enterprises (SOE) play an essential role. Using panel data of Chinese listed firms, this paper examines the influence of state ownership on innovation output at the firm level. Controlling for size, we analyse the effects of central and local government control on the number of firms' patent applications in different time periods. Doing so, standard assumptions on state ownership's inhibiting character are confirmed. However, we then qualify these findings by running separate models for different regions and sectors finding that the impact of state-control on innovation performance depends on a number of conditions. More precisely, state control of firms has a negative impact on innovation output in particular in China's Northeast region and in mid-tech sectors whereas under other circumstances it does either not matter or can even exert a positive influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest-based manufacturing firms are currently under pressure to achieve higher margins and increased profits. Many firms have tried to maintain profits by cutting costs, however, the effects of this, in markets suffering from overcapacity and declining demand, are temporary. Instead, innovation is seen as being the key to firm growth and sustained profit. This article presents a study of nine large Nordic (Swedish and Norwegian) forest-based manufacturing firms, with operations ranging from pulp and paper chemicals, pulp production, packaging boards, packaging paper, and specialty paper to food processing and packaging solutions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prerequisites for innovation at firm level in terms of firms’ organizational climate and capabilities for innovation, and how these firms could improve their innovation processes. The paper draws on data from a collaborative research project that includes these nine firms, derived from interviews and questionnaires. The results show that forest-based firms are creative and have the potential to be innovative. However, the capabilities for innovation, that is the capabilities to do things differently and to exploit ideas, differ among firms. The study highlights two capabilities that may be obvious but are critical for innovation – management willingness and awareness, and the implementation of a strategy for innovation – and that the potential exists for increased output through appropriate managerial action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies spillover effects of innovation at the firm level and the comparability of generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators with maximum likelihood estimators of the earlier studies. Two sources of spillovers are identified, i.e. intra-industry R&D expenditure and intra-industry innovation output. This paper estimates a negative R&D spillover effect and a positive output spillover effect. Because of the substitution effect of intra-industry R&D spillovers, the elasticity of patent with respect to firm's own R&D expenditure is greater than those estimated in the earlier studies. With GMM, individual effects are incorporated into the models either by developing proxies for them or attempting to eliminate them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical review of firm-level innovation models based on research in the industrially advanced countries (IACs) and draws implications for firms in industrialising countries such as Korea and Taiwan. The paper summarises different categories of innovation model and identifies their achievements and weaknesses, showing how a few researchers have successfully linked IAC models to innovation processes found within the more advanced developing nations such as Korea. One of the chief contributions of IAC models is that many of them go substantially into the management of innovation and the decision-making processes within the firm. However, in general, there is a lack of empirical evidence to verify existing models, weak theoretical underpinnings and, in some cases, a failure to sufficiently recognise the diversity and unpredictability of innovation processes. The paper suggests how best to use innovation models and how to overcome some of the difficulties in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition toward more efficient and sustainable energy systems relies on the introduction by firms of innovations aimed at reducing the energy-environmental impact. In this paper, controlling for firms' technological capabilities and taking into account the role of specific policy instruments, demand-pull factors and firms' cost-saving needs, we carry out an in-depth analysis of the drivers motivating firms' decision to engage in two main types of energy innovations, energy-efficient and renewable energy innovations, as compared to other environmental technologies. The empirical evidence, provided by using firm-level data from the Community Innovation Survey for different European countries, highlights the key role of firms' cost saving needs as a motivation driving the introduction of both types of energy innovations, as well as of governmental subsidies and public procurement though only for renewable energy innovations. The influence of demand-pull factors is instead transversal between energy innovations and other eco-innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how management (organisational and marketing) innovations influence non-R&D technological innovators’ performance. Drawing on Community of Innovation Survey data to examine 5878 non-R&D Spanish firms, results indicate that the joint introduction of management innovations with technological innovations improves technological innovative performance thanks to the creation of complex innovation capabilities. Thus, the joint adoption of management and technological innovations in tandem is linked to a premium effect on performance based on complementarities. Non-R&D technological innovators heavily use organisational and marketing activities in order to compensate for their lack of engagement in R&D activities. This is the first paper that brings the management innovation literature into the non-R&D technological innovators debate, using a resource-based view framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst many studies have focused on the adoption of individual or sets of innovative management practices (e.g. lean production), fewer studies have evaluated a diverse set of management practices and firm contextual factors which may limit (or enable) the accumulation of groups of innovations in organisations. The Australian manufacturing sector is a novel setting to investigate such issues due to, among other reasons, a protracted decline of the competitive position of the sector. In this paper, we use a data-set from the Australian government funded management practices benchmarking project which was part of the World Management Survey and empirically evaluate why some companies have more innovative management practices than others. The conceptual model developed draws mainly on innovation diffusion theory and prior empirical findings. We find that (1) firms which adopt clusters of better management practices have greater performance; and (2) several firm characteristics explain the adoption of better management practices, such as education level of employees and managers, firm size, ownership by a multinational firm, and diffused ownership structure. The study has practical implications for policy-makers and stakeholders who are interested in supporting the adoption of better management practices by firms to enhance productivity in the manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is generally known that clusters are the sources of innovation and therefore, of late, the focus of researchers has been increasing to unearth the factors driving innovation among the SMEs in a cluster. Researchers have identified the absorptive capacity, which is a measure of dynamic capability of an SME, as one of the critical factors that determine the innovation propensity of an SME. However, due to a lack of consensus among researchers about the factors determining the absorptive capacity of a firm in general and SMEs specifically, quantifying the absorptive capacity has remained a challenge. Within the context of a Bengaluru cluster which houses a densely interconnected network of high-tech manufacturing SMEs, this paper attempts to quantify the absorptive capacity of a firm taking into account both internal/firm-level and external/industry-level factors. Subsequently, this paper probes the impact of the absorptive capacity of an SME on the innovation performance of an SME. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Some types of government R&D incentives, such as subsidies and the High-and-New Technology Enterprise (HNTE) programme in China, are considered selective because they are given to few eligible firms. The selection process necessitates firm signalling and thus may influence R&D activities before the policy takes effect. This paper explores the innovation behaviour of firms in both the period of preparing to apply for the incentives (application period) and the period after obtaining the incentives (execution period). The empirical results show that subsidy programmes can effectively encourage firms to carry out substantive innovation, while HNTE programme stimulates deceptive innovation in the application period and suppresses innovation motivation in the execution period. This result implies that the HNTE programme fails, at least in the short run, to drive substantive innovation. Comparison of the two policies also shows that information gathering and inspection may reduce firm deviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies suggest that firms may gain from global sourcing of innovative activities. Yet, only a small number of firms offshore their R&D, design, and engineering tasks. To explain this selection pattern, this paper examines the heterogeneity in total factor productivity among a large group of European firms. The results suggest that those firms that offshore their innovative activities tend to be more productive than domestic firms, exporters, and other multinational corporations. This finding implies that firms with superior productivity are more likely to exploit the global task distribution in innovative activities, which may provide an explanation for why such low participation is observed in the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestically owned firms in developing countries has been widely debated in the literature. It has been argued that FDI provides access to advanced technologies and other intangible assets, which may spill over to the host country and allow domestic firms to improve their performance. While there is a substantial literature on this issue, for obvious reasons, little is known about the effect of FDI on domestic firms in the African context. Noting this gap, this paper uses two-period (2003 and 2007) firm level panel data from South Africa to examine the impact of FDI on the labour productivity of domestic firms. A key policy change during this time period was the passage of the broad-based black economic empowerment act (BB-BEE) and we also examine the effect of the interaction between foreign firm ownership and BEE on labour productivity. Regardless of the empirical specification, we find no spillover effects and no evidence that a greater degree of BEE compliance by foreign firms influences labour productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study addresses two main questions. First, what is the best measurement of innovation performance? Second, is there a significant difference in the performance between open and closed innovation firms? We discuss new measures (‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’) and investigate any differences between open innovation and closed innovation firms by using indicators. The impact of open innovation on firm performance has been examined in existing studies. Most papers, however, employ simple indicators such as patents and financial data. This paper verifies the relationship between open innovation and performance in the Korean manufacturing industry using a new approach. The results show that both efficiency and effectiveness were statistically higher among open innovation firms than among their closed counterparts. It may thus be concluded that the acquisition of outside technology or knowledge has a positive impact on firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper presents one of the most interesting collaborative networked organisations in Italy, namely Gruppo Poligrafico Tiberino (GPT), the first organisation that adopts the governance model with the Virtual Development Office (VDO) structure. The VDO is an innovative model that introduces products/services innovation through collaboration between companies, with a particular focus on small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In effect, the existing forms of collaboration are evolving towards the direction of extending the classical collaboration fields of supply chains including phases like product and service development. However, when collaboration is established exclusively among SMEs, the introduction of new products/services becomes much more difficult. This is due to the lack of the actions of a leader firm, that is, a big company that is able to innovate. The VDO model is introduced to overcome this limit, and to stimulate innovation in collaborative networks of SMEs. GPT network is constituted by 21 companies belonging to the paper converting, packaging and logistics sectors. The nature of the collaboration is based on a long-term strategy vision, giving to the network more competitive advantages, with respect to the classical collaborative alliances in Italy, such as industrial districts, cooperatives, consortiums or temporary associations. Started from a national research project, currently it is a very fast growing up reality; the significant results achieved and the strong interests coming from Institutions, Ministries and Universities make GPT a real success both under the industrial and the academic perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reports on the special issue of "Industry and Innovation" regarding the offshoring of intangibles and global innovation. The special issue focuses on the coordination of firms' innovation in terms of offshoring of intangibles. It needs papers which investigate planned organizational choices and impact innovation. Its topics include empirical studies and review articles on theory development. Its manuscripts for publication should be composed of 10,000 words, author's contact details, and must be sent electronically to the Guest Editors of "Industry and Innovation."

This paper analyses the role of university knowledge in the innovation processes of cultural industries. Most studies of cultural industries highlight the importance of locally clustered firms in innovation processes. Those that analyze university-industry collaboration focus on technological development or industrial R&D, but neglect cultural industries as objects of analysis. The paper addresses this gap in the literature while analyzing collaboration with university patterns and innovation processes of new media firms in Scania, Southern Sweden. The findings reveal that innovation, influenced by industry-academia collaboration, takes place not only in technology-based industries. Collaborative aspects of innovation processes go beyond R&D transfer and include joint competence building, changes in market concepts and new social corporate responsibility actions. This paper adds to the understanding of innovation processes in cultural industries by introducing the university as one more important actor in the knowledge exchange networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regions have gained a position at the forefront of the economic development policy agenda. However, the regional approach to economic strategy remains contested. This paper tests the extent to which regional policy in less competitive regions is accounting for issues relating to entrepreneurship and enterprise development as a tool for improving regional competitiveness. It does so by examining policies undertaken by the UK Labour government 1997–2010, drawing on interviews with policy makers and an analysis of relevant policy documents. This paper finds that entrepreneurship policy at the regional level is multidimensional, with policies broadly ranging from those that are either economically or socially driven. Although there is a considerable policy activity in these areas across less competitive regions, enterprise policy making remains relatively undifferentiated across the regions. There are a number of evolutions in regional policy occurring, especially a shift from policies relating to the facilitation of clusters to those focused on developing regional innovation ecosystems. It is found that regional policy makers are under pressure to measure short-term outputs at the expense of long-term nurturing. The paper also finds that there is a tension between using enterprise policy as a tool for improving regional competitiveness or for addressing economic and social disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese manufacturing firms have been pursuing strategic upgrading from traditional low-cost manufacturing strategies to innovation differentiation strategies since China's reforming and opening. Under such research backgrounds, using data from 182 Chinese sample firms in east China, this paper attests that relational technology embeddedness and structural technology embeddedness have positive impacts on firm performance, and such influences are mediated by innovation differentiation strategies. The result also shows that the interaction between relational technology embeddedness and structural technology embeddedness has a direct impact on firm performance, not being mediated by innovation differentiation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]