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Policy promotes the development of high-tech industrial parks (HIP) and the improvement of their innovation efficiency. To conduct an in-depth study of the driving path and differences of HIP policies on innovation efficiency, by making a theoretical analysis on the impact of scientific and technological innovation policies (STI) on innovation efficiency, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of STI on innovation efficiency of high-technology industrial parks. Linear regression and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) are mainly used. Empirical tests found that policy targets drove innovation efficiency in a relatively minor way. Demand-based policy tools had the most significant influence on that. Supply-based and environment-based policy tools had a notable positive impact during the lag periods of policies.As the results of QCA, in the early stage of the development of HIP, the supply-led environment optimization path and the supply-led comprehensive path are the two forms of policy combination approaches of STI, and supply-based policies have a greater impact. In the later stages, there are four forms of policy mix approaches to STI that affect innovation efficiency, including targets-directed pathway, demand-driven pathway, supply-dominated environment optimization pathway, and environment-dominated comprehensive pathway. Given the above, this paper put forward relevent proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovative activities are increasingly decentralized and globally dispersed, which provides new upgrading opportunities for emerging market firms. However, little is known about how latecomer firms (re-)organize their research and development (R&D) over time as conditions for upgrading change. This paper systematically maps the R&D networks of China's lead firms in the wind turbine industry. The empirical findings reveal that latecomer firms not only exploit but increasingly co-create vanguard knowledge in global R&D networks through organizational diversification. Taking an evolutionary perspective, the paper extends our understanding of the changing nature of upgrading mechanisms and provides new insights into the reorganization of innovation processes in an era of technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates how the non-economic goals of the current CEOs affect innovation in family firms. A qualitative in-depth multiple case study of four family firms is carried out, in which the current CEOs' non-economic goals are identified by direct interviews with the current CEOs themselves and with the members who managed the company before them (i.e., the predecessors). As a main result, the paper proposes a theoretical framework which explains the relationships between goals and innovation by identifying a series of managerial levers activated because of the peculiarity of the current CEOs' non-economic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effects of innovation on firm survival by using data from a representative survey of small and medium manufacturing firms in the province of Salerno, Italy. We innovate upon the literature by (a) comparing the impact of different sources of internal and external knowledge (including universities) on the probability of firm survival; (b) assessing the mediating impact of the human capital of workers and entrepreneurs on learning from these knowledge sources. Finally, we measure the impact of different types of innovation on firm survival. Our evidence upholds the link between innovation and firm survival, particularly for product and organisational innovation. Results regarding the impact of different sources of knowledge highlight the roles of employee training, the human capital of entrepreneurs and workers and the productivity of university departments providing relevant knowledge. Other elements of external knowledge, such as proximity to the University of Salerno or being in the city of Salerno, are significant facilitators of survival only if mediated through high levels of the human capital of entrepreneurs and workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation is important to firms' productivity, competitiveness, agility, resilience and growth. The success of a firm's innovation strategy depends in part on how it combines and absorbs different innovation activities. Using the Crépon-Duguet-Mairesse (CDM) structural model, this paper analyses complementarity between product and process innovation for the case of small and micro manufacturing firms in Johannesburg, South Africa. The empirical analysis utilises rich new firm-level survey data that, unlike most firm surveys, includes micro-sized firms as well as informal enterprises. Our results show strong evidence of complementarity between product and process innovations in their effects on firm performance. The results suggest that firm size, capital intensity, firm age, innovation expenditure and financial constraints are key variables associated with complementarity. We extend the specifications used in previous studies to take account of the contextual setting, with split samples by firm formality, ownership and size. We find evidence of complementarity in formal firms only. Our results also show stronger effects of complementarity in micro-firms and foreign-owned firms. The findings have relevance for promoting innovation and for enhancing the effects of innovation on firm performance among micro- and small enterprises (MSEs) in a developing country context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unfolding of the digital transformation, often associated with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, has been attracting increasing attention in diverse academic disciplines. The related research has already populated several special issues that represent important guideposts for future studies on the topic. However, a paper collection with an 'Industry and Innovation' perspective, dealing with how firms behave, innovate, and perform in the new industrial paradigm, is still missing. This special issue aims to fill this gap. The six research articles investigate how firms face digital transformation from three different angles, looking at its determinants, the patterns of its unfolding, and its techno-economic effects. The variety of the theoretical backgrounds, data sources, and empirical methodologies, along with the originality and managerial/policy relevance of their results, make the special issue a privileged point of view to investigate the new industrial paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese pharmaceutical industry has seen rapid development, with industrial mergers and acquisitions (M&As) increasing over the recent years. However, the studies focused on the characteristics and identified limited impacts of these M&As. This paper then intends to fill the gap by analyzing 393 completed M&As deals in China's pharmaceutical industry from 2004 to 2016 concerning 54 firms. This paper found that: (1) firms' innovation performance is higher when the industrial M&As activities are intensive. (2) M&As activity improves firms' innovation output while overly frequent M&As exert negative effects on innovation output. Stock payment is negatively associated with firms' innovation output. (3) Firms' innovation performance is statistically different between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-SOEs. Firms' innovation performance does not vary whether the acquisition was conducted by SOEs or non-SOEs. Apart from providing empirical evidence, this paper, in turn, proposes policy implications for further innovation development in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation is key to industrialization in Africa and must be aligned with industrial policy. A challenge for African countries is to design and implement innovation and industrial policies that take into account the unique structural nature of African economies, in which the informal sector is prevalent. This paper argues that a measurement programme focused on innovation in the context of local economic development is imperative for setting industrial and innovation policy in Africa. Policies tend to speak and respond to those phenomena that have been subjected to measurement programmes. Is there space for designing new measures of innovation in Africa that include the informal sector? We propose a novel methodology and framework for measuring informal sector innovation, based on a local innovation and production systems approach. We end the paper with a proposal for using the evidence gathered from this methodology and a continental strategy that lends itself to direct policy intervention that has local economic development and upgrading of value chains as a goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the phenomenon of intra-industry Business Model (BM) imitation through the concept of BM configurations and sheds light on how it relates to BM innovation. The analysis focuses on similarities and deviations of BM configurations among 80 companies operating in the industry sector related to Phantom Limb Pain (PLP). Leveraging a questionnaire-based mapping tool, the results show that companies operating within the area of PLP treatment apply relatively similar BM configurations. This indicates that companies mostly imitate the successful BMs of their main competitors in the industry as a whole and in their specific sub-groups, thus potentially ignoring the opportunity to also compete on a BM level. The contribution brought by the paper is twofold. First, it adds to the research stream on BM configurations by showing that this concept can be used not only to analyze and foster cross-industry BM imitation, but also to explore and examine intra-industry BM imitation (or differentiation). Second, the article contributes to the research stream on intra-industry BM imitation by going beyond prior anecdotal evidence and empirically testing the existence of the phenomenon of intra-industry BM imitation and hence, the potential innovation space on a BM level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business model experimentation is an essential step for developing new business models. While the benefits of business model experimentation are increasingly studied, it is still poorly understood why companies engage in business model experimentation. This paper examines, starting from environmental turbulence reasoning, which external and internal drivers serve as antecedents for business model experimentation by firms that already have established business models. We do so by making use of a unique, quantitative data set based on a survey study among 929 European SMEs actively engaged in business model innovation. Using Dual Scaling, a procedure to scale categorical inputs that yields the least-squares lower-rank approximation to the elements of our data set, we find that external drivers relating to technological turbulence are the most important antecedents for business model experimentation. External competitive intensity doesn't motivate business model experimentation. Regarding internal drivers, strategic change, related to product innovation, is a significant antecedent, while innovative activities are less outspoken. By examining why companies engage in business model experimentation, the paper contributes to understanding the antecedents of business model innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is primarily concerned with how managerial and technological innovations interact, and their relationship with firm performance. Parallels between managerial innovations and investments in intangibles are highlighted. Using an existing data set relating to 1497 UK enterprises in 2009 with an emphasis upon the service sector, it is shown that firms both source and use managerial and technological innovations and different types thereof simultaneously, suggesting widespread complementarities. Factor analysis is used to generate combined indicators of firms' overall efforts in both sourcing and using different innovations and enables their allocation to clusters. The most active sourcing and using clusters are the smallest, whilst the least active are the largest. Firm characteristics differ across both sourcing and using clusters in expected ways. Further, (i) there is a positive relationship between corporate performance and the intensity of both sourcing and using innovations, and (ii) firms undertaking technological (managerial) innovation experience greater improvement in sales growth if they also undertake managerial (technological) innovation. The findings indicate that reliance upon either managerial or technological indicators of innovation alone could be misleading in terms of both measuring the extent of innovation and the impacts of different types of innovation upon firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dual embeddedness of inventors' cooperative networks influences firm innovation. This paper explores the mechanism of synergy between network structural embeddedness (network centrality and structural hole) and relational embeddedness (relational strength) on firm innovation using data from Chinese listed automobile companies. This paper further explores the mediating role of exploitative learning and exploratory learning between the synergy of cooperative network dual embeddedness and innovation. The results show that the synergy of network centrality and relational strength hinders innovation, while the synergy of the structural hole and relational strength promotes innovation. The synergy of centrality and relational strength hinders exploitative learning, while the synergy of the structural hole and relational strength promotes exploitative learning. Exploitative learning plays a mediating role between synergy of structure and relational embeddedness and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2017, this paper examines whether or not shareholders tolerate the faults of scientific and technological (S&T) innovation and the effect of firm heterogeneity on this relationship. The empirical results show that, in general, shareholders do not tolerate faults in S&T innovation, and this intolerance intensifies with a longer failure time; there are differences in shareholders' fault tolerance in different types of companies; shareholders of companies with high profitability and financial risk tend to tolerate faults in S&T innovation. This paper might provide some new insights for corporate shareholders to devise reasonable S&T strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates a knowledge production function to study the effects of local spillovers on the patenting activity and new innovation sales of Chinese firms during a period marked by rapid economic reform. We show that local spillovers expected to arise between co-located firms in related industries encourages firm innovation outcomes, especially among firms that diversify their core competencies into new related (versus unrelated) technological domains. Exploiting the gradual and spatially uneven economic transitioning process as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that the positive effects of relatedness on firm innovation are significantly larger in size following more intense market-oriented reforms. The results are potentially relevant for policy-makers in transitioning economies, highlighting for the first time the importance of firms' own diversification process and market-oriented reforms for encouraging innovation-enhancing technological related spillovers. [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]

Previous studies have investigated the factors that influence firms' decision engaging in government innovation programme, but some important horizontal factors have been largely ignored, such as the effect from industry peers. Based on signal theory and expectancy theory, this paper studies the role of industry peers who have obtained government R&D subsidies in raising awareness and motivation of other non-funded firms to engage in the same project. Using Chinese listed firms between 2008 and 2016 as the empirical sample, this paper introduces the awareness-motivation-capability (AMC) framework and uses the Logit regression to examine the associations between peer effects and strategy choice. The empirical results indicate that the number of funded firms in an industry and their superior performance have positive impact on non-funded firms to obtain government R&D subsidies, and these relationships are further strengthened by non-funded firms' innovation ability and profitability. This study makes contributions to literature on government R&D subsidies and peer effect by providing a view of imitation behaviour in innovation activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the innovation impact of R&D subsidies in Spain. It contributes to the literature on technology policy by challenging the assumption considering this impact as homogenous across firms. The paper presents a conceptual framework in which the human capital composition of a firm's R&D staff, defined in terms of education and skills, conditions the innovation impact of R&D subsidies. Using panel data for Spain, we find that the shares of Ph.Ds. and researchers within a firm's R&D staff positively moderate the effect of national R&D subsidies on the production of technological knowledge. This fact shows the strategic value of Ph.Ds. and researchers in exploiting R&D subsidies. We also show that the contribution of Ph.Ds. is limited to the production of technological knowledge. In contrast, the contribution of researchers goes beyond the production of technological knowledge, also enhancing the R&D subsidy impact on the commercialisation of firms' innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an environment of changing customer needs, technological advancement and digitization, the importance of business model innovation in supporting companies to accrue benefits from increased digitization while counteracting threats has intensified. Factors driving business model innovation could be of value in facilitating business model innovation success and accrue benefits from increasing digitization. As the factors driving business model innovation are often triggers for the next cycle, however, there is limited empirical research on factors driving business model innovation. This paper presents empirical findings on factors driving business model innovation using unstructured interviews with nine executives from five sample companies in South Africa. Main finding from the research indicate that both external and internal factors such as existential crises, serve as valuable triggers for business model innovation. Furthermore, entrepreneurial inspirational leadership and quality of staff are important conditions for business model innovation success. The study findings imply that both companies and policymakers who seek to facilitate innovation need to take into account the impact of the business model innovation triggers on business model innovation success. The main contribution of the paper is the empirical finding on factors driving business model innovation using as a lens the sample case study companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using empirical data in China from 2010 to 2018, this paper investigates the relationship between management control matching patterns and different modes of innovation by introducing a text analysis method. The study found that adaptation matching pattern has a significant positive impact on radical innovation, execution matching pattern has a significant positive impact on incremental innovation, and compensatory matching has a significant positive effect on balanced innovation. Additional analyses further show that the positive 'control-innovation' relationship becomes more significant in high-tech firms. Environmental uncertainty and the degree of executive risk preference have a heterogeneous regulatory effect on the choice of control matching and innovation model. [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 paper examines how efficiently different groups of firms use their R&D expenditures. To this end, it investigates how the empirical relationship between firms' R&D expenditures and their sales growth varies with different values of firm size, firm age, and the number of firms in the respective industry. Using panel data for Switzerland ranging from 1995 to 2012, the paper finds that smaller, more mature firms show a more positive relation between R&D expenditures and sales growth than both relatively larger or younger firms. The paper argues that, on the one hand, these firms can benefit from various small size advantages in the R&D process, such as more motivated researchers, caused by a stronger connection to the firm's fate. On the other hand, these firms can also benefit from a well-established R&D department that allows absorbing the latest technological developments. The paper further finds that industries consisting of many small firms show a more positive relation between R&D expenditures and sales growth than industries consisting of only a few large firms. The intuition behind this result is that industries consisting of many small firms imply more independent innovative trials, which then together result in a higher probability of discovering successful innovations. In sum, the paper finds that groups consisting of a large number of small, more mature firms spend their R&D in the most efficient way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a conceptual and empirical framework for analyzing the role of users in innovation and performance at the firm level in the service sector. The theoretical model builds on the user innovation theory in services and proposes to distinguish between different modes and degrees of user participation that may perform differently. The empirical testing is based on a unique dataset from Finland. Results show that not all user engagement led to similar impacts: more active roles versus passive ones have a significant positive relationship with innovation output, but only specific combinations of user orientation and its intensity matter. Besides, no direct significant impacts from user orientation on productivity were found. As a managerial implication, service companies may approach users as co-innovation partners oriented to service quality and customer satisfaction rather than oriented to increase business efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of green innovation in attracting venture capital (VC) financing. We use a unique dataset that matches information on equity transactions, companies' balance sheet variables and data on patented innovation at the firm level over the period 2008–2017. Taking advance of a novel granular definition of green innovative activities that tracks patents at the firm level, we show that green innovators are more likely to receive VC funding compared to other equity financing than firms without green patents. Likewise, a larger share of green vs. non-green patents in a firm's patent portfolio increases the probability of receiving VC finance with respect to other equity. Robustness checks and extensions tackling several dimensions of heterogeneity confirm the attractiveness of green patenting for VC investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation activities of firms tend to be highly persistent. Yet, little is still known about potential spatial contingencies affecting the degree of persistence. This paper analyses the influence of local knowledge spillovers on firms' persistence in innovation activities. Using a representative panel data set of firms in Germany from 2002 to 2016, complemented by detailed geographic information of patent activity over discrete distances to proxy local knowledge spillovers, we find that the local patenting activity positively moderates persistency in innovation activities. Estimations with different distance bands show that the strength of knowledge spillovers that contribute to innovation persistence attenuates with increasing distance and vanishes beyond 30 kilometres in manufacturing and beyond 20 kilometres in services. [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.

Based on the knowledge-based view (KBV), we investigate how and under what conditions knowledge search, including problemistic and slack searches, affects radical and incremental innovation. Using a data set composed of 247 Chinese firms, this study finds that slack search promotes radical and incremental innovation directly while problemistic search can positively affect radical and incremental innovation by the mediating role of knowledge integration capability (KIC). In addition, learning inertia strengthens the positive effect of problemistic search on KIC. This paper primarily contributes to innovation literature by clarifying and verifying how problemistic and slack searches affect radical and incremental innovation from the combined perspective of knowledge inertia and KIC. It also creates a foundation for further empirical investigation by explaining why existing studies have different views on the impacts of knowledge search on firm innovation. [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]

Industry 4.0 requires that manufacturing firms not only innovate but also generate more radical and different varieties of innovation, often incorporating new types of knowledge. To advance such types of innovation, several studies in Innovation and Economic Geography foreground that firms need to combine knowledge in novel ways. The contribution of this paper is to investigate in-depth how manufacturing firms with traditional roots combine new generative knowledge in and beyond a local productive system (LPS), what enables them to access and integrate such knowledge from external sources, and how this relates to the firms' innovation performance, with a focus on radical and varied forms of innovation. Findings show that firms standing out in terms of innovation performances combine complementary types of knowledge through internal and external sources, particularly at national and international levels. Moreover, firms that have complementary knowledge internally are able to access new knowledge beyond the borders of the LPS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past twenty years, a major development in firms' innovation strategies has been the emergence of crowdsourcing as a tool to stimulate new ideas. A growing literature has examined the process by which firms select ideas from such discussions for further development. This paper focuses upon a surprisingly neglected factor: the substantive content of employee contributions. We explore the utility of topic modelling as a means, first, to construct themes as analytic objects; second, to describe the prevalence of themes in a discussion; and, third (and most important) as a platform for the development of measures suited to addressing a wide range of research questions. Drawing on data from a company-wide innovation dialogue at IBM, we illustrate this argument by highlighting four affordances of topic modelling: (1) identifying features of written contributions that predict their subsequent recognition; (2) identifying significant collective concerns and the degree of consensus around them; (3) examining the effects on selection of alignment of posts, respectively, with elite priorities and collective concerns; and (4) assessing whether a dialogue has produced deliberative learning. Including measures of post content changed conclusions about the impact of poster status on idea selection, and revealed considerable consensus on issue salience across organisational levels and geographic regions. Posts selected for recognition were aligned disproportionately with cues from organisation elites but also reflected collective preoccupations. Finally, extended deliberation appears to have improved discussion quality and, in some instances, led to productive reframing of the problems discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dominant stream of research has linked a firm's innovation capacity to its shareholder orientation, concerning how effectively internal corporate governance mechanisms maximise shareholder wealth and sustain competitive advantages. The main mechanisms involve independent board monitoring and incentives alignment, pertaining to how managers are monitored through shareholders' surveillance and bonded with compensation structures to adopt risky innovation strategies, respectively. However, firms are mandated to engage with both shareholding and non-shareholding groups such that firms simultaneously pursue shareholder and stakeholder orientation through corporate social performance. Strikingly, extant research has analysed the effects of shareholder and stakeholder orientations on innovation on a separate basis. The present paper integrates multiple corporate orientations to provide a more comprehensive framework of the antecedents of firms' product innovation. Specifically, the study not only examines the main effects of independent monitoring and incentives alignment, but also the synergistic effect of corporate social performance and the former mechanisms on the rate of new product introductions. Empirical results indicate that corporate social performance alleviates the negative effects of independent monitoring on the rate of new product introductions. In addition, corporate social performance alleviates the negative effects of short-term incentive compensation and the rate of new product introductions. Findings suggest that as businesses are currently required to both use a host of governance mechanisms to resolve agency problems and to enhance competitiveness via new product introductions, a strong stakeholder orientation mitigates the trade-offs that a narrow pursuit of shareholder orientation imposes on firm innovativeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to address a gap in the empirical literature on the importance of ‘low-capability’ innovation for firms. The study is framed around discussion of the conceptual bias that remains in policy and academic literature towards a narrow subset of technological (product or process) innovation labelled ‘high-capability’ innovation in this paper. The paper argues that this bias influences the public and business community's understanding of the term ‘innovation’ and has implications for innovation measurement, research, policy and strategy. The study uses data from an economy-wide, regional innovation survey based on the Oslo manual, and includes 648 innovative firms covering all industry sectors. The paper combines elements of both subject and object approaches to innovation measurement, using data from an open-ended survey question to explore the alignment between what firms report as their ‘most important innovation’ (MII) and firm capabilities for introducing ‘high-capability’ technological innovation. Results show that a substantial share of firms report an MII that is a ‘low-capability’ innovation, including those firms with high R&D intensity, those with novel technological innovation, and firms in more innovative sectors of manufacturing and knowledge intensive business services. The paper discusses the implications of this result for future innovation measurement and research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss reports within the issue on topics including innovation as well as research and development and technologies in China, Russia, and India.

The aim of this conceptual paper is to explore the business ecosystem concept in innovation policy context, and question whether it has something new to bring to the innovation policy field compared to previous theoretical discussions. A comparative study was conducted where three widely utilized policy approaches were examined together with the business ecosystem concept. The ecosystem concept differs from the three approaches, for example, in its evolving around innovation, and its self-organizing and self-renewing nature. This paper sets a conceptual basis for further empirical research concerning the innovation policy implications of the business ecosystem concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a case study on how an industry association wrote a new principle on innovation and succeeded in introducing this principle into a number of European Union (EU) texts. The paper maps out how vested interests secured adoption of this (controversial) principle with an eye to influence future policy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time an industry association has successfully tried to introduce a new principle into the EU's legal order. We try to assess what implications this could have on the EU's existing legal order, with a particular emphasis on the impact this could have on the precautionary principle. The paper begins by examining both the political and the legal backdrop to the EU's innovation agenda. We conclude by suggesting that a qualified innovation principle that balances reasonable risk-taking with a degree of responsibility could be an interesting new tool for the EU to guide its innovation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on university–business interactions has thrived in recent years, influenced by some very successful examples where they have led to the emergence of world-class clusters. However, this paper will argue that in less developed regions the most important contribution that universities can make to their regional economies is the supply of skilled human capital. Through the case study of the wine industry in Portugal, it will argue that this supply of human capital can have a significant impact on the absorptive capacity of firms, particularly SMEs. It will therefore seek to make an important contribution to academic research in this area, by outlining a relatively neglected research area. It is also relevant for policy-makers and practitioners, as it argues that innovation and regional development policies should pay more attention to the need to match skills provision by higher education institutions to business needs among SMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper takes an institutional approach to the development of cross-border regional innovation systems (CBRISs). It argues that the nation-state border is expressed through institutional hindrances that negatively influence cross-border cooperation processes. The concept of multilevel institutional architecture (MLIA) is introduced to improve understandings of the border as the nexus between institutions engaged in regional innovation systems. Through a case study analysis of the Venlo-Lower Rhine region, the paper investigates how a nation-state border impedes the build up of systemic cross-border relations that underpin the development of CBRISs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation is key for productivity growth and an important focus for policy in many countries. Innovation novelty, increasing from new-to-firm to new-to-world, is linked with firm growth and spillover effects. We examine the role of R&D, management capability and business skills in innovation novelty. Using detailed firm-level data, we find that firm-specific variables such as R&D, collaboration, foreign ownership, business focus on innovation and management capability are significantly associated with higher levels of innovation novelty. We also find that innovation strategy can vary based on firm size. We provide new evidence for Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine the relation between innovation ambidexterity and organisational performance and the moderating effect of business experience on a sample of IT companies. Various authors pointed out the necessity to analyse not only explorative and exploitative innovation separately, but also their combined effects on organisational performance. These effects are assessed by using polynomial regressions in testing the research hypotheses. Business experience contributes to important differences in both the quantity and quality of resources available, which are critical for innovation. With only a handful of papers specifically addressing business experience in the context of innovation ambidexterity, this study fills a major research gap. The findings demonstrate the positive influence of innovation ambidexterity on organisational performance. In terms of business experience, the findings show that in new ventures it moderates the relation between innovation ambidexterity and organisational performance, while in established companies no relation was found. Business experience is rarely used to explain interactions between innovation and performance and, as such, we provide new insights on how both new ventures and established companies make use of business experience in their innovation approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturing companies need to continuously innovate in order to remain competitive. Fostering a successful innovative environment should reflect positively on manufacturing performance, with a premise that companies seek to attain appropriate level of readiness when deploying their innovation. This paper presents an approach to assessing innovation deployment readiness in manufacturing. Deployment is conceptualised as a sequential decision process that involves a deployment plan to be executed sequentially in an uncertain environment. The deployment plan is assessed using simulation to account for risks and uncertainties that may characterise the deployment activities in the target environment and the capabilities put forward in the plan for handling the risks and uncertainties. The approach is illustrated using a simulated manufacturing job shop scenario and the results show that deployment readiness can vary over time. Deployment readiness can be improved by identifying the states in which readiness is weak and taking appropriate actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether a firm's failure in undertaking innovative activities can promote or hamper its growth. It conducts a two-stage regression for the determinants innovation failure and its impact on firm growth by analysing the data of firms in the Korean manufacturing sector. It finds that firms are likely to fail in innovation when they have either low or extremely high levels of R&D intensity, conduct cooperative R&D, or face financial constraints. In addition, it finds that under these conditions, failed innovators have lower rates of growth than successful innovators, but also that firm size and age moderate the negative effect of innovation failure on firm growth. These findings imply that the impact of innovation failure on firm growth differs depending upon internal resources and resilience capability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the linkages between institutions and economic growth in the European context and highlights innovation as the intermediate variable that drives this interplay. Building on the literature in the evolutionary approach to the economics of innovation and in the economic growth theory with a political economic perspective, we assume that knowledge externalities can fully take place where institutions guarantee a level playing field in the access to knowledge. We estimate the effects of a set of relevant institutional variables on the growth rate of technological knowledge and per capita GDP for a sample of European countries. The empirical analysis confirms that institutions that tend to equalise opportunities to innovate significantly amplify the impact of an exogenous increase in the knowledge base on the growth rate of per capita GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the geography of innovation suffers from a lack of attention to temporal aspects of proximity in innovation processes. Consequently, an emerging literature on knowledge-creation processes has appeared to address this shortcoming. This paper adopts this perspective and develops an integrated framework for understanding knowledge creation and proximity dynamics across phases of the innovation process (idea generation, problem-solving and implementation). Geographical proximity plays a role in all stages of the innovation process, but its form varies. Three innovation biographies from the Danish wind power industry serve as principal examples of this integrated framework. It is demonstrated that innovation processes can be multilocational, meaning innovative activities are stretched in space and may take place at multiple sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Caribbean has one the lowest rates of Research and Development (R&D) investment intensity by firms. This characteristic can limit the growth and sustainability of Caribbean businesses given the role that this type of investment plays in firm growth and competitiveness. Using the World Bank's Enterprise Survey database, which provides firm-level data on 13 Caribbean nations, this paper evaluates the decision to engage in R&D amongst Caribbean firms. Using cross-sectional regression analysis to estimate R&D models, the results suggest firms that participate in trade, are technologically-inclined and have access to bank financing, are more likely to make the decision to invest in R&D. Small firms, especially those facing financing obstacles, however, are less likely to engage in R&D. Our findings also provide insights into the financing of R&D investment and could be used by policymakers to encourage greater innovation in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation for inclusive development refers to the development of products and services for and/or by marginalized communities with the aim of improved economic and social welfare. Innovation systems present a framework for analyzing actors, institutions, interlinkages and societal subsystems that contribute to the emergence of innovation for inclusive development. However, the innovation system framework requires a re-orientation as an analytical tool to 1) support a systematic process towards identifying barriers to inclusiveness 2) systematically define the root cause of systemic problems or barriers for innovation for inclusive development, and finally, 3) to provide a framework against which to formulate systemic policy interventions that systematically enhance the environment for innovation for inclusive development. The main contribution of this article is to deduce a systemic policy intervention framework and roadmap towards developing more inclusive innovation systems. We explore policy interventions to position innovation systems more inclusively by considering a case study of a large-scale maternal mHealth project (MomConnect) in South Africa. The article concludes that the use of a systemic policy intervention framework, as derived in this paper, may greatly enhance the design of large-scale projects and innovation systems towards improved inclusivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding technology's influence on the implementation of new models of innovation is of increasing importance to research scholars. This study aims to understand through a techno-social perspective the underlying characteristics of innovation jams and how they contribute to the implementation of OI. This paper presents innovation jams through a 10-year longitudinal study from 2001 to 2011 and posits innovation jams as an ongoing accomplishment that was constituted and reconstituted through the techno and social systems in their development for innovative activity. The investigation contributes to theory and practice by placing innovation jams into three research streams that connect the role of technology to the implementation of OI. The study differentiates innovation jams from crowdsourcing as an innovation model and offers ten dimension and changing definitions of innovation jams as they evolved. Finally, the study connects the techno-social approach to the practice of OI and suggests both the technical and social systems are reinforcing factors when implementing OI practices supported. [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]

Automakers are an important knowledge source for components suppliers. Concentration on automakers for knowledge can enhance suppliers' innovation quality. However, diversification of external knowledge sources has also been emphasised. This paper discusses the effects of concentration and diversification of external knowledge sources on suppliers' innovation quality. Using U.S. vehicle components suppliers as a sample, the empirical result shows concentration is curvilinearly related to suppliers' innovation quality. More importantly, this study reveals that integrating broad sources of knowledge can enhance the efficiency with which suppliers utilise automakers' knowledge. This study contributes to the investigation into the influence of the distribution of external sources of knowledge on the firm's innovation performance. The study also contributes to the understanding of sources of innovation and knowledge transfer in value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary supplements the work of a creative practice research project that generates new ways of thinking about innovation and entrepreneurial processes. Our creative method, underwritten by the logic of sensation and presented in film format, operates as an alternative form of research in these fields, where results are normally conveyed in book or journal paper. Film-based research has developed distinctive qualitative, empirical and theoretical vocabularies that can expand the nature and range of evidence, argument and expression across the broad range of innovation and entrepreneurship studies. 600 Mills, the film that accompanies this paper, is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/08109028.2017.1336011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]