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The goal of this dissertation is to contribute to the corporate foresight research field by investigating capabilities, practices, and challenges particularly in the context of interorganizational settings and networked organizations informed by the theoretical perspectives of the relational view and dynamic capabilities. Firms are facing an increasingly complex environment and highly complex product and service landscapes that often require multiple organizations to collaborate for innovation and offerings. Public-private partnerships that are targeted at supporting this have been introduced by policy-makers in the recent past. One example for such a partnership is the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) with multiple Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs). The EIT has been initiated by the European Commission in 2008 with the ambition of addressing grand societal challenges, driving innovativeness of European companies, and supporting systemic change. The resulting network organizations are managed similarly to corporations with managers, boards, and firm-like governance structures. EIT Digital as one of the EIT KICs are a central case of this work. Research in this dissertation was based on the expectation that corporate foresight activities will increasingly be embedded in such interorganizational settings and a) can draw on such settings for the benefit of themselves and b) may contribute to shared visions, trust building and planning in these network organizations. In this dissertation the EIT Digital (formerly EIT ICT Labs) is a central case, supplemented with insights from three additional cases. I draw on the rich theoretical understanding of the resource-based view, dynamic capabilities, and particularly the relational view to further the discussion in the field of corporate foresight—defined as foresight in organizations in contrast to foresight with a macro-economical perspective—towards a relational understanding. Further, I use and revisit Rohrbeck’s Maturity Model for the Future Orientation of Firms as conceptual frame for corporate foresight in interorganizational settings. The analyses—available as four individual publications complemented by on additional chapter—are designed as exploratory case studies based on multiple data sources including an interview series with 49 persons, two surveys (N=54, n=20), three supplementary interviews, access to key documents and presentations, and observation through participation in meetings and activities of the EIT Digital. This research setting allowed me to contribute to corporate foresight research and practice by 1) integrating relational constructs primarily drawn from the relational view and dynamic capabilities research into the corporate foresight research stream, 2) exploring and understanding capabilities that are required for corporate foresight in interorganizational and networked organizations, 3) discussing and extending the Maturity Model for network organizations, and 4) to support individual organizations to tie their foresight systems effectively to networked foresight systems. Das Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es zu dem Forschungsfeld Corporate Foresight beizutragen, indem Fähigkeiten, Praktiken und Herausforderungen insbesondere in interorganisationalen Kooperationen und vernetzten Organisationen untersucht werden. Die Arbeit bedient sich dabei der theoretischen Perspektiven des Relational View und Dynamic Capabilities in Ergänzung zum aktuellen Forschungsstand im Forschungsfeld Corporate Foresight. Unternehmen sind mit einer zunehmend komplexen Umwelt und hochkomplexen Produkt- und Servicelandschaften konfrontiert, die vielfach die Zusammenarbeit mehrerer unterschiedlicher Organisationen erfordern, um Innovationen zu ermöglichen. Public Private Partnerships mit dem Ziel ebendies zu unterstützen, wurden in der jüngeren Vergangenheit zunehmend initiiert. Ein Beispiel für eine solche Partnerschaft ist das Europäische Institut für Innovation und Technologie (EIT) mit mehreren Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs). Das EIT wurde 2008 von der Europäischen Kommission mit dem Ziel, die großen gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen zu adressieren, die Innovationskraft europäischer Unternehmen zu fördern und systemische Veränderungen zu unterstützen, ins Leben gerufen. Die entstandenen Netzwerkorganisationen werden ähnlich wie Unternehmen geführt, mit Managern, Vorständen und firmenähnlichen Governance-Strukturen. EIT Digital (ehemals EIT ICT Labs) als eines der EIT KICs ist eine zentrale Fallstudie dieser Arbeit, die durch Erkenntnisse aus drei weiteren Fällen ergänzt wird. Die Forschung in dieser Dissertation basierte auf der Annahme, dass Corporate Foresight-Aktivitäten zunehmend in solch interorganisationale Kontexte eingebettet werden und a) diese Settings zum Vorteil einzelner Unternehmen beitragen sollen und b) zu gemeinsamen Visionen, Vertrauensbildung und Planung in diesen Netzwerkorganisationen beitragen können. Die Arbeit stützt sich auf das reichhaltige theoretische Verständnis des strategischen Managements, genauer des Resource-Based Views, der Dynamic Capabilities und insbesondere des Relational View, um die Diskussion im Bereich Corporate Foresight - definiert als Vorausschau in Organisationen in Abgrenzung zur Vorausschau mit einer makroökonomischen Perspektive - in Richtung eines relationalen Verständnisses weiterzuentwickeln. Dabei wird das Reifegradmodell für die Zukunftsorientierung von Unternehmen als konzeptioneller Rahmen verwendet. Die Studien - verfügbar als vier Einzelpublikationen, ergänzt durch ein zusätzliches Kapitel - sind als explorative Fallstudien konzipiert und basieren auf mehreren Datenquellen, darunter eine Interviewserie mit 49 Personen, zwei Fragebogen-basierte Umfragen (n=54, n=20), drei ergänzende Interviews, Zugang zu internen Dokumenten und Präsentationen sowie Beobachtungen durch Teilnahme an Meetings und Aktivitäten des EIT Digital. Diese Arbeit leistet so einen Beitrag zur Corporate Foresight-Forschung und -Praxis, indem 1) relationale Konstrukte, die primär aus dem Relational View und der Dynamic-Capabilities-Forschung stammen, in die Forschungskanon Corporate Foresight integriert werden, 2) das Wissen über Fähigkeiten, die für die Anwendung von Corporate Foresight in interorganisationalen und vernetzten Organisationen erforderlich sind, vertieft wird, 3) das Reifegradmodell für die Zukunftsorientierung für Netzwerkorganisationen diskutiert und erweitert wird und 4) praxisrelevante Aspekte für die effektive Nutzung von interorganisationalen Kooperationen für Corporate Foresight Systeme diskutiert werden.

Dans l'article, les auteurs se concentrent sur différents aspects de la fracture numérique "spatiale" et cherchent à répondre à trois questions : existe-t-il encore aujourd'hui des inégalités spatiales dans l'adoption de ces technologies ? Existe-t-il une fracture spatiale dite de "second niveau" caractérisée par une faible utilisation d'Internet et du mail par des entreprises ayant pourtant adopté ces outils ? Peut-on observer des processus d'appropriation et/ou des logiques de diffusion distincts parmi les entreprises adoptantes selon leur zone de localisation (urbaines vs. rurales) ? Pour y répondre les auteurs ont construit un modèle original de diffusion de technologies (de type Battisti et Stoneman, 2005) qui cherche à combiner les modèles se concentrant sur les effets de la contagion et ceux dits d'équilibre modélisant la décision de l'adoption comme le résultat d'un calcul économique des agents en fonction de leurs caractéristiques propres et de celles de leur environnement concurrentiel, industriel et local. Ce modèle est testé sur une enquête nationale récente (TIC et commerce électronique, 2002). L'un des principaux résultats est que si, à taille et à secteur des entreprises donnés, des inégalités spatiales liées à l'adoption des TIC ne sont plus à l'oeuvre en France, elles demeurent en revanche toujours très importantes dans les processus d'appropriation et d'usage de ces technologies par les firmes.

Greece’s currently planned institutional reforms will help to get the country going with limited economic growth. With an economy based primarily on tourism, trade, and agriculture, Greece lacks an established competitive industry and an innovation-friendly environment, resulting in a low export ratio given the small size of the country and its long-time EU-membership. Instead, Greece exports only its nation's talent, with low returns. To become prosperous, the country must better capitalize on its Eurozone membership and add innovative sectors to its economic structure. Given Greece's hidden assets, such as the attractiveness of the country, a small number of strong research centers and an impressive diaspora in research, finance and business, we envision a Greek “Silicon Valley” and propose a ten point policy plan to achieve that goal., Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe, 896

Science and Technology Parks (STPs) has become fairly widespread through the world, although their effect on firms' innovation performance is still a very debated issue. A recent stream in the literature points to heterogeneity of tenants and of parks themselves being a key concept when assessing STPs effect on tenants' performance. An important source of STPs heterogeneity that has been disregarded so far is the degree of university involvement in these parks. At the extremes, there are parks that are owned and managed by universities, and parks with no formal links with a university. We use data from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) for Spain and a survey of STP park managers to analyse how the degree of involvement of a university in the STP is related to innovation outputs of its tenants and their links with universities. We show that higher involvement of a university in the STP is positively related to the number of patent applications, but negatively related to tenant's innovation sales. In addition, we find no robust evidence that higher involvement of a university in the STP is positively related to the propensity for park firms to cooperate with a university or to purchase external R&D services from the university.

We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions yield agglomeration clusters that are much larger than the underlying agglomerative forces themselves. Empirically, we demonstrate that our model’s assumptions are present in the structure of technology and labor flows within Silicon Valley and its surrounding areas. Our model further identifies how the lengths over which agglomerative forces operate influence the shapes and sizes of industrial clusters; we confirm these predictions using variations across both technology clusters and industry agglomeration.

This paper develops a simple model of trade and “quality-ladders” growth without scale effects to study the implications of general purpose technologies (GPTs) for international trade. GPTs refer to a certain type of drastic innovations, such as electrification, the transistor, and the Internet, that are characterized by the pervasiveness in use, innovational complementarities, and technological dynamism. The model presents a two-country (Home and Foreign) dynamic general equilibrium framework and incorporates GPT diffusion within Home that exhibits endogenous Schumpeterian growth. The model analyzes the long-run and transitional dynamic effects of a new GPT on the pattern of trade and relative wages. The main findings of the paper are: 1) when the GPT diffusion across industries is governed by S-curve dynamics, there are two steady-state equilibria: the initial steadystate arises before the adoption of the new GPT and the final one is reached after the GPT diffusion process has been completed, 2) when all industries at Home have adopted the new GPT, Home enjoys comparative advantage in a greater range of industries compared to Foreign, 3) during the transitional dynamics, Foreign gains back its competitiveness in some of the industries that lost its comparative advantage to Home.

This paper examines the links between the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the firm's performance using a sample of Luxembourgian manufacturing and services firms (2 183 firms). The data used is the 2008 Survey on ICT Usage and e-Commerce in Enterprises in the case of Luxembourg (STATEC, 2006, 2007). We found four original results. First, the use of the latest generation of ICT increases firms' revenues (short term returns) if the ICT use serves to customize their products. Second, the use of the latest generation of ICT enables long run returns if they are used for several purposes such as setting a catalogue online, developing e-commerce solutions and customizing the website. Third, while ICT seems to need dedicated human capital and technological absorptive capacity for increasing revenue, this is not valid for reaching new customers. Finally, we found also that “belonging to a group†has no impact on increasing the revenue of the firm when it uses ICT, while it has a negative effect on capturing new customers.

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from over 4,000 medium sized manufacturing firms across Asia, Europe and the US. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level performance (e.g. productivity, profitability and stock market value). Private Equity owned firms are significantly better managed than government, family and privately owned firms. Although they are also better managed on average than publicly listed firms with dispersed owners, this difference is not statistically significant. Looking at management practices in detail we find that Private Equity-owned firms have strong people management practices (hiring, firing, pay and promotions) but even stronger operations management practices (lean manufacturing, continuous improvement and monitoring). This suggests that Private Equity ownership is associated with broad based operational improvement in management rather than just stronger performance incentives. Finally, looking at changes in management practices over time, it appears that Private Equity targets poorly managed firms and these firms improve their management practices at a faster rate than other ownership types.

We explore how changes in ownership affect the productivity and profitability of producers. Using detailed data from the Japanese cotton spinning industry at the turn of the last century, we find that acquired firms’ production facilities were not on average less physically productive than the plants of the acquiring firms before acquisition. They were much less profitable, however, due to higher inventory levels and lower capacity utilization—differences that reflected problems in managing the uncertainties of demand. After acquisitions, less profitable acquired plants saw drops in inventories and gains in capacity utilization that raised both their productivity and profitability levels. (JEL D24, G32, G34, L11, L25, L66, N65) The influence of changes in corporate control of assets on productivity has been a focus of theoretical and empirical research for some time. In principle, mergers and acquisitions can reallocate control of productive assets to entities that are able to apply them more efficiently. Besides increasing the productivity of the individual production units that are merged or acquired, a broader process of such reallocations can also lead to aggregate productivity growth. Such a mechanism therefore has the potential to explain patterns of productivity at both the micro- and macro-levels. Implicit in the story of this mechanism—though not often treated explicitly in the empirical work on the subject—is the notion that productivity growth occurs when changes in ownership and control put assets in more able managers’ hands. 1

International audience; The Framework programmes created by the European Union are the main financial tools used to support cooperative R&D activities in the EU. Unlike previous empirical studies, this paper suggests that their impact on firms’ competitiveness is significant. We analyze industry-oriented research joint ventures supported by the Fifth European Framework Programme between 1998 and 2002. A key feature of this Programme is that funding is available to the firms based on social and economic concerns instead of pure performance criteria, which guarantees that financial support is not granted conditional on technological opportunities. This allows us to identify the causal effect of the programme on firms’ performance using the funding available to the firms in their respective industries as a source of exogenous variation in the decision to participate in the programme. Our results suggest that participation in research projects may raise labor productivity by at least 44.4% while it has very limited effect on profit margin.

Although Greece is showing initial signs of recovering from its 2008 crash, its economy continues to suffer. It has become clear that the economy will not become prosperous only by the given recommendations of the so called Troika, namely by cutting costs and public expenditures, and by making institutional reforms, as much as these steps are needed. If nothing else changes, the country will have a steady, tourism-based economy supplemented by a food manufacturing base. However, these components will not yield substantial prosperity increases for the Greek society. At the same time the country has a number of unexploited hidden assets, in particular a small number of excellent research institutes and a great number of top researchers, most of them however working abroad. The central problem is the lack of an innovation-oriented industry structure and of a well-functioning innovation system connecting research output with the demand of entrepreneurs and high-tech start-ups in Greece. Greece needs a strategy for a strong capacity building towards the creation of new applied research institutes. If appropriate research networks are developed out of these and if innovative firms result, creating new products with high value-added, the country has the opportunity to transform into an innovation-driven economy.

Global value chains (GVCs) are playing an increasingly important role in business strategies, which has profoundly changed international trade and development paradigms. GVCs now represent a new path for development by helping developing countries accelerate industrialization and the “servicification” of the economy. From a firm perspective, production in the context of GVCs highlights the importance of being able to seamlessly connect factories across borders, as well as protect assets such as intellectual property. From the policy maker perspective, the focus is on shifting and improving access to resources while also advancing development goals, and also on the question of whether entry into GVCs delivers labor-market-enhancing outcomes for workers at home, as well as social upgrading. GVCs can lead to development, but, at the country level, constraints such as the supply of various types of labor and skills and inadequate absorptive capacity remain. GVCs can create new opportunities on the labor demand side, but supply and demand cannot meet if the supply is missing. This potential gap illustrates the importance of embedding national GVC policies into a broader portfolio of policies aimed at upgrading skills, physical and regulatory infrastructure, and enhancing social cohesion.

We investigate learning by doing using detailed data from a major auto producer's assembly plant. We focus on the acquisition, aggregation, transmission, and embodiment of the knowledge stock built through learning. We find that most knowledge was not retained by plant workers despite their importance as a learning conduit. This is consistent with the plant's systems for productivity measurement and improvement. We further explore how learning at the hundreds of processes along the production line undergirds plantwide productivity. Our results shed light on how productivity gains accrue at the plant level and how firms apply managerial inputs to expand production.

SummaryThe paper analyzes the relevance of the three constituent elements of the ‘new firm paradigm’, i.e. ICT, workplace organization and human capital, as determinants of a firm’s provision of training. We concentrate on apprenticeship training, which in German-speaking countries is a widespread practice of skill formation. Econometric studies dealing with a firm’s provision of apprenticeships so far did not pay much attention to the influence of a shift towards the new paradigm. We find that apprenticeship training is an appropriate way of skill formation in advanced economies, but this may not be the case in leading-edge segments of the economy.

This paper investigates the causal relationship between innovation and labour force reallocation within the firm, measured as the share of white collar workers. To the extent that intra-firm reallocation can be considered as a substitute for inter-firms and sectors reallocations, innovation activity can be effective in hampering immigration flows from lagging regions to the richest ones. Using data on 5,000 Italian manufacturing firms we provide evidence that where sizable migration flow of graduated people took place the innovation process was not effective in increasing the requirement of high-skill workers.

The creation of an innovation niche depends on the interaction of three mechanisms involving: converging expectations, adequate level of individual and network power and efficient knowledge creation and diffusion (Lopolito and Morone, 2010). Such mechanisms define the key characteristics of a network of firms (i.e. the innovation niche), and the interaction among them guides the creation and development of a new technology. In this paper, we propose an agent-based model to investigate the dynamics characterising such interactions and the role that policy intervention can have in governing the niche development process. Specifically, we consider and assess the impact of two policy actions: (1) increasing actors' expectations towards the new technology by means of information spreading, and (2) providing subsidies aimed at stimulating technological switch. Our preliminary results confirm the importance of policy intervention and show the complementarity of the two policy measures considered. Hence, a mixed policy action could serve the purpose of a rapid and stable creation of an innovation-niche.

Germany has profited from the internationalization of research and development (R&D) in multinational companies. While the international R&D balance sheet was balanced until 2001, foreign companies now invest more in R&D in Germany than German companies abroad. The share of R&D expenditures of German multinationals abroad is declining, whereas their global expenditures are increasing. This means the internationalization of R&D activities in Germany has slowed down. Strategic restructuring of multinational companies is the decisive factor for internationalizing R&D, not relocation. Against this background, current plans for tax relief for R&D will probably not lead to significant backshoring of foreign R&D activities to Germany.

This paper studies an independent patent-holder's licensing of a process innovation to a Cournot duopoly characterized by partial cross ownership. We find that royalty licensing is preferred by the patentee when the degree of cross ownership is high, whereas fixed fee licensing is preferred when the degree of cross ownership is low. When the degree of cross ownership is in the intermediate range, the superiority of fixed fee and royalty licensing depends on the magnitude of the innovations.

Employment growth is strongly predicted by smaller average establishment size, both across cities and across industries within cities, but there is little consensus on why this relationship exists. Traditional economic explanations emphasize factors that reduce entry costs or raise entrepreneurial returns, thereby increasing net returns and attracting entrepreneurs. A second class of theories hypothesizes that some places are endowed with a greater supply of entrepreneurship. Evidence on sales per worker does not support the higher returns for entrepreneurship rationale. Our evidence suggests that entrepreneurship is higher when fixed costs are lower and when there are more entrepreneurial people.

Investment in R&D is positively associated with the variance of sales growth and, to a lesser extent, employment growth. The magnitude of this effect has not increased in recent decades, however.

Why are some places more entrepreneurial than others? We use Census Bureau data to study local determinants of manufacturing startups across cities and industries. Demographics have limited explanatory power. Overall levels of local customers and suppliers are only modestly important, but new entrants seem particularly drawn to areas with many smaller suppliers, as suggested by Chinitz (1961). Abundant workers in relevant occupations also strongly predict entry. These forces plus city and industry fixed effects explain between sixty and eighty percent of manufacturing entry. We use spatial distributions of natural cost advantages to address partially endogeneity concerns.

Network is often considered as a support of knowledge creation. We consider that two main forms of networks can be identified in the economy: horizontal and vertical. We propose to compare these networks according to the question of knowledge creation. The aim of this article is then to demonstrate mathematically the hypothesis that a decentralized network is more efficient in terms of knowledge creation. This hypothesis supposes that interactions between firms promote collective learning and collective knowledge and increase performances. We propose to describe, in terms of mathematical metaphors, the two forms of network in order to compare afterwards their dynamical evolution. JEL Codes: D85, L2, O3

This paper develops a model linking firm knowledge with productivity. The model captures three characteristics of firm knowledge (capital, diversity and relatedness) that are tested on a sample of 156 of the world’s largest corporations. Panel data regression models suggest that unlike knowledge diversity, knowledge capital and knowledge relatedness explain a substantial share of the variance of firm productivity. Relatedness matters because it lowers coordination costs between heterogeneous activities. Consequently, the traditional econometric specification has repeatedly underestimated by 15 percent the overall short-run contribution of intangible assets to firm productivity. This underestimation becomes fiercer in high-technology sectors.

We present evidence that small firms perform two to four times more innovations per dollar of R&D than large firms. We propose a search theory of R&D that accounts for the evidence. A firm incurs R&D expenses until it has discovered a level of R&D productivity that is sufficiently great to warrant stopping the search. We show that because the large number of R&D projects run by a large firm becomes a substitute for enhanced R&D productivity, the average R&D productivity of a firm is decreasing in firm size.

Our data from 351 innovating firms for the years 2001–2012 generally suggest that patentable ideas are strongly linked to the mobility of individual inventors, or that the knowledge flows transmitted are sticky inventor-specific. In other words, the larger the knowledge pool of an inventor entering (leaving) the firm, the more the firm’s innovation performance increases (decreases). However, our separate estimations for six different technology classes suggest that this does not apply for all technologies. Our data indicate that the knowledge flows are mobile inventor-specific for chemicals and pharmaceuticals and mechanical engineering such that the mobility of an inventor to a firm increases its innovation performance but the mobility of an inventor from a firm does not affect its innovation performance. We further find that particularly innovation coopetition (i.e., collaboration with a firm’s competitors) is an important source of knowledge spillovers. Furthermore, the magnitude of overall localized innovation activity positively relates to the firm’s innovation performance providing support for agglomeration externalities.

This review discusses frontier topics in economic geography as they relate to firms and agglomeration economies. We focus on areas where empirical research is scarce but possible. We first outline a conceptual framework for city formation that allows us to contemplate what empiricists might study when using firm-level data to compare the functioning of cities and industries with each other. We then examine a second model of the internal structure of a cluster to examine possibilities with firm-level data for better exposing the internal operations of clusters. An overwhelming theme of our review is the vast scope for enhancements of our picture of agglomeration with the new data that are emerging.

Family firms are typically associated with negative characteristics, including lower tendencies towards innovation, a higher risk of failure, and inefficiencies deriving from nepotism among family members, criticisms which are even greater when the company is handed over to a female relative. Women in business have generally been presented as petty traders and passive investors, whose entrepreneurial activities were scarce because of such restrictions as limited human capital, culture, market imperfections, and institutional biases. The French economy has similarly been faulted for the prevalence of family firms during the nineteenth century, and for disincentives for the integration of women in the business sector. These issues are explored using an extensive sample of women who obtained patents and prizes at industrial exhibitions during early industrialization. The empirical evidence indicates that middle-class women in France were extensively engaged in entrepreneurship and innovation, and that their commercial efforts were enhanced by association with family firms. Their formerly invisible achievements suggest a more productive role for family-based enterprises, as a means of incorporating relatively disadvantaged groups into the market economy as managers and entrepreneurs.

We model non-drastic technological innovation in a duopoly model with differentiated products. We derive profit functions for both firms which depend on only one variable, the technological gap. As our model derives product demands directly from agent utility we are able to fully describe the welfare effects of innovation. We show that the welfare improvements from innovation come not only as firms accrue higher profits, by charging consumers higher prices, but also as consumers enjoy higher quality products.

The present innovative research continues a series of scientific articles on a) the theory of the firm in the nonlinear dynamic financial and economic systems in the classic economics science, b) the information theory of the firm in the classic economics science, c) the quantum microeconomics theory in the quantum economics science, presenting the groundbreaking theoretical research results: 1) the quantum theory of firm in the frames of the quantum microeconomics theory in the quantum econophysics science is proposed; 2) the formulas (1, 2) to compute the firm’s discrete-time EBITDA (the firm’s value) changes at the different time moments are derived; 3) the formulas (3, 4) to calculate the distribution of a number of the firms’ excited business processes of certain value at the selected firm’s state in the economy of scale and scope are presented; 4) the notion on the wave function in the quantum econophysical time-dependent/time independent wave equations is introduced; 5) the formulas (5, 6) to predict the firm’s discrete-time EBITDA (the firm’s value) state changes in the national/global economies at the certain time moment, using the wave functions in the quantum econophysical time-dependent/time independent wave equations, are derived; 6) the quantum phenomena, including the possible weak/strong interactions between the firms in the national/global economies are described; 7) the comparative analysis between a big number of the classic theories of the firm and the quantum theory of the firm is completed, explaining the main characteristic differences and existing similarities; 8) the evolutionary shift from the classic theory of the firm to the quantum theory of the firm is described; 9) the perspectives on the application of the quantum theory of the firm with the aim to solve the various economic problems in the real- and speculative- sectors of economic markets are discussed.

The paper reviews theories of information technology adoption and organizational form and applies them to an empirical analysis of firm choices and characteristics in four transition economies: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. We argue that these economies have gone through two major structural changes-one concerning new technology and another concerning ownership and boundaries of firms-and we consider if and how each one of the two structural changes has affected the other. We test the impact of firm size, integration, and ownership on the extent of new information technology adoption (measured by growth in the fraction of employees using personal computers or computer-controlled machinery), and the impact of information technology on changes in the boundaries and the ownership structure of enterprises, drawing upon a sample survey of 330 firms.

This paper aims to introduce a qualitative indicator to measure innovation performance of Turkish firms by using firm level data collected by Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) in 2008 and 2009. We propose a new indicator to measure the innovation performance which is simply based on the perception of firms regarding to the impacts of innovation. In order to create performance indicators we conduct a factor analysis to group the firms’ perceptions on the impacts of innovation. Factor analysis gives us product and process oriented impacts of innovation. There are significant differences among product innovators, process innovators and firms engaged in both product and process innovations with respect to their perceptions on product and process oriented impacts of innovation. Among these three groups, product and process oriented impacts provide a highest value for the firms that perform both product and process innovations. As far as the link between firm characteristics and the impact of innovation is considered, there is a significant difference between small and large firms with respect to their perceptions on product oriented impact of innovation.While product oriented impact are larger for small firms, large firms focus more on process oriented impact. Anova results also indicate that perceptions on process oriented impact significantly differ among exporter firms, domestic market oriented firms and firms being active in internal and external markets. Process oriented impact generate results in favor of exporting firms.

Financial innovation has been described as the “life blood of efficient and responsive capital markets.” Yet, there have been few quantitative investigations of financial innovation and the diffusion of these new technologies. Of the latter, there have been only three prior quantitative studies, and all three used the same data set on automated teller machines! ; This paper makes a significant contribution to the financial innovation literature by examining the diffusion of a recent important innovation of the 1990s: banks’ use of credit scoring for small business lending. The authors examine the responses of 95 large banking organizations to a survey that asked whether they had adopted credit scoring for small business lending as of June 1997 (56 had done so) and, if they had adopted it, when they had done so. The authors estimate hazard and tobit models to explain the diffusion pattern of small business credit scoring models. Explanatory variables include several market, firm, and managerial factors of the banking organizations under study. ; The hazard model indicates that larger banking organizations introduced innovation earlier, as did those located in the New York Federal Reserve district; both results are consistent with expectations. The tobit model confirms these results and also finds that organizations with fewer separately chartered banks but more branches introduced innovation earlier, which is consistent with theories stressing the importance of bank organizational form on lending style. Though the managerial variables signs are consistent with our expectations, none yields significant results.

This paper deals with the first results of some research into the field of Business-to-Business, involving some processes of subcontracting implemented at an international level by SMEs operating in a high tech sector (PCBs). Particular attention has been placed on the prospects for development of the SME, which are located in the industrial district of Castelfidardo, and which operate in the global market. This research has the aim of studying the modifications that have effected the demand and supply of the sector of printed circuits within the district. Some growth strategies of client firms of the Marche are also investigated. The paper helps to interpret the strategies of subcontractor firms within the processes of the international decentralisation of production and in the context of global competition. Classification JEL : L2, M13, O3, O32.

The question whether technological progress displaces employment or whether technological advance is beneficial for the level of employment has been at the core of economic debate for over two centuries. The beneficial effect might be achieved by several compensation mechanisms within the economic system. In this paper we categorize these compensation mechanisms into two basic categories that reflect the different nature of the ideas ruling the compensation. We discriminate the mechanisms of employment despite innovation from employment via innovation. In the context of new innovation economics we model an artificial industry implementing both compensation mechanisms. Simulation analysis is used to examine both the short–run and long–run properties of the model. There we focus on the influence of wage restraint policy on the functioning of the compensation mechanism.

International audience; The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between the adoption of Information Technologies (IT) and the adoption of New Organizational Practices (NOP) in the context of an emerging country (Tunisia). Based on face-to-face questionnaire, to a random sample of 175 Tunisian manufactures, and using an ordered logit model, our empirical results show a significant link between IT adoption and NOP. We show that the complementarity is strengthened when the technology evolves. Adoption and usage of latest technologies are pushed by the prior adoption of NOP.

We use data from over 1500 Finnish companies for the years 2006-2008 and 2008-2010 to explore complementarity of a firm’s R&D strategy with its external knowledge acquisition and innovation collaboration strategies. We define knowledge complementarity (tacit knowledge complementarity) of R&D capabilities to exist when increase in investments in R&D also increases marginal returns from broader external knowledge search (deeper innovation collaboration with external partners). Our estimation results provide support for knowledge complementarity of external R&D. Instead, our data provide no evidence on tacit knowledge complementary of external R&D generally. However, our empirical results concerning the separate types of external R&D suggest that a firm’s acquisition of new technology (i.e., advanced machinery, equipment or software) for innovation purposes appears to be tacit knowledge complementary.

Draft chapter for the forthcoming Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Vols. 5A and 5B This paper reviews academic research on the connections between agglomeration and innovation. The authors first describe the conceptual distinctions between invention and innovation. They then discuss how these factors are frequently measured in the data and note some resulting empirical regularities. Innovative activity tends to be more concentrated than industrial activity, and the authors discuss important findings from the literature about why this is so. The authors highlight the traits of cities (e.g., size, industrial diversity) that theoretical and empirical work link to innovation, and they discuss factors that help sustain these features (e.g., the localization of entrepreneurial finance).

This chapter reviews academic research on the connections between agglomeration and innovation. We first describe the conceptual distinctions between invention and innovation. We then describe how these factors are frequently measured in the data and some resulting empirical regularities. Innovative activity tends to be more concentrated than industrial activity, and we discuss important findings from the literature about why this is so. We highlight the traits of cities (e.g., size, industrial diversity) that theoretical and empirical work link to innovation, and we discuss factors that help sustain these features (e.g., the localization of entrepreneurial finance).

The late nineteenth century Danish agricultural revolution saw the modernization and growth of the dairy industry. Denmark rapidly caught up with the leading economies, and Danish dairying led the world in terms of productivity. Uniquely in a world perspective, high quality micro-level data exist documenting this episode. These allow the use of the tool of modern agricultural economists, stochastic frontier analysis, to estimate production functions for milk and thus find the determinants of these productivity and efficiency advances. We identify the contribution of modernization through specific new technologies and practices.

This report explores how U.S. federal institutions fund and influence innovation in the knowledge economy context and if any agencies or particular policies could be replicated in other countries. Three key U.S. agencies are identified as having significantly contributed to innovation and growth: (1) the Small Business Innovative Research program (SBIR), (2) the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) and (3) the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA). How these agencies have advanced US innovation is explained in detail. The beginning of the report offers a lens for understanding why and how research and development does not necessarily lead to innovation. The report explores how ideas must pass through a knowledge filter in order to become successful innovations. This filter, which may impede potential innovations, means that transfers from ideas to innovations are not linear, nor are they always successful even though conditions may be suitable. Therefore, U.S. agencies are needed to help firms pass through the Valley of Death from ideas to successful commercial innovations. The report identifies US policies which could conceivably be replicated in other countries. Most notably, the authors argue that spurring innovation from European universities, with the help of an SBIR-like institution, may offer considerable help in transforming European ideas into innovations. The report concludes that the SBIR offered significant aid to innovative firms in the US and its replication by Horizon 2020 could also offer significant advantages for commercialization of inventions and ideas. The report also points out potential problems in a adopting an SBIR-like program in other countries.

With the dwindling of natural resources, like oil and gas, even resource-rich countries like Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia have to re-adjust their development strategies. Governing knowledge for development (K4D) is seen as a way out of the dilemma of reduced revenues from natural resources. This paper analyses the attempts to create knowledge clusters as a strategy to move Brunei and Malaysia towards knowledge-based economies. Our study shows that several knowledge clusters have already been established in Peninsular Malaysia and are starting to emerge in Brunei Darussalam. The paper is structured as follows: the first section explains the dangers of falling into a “knowledge trap” and the strategies a country may adopt to govern knowledge. The second section looks at the epistemic landscapes in Peninsular Malaysia. Two knowledge clusters are the focal points of analysis, namely the North Corridor-Penang Knowledge Cluster and the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC-Cyberjaya) Knowledge Cluster. We then provide empirical evidence of knowledge cluster formation in Brunei Darussalam as an effort to build up knowledge institutions and to diversify its economy. The paper ends with recommendations how to build the basis for a move towards a knowledge-based economy.

Resume L’objet de cette contribution est de proposer une grille d’analyse de la geographie de l’innovation des nouvelles entreprises de biotechnologies prenant en compte la diversite des modeles d’entreprise. Cette recherche s’appuie sur l’analyse comparee de soixante et une nouvelles entreprises de biotechnologies francaises et de leur cent vingt neuf fondateurs16. Quatre modeles d’entreprise sont differencies, chacun reposant sur des competences des equipes de fondateurs, des ressources mobilisees pour assurer la viabilite de leur projet et des geographies de l’innovation distinctes.

Extending research on organizational learning to multi-product environments is of particular importance given that the vast majority of products are manufactured in such environments. We investigate learning in a multi-product facility drawing on exceptionally rich data for a manufacturing firm that is a leading producer of high technology components. Weekly data for 10 years from the firm's production and human resource tracking systems are augmented by surveys of managers and engineers and by extensive first-hand observation. We find that productivity improves when multiple generations of the firm's primary product family are produced concurrently, reflecting the firm's ability to augment and transfer knowledge from older to newer product generations. No significant transfer of knowledge is evident between the primary product family and other products. Productivity is, however, decreased when the production facility is faced with extensive within-product buyer-specific customizations.We develop the implications of these findings for theory and practice.

Prior work suggests that more valuable patents are cited more and this view has become standard in the empirical innovation literature. Using an NPE-derived dataset with patent-specific revenues we find that the relationship of citations to value in fact forms an inverted-U, with fewer citations at the high end of value than in the middle. Since the value of patents is concentrated in those at the high end, this is a challenge to both the empirical literature and the intuition behind it. We attempt to explain this relationship with a simple model of innovation, allowing for both productive and strategic patents. We find evidence of greater use of strategic patents where it would be most expected: among corporations, in fields of rapid development, in more recent patents and where divisional and continuation applications are employed. These findings have important implications for our basic understanding of growth, innovation, and intellectual property policy.

A vintage capital model where the firm makes decisions about whether to replace or upgrade its old capital stock with new capital is developed in this paper. The model is used to study how technological characteristics of capital affect investment behavior. In particular, it is asked how the rate of technological advance, the compatibility between capital stocks of different vintages, and the extent of learning-by-doing affect investment behavior. The model sheds light on the “information technology productivity paradox.” The results suggest that the paradox may just be an artifact of the estimation procedures used, which ignore the vintage features of capital. Finally, the key implications of the model are tested using firm-level data. The data support the implications of the model that information technology (IT) capital is associated with a strong learning-by-doing effect and that IT capital investment is lumpier than other kinds of capital investment.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: E1, E2, O3, O4, L2, L6.

L’objectif de cette étude est de présenter les grandes phases du développement de l’entrepreneuriat à Dunkerque depuis le 19e siècle. Depuis cette période, l’économie dunkerquoise s’est développée sur la grande industrie et l’emploi salarié. Au cours du temps, l’industrie s’est transformée mais elle est restée dominante et l’emploi salarié également. La crise économique des années 1970 a remis en cause cette évolution. Des mesures de politique publique ont été prises pour promouvoir la création d’entreprise. Cependant, le nombre de créations d’entreprises reste faible. On ne devient pas patron par décret ! Nos conclusions s’appuient principalement sur une enquête réalisée en 2011 sur 80 nouveaux entrepreneurs. The aim of this article is to present the large phases of the development of entrepreneurship in Dunkirk since the 19th century. Since this period, the development of the economy of Dunkirk has been based on big industrial enterprises and on salaried employment. The industrial activity changed all along the period, but big industry remained strong as well as salaried employment too. The economic crisis of 1970s stopped this evolution. Public policies are now oriented toward the promotion of new businesses. Nevertheless, the number of creation of new enterprises remains low. People cannot become entrepreneur by law! Our conclusions are based on a case study achieved in 2011 on the new entrepreneurs in the city of Dunkrik (North of France).

La Chine est actuellement le plus grand marché de smartphones dans le monde, même plus grand que les Etats-Unis. Cela fait beaucoup de vendeurs qui luttent pour accroître leur part de marché dans le pays. Par ailleurs, de plus en plus d’entreprises chinoises investissent dans la R&D de la téléphonie mobile, notamment à la production de smartphones afin de s’introduire sur ce marché. Ce document cherche à montrer l’importance du transfert de technologies et le développement de la téléphonie mobile en Chine prenant le cas du groupe Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Dans la première partie, il présente l’importance du marché chinois de la téléphonie mobile et les producteurs de téléphones mobiles en Chine. La deuxième partie présente le développement de la production des téléphones mobiles et la place de Huawei en Chine. La dernière partie explique l’importance et les limites d’une stratégie de croissance fondée sur les transferts de technologie. China is nowadays the biggest smart phone market in the world, even before the US. The sellers’ competition is intensifying as they try to increase their market share in China. Moreover, an increasing number of Chinese firms decide to invest in R&D to develop new models in particular new smart phones in order to gain their place in the Chinese market. This paper attempts to show the technology transfer and the development of mobile phone in China through the case of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.. In the first part, it presents the size of the Chinese mobile phone market and the producers in China. The second part analyses the development of the mobile phone manufacturing sector and the position of Huawei in China. The last part explains the importance and the limits of a growth strategy based on technology transfer.

Even if today's successful companies operating in the market were start-ups at some time, so far, no consensus could be found, if entrepreneurship is to be understood as an independent research discipline. Should entrepreneurship have its own theory based on generally accepted assumptions and constructs or should the field of research rather convince with an integrated perception and interfaces to many related disciplines? The terminological and conceptual difficulties come along with methodological challenges. In addition, data bases in entrepreneurship are often small and difficult to access and therefore restrict the choice of analytical methods. Which methodological problems must be addressed and what opportunities and prospects arise for empirical entrepreneurship research? Based on a literature review and an outline of the state of research, it will be discussed whether entrepreneurship could be established as an independent research discipline. Moreover, the use of data analysis methods to study entrepreneurship are surveyed to stress occuring problems and draw implications for the future of entrepreneurship research, as well as for the practice.

The conventional wisdom is that the formation of patent pools is welfare enhancing when patents are complementary, since the pool avoids a double-marginalization problem associated with independent licensing. This conventional wisdom relies on the effects that pooling has on downstream prices. However, it does not account for the potentially significant role of the effect of pooling on downstream innovation. The focus of this paper is on downstream product development and commercialization on the basis of perfectly complementary patents. We consider development technologies that entail spillovers between rivals, and assume that final demand products are imperfect substitutes. When pool formation facilitates information sharing and either increases spillovers in development or decreases the degree of product differentiation, patent pools can adversely affect welfare by reducing the incentives towards product development and product market competition|even with perfectly complementary patents. The analysis modifies and even negates the conventional wisdom for some settings and suggests why patent pools are uncommon in science-based industries such as biotech and pharmaceuticals that are characterized by tacit knowledge and incomplete patents.

We develop a theory of innovation for entry and sale into oligopoly, and show that inventions of higher quality are more likely to be sold (or licensed) to an incumbent due to strategic product market effects on the sales price. Such preemptive acquisitions by incumbents are shown to stimulate the process of creative destruction by increasing the entrepreneurial effort allocated to high-quality invention projects. Using data on patents granted to small firms and individuals, we find evidence that high-quality inventions are sold under preemptive bidding competition. Asymmetric information problems are shown to be solved by verification through entry for sale.