Search

In this paper we investigate the determinants of cooperative innovation and put our main focus on the regional or spatial and on the technological or sectoral dimension. We suggest a method to disentangle these two factors and to extract differential regional effects. The latter can be used to identify and evaluate the strength of regional innovation systems. Applying this method to German patent data we find evidence that regional differences in the degree of cooperative innovation are not only due to the technological/sectoral composition of the region but also due to a specific regional effect.

This paper investigates the processes by which scientific knowledge is created and legitimized. It focuses on scientific developments in a branch of medicine and explores the pathways through which the growth of knowledge enables advances in medical science and in clinical practice. This work draws conceptually on evolutionary approaches to technological change. The empirical part presents a longitudinal analysis of a database of scientific publications in the field of ophthalmology over a period of 50 years. Such an exercise allows us to identify pathways of shared understanding on a disease area, and to map out distinctive trajectories followed by the ophthalmology research community. The paper also contributes to general understanding of the innovation process by supporting the notion that knowledge coordination is a distributed process that cuts across and connects complementary areas of expertise.

This paper reviews approaches used for evaluating the performance of local or regional innovation systems. This evaluation is performed by a benchmarking approach in which a frontier production function can be determined, based on a knowledge production function relating innovation inputs and innovation outputs. In analyses on the regional level and especially when acknowledging regional innovation systems those approaches have to take into account cooperative invention and innovation the core of the innovation system approach. To make these interactive effects visible, a method is suggested to identify the relative regional impact on cooperative innovative activities.

This paper has two goals. First, it analyzes the extent to which the innovativeness of spin-offs, either born from a research facility or from another company, is influenced by locational conditions. Second, it provides evidence on how important local cooperation links are in comparison to nonlocal ones. Using a sample of approximately 1,500 East German firms from knowledge-intensive sectors, we estimate a structural equation model applying the partial least squares method. We find that proximity to local research institutes and universities is the most influential factor for the cooperation intensity of spin-offs. Furthermore, the higher the cooperation intensity, the greater the innovativeness of a firm. Moreover, the results indicate that it is not the local but the nonlocal cooperation ties that are more conducive to innovativeness of research spin-offs. The findings also highlight that the innovativeness of research spin-offs with solely local links is strongly depends on support from various authorities and institutions.

For academic spin-offs I analyze the length of time between the founder's leaving of academia and the establishment of his firm. Technology transfer can take place even years after leaving the mother institution. A duration analysis reveals that a longer time-lag is caused by the necessity of assembling complementary skills, either by acquisition by a single founder or by searching for suitable team members. Furthermore, new ventures are established earlier if the intensity of technology transfer is high, the founders have access to university infrastructure, or received informal support by former colleagues.

Zukunftsplattform Obergurgl 2006. Ed.: M. Grumiller ; T. D. Märk Literaturangaben Beitr. teilw. dt., teilw. engl.

In 2004, European competition law had been faced with considerable changes due to the introduction of the new Council Regulation No. 1/2003. One of the major renewals was the replacement of the centralized notification system for inter-company cooperations in favor of a so-called legal exemption system. We analyze the implications of this reform on the agreements firms implement. In contrast to previous research we focus on the reform's impact on especially welfare enhancing, namely innovative agreements. We show that the law's intention to reduce the incentive to establish illegal cartels will be reached. However, by the same mechanism, also highly innovative cooperations might be prevented. To avoid this unintended effect, we conclude that only fines but not the monitoring activities should be increased in order to deter illegal but not innovative agreements.

In this paper, we compare two different representations of Framework Programs as affiliation network: 'One-mode networks' and 'Two-mode networks'. The aim of this article is to show that the choice of the representation has an impact on the analysis of the networks and on the results of the analysis. In order to support our proposals, we present two forms of representation and different indicators used in the analysis. We study the network of the 6th Framework Program using the two forms of representation. In particular, we show that the identification of the central nodes is sensitive to the chosen representation. Furthermore, the nodes forming the core of the network vary according to the representation. These differences of results are important as they can influence innovation policies.

Nanomaterials are seen as a key technology for the 21st Century, and much is expected of them in terms of innovation and economic growth. They could open the way to many radically new applications, which would form the basis of innovative products. In this context, it seems all the more important for regions to put their own innovation systems in place, and to ensure that they offer a suitable location for such activities in order to benefit from the expected growth. Many regions have already done so by establishing ?science parks? and ?nanoclusters?. As nanomaterials are still in their infancy, both public research institutes and private businesses could play a vital role in the process. This paper investigates what conditions and configurations allow a regional innovation system to be competitive in a cutting-edge technology like nanomaterials. We analyse European Patent Office data at the German district level (NUTS-3) on applications for nanomaterial patents, in order to chart the effects of localised research and development (R&D) in the public and private sector. We estimate two negative binomial models in a knowledge production function framework and include a spatial filtering approach to adjust for spatial effects. Our results indicate that there is a significant positive effect of both public and private R&D on the production of nanomaterial patents. Moreover, we find a positive interaction between them which hints at the importance of their co-location for realising the full potential of an emerging technology like nanomaterials.

This paper develops theoretical standpoints to investigate and analyse university inventors and patenting activities. Although the studies on academic entrepreneurship and university patenting have substantially increased, first there have not been enough studies on individual inventors and second the current theoretical studies are not eclectic enough to capture the different factors that may explain university inventors patenting activities. The framework described here addresses this need. To accomplish this we inductively derive several factors from a substantial number of studies on university patenting and entrepreneurship, and develop these factors into a tentative framework. It is our hope that this framework is useful in future empirical research on university patenting and provides a point of departure for scientists.

Starting from the premise that firms are distinct in terms of their capacity to create radical product innovations, the present paper attempts to explore how firms choose between different forms of R&D cooperation and their consequences for social welfare. It studies a duopolistic market, where firms have to choose between R&D competition, a cost sharing alliance, an information sharing alliance or an R&D cartel. The paper demonstrates that asymmetry has an impact on alliance choice and social welfare. With similar firms, the cost sharing alliance will be preferred to R&D competition or any other form of collaboration. With significant asymmetry no alliance may be formed. In terms of social welfare, any alliance is preferable to R&D competition and the R&D cartel is the best. Given this inherent contradiction between private preferences and optimal social choice, the paper provides a rationale for public investment in terms of science and technology parks to promote R&D cartels.

Studies analyzing the importance of intra- and inter-regional cooperation for regional innovation performance are mainly of qualitative nature and focus strongly on the positive effects that high levels of cooperation can yield. For the case of the German labor market regions and the Electrics & Electronics industry the paper provides a quantitative-empirical analysis taking into account the possibility of negative effects related to regional lock-in, lock-out, and cooperation overload situations. Using conditional nonparametric frontier techniques and cooperation behavior measures we find positive as well as substantial negative effects of cooperation with the latter being induced by excessive and unbalanced cooperation behavior.

This paper investigates the possible presence of three problems in regional innovation systems (RIS): intermediation, reciprocity and compatibility. Based on firm data gathered for three different regions, Northern Hesse, Jena and Sophia Antipolis, we can show that a low propensity to cooperate in a RIS is related to poorly performing intermediaries and a low complementarity with the regional knowledge base. The issue of trust in cooperating tends to have no effect on the propensity to cooperate. However, it is a main determinant of failed cooperation projects.

The flow of knowledge through interaction between innovative actors is central to the systemic view of innovation. We review the literature on interaction and innovator networks with a focus on regional aspects. To illustrate the relevance of these relations, we apply social network analysis methods to describe the evolution of the innovator network of Jena, Germany in the period from 1995 to 2001. During this period, the network is characterised by growth in the number of patents, actors and relations, with central positions of public research. The evolution is directed towards an increasing focus on core competencies of the network.

Public procurement has been at the centre of recent discussions on innovation policy on both European and national levels (e.g., Aho-Report, Barcelona Strategy). It has a large potential to stimulate innovation since it accounts for 16% of combined EU-15 GDP. We embed public procurement for innovation into the broader framework of public policies to stimulate innovation: regulations, R&D subsidies and knowledge infrastructure (i.e. basic research at universities). We synthesize the characteristics of all four instruments based on existing literature and quantitatively compare their effects on innovation success. Our empirical investigation rests upon a survey of more than 1,100 innovative firms in Germany. Our survey puts us in the position to trace all sources of valuable innovation impulses, namely public customers, law and regulations, universities and public funding for R&D. We relate these sources back to innovation success. We find that (non-defense related) public procurement and knowledge spillovers from universities propel innovation success equally. In a second step, we explore whether these effects vary across firms (e.g. size, location, industry). The benefits of university knowledge apply uniformly to all firms. However, public procurement is especially effective for smaller firms in regions under economic stress as well as in distributive and technological services. Based on these findings targeted policy recommendations can be developed.

Firms compete increasingly in an open innovation environment. Search strategies for external knowledge become therefore crucial for firm success. Existing research differentiates between the breadth (diversity) and depth (intensity) with which firms pursue external knowledge source. A consensus exists that resource constrains force firms to balance both dimensions. However, relatively little is known on how managers can selectively strengthen one of these dimensions. We argue conceptually that the breadth and depth of a search strategy depends upon the nature of a firm’s absorptive capacity (i.e. whether they are built through internal or external R&D activities) and the munificence of its innovation environment. We test these hypotheses empirically for a large sample of more than 8,300 firms from 12 European countries. Our empirical results show that in-house R&D strengthens the depth of a firm’s search strategy while external R&D activities (e.g. contract research) increase its breadth. Moreover, we find that scarce innovation environments favor deep search strategies while breadth is more prevalent in munificent environments. We develop targeted management recommendations based on these results.

This work deals with the determinants of cooperative invention and innovation within innovation systems. Several proximity dimensions are used to identify the levels on which systemic innovation activities can be observed. To disentangle the effects of different proximity dimensions a procedure is suggested to identify the relative regional impact (RRI) on cooperative invention and innovation. Applying this method to German patent data shows that there are significant differences in the RRI of German regions. These differences are related to measures of the technological relatedness of the regions knowledge bases, and over time they show a considerable path dependency.

Determining the research and development (R&D) boundaries of the firm as the choice between internal, collaborative and external technology acquisition has since long been a major challenge for firms to secure a continuous stream of innovative products or processes. While research on R&D cooperation or strategic alliances is abundant, little is known about the outsourcing of R&D activities to contract research organizations and its implications for innovation performance. This paper investigates the driving forces of external technology sourcing through contract research based on arguments from transaction cost theory and the resource-based view of the firm. Using a large and comprehensive data set of innovating firms from Germany our findings suggest that technological uncertainty, contractual experience and openness to external knowledge sources motivate the choice for engaging in contract research activities. Moreover, we show that internal and external R&D sourcing are complements: the marginal contribution of internal (external) R&D is the larger the more firms spend on external (internal) R&D.

A key issue of dfferent streams of economic literature is to determine the impact of certain dimensions of proximity on the cooperative behavior of actors and, thus, on interactive learning processes. This paper is a quantitative study on the impact of technological and geographical proximity on the choice of the cooperation partner. Patents that were filed for Germany in the years 1998 to 2003 are used to identify the impact of both dimensions of proximity as well as their interplay. It can be shown that an increasing proximity in either of these dimensions has an independent positive impact on the cooperation probability.

Valuable knowledge emerges increasingly outside of firm boundaries, in particular in public research institutions and universities. The question is how firms organize their interactions with universities effectively to acquire knowledge and apply it successfully. Literature has so far largely ignored that firms may combine different types of interactions with universities for optimizing these knowledge sourcing strategies. We argue conceptually that firms need diverse (broad) and highly developed (deep) combinations of various interactions with universities to maximize returns from these linkages. Our empirical investigation rests upon a survey of more than 800 firms in Germany. We find that both the diversity and intensity of interactions with universities propel innovation success. However, broadening the spectrum of interactions is more beneficial with regard to innovation success. In an exploratory step we go beyond breadth and depth of interactions by identifying four distinct patterns of interaction. Our findings show that formal forms of interaction (joint/contract) research provide the best balance between joint knowledge development and value capture.

This paper concerns the regional innovation system approach. It deals with the characteristics of three regional systems, Northern Hesse, Alpes-Maritime and Jena, and focusses on each regional network of innovators. In this context the importance of the size and homogeneity of a regional pool of knowledge spillovers for those networks is analyzed. We find evidence that an increasing regional knowledge base in combination with an increasing homogeneity of this knowledge base enhances the knowledge ows and the incentives for actors to interact with each other.

Incentives and assistance provided by TTOs, university policies, patent legislation and scientific disciplines are certainly part of the explanations for academic entrepreneurship. But they are only one facet of the story. Another facet is related to the scientists' motives, expectations and perceptions about the importance and necessity of such activities. There are no comprehensive studies to date that cover both internal and external factors. This is an important, complex and relatively under-researched theme. Our findings suggest that scientists are rarely engage in patenting activities for economic profit reasons or due to institutional and organizational support. Individual relations and networks with firms and other actors found to be important factors for scientists' entrepreneurial activities. Serial inventors act as role models to other scientists and crucial in the creation of an entrepreneurial milieu at the universities, as others would be affected by these behaviours and tend to follow them. However, the fact that university policies and TTOs have provided little incentives for scientists to get involved in entrepreneurship should not be considered to rule out institutional effects.

Innovation cooperation has been recognised as an important detfirminant of enterprises?innovation activity, productivity, and growth, and has recently become the subject of intensive research. We explore the importance of innovation cooperation for the innovation activity of Slovenian enterprises, what kind of innovation cooperation is the most 'productive?for innovation activities, and whether the location and foreign ownership of innovation cooperation matters. Probit estimations confirmed external innovation cooperation as one of the most important incentives for innovation activity, after R&D spending. However, a significant influence was only confirmed for domestic and not for international innovation cooperation in general. The efficiency varies also by type of partners; while inter-firm innovation cooperation significantly increases the probability of innovation, this was not found regarding cooperation with universities and R&D institutes. The impact of innovation cooperation differs by distance; the contribution of EU partners to innovation activity was the highest (higher then that of domestic partners), while partners from other locations may even decrease the probability of innovation.

We analyze information and knowledge transfer in a sample of 16 German regional innovation networks with almost 300 firms and research organizations involved. The results indicate that strong ties are more beneficial for the exchange of knowledge and information than weak ties. Moreover, our results suggest that broker positions tend to be associated with social returns rather than with private benefits.

The discussion on regional innovation systems emphasizes the duality of local and global links. While the former enable effective knowledge exchange between regional actors, the latter are considered to provide regional systems with knowledge diverse to their knowledge base. Our empirical analysis of 18 German regional innovation networks highlights the importance of public research organizations for inter-regional knowledge exchange. The broker and gatekeeper function of public research organizations may be particularly important in lagging regions that typically suffer from a lack of large firms who often assume the role of gatekeepers of knowledge”.

This study scrutinizes the impact of value-creating practices in university-industry technology transfer that facilitate the diffusion of knowledge generated in academic research towards its successful application by companies on markets. To be more precise, the aim is to demarcate the role that US university technology transfer offices (TTOs), one of the consequential arrangements conjured into existence by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, play in matching the substance of academic research and the need-driven demand of commercial markets. In the process, they implicitly, yet strategically, guarantee the sustainability of the flow of technologies out of the laboratories towards market application, as their actions and motives uphold and sustain the incentive structures of both of the universes, the academic and the commercial. This is accomplished by performing and specializing in the very functions that neither universe has been able or willing to perform in order to take a step closer towards each other. These contributions are often hard to capture in quantitative measures, which has led to common criticism about the effectiveness of TTOs. We propose such measures to be used with care in the comparative evaluation of TTO performance, but also point at and recognize their value as parameters that can be utilized to internally monitor the performance of each TTO individually over time as a tool of management. Some alternative, Intellectual Capital based measures are suggested.

This study investigates how local milieus foster innovation success in firms. We complement the common practice of linking firm performance indicators to regional characteristics with survey evidence on the perceived importance of locational factors. While the former approach assumes that location characteristics affect all firms in the same way, the survey allows us to model how firms judge the attractiveness of locations using a heterogeneous set of criteria. It turns out that the availability of highly skilled labor and the proximity to suppliers matter for firms' innovation performance. Interestingly, location factors obtained from the survey provide a more accurate explanation of how local milieus facilitate innovation.

We develop a model of endogenous network formation in order to examine the incentives for R&D collaboration in a mixed oligopoly. Our analysis reveals that the complete network, where each firm collaborates with all others, is uniquely stable, industry-profit maximizing and efficient. This result is in contrast with earlier contributions in private oligopoly where under strong market rivalry a conflict between stable and efficient networks is likely to occur. A key finding of the paper is that state-owned enterprises may be used as policy instruments in tackling the potential conflict between individual and collective incentives for R&D collaboration.

This policy paper on science-industry technology transfer has four emphases: the rationale of recent changes in German science policy, the contribution of diverse transfer channels to economic development as well as the role of IPR in that context, the differences in the institutional framework between Europe and USA regarding academic patenting, and the organisational design of technology transfer offices (TTOs). The extensive literature review highlights the importance of TTOs, the necessity of supporting manifold transfer channels, and continuous government funding of intermediaries. Important open research questions are the relative importance of transfer channels and the optimal size of TTOs.

Die Kernspinresonanz (NMR) ist ein Phänomen, das einen präzisen Blick in das Innere der Materie erlaubt. Für Chemiker und Biologen hat ihre Messung im Laufe der vergangenen 50 Jahre immer mehr Bedeutung gewonnen. Die analytische Präzision hat ihren Preis: Ein hochauflösendes NMR-Spektrometer kostet 6,4 Millionen Euro. Auch deshalb haben sich fünf europäische NMR-Zentren jetzt zu einem Großforschungsverbund zusammengeschlossen; unter Federführung Frankfurts und gefördert von der Europäischen Union – damit die Spitzenstellung Europas auf dem Gebiet der NMR-Forschung erhalten und ausgebaut werden kann.

This paper analyses the effects of innovation networks on product and pro-cess innovation and sales growth of high technology SMEs. Innovation net-works are positively related to both product and process innovation, i.e. know-ledge creation. One exception is the negative effect of innovation networks with suppliers on product innovation. Older SMEs are more product innovative than young SMEs. The positive relation between firm size and (process) inno-vation, disappears when networks are introduced into the analyses. The general conclusion is that vertical innovation networks remove the effect of firm size on process innovation. In other words, high-tech SMEs can ‘borrow’ size if they co-operate with customers, but especially with suppliers for pro-cess innovation. So smallness is not necessarily a disadvantage for inno-vation, as long as firms cooperate with other organisations. Innovation and networks do not seem to effect value creation, measured as sales growth.

Business incubation as an instrument of fostering new venture formation is widely discussed in the research field of entrepreneurship. Numerous aspects of Business Incubators (BIs) have already been investigated in more depth: e.g. the organizational structure, funding, objectives, provided services, incubatee selection policy, impacts on the survival and growth of incubatee firms etc. So far, researchers focused their work on public-sponsored, private-sponsored, and nonprofit-sponsored BIs as well as on university-related BIs. In the case of University Business Incubators (UBIs) research basically circulated around the question of how UBIs can support technology transfer. This paper focuses on a new type of UBI: the University Business Pre-Incubator (UPI). UPIs are facilities that support embryonic businesses during their planning stage by providing office space, consultancy and training, and mentoring services. In the scope of a comprehensive support program of the German government called 'EXIST - Existenzgruendungen aus der Wissenschaft' that started in 1998, a couple of German universities established pre-incubators to assist the development of new enterprises. So despite the lack of research literature concerning business-related pre-incubators, in practice, these institutions play an important role for German universities in fostering new ventures. This paper tries to make a substantial contribution to reduce the knowledge gap in the research area of UPIs. After defining the facility 'University Business Pre-Incubator' based on metaphorical considerations and the business incubation literature, the paper presents results from a national survey of UPIs in Germany. On the one hand these results show that UPI's organization differs in many aspects: size, age, planned time horizon, and total financial volume. On the other hand similarities could be identified, such as: UPIs offer consultancy, training, mentoring and coaching services, set requirements for accessing the UPI program, have common target groups, and are integrated in external as well as internal networks. In addition, a case study of the UPI 'Gruendungslabor' is presented before motivating possible fields for future research.

In this paper we investigate the factors that lead firms to cooperate with partners from foreign countries on innovation activities. Portuguese and German data from the harmonised Community Innovation Survey (CIS III) allow us to compare innovation cooperation behaviour of private firms in the two countries. Using a bivariate probit model, we show that the characteristics of firms cooperating with foreigners in both countries are quite similar. International activities other than cooperation, firm size and the importance of protection methods for knowledge have a positive influence in both countries on the decision to cooperate with foreign partners. Some differences remain, however: In Germany, exporters are more likely to cooperate with foreign partners than non-exporters, whereas in Portugal this is not the case.

Nachdem die chinesische Volkswirtschaft im Verlauf der 1990er Jahre zur Werkbank der Welt” aufgestiegen war, ist angesichts massiv ausgeweiteter F&E Budgets in den letzten Jahren die Frage aufgekommen, inwiefern China in naher Zukunft nicht auch zur Wissensfabrik der Welt aufsteigen könnte. Aber kann China tatsächlich auch zu einem Zentrum der globalen Wissensgenerierung werden? Welche Implikationen würden dadurch für den bislang die globale W&T [Wissenschaft & Technik] Landschaft mit dominierenden Forschungsstandort Deutschland ergeben? Die vorliegende Studie befasst sich vor dem Hintergrund dieses Fragenkomplexes mit den aktuellen Entwicklungen im chinesischen W&T Komplex. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf der industrienahen Forschung. Ziel ist es, die strategische Ausrichtung und Leistungsfähigkeit des chinesischen W&T Systems besser einschätzen zu können, um auf dieser Grundlage dann Schlussfolgerungen für den mit der chinesischen Herausforderung konfrontierten Forschungsstandort Deutschland ziehen zu können.

The internal density of a local network is said to increase the regionspecific knowledge-stock and might lead to a comparative advantage. However, it might also lead to a lock-in situation, if local trajectories are directed towards inferior solutions. Accordingly it is argued that successful clusters are characterised by the existence of gatekeepers, i.e. actors that generate novelty by drawing on local and external knowledge. We attempt to answer questions related to the role and characteristics of gatekeepers within regional innovation systems by applying social network analysis based on patent data for four East-German regions. The regional networks appear to be significantly different with respect to the overall degree of interaction and with respect to their relative outward orientation. Concerning the characteristics of gatekeepers, we find that size does not play the major role for being a gatekeeper. It is rather absorptive capacity that matters for gatekeepers. It also shows that public research organisations serve the functions of a gatekeeper to a higher degree than private actors.

In Deutschland gibt es spürbare Innovationsdefizite beim Mittelstand im Vergleich zu Großunternehmen. Das System der staatlichen Forschungsförderung leistet nur begrenzt Abhilfe, auch aufgrund seiner technologischen Selektivität und unnötigen Bürokratie. Wie die vorliegende Analyse zeigt, wirkt die Forschungsförderung aber positiv; jeder Euro Förderung induziert rund 70 Cent zusätzliche private FuE-Ausgaben. Um das EU-Ziel einer Innovationsintensität von 3 Prozent des BIP zu erreichen, ist die Politik gefordert, das System der Forschungsförderung zu optimieren. Aus der Befragung von über 3.000 Unternehmen lassen sich folgende Handlungsempfehlungen ableiten: (1) Schaffung eines gemeinsamen Internetportals für die gesamte Forschungsförderung, (2) Vereinfachung der Antragswege durch abgespeckte Bewertungs- und Kontrollverfahren, (3) Stärkung der technologieungebundenen Förderung für KMU, (4) Verbesserung des Wagniskapitalmarktes, (5) Einführung von Steuervergünstigungen für FuE, (6) eine Forschungsprämie, gegebenenfalls mit einer Bevorzugung von KMU, und schließlich (7) die Verbesserung der Governance-Strukturen in der staatlichen Förderpolitik. In Germany there is considerably less innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) than in large companies. The government's arrangements for promoting innovation provide only a limited corrective here, not least because they are selective in the technologies they promote and unnecessarily bureaucratic. Nonetheless, as the present analysis shows, research promotion is having a positive effect: every euro of subsidy leads to approximately 70 cents of additional private expenditure on R&D. If the EU's target of raising innovation intensity to 3 percent of GDP is to be achieved, however, policymakers will have to improve the system of research promotion even further. A survey of over 3,000 companies suggests the following improvements: (1) creating a single internet portal for all research promotion; (2) simplifying the application process by limiting assessment and monitoring procedures; (3) increasing the subsidies for SMEs which are not restricted to certain technologies; (4) improving the market for venture capital; (5) introducing tax breaks for R&D; (6) offering a research award, perhaps with a bias towards SMEs, and finally (7) improving the way government R&D-promotion policy is managed and administered.

Der deutsche Maschinenbau positioniert sich im internationalen Wettbewerb vorrangig als Technologie-, Innovations- und Qualitätsführer. Dies gelingt ihm bislang, obwohl die FuE-Intensität der Branche im Mittel nicht auf Spitzentechnologie hindeutet. Gepaart mit der hohen Komplexität der meist in Einzel- oder Kleinserie gefertigten Produkte und einer starken Orientierung an individuellen Kundenwünschen erfordert dies den Einsatz von unterstützenden technischen und organisatorischen Konzepten, um vorhandene Innovationsressourcen möglichst effektiv und effizient einzusetzen. Der deutsche Maschinenbau positioniert sich im internationalen Wettbewerb vorrangig als Technologie-, Innovations- und Qualitätsführer. Dies gelingt ihm bislang, obwohl die FuE-Intensität der Branche im Mittel nicht auf Spitzentechnologie hindeutet. Gepaart mit der hohen Komplexität der meist in Einzel- oder Kleinserie gefertigten Produkte und einer starken Orientierung an individuellen Kundenwünschen erfordert dies den Einsatz von unterstützenden technischen und organisatorischen Konzepten, um vorhandene Innovationsressourcen möglichst effektiv und effizient einzusetzen.

Competitors can be valuable sources and partners for innovation activities. Against the background of international expansion of firms and increased international competition, the R&D collaborations with international competitors (international co-opetition) is becoming an increasingly interesting way to gain access to well guarded knowledge from abroad. However, to be able to benefit from these paradox alliances, a certain level of international co-opetition readiness is required. On the one hand, this readiness is important to protect the companies? intellectual property that should not be leaked to competitors. On the other hand, the firm has to be able to absorb and utilize the knowledge and capabilities of the collaborating competitor. Hence, we envision co-opetition as a balancing act between appropriability practices and absorptive capacities in a cross-border context. We test these dual hypotheses for a broad sample of roughly 1,000 innovative firms in the German manufacturing sector. We find that co-opetition with international competitors requires a shift in appropriability practices from informal methods (secrecy, lead time) towards formal ones (like patents and copyrights). Besides, we discover that the readiness for international co-opetition can be achieved by developing international collaboration experience through collaborations with international customers or suppliers.

Subsidising research networks has become a popular instrument in technology policies, driven mainly by expected positive spillovers. In particular, the stimulation of R&D co-operation between scientific institutions and industry is considered as most promising. In the context of policy evaluation we analyse if public R&D funding is suitable for influencing firms' collaborative behaviour in the intended way and where applicable, if a lasting change results. The empirical analysis is based on German CIS data and a supplemental telephone survey. Using a nearest-neighbour matching approach we find that R&D funding is indeed a particularly valuable tool for the linking of science into industry R&D partnerships. However, we also show in a bivariate probit analysis that newly initiated R&D co-operations with science are less likely to be continued after funding has ended compared to already existing co-operations. Therefore, the behavioural change induced by public funding is not necessarily longlived.

"Akademische Ausgründungen aus Hochschulen und Forschungseinrichtungen stehen hoch im Kurs. Bund und Länder bemühen sich schon seit Jahren die Zahl dieser Spin-offs zu erhöhen, weil Unternehmensgründungen als Ausweis einer innovativen Forschungspolitik gelten. Allerdings bleibt die faktische Zahl der Neugründungen sehr gering. In diesem Papier wird der Frage nachgegangen, warum die Bedeutung der Spin-offs dennoch seit vielen Jahren im politischen Alltagsgeschäft so hoch ist. Beantwortet wird diese Frage durch den Nachweis, dass Spin-offs im Technologietransfer ein wichtiges Element für die Begründung und Legitimation der Wissenschafts- und Forschungspolitik darstellen. Akademische Ausgründungen sind nämlich sehr gut geeignet, den Gebrauchswert der bundespolitischen Wissenschaftspolitik symbolisch belegen zu können. Spin-offs werden als Antwort auf eine ganze Reihe struktureller Probleme der Forschungspolitik genutzt. In den 1960er Jahren legitimierte das Forschungsministerium mit seiner Forderung nach einem internationalen Technologietransfer den Aufbau einer bundesrepublikanischen Großforschung und damit indirekt einer forschungspolitischen Kompetenzausweitung des Bundes gegenüber den Ländern. Seit der Rezession 1966/67 spiegelt sich im Technologietransfer-Diskurs zunehmend der Versuch, die Strukturprobleme der Großforschung durch eine Reform der Außenbeziehungen der Großforschungseinrichtungen zu bewältigen. In den 1980er Jahren kamen wirtschaftspolitische Strukturprobleme hinzu, auf die sich die forschungspolitischen Transferkonzepte bezogen. Das Papier schließt mit der Empfehlung, dass bei einer stärkeren Integration von Erkenntnissen über die Veränderungen wissenschaftlicher Produktionsweisen die Bedeutung von akademischen Ausgründungen neu diskutiert werden könnte." (Autorenreferat)

Im Rahmen des RIS-Projekts wurden zum Thema der Forschungs- und Entwicklungskooperationen zwischen KMU und wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen mehrere empirische Befragungen sowie ein gemeinsamer Workshop mit Vertretern beider Gruppen durchgeführt. Die Untersuchungsergebnisse synthetisierend ist festzuhalten, dass F&E-Kooperationen zwischen KMU und Hochschulinstituten für beide Partner einen hohen Stellenwert einnehmen. Beide Seiten beurteilen gemeinsame Forschungsprojekte für die Erreichung ihrer Ziele als attraktives Instrument mit guten Erfolgsaussichten. Dieser Einschätzung entsprechend hat die Mehrzahl der befragten Unternehmen und Institute bereits bei mindestens einer F&EKooperation mitgewirkt. Die Zufriedenheit mit den durchgeführten Projekten war sehr hoch, wurden doch die Erwartungen oft deutlich übertroffen. Nichtsdestotrotz wurden während der empirischen Untersuchungen zwei Problembereiche identifiziert: Zum einen scheitern viele Kooperationen bereits vor ihrer Entstehung, d. h. sie kommen trotz positiver Erfolgserwartungen nicht zustande. Und zum anderen können, der gesamthaften Zufriedenheit mit dem Projekterfolg ungeachtet, in Bezug auf das Kooperationsmanagement teils erhebliche Verbesserungspotenziale identifiziert werden. Das Zustandekommen von F&E-Kooperationen zwischen KMU und Hochschulinstituten wird zum einen durch ein Informationsdefizit seitens der KMU erschwert, die vielfach über wenig Kenntnisse zum Leistungsspektrum möglicher Partnerinstitute sowie zu geeigneten Ansprechpartnern verfügen. Begründet liegt dieser Kenntnismangel oft in der geringen Priorität, die der Evaluation von Kooperationsmöglichkeiten im Rahmen des Tagesgeschäfts von KMU eingeräumt werden kann. Lösungsansätze, die diese Besonderheit berücksichtigen, wurden im Rahmen des Workshops entwickelt. Einen zweiten wesentlichen Hinderungsgrund beim Zustandekommen von Kooperationen bildet die unzureichende Ausstattung an Finanzmitteln, die KMU sowie auch staatliche Förderprogramme zur Verfügung stellen können. Drittens erweist sich auch die Einigung bzgl. des Projektumfangs, insbesondere bzgl. der Projektdauer, aufgrund divergierender Vorstellungen und Interessenlagen als problematisch. Im Bereich des Kooperationsmanagements wurden vor allem die Kommunikation zwischen den Partnern sowie die Effizienz der Zusammenarbeit als verbesserungsbedürftig beurteilt. Zur Überwindung von Kommunikationsproblemen wurden während des Workshops vielfältige praxisnahe Lösungsansätze erarbeitet. Ein gesteigerter Einsatz von Methoden des Projektmanagements und -controllings erscheint zur Effizienzsteigerung sowie zur Absprache eines gemeinsamen Zeithorizonts der F&E-Zusammenarbeit und dessen Einhaltung angezeigt.

When academic researchers participate in commercialization using for-profit firms there is a potentially costly trade-off – their time and effort are diverted away from academic knowledge creation. This is a form of brain drain on the not-for-profit research sector which may reduce knowledge accumulation and adversely impact long-run economic growth. In this paper, we examine the economic significance of the brain drain phenomenon using scientist-level panel data. We identify life scientists who start or join for-profit firms using information from the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and analyze the research performance of these scientists relative to a control group of randomly selected research peers. Combining our statistical results with data on the number of university spin-offs in the U.S. from 1994 to 2004 we find the academic brain drain has a nontrivial impact on knowledge creation in the not-for-profit research sector.

Innovation processes are characterized by a pronounced division of labor between actors. Two types of externality may arise from such interactions. On the one hand, a close location of actors affiliated to the same industry may stimulate innovation (MAR externalities). On the other hand, new ideas may be born by the exchange of heterogeneous and complementary knowledge between actors, which belong to different industries (Jacobs’ externalities). We test the impact of both MAR as well as Jacobs’ externalities on innovative performance at the regional level. The results suggest an inverted u-shaped relationship between regional specialization in certain industries and innovative performance. Further key determinants of the regional innovative performance are private sector R&D and university-industry collaboration.

We assess the efficiency of regional innovation systems (RIS) in Germany by means of a knowledge production function. This function relates private sector research and development (R&D) activity in a region to the number of inventions that have been registered by residents of that region. Different measures and estimation approaches lead to rather similar assessments. We find that both spillovers within the private sector as well as from universities and other public research institutions have a positive effect on the efficiency of private sector R&D in the respective region. It is not the mere presence and size of public research institutions, but rather the intensity of interactions between private and public sector R&D that leads to high RIS efficiency. We find that relationship between the diversity of a regions’ industry structure and the efficiency of its innovation system is inversely u-shaped. Regions dominated by large establishments tend to be less efficient than regions with a lower average establishment size.

Universities are increasingly expected to be at the heart of networked structures contributing to society in meaningful and measurable ways through research, the teaching and development of experts, and knowledge innovation. While there is nothing new in universities' links with industry, what is recent is their role as territorial actors. It is government policy in many countries that universities - and in some countries national laboratories - stimulate regional or local economic development. Universities, Innovation and the Economy explores the implications of this expectation. It sites this new role within the context of broader political histories, comparing how countries in Europe and North America have balanced the traditional roles of teaching and research with that of exploitation of research and defining a territorial role. Helen Lawton-Smith highlights how pressure from the state and from industry has produced new paradigms of accountability that include responsibilities for regional development. This book uses empirical evidence from studies conducted in North America and Europe to provide an overview of the changing geography of university-industry links.

This paper analyses the endogenous formation of technology sharing coalitions with asymmetric firms. Coalition partners produce complementary technology advancements, although each firm determines its R&D investment level non-cooperatively and there is no co-operation in the product market. We show that the equilibrium coalition outcome is either one between the two most efficient firms, or a coalition with all three firms. The two-firm coalition is the preferred outcome of a welfare maximising authority if ex ante marginal cost is sufficiently high, and the three-firm coalition is preferred otherwise. Furthermore, we show that the equilibrium outcomes result in the lowest total R&D investment of all possible outcomes. Aircraft engine manufacturing provides a case study, and indicates the importance of anti-trust issues as an addition to the theory.