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Annual flu led by influenza viruses is contemplated to be one of the foremost global health challenges due to its rapid spread leading to the life-threatening epidemic or pandemic. An enormous number of people die due to flu and its associated intricacies every year. Annual vaccination is considered to be the gold standard strategy to protect the individual from acquiring infection and further decimation, although recent estimates suggest that overall flu vaccine effectiveness was within 19% to 53% in last five years. A significant weakness of current vaccination is its inability to protect an individual from different or mutant flu strain. Host immune system performs a vital role during natural infection or after vaccination leading to influenza-specific immunities. Previous imprints of common flu or vaccination may alter the outcomes of the current vaccination. Current flu vaccine regime does not consider the host immune status before vaccination. Irrespective of the previous influenza exposure history or prior flu vaccination, individual get flu vaccination based on WHO recommendation with selected strains which may be the reason why induction of broad immunities does not transpire with their testimonial. Over the last few decades, scientific research had identified the role of preexisting immunities on vaccination or natural infection outcome. In this review, we are proposing the concept of personalized flu vaccines depending on individual immune status. We will also discuss why individual was unable to induce broader immunities to protect itself from diverse influenza viruses and how we can accomplish that goal with the current findings.

PurposeIncreased globalization of the world's economies, along with accelerated technological changes are transforming research and development (R&D) activities around the world. The purpose of this paper is to study the technology development in China, particularly in the light of the globalization of R&D activities.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on a detailed analysis of all US patents granted between 1979 and 2007 in which at least one inventor was a resident of China. US patents have been used as a surrogate measure of technology development and a patent developed with a resident Chinese inventor has been assumed to have been developed in China.FindingsThe paper identifies four phases of technical development in China: growth rate of patenting, extent of inventor collaboration, ownership pattern, concentration on technology trajectory and changing role of MNCs characterize each phase. While along the relatively new electrical and ICT technology trajectories, Chinese entities have benefited from the pioneering lead of foreign entities, along the traditional mechanical and chemical trajectories, foreign entities have followed the early work of Chinese entities.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations of the study include the validity of using US patents as the sole measure of technology development. Other measures of technology development may be necessary to validate the findings reported here.Practical implicationsThe study provides a rich source of information about different aspects of technology development in China and the challenges it faces in its internationalization.Originality/valueThe identification of four distinct phases have highlighted the pioneering role of foreign entities in opening up some technology trajectories as well as the increasing maturity and competence of all‐Chinese researcher teams.

Past literature on the development of new technology-based firms (NTBF) within business incubators suggests that the incubation process of these ventures includes both business and technical assistance. In addition, past literature suggests that this assistance is accessible through direct and networking interactions with the incubator management. However, research on the influence of each of these types of interactions on the types of beneficial assistance gained by ventures is unclear. Drawing predominately from social capital theory, this study examines the role of counseling and networking interactions with incubator management on both beneficial business and technical assistance for NTBFs. Results of this study suggest that business assistance, in the form of venture learning about buyer preferences, is best enabled through counseling interactions with incubator management. Learning buyer preferences was not enabled through networking interactions. Technical assistance, in the form of venture learning technological know-how skills, is best enabled through networking interactions with incubator management. Learning technological know-how skills was not enabled through counseling interactions. This study, therefore, highlights the importance and a clearer distinction of how both counseling and networking interactions with incubator management enable the incubation process of new ventures.

PurposeDuring past ten years China and India have emerged as the favorite destination for R&D investment. In this paper a comparative evaluation of the process of technology development in China and India is carried out. The objective is to identify the rate of growth of technology and the patterns of development in different technology sectors.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on the tangible, measurable and recorded output of the technology development process – namely grant of patents. The authors have used US patents as the surrogate measure for the technological output between 1992 to 2007. The authors obtained data on inventor's background, ownership pattern of the patents, as well as technology sectors and descriptive statistics are used to compare the trends between the two countries.FindingsThe paper finds that both China and India have achieved very high growth rates in patents granted with some resident research between 1992 and 2007. Both have a high percentage of foreign‐owned and low percentage of joint ownership of patents. Also, a clear polarization in the composition of research teams is detected in both China and India in that international researcher teams have largely been used only for foreign and jointly owned patents. The authors find that corporations have become much more active in recent years in patenting and multi national companies have led the local companies in patent development across many sectors. The authors also detect some significant differences in the Chinese and Indian pursuit of patent development. About 30 to 35 percent of all patents developed in China are design patents – the rest being utility patents. For India almost all such patents – more than 95 percent – are utility patents. The authors find a clear dominance along the mechanical trajectory among the patents developed in China, while for India a similar dominance is along the chemical trajectory that includes pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. Another interesting finding is the growing share of ICT patents in both China and India, particularly in the last few years China has emerged ahead of India in terms of its patent development as well as in the internationalization of its patent development as reflected in the ownership of patents developed. However, even for foreign patents developed in these countries, researcher collaboration is showing a downward trend.Originality/valueThis paper carries out a comparative evaluation of the process of technology development in China and India. The analysis is based on the tangible, measurable and recorded output of the technology development process – namely grant of patents. The paper uses US patents as the surrogate measure for the technological output from China and India.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the internationalization of technology development in India. The internationalization of research and development (R&D) has not been a recent phenomenon. Large multinational companies increased their R&D investment in various host countries during the past years. While the US and the countries in Western Europe have been the traditional locus of R&D, China and India have emerged lately as the destinations for R&D. The changes in geopolitical systems of trade and intellectual property protection couples with the advances in information and communication technology have helped globalize the R&D activities.Design/methodology/approachThe study has used the US patents as a surrogate measure for the technical output from India. The data include all US patents granted between 1992 and 2007 in which at least one inventor was an Indian resident. Studies in the field of economics of technology and in science policy have used patents as a valid measure of R&D output.FindingsThe results of this study indicated that there were three phases of technological development in India. Intensity of patenting, role of the different institutions in technology development, and the focus of technology characterize each phase. By examining the co‐inventors, the authors see how the international cooperation among scientists has shaped. While government laboratories under the aegis of the council of scientific and industrial research had a high number of patents, their role has gone through significant shifts among the three phases. The authors also find that the multinational companies from the US have driven the recent growth in Indian patenting and are using more of all‐Indian teams for patentable research. This indicates maturation the skills of technical personnel in India in terms of developing patentable technology. The study also points out the fact that despite the growth of the Indian corporations in the IT sector, they lack in building their own intellectual property. If India wants to maintain the momentum of growth in corporate R&D, it faces the challenge of upgrading its higher education in producing technical graduates at masters and doctoral levels.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations of the study include the validity of patents as the sole measure of innovation and technology development. The process of obtaining patents in the US is expensive and it may deter some organizations to pursue it. Other methods to obtain data on innovative activities may be necessary to validate the findings reported here.Practical implicationsThe study provides a rich source of information about the growth of technological fields in India and the challenges that it faces in building its global competitiveness.Originality/valueThe study should be useful in identifying the sectors where India has developed strengths and the areas where it needs to improve. Also, by examining the ownership pattern of the intellectual property in these sectors, one can postulate the technological independence of Indian organizations.

Technology incubators are newer organizational forms that are created to support and accelerate the development and success of affiliated ventures, particularly new technology-based ventures. Current literature regarding incubators has suggested that an understanding of the incubation process is important when seeking to understand how affiliated ventures develop and grow. However, very little is known about the incubation process, particularly the incubation of technology-based ventures. Prior literature suggests that technology-based ventures develop in terms of both business and technological development and that the incubation process varies along these dimensions. Thus, understanding the incubation of technology–based ventures must consider the differing but simultaneous dynamics of business and technological development. Drawing from the social capital, entrepreneurship, incubation, and organizational learning literature, a conceptual model of the incubation of new technology-based ventures within technology incubators is presented.

University research centers can be beneficial to industrial firms by providing firms with a number of relationship alternatives that facilitate the advancement of knowledge and new technologies. This multi-method field study indicates that larger more mechanistic firms especially those in resource intense industrial sectors use knowledge transfer and research support relationships to build competencies in non-core technological areas. In contrast, smaller more organic firms particularly those in high tech industrial sectors focus more on problem solving in core technological areas through technology transfer and cooperative research relationships. We also found that champions at the firm play a key role in these dynamics. Implications for industry and universities are discussed.

Recycling disposed off products has increasingly become more important as the landfill cites have diminished and the reality of exhaustible resources has become evident. Using the reverse logistics channel to recycle some of the waste produced by consumers has been recognized for a few decades. However, there has been no attempt to develop a theoretical analysis of the incentives in the reverse distribution channel which would encourage the channel members to recycle. In addition, marketers have not formally studied the welfare implications of recycling on producers, retailers, and consumers of products. Also, there has been no analysis of the effects of waste disposal on the welfare of people external to the marketing channel.

Organizations face increased pressures to continually advance knowledge and new technologies long-term success and prosperity. University research centers offer important interorganizational linkages for industry-university collaboration, conducive for advancing knowledge and new technologies. This study examined industry's strategic objectives for establishing relationships with university research centers. As a result of this multimethod exploratory field study, the authors have identified three clusters of industrial firms with different strategic objectives: collegial players, aggressive players, and targeted players. Collegial players are predominately large firms working with university research centers on topics of interest to the firm which are perceived to have long-term value rather than the promise of immediate commercial opportunities. Aggressive players are a mix of both large and small firms employing relationships with university research center primarily to develop and commercialize a wide range of marketable products and services. Targeted players are often smaller firms largely interested in using their relationships with university research centers to address specific needs central to their business. They conclude this paper by discussing the implications of these findings for both industrial firms and universities.

This paper reviews the importance of industry–university relationships and the strategic considerations within the context of these partnerships in university research centers. We have identified several factors that are particularly important to industry in building relationships with university centers. These include: acquiring skills, knowledge and gaining access to university facilities; organizational cultures that are more organic; flexible university policies for intellectual property rights, patents and licenses; and the presence of champions. Firms also have explicit collaborative strategies for partnering with universities where firms can be segmented into three distinct clusters: Collegial Players, Aggressive Players and Targeted Players. Collegial Players are often large firms working with universities and university-sponsored consortia on topics of interest that have long-term value rather than promise immediate commercial opportunities. Aggressive Players are both large and small firms who employ university relationships specifically to develop and commercialize a wide range of marketable products and services. Targeted Players are often smaller firms, largely interested in using university relationships to address specific issues central to their business. We conclude by discussing key implications for both industry and universities.

A study of U.S. and German chemical firms reveals four different strategies for responding to environmental concerns. Are you a defender or escapist, a dormant or activist? OVERVIEW: Environmental management has become an issue of substantial concern, particularly in the chemical industry. A comparative study of U.S. and German chemical companies shows that they adopt substantially different strategies to express this concern. Four different strategies have been identified, and the characteristics that indicate responses to environmental factors are substantially different among the clusters. It is suggested that regulatory agencies should take these differences into account, and that companies that have adopted a particular strategy should be aware of alternative approaches by their competitors. The choice of new technology and the RD (2) RD reactive strategies aimed at developing recycling models and considering the lifelong environmental impact of new products; and active strategies seeking integrated protective concepts and taking account of those effects that result from product use (). Similarly, a study of British firms identified three basic strategic responses to environmental concerns: compliance, compliance plus, and excellence (8). Compliance is the minimalist approach to observing legal requirements. Compliance plus goes beyond the minimum legal requirements and strives to integrate environmental management into business structures and systems. Excellence involves striving for both environmental and business excellence. There have been four different routes to achieving these strategic responses: 1) The quality route involves achieving environmental goals through a zero-defect philosophy; 2) companies such as ICI focus on the health and safety of their personnel to achieve environmental goals; 3) emphasizing the "green attributes" of products is another means of promoting environmental concern; 4) some companies incorporate environmental values in their overall value system. A four-stage scheme of responses includes indifferent strategy, defensive strategy with end-of-pipe technologies, offensive strategy with modification of new products, and innovative strategy that actively seeks major changes in products and processes (9). Corporate strategies for enviromental management have evolved from pollution control to pollution prevention, which means minimizing waste before it happens. …

Seventy‐five new product development projects were studied in ten large companies to test potential strategic and process antecedents to quality. Seven factors were found to significantly increase product quality: high importance placed on quality by top management, high reward for process speed, high project stream breadth, high use of internal (versus external) sources of ideas and technology, low overlap or concurrency of the development process, low turfguarding or “silo” orientation, and high development milestone frequency. These results suggest that managers need to pay attention to both strategic orientation factors and structure‐related organizational capability factors to increase product quality. Staffing‐related factors did not seem to have a strong impact on quality; this suggests that quality is more a function of systemic versus individual factors. Additionally, it was found that there were some differences in the factors associated with high‐quality products between radical and incremental innovations. However, the study is exploratory and further research needs to test these findings as well as extend them to include other interrelationships between factors.

Are you too defensive? Take advantage of metrics and simulation models to demonstrate RD otherwise, R&D decisions are treated as standard operating expenditures. Also, when companies change their technological orientation, the R&D representatives must be able to point to past performance records if they are to inspire confidence or trust in their ability to excel in new areas. The quest for technical or scientific perfection makes it difficult to apply commonly used financial decision rules to R&D budgeting. These rules favor optimization of technological developments by seeking a balance between the marginal cost of additional technological developments and the resulting marginal benefits. This economic reasoning stands in opposition to the idealistic drive of scientists and engineers to develop something to perfection, which can be detrimental to the efficiency and effectiveness of R&D. While other business functions claim to show "hard data" to support their requests, R&D often relies on "soft data. …

The objective of this study was to better understand strategic management using the dynamic capabilities approach. The authors have focused on two fundamental constructs of dynamic capabilities, technological learning and strategic flexibility, and discerned their influence on organizational performance. Their main argument has been that a firm's strategic flexibility moderates the relationship between technological learning and technological performance as evidenced by new product development. Their model is based on the synthesis of the traditions of research in strategic and technology management. Technological learning has been defined in two dimensions: internal and external learning. Strategic flexibility has been operationalized in financial, marketing, manufacturing, and technological dimensions. Data from the US ethical pharmaceutical industry for 1977-1991 have been used to test their hypotheses. Although they found support for their basic argument, they have observed that the strategic flexibility factors are related with the variables in a more complex way. Furthermore, internal learning involves a different process than learning from external sources. The robustness of their finding is due to the longitudinal data and objective indicators used in measuring the constructs. Implications for further research and managerial actions are also discussed.

The paper focuses on several research questions: How do the firms differ in terms of their strategic objectives for foreign acquisitions? What are the determinants of ‘success’ of acquisition? What are the differences between the American and German firms in terms of their acquisition strategies and successes? Our special interest was to get a closer look into the technological motive of the foreign acquisitions. This made a two-step procedure necessary. A first survey of 86 firms had to identify those acquisitions which were motivated by technological interests through a questionnaire. Findings: There are four classes of companies with different motives for acquisitions: Market oriented entrepreneurs, Short-term profit seekers, Technological acquirers, Preemptive market protectors. The second survey investigated the process and the results of acquisitions with a special view on the role of research and development through 60 interviews in 30 acquisition cases in both acquiring and acquired units. Findings: A network of variables explains the success. The most important are context variables (uncertainty, cultural differences), size of both firms, low degree of formalization, expertise, and lack of conflicts about technological philosophy.

Forecasting the diffusion of innovations plays a major role in managing technology development and in engineering management overall. In this paper, we extend the conventional Bass model stochastically by specifying the error process of sales as log-normal and mean-reverting. Our model satisfies the following reasonable properties, which are generally ignored in the existing literature: sales cannot be negative, the error process can have a memory, and sales fluctuate more when they are high and less when they are low. The conventional and widely used model that assumes normally distributed error term does not have these properties. We address how to forecast properly under the log-normal and mean-reverting error process, and show analytically and numerically that in our extended model sales forecasts can substantially alter conventional Bass forecasts. We also analyze the model empirically, showing that our extension can improve the accuracy of future sales forecasts.

The impact of defense expenditure is discussed in terms of the direct relationships between defense R&D and economic performance as well as the indirect relationships between the development of technical and scientific skills and new technology. The model is estimated for the period 1955-1988 on a time-series set measured as elasticities. The effect of defense R&D is observed through technological change as measured by the number of patents granted to US organizations and individuals. Results indicate no statistically visible evidence of direct effect from defense R&D to the economy. The nonR&D aspect of defense spending appears to have no statistically significant effect on the major components of civilian economic performance, technical skills formation or technological change. From a policy point of view, this suggests that technical spillovers may be limited to a specific kind of defense spending and not to defense spending in general. Another implication is that the rivalry between R&D and nonR&D defense spending favors the latter. >

A model of computer-integrated manufacturing as the integration of strategy, implementation and innovation is presented. Strategy emphasizes a clear understanding of the objectives and goals of the organization. Strategy can be understood in terms of the interaction between product and process strategies, critial success factors and product life-cycle. Implementation stresses an iterative incremental process based on strategy, user involvement and tolerance. Innovation is the result of a successfully implemented strategy. It is both organizational learning and change.

Although technology is considered to be a strategic asset for an organization, interplay in technology among organizations is necessary. Technology may be considered to be a bank to which organizations both contribute and draw. Such interactions among organizations in technology follow different patterns. The authors present some preliminary results from a study addressing this issue. By using patent citation data, they show how the benefits to participating firms change with industry type, organization class, country of origin, etc. By observing who has been cited by McDonnell Douglas and who has cited patents assigned to McDonnell Douglas, the authors have quantified the flow of technical knowledge. The analytical method considered has yielded some interesting results in quantifying the knowledge exchange process between a defense contractor and other firms. >

The economic impact of defence and space expenditures has been an important policy issue because of the secondary benefits expected to be accruing from it. In order to capture the scientific and technological value added of defence and space financed productions, we took as indicators patents and scientific and technical publications. The economic performance was measured by firm growth (in terms of rates of change in the number of employees), and by rates of return on sales. Firm level analysis showed that military R&D contracts did not contribute to economic or technical performance. NASA contracts were also not associated with economic performance and with technical progress as measured by patents, but they helped to raise the number of scientific publications. On the other hand, the standard variables (capital formation and own R&D activities) proved to be mostly relevant.

The paper explores the strategies of biotechnology firms in the U.S. through a mail questionnaire study. Based on the responses of 89 companies we have developed strategy archetypes of these firms in R&D, marketing, and technology acquisition. In R&D, we found the firms to follow either incremental or radical strategy. In marketing, the firms use either a defender or an innovator strategy. In technology acquisition, firms differ in terms of their emphasis on licensing or developing new technology. The interrelationship among the strategy groups is weak. The R&D and technology acquisition strategies are related in the sense that aggressive technology strategy dictates radical R&D behavior with emphasis on development of new technology. We have found that firms following aggressive technology strategy tend to follow conservative marketing strategy. This is consistent with an earlier study by of German firms where it was found that firms tend to balance their technical and marketing risks. The paper also provides additional information about the factors considered to be important in product decisions for various strategies.

Using the small and medium size firms in the US as a sample, this paper reports on interrelationship among patents, publications and new products. Correlates of R&D expenditure, patents and papers and new products are presented. Relationships between firm size and R&D output and productivity are also investigated. Since the study is based on correlational analysis, causal inferences are not drawn. The data indicates that the three indicators are related, but their strength of relationship varies with industries. Growth of sales is related with new products, but not with patents or papers. Although the data point to the fact that small firms are more productive than their larger counterparts, there are many reasons to come to such a sweeping generalisation. Reporting of RD opportunities for patents or new products also change accordingly. These make it difficult to accurately measure and compare the R&D efficiency across firms of different sizes.

Using US patents as a surrogate measure of technological positions, the competitive positions of the industrial nations (the US, United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Canada, and Japan) in high-technology areas during the period from 1975 to 1988 are examined. High-technology industry is defined as one which requires a high proportion of R&D expenditure and employs a high proportion of scientists and engineers. High-tech industries are further subdivided into four categories (equipment, consumer durable, nondurable, and intermediate products) in terms of their market and/or use. How different countries have specialized in different product market areas within the high tech sector is also examined. To better understand the impact of the patients, the citations per patent for the different countries and the citation performance ratio, which is the share of country's most highly cited patents on a worldwide basis, are examined. >

The relationship between innovation and productivity growth in the chemical, textile and machine tool industries is explored here. Information about innovations has been obtained from published sources. Although the linkage between innovation and productivity can be a complex one, it is observed that the slowdown of the productivity growth in the chemical industry coincided with a significant slowdown in innovation. An opposite trend is observed in the textile industry. Although the machine tool industry showed an increase in innovation, the productivity growth slowed down consistently during 1967–1984. Cyclical fluctuation in the demand for machine tools might have created a difficult problem. Moreover, the small companies which were interested in producing machines for special purposes used labor intensive processes which did little to improve productivity and their excess wage could not be reflected in the price because of intense competition. The impact of environmental and other governmental regulations on innovation in the chemical and textile industry is also discussed.

Survey data gathered from 187 participants were used to examine the relationship between demographic variables, computer training and experience, management support and system quality and computer anxiety, and attitudes toward microcomputers. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that the quality of the computer-based information system which represents the interface and the interaction between the participants and the system has a strong positive effect on attitudes toward microcomputers, and a significant reduction on computer anxiety. Computer training contributes strongly to decrease in computer anxiety and has an indirect effect on attitudes toward microcomputers. However, computer experience and management support were found to affect the attitudes toward microcomputers directly. Among the demographic variables, gender was the only one which correlated highly with computer anxiety. Implications for the design of information and decision support systems and future resea...

A study is reported based on 31 acquisitions for which data have been obtained from executives in the acquired divisions as well as the corporate officers by structured interviews and questionnaires. The study shows a lack of relationship between the professed motives of acquisition and post-acquisition performance. It seems that the lure of quick profitable growth through acquisition does not often materialize regardless of motive. The level of integration between the acquired division and its parent is shown to affect performance measured in terms of sales, profit, return on investment, market share growth, innovation, and broadening of customer base. The post-acquisition performance is also dependent on a variety of other factors including the assistance accorded to the division by the corporate organization. Intensive communication between the acquired division and the other organizational units on technology, joint projects, etc. are key elements in sharing the strategic capabilities. Increased level of formalization in resource allocation and other management decision areas adversely affects performance. >

The author focuses on the scientific output of small and medium-sized firms in high-tech industries in the US. The indicators for technological output have been defined differently by different researchers. Economists have used patents as the measure of research and development (R&D) output, partly because they are easier to delineate than other indicators. Behavioral researchers interested in the R&D management process have relied on publications as a surrogate measure for R&D output, while research in science policy and innovation has focused on products and processes as indicators of innovation and technical output. The author focuses on all three measures as indicators of R&D output and investigates the interrelationship among them as well as the correlates for this output. Except for the chemical industry. R&D expenditure is closely related to size as measured by annual sales, rather than the net income. It is observed that a growing firm is more likely to spend proportionately more money in R&D. The three output measures-patents, papers, and new products-are correlated, but the pattern of the relationship is different in different industries. It is noted that a firm's grown is linked with new products in only some industries. Patents do not seem to have any effect on sales growth. The growth in R&D is not a factor leading to a higher level of scientific productivity. The important factor is the average level of R&D spending. The policy implication for this observation is to maintain a steady funding level of R&D, avoiding sudden changes in R&D budget. >

This study focuses on the scientific output of firms of different sizes in different industries in the U.S. Both patents, and papers and publications are used as measures of technical output. Data from two samples of firms, one consisting of 225 large firms (annual sales at least $250 million and minimum annual R&D budget of $1 million) and the other consisting of 248 small and medium sized firms (annual sales between $10 to $200 million and annual R&D budget at least $10 thousand) have been presented here. The study shows that determinants of R&D expenditure are different in firms of different sizes. For the large firms, R&D expenditure depends on net income as well as its size, measured in terms of annual sales. For small size firms, R&D expenditure is closely related with sales, rather than the net income. For large firms, R&D expenditure is related to both sales and income, the latter being more important than the former. The two output measures, patents and papers are correlated, but the correlation is not a very strong one for small firms. Patent and papers are correlated significantly with both R&D expenditure as well as annual sales. The firm's growth is not linked with patents. On the contrary, there is a negative relationship between patent and R&D growth and patent and income growth in the case of small firms. Papers are not linked with growth variables for small firms. Finally, this study confirms the hypothesis that small firms are more productive in innovation than the large firms. Small firms are more efficient than their larger competitors in terms of patents and papers per million dollars of R&D expenditure.

There are currently three divergent views regarding the sources of beneficial social capital within collectivities or networks: historical ties, organizational facilitation, and trust-based shared pursuit of common goals. Technology incubators are newer organizational forms that are created to support and accelerate the development and success of affiliated technology-based ventures. However, it is unclear how social capital that benefits the technological development of affiliated ventures is created within technology incubators. Drawing from the social capital, technology, and organizational learning literature, this study seeks to understand how technology incubators can create social capital that enables accelerated technological learning of affiliated ventures. Based upon a survey of 43 technology-based ventures affiliated with U.S. and Finnish technology incubators, results of this study suggest that facilitated networking support of the technology incubator serves as the primary source of social capital that enables accelerated technological learning of affiliated technology-based ventures. However, results also suggest that less established or newer technology incubators enable accelerated technology learning better than more established incubators. This suggests that technology incubators are not able to maintain historical ties that benefit the technological learning of affiliated ventures.

Continually producing high-quality products is critical to competitive advantage. We studied 75 new product development projects in ten large firms to test potential strategic and process antecedents. Seven factors were found to significantly increase product quality: perceived importance, rewards, project stream, internal sourcing, overlap, turfguarding, and milestones. Implications are discussed.

Concurrent development, or simultaneously executing multiple stages of the product development process, is regarded by many as an efficient and effective method for increasing the speed of innovation (see Figure 1) while also providing a means for containing development costs and improving the quality of the end product (Gilbert 1995; Zairi, Youssef 1995). It has also been referred to as parallel versus linear processing of tasks (Millson et al. 1992), coordinating efforts rather than “throwing the product over the wall” from one stage to another (Brown, Karagozoglu 1993), and as a “rugby” method of constant, multi-disciplinary team interplay rather than a “relay race” method of phase-to-phase progression with functionally specialized and segmented divisions (Smith, Reinertsen 1991; Souder, Chakrabarti 1980; Takeuchi, Nonaka 1986). Consis­tently, the Institute for Defense Analysis (Handfield 1994) refers to concurrent development “as a systematic approach to the integrated concurrent design of products and related processes including manufacture and support ... [which] causes the developers, from the outset, to consider all the elements of product life-cycle from conception through disposal including quality, cost, schedule, and user requirements.”

Many industries are becoming “boundaryless” and associated with rapidly changing competitive environments (Bettis, Hitt 1995; Hamel, Prahalad 1994; D’Aveni 1994). The increasing rate of technological diffusion and the globalization of markets are two of the main reasons why firms’ environments are becoming more dynamic. New technologies are diffusing across industry boundaries at an increasing rate primarily because of the tremendous increase in access to information through the advances in computers and communications. This “sharing” of technologies among industries creates new competitors from surprising sources. Additionally, the globalization of almost all major industries has increased the rivalry, and hence the rate of innovation, in many industries by introducing players with different knowledge sets, different perspectives of the future, and a different set of industry norms. Partners can be very valuable in this type of setting to help better understand the changing rules of the game (Ohmae 1989).

Entgegen weit verbreiteten Vorstellungen war es Joseph Schumpeter, der darauf aufmerksam machte, das Innovation, das “Durchsetzen neuer Kombinationen”, das Zusammenwirken hochst unterschiedlicher Menschen erfordert: “Und die Funktion des Durchfuhrens neuer Kombinationen und die der Erweiterung unsrer Erkenntnis, die Funktion des Unternehmers und die Funktion des Erfinders sind ganz verschiedene Dinge. Der Unternehmer ist weder prinzipiell selbst Erfinder — wo er es ist, liegt eine zufallige Vereinigung verschiedener Funktionen vor-, noch ist er der Handlanger und Ordonnanzoffizier des Erfinders, so das der Erfinder der eigentliche Unternehmer ware.” (1. Aufl., 1912, S. 178).

Fundamental shifts in the mode, the geography and the personnel of global technology development are taking place in the wake of increasing globalisation of economies and rapid technological changes. Many large multinational corporations are focusing on building global innovation networks, comprising of R&D units located in clusters of excellence around the world, including many developing economies. In this paper we take a close look at this emerging phenomenon – particularly the developments taking place in China, India and Brazil. By using US patents as indicators, this study seeks to detect the trends in the technical activities, the innovative capability, the ownership of the intellectual property and the quality of technology developed in these countries.

New product development often incorporates a multitude of individual technologies. Research and experience show that even very large firms have resource limitations that prevent them from maintaining and developing all of the necessary technologies in-house. We explore how the value of a technology is related to whether a firm develops a technology internally or sources it through some external means. This research is set in the medical devices industry, and our model linking value to technology sourcing is based on both previous literature and on exploratory interviews conducted in Finland and the USA. We test the model with survey data gathered from US firms on 162 individual technologies. The results indicate that the relationship between value and internal sourcing is strongest when value is defined operationally (reduces costs) than when it is defined strategically (increases differentiation). Additionally, the uniqueness of a technology is antecedent to its value.

We compare some EU countries with China and India in terms of IPR development trends and inflows and outflows. We examined the trends in production of patents, the trend in ownership pattern and the impact of the globalisation of science and technology. We have obtained patent-related data from the website of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. We used GDP as the control variable when analysing the patent ownership of a country and population as the control variable while studying the patents generated by residents of a country. Our study contributes to the debate of the strategic importance of international collaboration in intellectual property development in global business. Our study indicates that both China and India have leapfrogged on the learning curve in research and development for developing patents.