This handbook looks to provide academics and students with a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the phenomenon of innovation. The editors have carefully selected and designed twenty-one ...contributions from leading academic experts within their particular field, each focusing on a specific aspect of innovation. These have been organized into four main sections, the first of which looks at the creation of innovation , with particular focus on firms and networks. Section Two provides an account of the wider systematic setting influencing innovation and the role of institutions and organizations in this context. Section Three explores some of the diversity in the working of innovation over time and across different sectors of the economy, and Section Four focuses on the consequences of innovation with respect to economic growth, international competitiveness, and employment.
Our era is one of increasingly pervasive digital technologies, which penetrate deeply into the very core of the products, services, and operations of many organizations and radically change the ...nature of product and service innovations. The fundamental properties of digital technology are reprogrammability and data homogenization. Together, they provide an environment of open and flexible affordances that are used in creating innovations characterized by
convergence
and
generativity
. An analysis of convergence and generativity observed in innovations with pervasive digital technologies reveals three traits: (1) the importance of digital technology platforms, (2) the emergence of distributed innovations, and (3) the prevalence of combinatorial innovation. Each of the six articles in this special issue relates to one or more of these three traits. In this essay, we explore the organizational research implications of these three digital innovation traits and identify research opportunities for organization science scholars. Examples from the articles in this special issue on organizing for innovation in the digitized world are used to demonstrate the kind of organizational scholarship that can faithfully reflect and inform innovation in a world of pervasive digital technologies.
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This book is about measuring innovation, not just in the business sector but in every sector of the economy, using, for the first time, an internationally agreed general definition of innovation. The ...resulting indicators can be used to inform policy development, and offer a better understanding of the impact of the innovation policy of governments, the strategy of businesses and the practice of households, in a more digital economy. Innovation is a systems phenomenon and systems provide a structure throughout the book.
In this paper, we assess the economic viability of innovation by producers relative to two increasingly important alternative models: innovations by single-user individuals or firms and open ...collaborative innovation. We analyze the design costs and architectures and communication costs associated with each model. We conclude that both innovation by individual users and open collaborative innovation increasingly compete with and may displace producer innovation in many parts of the economy. We explain why this represents a paradigm shift with respect to innovation research, policy making, and practice. We discuss important implications and offer suggestions for further research.
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•We analyzed the persistency in innovation behavior of firms, using a panel of Community Innovation Survey in Sweden, which spans over a decade.•We distinguish between product, process, ...organizational, and marketing innovations.•There is a variation in the degree of persistency among the four types of innovation.•Product Innovation shows the strongest persistency among all four types of innovation.•Marketing Innovation shows the least persistency.
This paper analyzes the persistency in innovation behavior of firms. Using five waves of the Community Innovation Survey in Sweden, we have traced the innovative behavior of firms over a ten-year period, i.e., between 2002 and 2012. We distinguish between four types of innovations: process, product, marketing, and organizational innovations. First, using transition probability matrix, we found evidence of (unconditional) state dependence in all types of innovation, with product innovators having the strongest persistent behavior. Second, using a dynamic probit model, we found evidence of “true” state dependency among all types of innovations, except marketing innovators. Once again, the strongest persistency was found for product innovators.
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The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy.
Innovation is rapidly ...becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive.
Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for.
The urgent need for innovation to address multifaceted and intertwined water-related challenges is becoming increasingly clear, acknowledged and responded to with cumulating sources and amounts of ...funding. Nevertheless, the water sector has been claimed to be less innovative than other sectors. This Special Volume on the dynamics of water innovation is based on the realization that, in general, there is a striking absence of academic studies on the dynamics of water innovation. This SV is therefore designed to lay the foundations for the field of water innovation studies, in an effort to integrate the emerging insights. Together, the contributions in this SV capture the current understanding of the dynamics of water innovation and provide insights into how the water innovation process can be fostered. The purpose of this introductory article is threefold, namely to frame the discussion on water innovation dynamics in order to contextualise the contributions of this SV, to provide systematic guidance for studying water innovation dynamics and to suggest the way forward for water innovation studies. It captures the extent of the field of water innovation studies with a review of the literature of the last three decades and frames water innovations. Based on five decades of innovation research and drawing on three areas (management, strategy and policy), we provide an innovation studies taxonomy that consists of four organising dimensions: type of innovation, stage of innovation, level of analysis and measurement. This taxonomy enables researchers to study the dynamics of water innovation from different combinations of conceptual and thematic angles, drawing on the field of innovation studies in a systematic fashion. Finally, we reflect on the way forward for water innovation studies with suggestions for future research.
•Editorial introduction to the Special Volume on the dynamics of water innovation.•This SV aims to lay the foundations for the field of water innovation studies.•Provides a taxonomy of innovation studies to guide research on water innovation dynamics.
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The gifts of Athena Mokyr, Joel
2002, 2002., 20111114, 2011, 2003-01-01
eBook, Book
"The growth of technological and scientific knowledge in the past two centuries has been the overriding dynamic element in the economic and social history of the world. Its result is now often called ...the knowledge economy. But what are the historical origins of this revolution and what have been its mechanisms? In The Gifts of Athena, Joel Mokyr constructs an original framework to analyze the concept of "useful" knowledge. He argues that the growth explosion in the modern West in the past two centuries was driven not just by the appearance of new technological ideas but also by the improved access to these ideas in society at large - as made possible by social networks comprising universities, publishers, professional sciences, and kindred institutions. Through a wealth of historical evidence set in clear and lively prose, he shows that changes in the intellectual and social environment and the institutional background in which knowledge was generated and disseminated brought about the Industrial Revolution, followed by sustained economic growth and continuing technological change." "Mokyr draws a link between intellectual forces such as the European enlightenment and subsequent economic changes of the nineteenth century, and follows their development into the twentieth century. He further explores some of the key implications of the knowledge revolution. Among these is the rise and fall of the "factory system" as an organizing principle of modern economic organization. He analyzes the impact of this revolution on information technology and communications as well as on the public's state of health and the structure of households. By examining the social and political roots of resistance to new knowledge, Mokyr also links growth in knowledge to political economy and connects the economic history of technology to the New Institutional Economics. The Gifts of Athena provides crucial insights into a matter of fundamental concern to a range of disciplines including economics, economic history, political economy, the history of technology, and the history of science."--BOOK JACKET.
In this paper, I study the effect of adding large numbers of producers of application software programs (“apps”) to leading handheld computer platforms, from 1999 to 2004. To isolate causal effects, ...I exploit changes in the software labor market. Consistent with past theory, I find a tight link between the number of producers on platform and the number of software varieties that were generated. The patterns indicate the link is closely related to the diversity and distinct specializations of producers. Also highlighting the role of heterogeneity and nonrandom entry and sorting, later cohorts generated less compelling software than earlier cohorts. Adding producers to a platform also shaped investment incentives in ways that were consistent with a tension between network effects and competitive crowding, alternately increasing or decreasing innovation incentives depending on whether apps were differentiated or close substitutes. The crowding of similar apps dominated in this case; the average effect of adding producers on innovation incentives was negative. Overall, adding large numbers of producers led innovation to become more dependent on population-level diversity, variation, and experimentation—while drawing less on the heroic efforts of any one individual innovator.
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Knowledge intensiveness has featured prominently in most strategies to promote agricultural development. In the past strengthened research systems may have increased the supply of new knowledge and ...technologies, but that has not necessarily translated into enhanced agricultural growth. Knowledge converts into products and services through an innovation system -- a network of organizations, enterprises and individuals focusing on bringing new knowledge into economic use, together with the institutions and policies that enable a well-functioning network. This book assesses the usefulness of the innovation systems concept in guiding investments to support knowledge intensive, sustainable agricultural development for developing countries and its collaborators.
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