New ventures face both liabilities of newness and smallness, which may inhibit their innovation efforts and output. However, existing research has not clearly distinguished between the two ...liabilities, leaving it unclear how certain determinants differentially affect innovation performance in start-ups relative to older established small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, in this study we investigate the impact of R&D investments, external knowledge sourcing and public R&D subsidies on innovation effectiveness in new versus older small firms. Employing panel data from the Spanish Community Innovation Survey (CIS), we show that R&D investments have a lower contribution to the innovation performance of new ventures, compared to older small firms. In contrast, we find that external knowledge sourcing makes a higher contribution to the innovation performance of new compared to older small firms, but only in high-tech settings. However, we find no support for a differentiating effect of R&D subsidies in new versus established small firms. Effectively, our results highlight the limited effects of internal R&D investments and R&D policy instruments to promote the growth of innovative start-ups, while highlighting potential benefits of their openness to external sources of innovation. As such, these results have important implications for research, practices and policies that relate to innovation in new ventures and SMEs, while casting doubts on the effectiveness of some of the common strategy and policy instruments to stimulate performance in small innovative start-ups.
The work looks at how regions design policies to facilitate the transition of regional innovation systems to Industry 4.0. The research analyses how regional Industry 4.0 policies should take into ...account the integration of the position of the regional productive system into international supply chains, the games of legitimacy and power of the actors involved in the innovation system, the institutional structures that allow the exchange of knowledge on Industry 4.0. between the agents and the connection between the synthetic knowledge base (engineering driven) and the analytical knowledge base (science driven) of the region. Through a detailed case study of the background, structure and impact of Industry 4.0 in the Spanish regions of the Basque Country and Catalonia, the work demonstrates how it is not possible to define a policy of promoting Industry 4.0 that is generalizable to all regions and how each region will have to adapt the design and implementation of its Industry 4.0 policies to the specific characteristics of its regional innovation system. Therefore the replication of policies from other regions will not be an effective mechanism for promoting Industry 4.0 since the transition to Industry 4.0 is a very regional specific and diverse process.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This study examines the relationship between breadths of two different modes of external knowledge: R&D outsourcing and cooperation. Building upon transaction costs literature and literature on ...research partner breadth and R&D outsourcing, we hypothesise an U-inverted relationship between outsourcing breadth and innovation performance and a complementary relationship between R&D outsourcing and R&D cooperation. The model is tested on a large sample based on CIS survey for Spain. The empirical analysis confirms the U-inverted relationship between outsourcing breadth and innovation and also reveals an interesting result: the complementary effect of R&D cooperation varies with the level of R&D outsourcing breadth and it is not confirmed for low and medium levels of R&D outsourcing breadth. The results have important implications for theory on the selection of different modes of inbound open innovation and for managers and their cooperation and outsourcing strategies.
During the last years music sales had sharply declined. According to the recording industry, one of the reasons for this decline is the development of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. The main goal of ...this research was to establish a relationship between consumer attitudes and the P2P music consumption proportion. We identified a set of characteristics of P2P networks that could explain the proportion of P2P music compared to Compact Disc (CD) music and we observed on a sample of 4060 Spanish P2P users the impact each of those characteristics had on the CD-purchasing behaviour of these users. Results show how price, assortment and discovery of the P2P music consumption process were related to higher proportions of P2P music.
Competir hoy en día a través de la innovación requiere atraer y retener una fuerza de trabajo altamente calificada. En comparación con los trabajadores menos cualificados, los trabajadores altamente ...cualificados tienen una mayor movilidad. Con el fin de ayudar a las empresas y a los gobiernos a crear estrategias que aprovechen o modulen esta alta movilidad de trabajadores, esta investigación explora las motivaciones e Implicaciones de la concentración regional de los trabajadores altamente calificados. El estudio analiza cómo las características del mercado laboral y la dinámica de la aglomeración del conocimiento crean incentivos para la concentración local de ingenieros y científicos. La concentración de trabajadores altamente cualificados se estudia en España y Europa. A nivel empírico, la investigación muestra lo fuertes que son los flujos de trabajadores que se trasladan de regiones menos innovadoras hacia Madrid y Cataluña, ya que en algunas de estas regiones menos innovadoras más del 40% de los ingenieros científicos e ingenieros emigran hacia regiones más innovadoras. En Europa, los resultados muestran dos fenómenos coexistentes: "islas de innovación" en algunos países que atraen a la mayoría de la mano de obra altamente cualificada de ese país y "valles de innovación" formadas por regiones innovadoras interconectadas. Los resultados indican que las concentraciones regionales de ingenieros y científicos en Europa se explican por las tasas de desempleo de las regiones exportadoras de trabajadores cualificados y las mayores concentraciones de actividades innovadoras en las regiones con mayor capacidad de atracción. En este sentido, los resultados sugieren que las perspectivas de una futura carrera profesional en lugar de disparidad salarial es el factor más importante en la concentración regional de trabajadores altamente cualificados.
This paper examines the effects of information technology (IT) adoption on the productivity of multimarket small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The main hypothesis is that IT usage increases ...efficiency to a higher degree in diversified and internationalized firms compared with singlemarket SMEs. This hypothesis is tested using a large sample of more than 2,000 Spanish SMEs. Overall, intensive use of IT in operations processes is found to be associated with substantial increases in productivity of firms following both related and unrelated diversification. Also, exporting firms with more intensive use of IT have higher productivity. These results are consistent with previous theoretical arguments on the relationship between IT and efficiency of firms and open future research directions related to the role played by IT in the management control systems of both diversified and exporting firms.
This research addresses the contribution that technical skills and cognitive abilities make toward technological efficiency in small and medium enterprises. While most of the literature on ...skill-biased technological change focuses on large corporations, this exploratory research tries to close the gap in the literature and addresses the impact of technical training, age, and educational level of the workforce on the fit between technological change and organizational innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises. The results suggest that the impact of the workforce structure on efficiency is a function of the level of technological change.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the unclear relationship between industry structure and open innovation.Design methodology approach - The focus of the study is on firms that ...received external help to develop their products or that helped third parties in developing their products. The hypotheses were tested on a large panel of more than 7,000 firms using generalized estimating equations.Findings - The results show that open innovation adoption is positively related to technology complexity and market uncertainty while it is negatively related to market concentration. Larger firms are more likely to adopt open innovation strategies.Originality value - The research makes an important contribution to the literature by examining on a large sample of firms the moderating effects of industry concentration, industry research and development intensity and the technology life cycle stage on the adoption of open innovation.
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