Abstract
Industrial evolution prompts firms to enter into R&D collaborations to ensure competitiveness and substantial growth. This study expands the industry life cycle concept to include the extent ...and types of R&D collaborations. I analyze 6581 R&D collaborations by 60 manufacturers in the German photovoltaics (PV) industry from 1980 to 2016 using a negative binomial regression model. The results indicate that the number of R&D collaborations is higher in the post-shakeout than in the pre-shakeout period of an industry. While this is particularly true for science-based R&D collaborations with universities and public research organizations, market-based R&D collaborations evolve from predominantly competitors before an industry’s shakeout to suppliers and customers after a shakeout has occurred.
•Framework on determinants of firm survival in global innovation systems (GIS).•Empirical evidence on the solar photovoltaics industry from 1960 to 2016.•Firm survival depends on GIS configurations ...in different parts of the value chain.•Firm survival is shorter in GIS with a mobile innovation mode and valuation system.•Demand-side policies produce negative effects on survival in most GIS types.
Economic globalization and the modularization of value chains increasingly challenge long-held conceptual models explaining the spatial evolution of industries. This paper seeks to re-interpret early industry life cycle dynamics by disintegrating an industry's value chain into upstream, core and downstream parts and characterizing each part according to its underlying global innovation system (GIS) configuration. We distinguish between firms in parts of the value chain that depend on formalized, science-based innovation and cater for globally standardized mass markets (‘footloose’ GIS) and firms in parts of the value chain that rely on spatially more stable GIS structures, in which either the innovation activities or the valuation dynamics (or both) depend on spatial embedding in given territorial contexts. Our hypothesis is that firms which occupy parts of the value chain with footloose GIS characteristics will have shorter survival times than firms which operate in spatially more stable GIS types. Demand-side policies will accordingly produce stronger competitive advantages for firms operating in GIS with spatially stable valuation structures. The empirical context of our study is the solar photovoltaics (PV) industry. We analyze market entry and exit of 129 German and 127 Japanese PV firms from 1960 to 2016 using a Cox Proportional Hazards model. The results support the hypotheses that firm survival and policy effects depend on a value chain part's underlying GIS configuration.
Generalized trust represents an important regional resource for a firm. It increases human capital, fosters frequent interaction and information sharing, and lowers transaction costs. We provide ...empirical evidence on the impact of generalized trust among people on firm innovation in German regions. Our observation period ranges from 2004 to 2018. A trust measure is generated by using survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, firm-level data is obtained from the Mannheim Innovation Panel and regional data is retrieved from the INKAR database. We apply a 3-level multilevel model, with yearly observations nested in firms, which are nested in regions. Our results show that the relationship between trust and firm innovation has an inverted U-shape. An increase in trust is particularly beneficial for firms inside regions with very low levels of trust, and in small and medium-sized enterprises, especially those that operate in the doing-using-interacting mode of innovation (DUI) with an emphasis on employee freedom and creativity.
•Generalized trust in regions is positively related to firm innovation.•The relationship is particularly strong for innovation in small and medium-sized firms.•The relationship is stronger in regions with below-average shares of generalized trust.•The results offer additional explanations for differences in innovation and regional growth.
Abstract
This paper provides empirical evidence on a special case of restricted technology transfer: the German Democratic Republic (GDR) characterized by a socialist innovation system with a ...supply-side-oriented technology-push model encompassing intellectual property rights protection partially distinct from the one employed in most market economies. We exploit the natural experiment setting of the formerly separated regions in Germany and compare the productivity effects of knowledge generation, accumulation, and diffusion in the GDR with those of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) between 1970 and 1989. By applying a Cobb–Douglas production function to original primary and harmonized productivity data and manually cleaned patent data, we show that knowledge generation, accumulation and diffusion contributed to sectoral productivity in the GDR similarly compared to the FRG, despite the institutional misalignments in the socialist innovation system. We explain these findings and provide implications for present organizations with regard to incentive schemes for patenting, the support of personal creativity and education, and alternative technology transfer mechanisms in case of institutional barriers to innovation.
We document the generation and the content of the Comprehensive Patent Database (CPDB) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (1949–1990), which is freely available at GESIS
. The database contains ...all patents granted in the GDR and published by the Office of Inventions and Patents (later: German Patent and Trade Mark Office/DPMA). The core database covers the years 1950–1990 and contains 24 variables with manually cleaned and processed information on a total of 261,822 unique patents of the GDR.
Generalized trust within regions represents an important firm resource. We provide empirical evidence on the impact of trust among people in regions on innovation using two distinct data sets. The ...first one contains firm-level data and is used to analyze how trust affects firm-level innovation in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The second data set is used to analyze the trust-innovation relationship within regions. It allows us to capture innovation in the form of patents and explore spatial patterns. Our observation period ranges from 2004 to 2019. We apply a multilevel approach, panel data models as well as spatial techniques. The results show that generalized trust has a positive impact on a firm's innovativeness, which is particularly strong for small and medium-sized firms and in regions with relatively low levels of trust.
This paper documents the generation and the content of the Comprehensive Patent Database (CPDB) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (1949-1990), Version 1.1, which is freely available at GESIS ...https://doi.org/10.7802/2423. The database contains all patents granted in the GDR and published by the Office of Inventions and Patents (AfEP, later: German Patent and Trade Mark Office/DPMA) in the period between 1 January 1939 (application before but granted in the GDR) and 29 June 2006 (application in but granted after the GDR). The core database covers the years 1950 to 1990 and contains 24 variables with manually cleaned and processed information on a total of 261,822 unique patents of the GDR. The data was collected and prepared for the purpose of research on innovation activity in the GDR.
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