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Innovative Activity (innovative + activity)
Selected AbstractsR&D and Firm Performance in a Transition EconomyKYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 4 2006Dirk Czarnitzki SUMMARY We estimate the effects of R&D on firms' credit ratings and on financial distress. The main purpose is the comparison of firms in Western Germany and Eastern Germany as a transitional economy. Innovative activity has a positive impact on firm value proxied by ratings in Western Germany, but a negative impact in Eastern Germany. We also consider future financial distress, and find that R&D in Eastern German firms leads to higher default risk. This stands in contrast to Western Germany where R&D enhances future performance. This result is highly politically relevant, since the high level of subsidies present in Eastern Germany may be subject to misallocation. [source] Anti-drink driving reform in Britain, c. 1920,80ADDICTION, Issue 9 2010Bill Luckin ABSTRACT Aim The goal of this report is to provide a framework for understanding and interpreting political, scientific and cultural attitudes towards drink driving in 20th-century Britain. Exploring the inherent conservatism of successive governments, Members of Parliament (MPs) and the public towards the issue during the interwar years, the contribution seeks to explain the shift from legislative paralysis to the introduction of the breathalyser in 1967. Design Based on governmental, parliamentary and administrative records, the report follows a mainly narrative route. It places particular emphasis on connections between post-war extra-parliamentary and parliamentary movements for reform. Setting The paper follows a linear path from the 1920s to the 1970s. Britain lies at the heart of the story but comparisons are made with nations,particularly the Scandinavian states,which took radical steps to prosecute drinking and dangerous drivers at an early date. Findings The report underlines the vital post-war role played by Graham Page, leading parliamentary spokesman for the Pedestrians' Association; the centrality of the Drew Report (1959) into an ,activity resembling driving'; the pioneering Conservative efforts of Ernest Marples; and Barbara Castle's consolidating rather than radically innovative activities between 1964 and 1967. Conclusion Both before and after the Second World War politicians from both major parties gave ground repeatedly to major motoring organizations. With the ever-escalating growth of mass motorization in the 1950s, both Conservative and Labour governments agonized over gridlock and ,murder on the roads'. Barbara Castle finally took decisive action against drink drivers, but the ground had been prepared by Graham Page and Ernest Marples. [source] Spatial Agglomeration, Technological Innovations, and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Italian Industrial DistrictsGROWTH AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2008GIULIO CAINELLI ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact on firms' productivity of innovative activities and agglomeration effects among firms belonging to Marshallian industrial districts and the possible joint effect of these two forces. We study a sample of 2,821 firms active in the Italian manufacturing industry in the period 1992,1995. Our analysis uses an original data set based on three different Istituto Nazionale di Statistica statistical sources,Community Innovation Survey, Archivio Statistico delle Imprese Attive (Italian Business Register), and Sistema dei Conti delle Imprese (Italian Structural Business Statistics),to estimate an "augmented" Cobb-Douglas production function to account for the impact of technological innovations and district-specific agglomeration effects on a firm's productivity growth. Our data set allows us to distinguish between product and process innovations, thus, through econometric analysis, we hope to achieve a better understanding of which of these two types of innovative activities benefits most from participation in an industrial district. Our empirical results show that belonging to an industrial district and making product innovations are key factors in the productivity growth of firms and that product innovations appear to have a greater effect on the economic performance of district rather than non-district firms. [source] Innovation and Regional Growth in the Enlarged Europe: The Role of Local Innovative Capabilities, Peripherality, and EducationGROWTH AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2005RICCARDO CRESCENZI ABSTRACT In this paper, a formal model for the relationship between innovation and growth in European Union regions is developed drawing upon the theoretical contribution of the systems of innovation approach. The model combines the analytical approach of the regional growth models with the insights of the systemic approach. The cross-sectional analysis, covering all the Enlarged Europe (EU-25) regions (for which data are available), shows that regional innovative activities (for which a specific measure is developed) play a significant role in determining differential regional growth patterns. Furthermore, the model sheds light on how geographical accessibility and human capital accumulation, by shaping the regional system of innovation, interact (in a statistically significant way) with local innovative activities, thus allowing them to be more (or less) effectively translated into economic growth. The paper shows that an increase in innovative effort is not necessarily likely to produce the same effect in all EU-25 regions. Indeed, the empirical analysis suggests that in order to allow innovative efforts in peripheral regions to be as productive as in core areas, they need to be complemented by huge investments in human capital. [source] National Science Foundation Graduate Teaching Fellows Promote Food Science Education in K-12 Schools in MaineJOURNAL OF FOOD SCIENCE EDUCATION, Issue 4 2003B. Calder ABSTRACT: The Univ. of Maine is participating in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) GK-12 Teaching Fellows program. Between 2000 and 2003, 4 food science graduate students demonstrated food- and nutrition-related science lessons, among other innovative activities. This article includes details of an activity on natural dyes to help students understand plant pigments. Assessment of the NSF GK-12 program is ongoing both locally and nationally. NSF's goals are being met, including one of the most important, which is the effect of NSF Fellows as role models on K-12 students. [source] The Relative Importance of Interfirm Relationships and Knowledge Transfer for New Product Development Success,THE JOURNAL OF PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2007Mette Praest Knudsen The relationship and network literature has primarily focused on particular partner types, for example, buyer,supplier relationships or competitor interaction. This article explores the nature and relative importance of different types of interfirm relationships for new product development (NPD) success. The underlying premise of the study is that not only the type of interfirm relationships but also the combination of relationships are important for NPD performance. The interaction with a specific type of partner is expected to influence innovative performance by means of appropriate knowledge transfer. Varying needs for external knowledge, and thus types of relationships, are observed depending on the particular stages in the NPD process, the character of the knowledge base of the firm, and the industrial conditions. The absorption of external knowledge is discussed using the degree of redundancy in knowledge, which is defined as the degree of overlap in the knowledge base of the sender and the recipient of knowledge. Hence, the degree of redundancy has direct implications for the ease and, hence, use of knowledge shared with an external partner. The article is based on data from the Know for Innovation survey on innovative activities among European firms, which was carried out in 2000 in seven European countries covering five industries. The article explores the extent of use of external relationships in collaborative product development and finds that customers are involved more frequently in joint development efforts. Second, the industry association of the most important relationship is studied, and the results show that firms tend to partner with firms from their own industry. The danger in this approach is that firms from their own industry tend to contribute similar knowledge, which ultimately may endanger the creation of new knowledge and therefore more radical product developments. The analyses combine the finding that relationships with customers are used most frequently at both early and late stages of the product development process, with a second and more contradictory finding that at the same time customer relationships have a negative impact on innovative success. Moreover, the combination of customers, with both universities and competitors, has a significant negative effect on innovative performance. The potential causes of this apparent paradox can be narrowed down to two: (1) the average customer may be unable to articulate needs for advanced technology-based products; and (2) the average customer may be unable to conceptualize ideas beyond the realm of his or her own experience. Based on this evidence the article cautions product development managers to think explicitly about what certain customers can contribute with and, more importantly, to match this contribution directly with their own sense of what direction product development should go in the future. Finally, the role of complementary as well as supplementary knowledge is investigated for innovative success finding that sharing of supplementary knowledge with external partners in NPD leads to a positive effect on innovative performance. The article is concluded by a discussion of the implication of this finding for building knowledge within the firm and for selecting external partners for NPD. [source] How Innovative are UK Firms?BRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2010Evidence from the Fourth UK Community Innovation Survey on Synergies between Technological, Organizational Innovations Using data from the Fourth UK Community Innovation Survey this paper explores the diffusion of a range of innovative activities (encompassing process, product, machinery, marketing, organization, management and strategic innovations) across 16,383 British companies in 2004. Building upon a simple theoretical model it is shown that the use of each innovation is correlated with the use of all other innovations. It is shown that the range of innovations can be summarized by two multi-innovation factors, labelled here ,organizational' and ,technological', that are complements but not substitutes for each other. Three clusters of firms are identified where intensity of use of the two sets of innovations is below average (56.9% of the sample); intermediate but above average (23.7%); and highly above average (19.4%). Distinctive characteristics are found to be common to the companies in each cluster. Finally, it is shown that innovativeness tends to persist over time. [source] Innovation and Peripherality: An Empirical Comparative Study of SMEs in Six European Union Member CountriesECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 1 2008Andrew Copus Abstract This article examines the rates of innovative activity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in central areas and equally developed but less accessible areas in six European Union member states. The probability of innovating is well predicted by the observable characteristics of firms, entrepreneurial characteristics, and business networks. More accessible areas consistently present higher rates of innovative activity than do their peripheral counterparts. The difference in the rates of peripheral and central areas is decomposed into observable and non-observable factors. The entire innovation gap is attributed to nonobservable factors that constitute a combination of behavior and environment. Innovation policy for SMEs should aim to meet businesses' specific needs (firm-specific factors) and to sustain and improve the innovative environment. [source] Local Industry Agglomeration and New Business ActivityGROWTH AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2003Todd Gabe New businesses are highly involved in innovative activity, which enhances worker productivity and leads to increased economic output. This paper investigates the effects of industry concentration on the incidence of new business openings in the 5,504 Maine county-industries. Empirical findings indicate that new business activity increases with the number of incumbent establishments in a county-industry and its concentration level relative to the U.S. economy. Model simulations show that raising county-industries, with no initial industry presence, to concentration levels similar to that of the industry in the U.S. economy results in a 1.7 to 8.9 percent increase in the expected number of business openings over a three-year period. Empirical results also suggest that industry clusters comprised of young and small establishments are more conducive to new business formation than clusters made up of mature and large companies. [source] Knowledge as a mediator between HRM practices and innovative activityHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2009Alvaro Lopez-Cabrales Abstract The objective of this paper is to test how human resources management (HRM) practices and employees' knowledge influence the development of innovative capabilities and, by extension, a firm's performance. Results confirm that HRM practices are not directly associated with innovation unless they take into account employees' knowledge. Specifically, our analyses establish a mediating role for the uniqueness of knowledge between collaborative HRM practices and innovative activity, a positive influence of knowledge-based HRM practices on valuable knowledge, and a positive contribution of innovations to the company's profit. We tested hypotheses in a sample of firms from the most innovative Spanish industries through structural equation modeling. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Innovation in Australian Trade UnionsINDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2002Paul Jarley Building on the study of innovation in American national unions, this article specifies and tests a model of the determinants of innovation in Australian trade unions. The results generally support the principal Delaney, Jarley, and Fiorito (1996) finding that the degree of union innovative activity is positively associated with rationalization and size,an indicator of resource availability. Several contrasts between the Australian and American findings are also noted and discussed. [source] Disruptive information system innovation: the case of internet computingINFORMATION SYSTEMS JOURNAL, Issue 4 2003Kalle Lyytinen Abstract., Information system (IS) innovation can be defined as a novel organizational application of digital computer and information communication technologies (ICT). This paper discusses how modalities of applying ICT technologies in their form and scope exhibit radical breaks, which are introduced herein as ,disruptive IS innovations'. This notion of disruptive IS innovation is developed by drawing upon and extending Swanson's (1994) theory of IS innovation as well as the concept of radical innovation. Disruptive innovations strongly influence the future trajectory of the adoption and use of ICT in organizational contexts and make the trajectory deviate from its expected course. In doing so, these disruptive innovations distinctly define what an IS is and how it is deployed in order to address current and future organizational and managerial prerogatives. Such changes are triggered breakthroughs in the capability of ICT that lead to the revision and expansion of associated cognitive models (frames) of computing. Disruptive IS innovations are those that lead to changes in the application of ICT that are both pervasive and radical. The pervasive nature implies that innovative activity spans all innovation subsets of the quad-core model of IS innovation introduced herein. Innovation types include: IS use and development processes; application architecture and capability; and base technologies. Radical in nature, disruptive is innovations depart in significant ways from existing alternatives and lead to deviation from expected use and diffusion trajectory. This paper demonstrates the importance of a concept of disruptive IS innovation by investigating how changes triggered by internet computing (Lyytinen et al., 1998) meet the conditions of a disruptive IS innovation defined herein. The analysis also affirms both the pervasive and radical nature of internet computing and explains how internet computing has fundamentally transformed the application portfolio, development practices and IS services over time. The analysis demonstrates that, with the concept of disruptive IS innovation, we can fruitfully analyse ,long' waves of ICT evolution , an issue that has largely been overlooked in the IS community. On a theoretical plane, the paper advocates the view that we need to look beyond linear, unidirectional, and atomistic concepts of the diffusion of IS innovations where innovative activity takes places in a linear fashion by oscillating between small technological innovations and small organizational innovations. In contrast, IS innovation can exhibit fundamental discontinuity; we need to theoretically grasp such disruptive moments. The recent influx of innovation, spurred by internet-based technology, offers one such moment. [source] Incumbency and R&D Incentives: Licensing the Gale of Creative DestructionJOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 4 2000Joshua S. Cans This paper analyzes the relationship between incumbency and R&D incentives in the context of a model of technological competition in which technologically successful entrants are able to license their innovation to (or be acquired by) an incumbent. That such a sale should take place is natural, since postinnovation monopoly profits are greater than the sum of duopoly profits. We identify three key findings about how innovative activity is shaped by licensing. First, since an incumbent's threat to engage in imitative R&D during negotiations increases its bargaining power, there is a purely strategic incentive for incumbents to develop an R&D capability. Second, incumbents research more intensively than entrants as long as (and only if) their willingness to pay for the innovation exceeds that of the entrant, a condition that depends critically on the expected licensing fee. Third, when the expected licensing fee is sufficiently low, the incumbent considers entrant R&D a strategic substitute for in-house research. This prediction about the market for ideas stands in contrast to predictions of strategic complementarity in patent races where licensing is not allowed. [source] A patent analysis of global food and beverage firms: The persistence of innovationAGRIBUSINESS : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 3 2002Oscar Alfranca We explore whether current innovation has an enduring effect on future innovative activity in large, global food and beverage (F&B) companies. We analyze a sample of 16,698 patents granted in the United States over the period 1977 to 1994 to 103 F&B firms selected from the world's largest F&B multinationals. We test whether patent time series are trend stationary or difference stationary in order to detect how large the autoregressive parameter is and how enduring the impact of past innovation in these companies is. We conclude that the patent series are not consistent with the random walk model. The null hypothesis of a unit root can be rejected at the 5% level when a constant and a time trend are considered. Both utility and design patent series are stationary around a constant and a time trend. Moreover, there is a permanent component in the patent time series. Thus, global F&B firms show a stable pattern of technological accumulation in which "success breeds success." "Old" innovators are the ones to foster both important changes and new ways of packaging products among F&B multinationals. The effect of past innovation is almost permanent. By contrast, other potential stimuli to technological change have only transitory effects on innovation. Patterns of technological accumulation vary in specific F&B industries. Past experience in design is important in highly processed foods and beverages, but not in agribusinesses and basic foodstuffs. Patterns of technological accumulation are similar in both smaller multinationals/newcomers and large, established multinationals. [EconLit citations : O330, F230, L660] © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] The front end of innovation in an era of industry convergence: evidence from nutraceuticals and functional foodsR & D MANAGEMENT, Issue 5 2006Stefanie Bröring Industry convergence, defined as a ,blurring' of boundaries between industries, induced by converging value propositions, technologies and markets, appears to be a pervasive phenomenon leading to the emergence of inter-industry segments. A current example of convergence can be witnessed in the nutraceuticals and functional foods sector, emerging at the boundary between the food and pharmaceutical industries. Not only technologies blur, but there is also a convergence of demand structures: consumers try to satisfy different needs in one transaction. In this context, this paper explores how actors from different industry-specific resource backgrounds can engage in an innovative activity requiring new technological and marketing competences. Given that absorptive capacity is limited by existing competences, this paper asks how organizations with different R&D competences are able to seize opportunities for innovation emerging from convergence. Empirical findings based on primary data collected from 54 R&D projects of a nutraceutical cluster show that there are different approaches of front end decision making: while some firms follow existing processes for front end decision making, others leave existing paths and need partners to fill in gaps already identified at the front end of innovation. [source] ANOTHER LOOK AT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INNOVATION PROXIES,AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 3 2009PAUL H. JENSEN Shortcomings in the treatment of intangible investment in company accounts imply that there is no statistical collection for innovative activity which abides by the logic used for other economic activity data. As a consequence, analysts rely on innovation proxies derived from administrative and survey data. However, it is still unclear exactly how the different proxies are correlated, and whether the choice amongst different proxies matters. In the light of the innovation measurement, this paper takes another look at the relationship between different proxies of firm innovation. The results show that firm-level correlations between survey-based indicators and other proxies for innovation are highest for manufacturing firms and for product innovations. [source] | |||||||||||||