nep-ipr New Economics Papers
on Intellectual Property Rights
Issue of 2010‒02‒13
three papers chosen by
Roland Kirstein
Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg

  1. Selling the ivory tower and regional development: Technology transfer offices as mediators of university-industry linkages By Reiner, Christian
  2. Economic Adversity and Entrepreneurship-led Growth: Lessons from the Indian Software Sector By Athreye, Suma
  3. Public Interventions Supporting Innovation in Small and Medium-Size Firms. Successes or Failures? A Probit Analysis By Serena Novero

  1. By: Reiner, Christian (University of Salzburg)
    Abstract: This article focuses on the role of Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) in regional development in three Austrian regions that represent different types of regional economies. TTOs can be defined as “bridging institutions” between academia and business. The value added by this approach emerges due to empirical results demonstrating that the variety of TTO functions and their respective spatial-profile of activities depend heavily on the regional context. Regional economic structure and regional policy systematically shape the spatial profile of TTO activities. The distinction between active and passive TTOs emerged as an important one regarding their potential regional economic development impact. While passive TTOs merely facilitate already existing contacts of the academic staff, active TTOs generate new university-industry linkages. These additionally created contacts are heavily biased towards the regional level. Intellectual property rights (IPR)-related TTO activities show a rather weak regional impact. This might prove problematic for policy makers that foster the patent-oriented commercialization of knowledge as a means to intensify knowledge spillovers from the universities to regional or national firms.
    Keywords: Universities; Technology transfer offices; regional innovation systems; regional policy; Austria
    JEL: I23 I28 O33 O34 R11 R58
    Date: 2010–02–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:sbgwpe:2010_005&r=ipr
  2. By: Athreye, Suma
    Abstract: It is commonly believed that the business environment in developing countries does not allow productive technology-based entrepreneurship to flourish. In this paper, we draw on the experience of Indian software firms where entrepreneurial growth has belied these predictions. This paper argues that the business models chosen by Indian firms were those that best aligned the country’s abundant labour resources and advantages to global demand. Many potentially higher value added opportunities struggled to attain success, but the qualitative value of experimental failures and the capability gaps they exposed was invaluable for collective managerial learning in the industry. Second, the paper also shows that the presence of growth opportunities and the success of firms stimulated institutional evolution to promote entrepreneurial growth. Last we show that the distinctive aggregate contribution of entrepreneurial firms was that they outperformed business houses and multinational subsidiaries in their more productive use of available capital resources whilst achieving similar levels of growth in output and employment. This paper draws upon an earlier shorter paper co-authored with Mike Hobday and titled 'Overcoming Development Adversity: How Entrepreneurs Led Software Development in India'.
    Keywords: Technology entrepreneurship, institutions and economic development, Indian software, intellectual property rights
    Date: 2010
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2010-04&r=ipr
  3. By: Serena Novero (Ceris - Institute for Economic Research on Firms and Growth, Moncalieri (Turin), Italy)
    Abstract: The aim of this work is to investigate the probability of success or failure of public interventions, made to support the development of some Italian firms. The great number of small and medium-size enterprises, placed in the Canavese area, north of Turin, Italy, has suffered, in the nineties, of a gap in technological innovation in their production. The Consortium for the Canavese Technological District (CCTD), a public local association established in 1993 specifically to support the firms of the area, has supplied them with some technological, innovative services, sustaining their growth. More exactly, some research centres, named Centres of Competence, were created, with the pre-existing structures of the Polytechnic of Turin and of the firm RTM (placed in Vico Canavese, Province of Turin): their targets were to supply innovative services to the local firms and to place technical machineries at the disposal of the local units, to support their innovation and competitiveness. The present research analyzes a central point: which has been the impact of these services? Which is the probability that a public o private intervention to innovate has success and brings economic growth to the involved firms? This objective is achieved with a Probit Model, built on a panel of 103 firms, that covers a 6-year range (from 1999 to 2004) and contains their balance-sheets data and the technical information regarding their collaborations with the Centres; the results highlight the role of a solid patrimonial stability, of the choice of the right innovations to apply to the production processes as well as the importance of a high previous technological status of the involved enterprises.
    Keywords: Innovation probability, Public interventions, Firms growth, Qualitative choice models
    JEL: C35 D92 H71 O31
    Date: 2008–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csc:cerisp:200811&r=ipr

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