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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2012‒04‒17
five papers chosen by Laura Stefanescu European Research Centre of Managerial Studies in Business Administration |
| By: | Montalvo, Carlos; Moghayer, Saeed |
| Abstract: | Innovation is currently seen as a cornerstone not only for economic development but also as an intrinsic human activity that could help to face the great challenges of human kind. Given the importance of innovation in the new European 2020 Strategy, measuring progress but also monitoring what drives innovation becomes crucial for policy development. Following upon this strategy the new European flag initiative “Innovation Union” called for a new “single” indicator on innovation. Currently the information infrastructure on innovation in Europe contains a number of indicators. Most of the current indicators at the national or sector levels use a performance theoretical framework based on an efficiency model of inputs and outputs. The last five editions of CIS have been a bastion of innovation policy research during the last decade. Despite this, CIS has been criticised for not having an umbrella framework that unifies its different underpinnings to explain what drives innovation to actual innovation and economic outcomes. In this paper we propose a framework that enables the theoretical and empirical linkages between the drivers of innovation to innovation performance via the integration of core features determining innovative behaviour in to a single composite. This index enables to assess the total propensity of firms to innovate and assess the relative innovation performance at the sector and country level. The approach adopted here to create the index overcomes long standing theoretical and methodological issues related to the reduction of complexity in a meaningful form, scope, aggregation, normalisation and validation of innovation composites. The empirical demonstration of the index was done using CIS4 data and the results validate the theoretical structure and robustness of the proposed model. This enables its replication for innovation policy analysis in different settings. The model underlying the proposed index provides not only a depiction of the efficiency of the innovation system but also a link to economic performance and to the factors that determine relative performance. |
| Keywords: | Innovation indicators; Innovation performance; innovation efficiency; innovation intensity; theory of planned behaviour; CIS; single indicator; composite indicators; sectoral innovation indicators; behavioral economics; psychological economics; |
| JEL: | D03 D7 C43 O3 |
| Date: | 2011–10–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:38002&r=knm |
| By: | Effelsberg, Martin |
| Abstract: | A rising competitive pressure for innovations comes along with an increasing number of companies and public research facilities that include external sources of information into the innovation process. This trend towards an open innovation process can be verified empirically. External R&D expenditures are those invested in R&D activities outside the firm's boundaries, e. g. license fees, research assignments or collaborations with public research institutes and companies. Investments in external R&D allow fast adaptations within the innovation process in case of changing market trends or radical innovations. Furthermore, opening up the innovation process simplifies an integration of required know-how from another industry. Altogether, the flexibility of innovation can be increased without an expansion of a company's own capacities. Beside the trend of integrating knowledge from outside the firm's boundaries, an increasing internationalization of R&D can be observed in several branches. Hence, this article examines the following questions: Which factors determine the absorptive capacity of national economies? How can these factors be operationalized and how can an adequate framework be developed to increase national absorptive capacity? -- |
| Keywords: | innovation systems,absorptive capacity,theory |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:opodis:201104&r=knm |
| By: | Rõigas, Kärt |
| Abstract: | The purpose of the paper is to find out whether linkages between productivity and innovation are different among Estonian service sector sub-sectors. In this paper productivity is measured as value added per employee. An original approach toward measurement of productivity is used, decomposing it into three components: labour costs, depreciation and gross profit per employee. Four types of innovation are studied: product, process, organizational and marketing innovation. The empirical analysis is based on productivity data from the Estonian Business Register and innovation data from the Estonian Community Innovation Survey 5, covering the period between 2004 and 2006. Results based on Estonian service sectors reveal that in different sub-sectors different types of innovation are linked to productivity. Still, all linkages between innovation and productivity or its components are positive. There is one exception: among assisting services marketing innovation and gross profit are negatively associated with each other. -- |
| Keywords: | service sector,productivity,productivity components,four innovation types |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:opodis:201102&r=knm |
| By: | Ainura Uzagalieva (Centre of Applied Economics Studies of the Atlantic at the Department of Economics and Management, the University of the Azores, Portugal); Evžen Kočenda; Antonio Menezes |
| Abstract: | We analyze the role of innovation in the technological development of four new EU members: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. For that purpose, we use a novel approach by modeling the empirical relationship between intra-industrial bilateral trade flows, which proxy the level of technological progress, and innovation expenditures within the context of a gravity model with a set of appropriate instrumental variables to account for the potential endogeneity of innovation to trade. We show that innovation efforts in high-tech industries exhibit a strong effect on the technological progress of the region and they are closely linked to foreign direct investment and multinationals. As foreign-owned subsidiaries become a part of the innovation systems and industrial structure of the host country they promote overall technological growth in the region. |
| Keywords: | foreign direct investment, innovation, imitation, international trade, European Union |
| JEL: | C51 F14 F21 O31 |
| Date: | 2012–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ost:wpaper:312&r=knm |
| By: | Tamm, Dorel; Ukrainski, Kadri |
| Abstract: | Although systems of innovation approach is gaining popularity among researchers and policy-makers, it is still rather difficult to apply this approach to specific policy settings and designs, because the approach is too general and does not provide many direct suggestions for building up an innovation system. It is often pointed out that in catching-up countries the innovation policy is not aligned with the specific circumstances of the innovation systems, but copies similar policies in more developed countries instead. This article finds by analysing the functional side of Estonian national innovation system, that the functions involving the provision of knowledge inputs and constituents of the innovation system, but also support services for innovating firms rather than demand-side activities are recognized by local policy designers. We suggest that by aligning the structure of the innovation system, more coherent logic of public-private co-evolution and better alignment of respective innovation policy measures should be followed. By looking at individual functions, it is clear, that the demand-side activities of innovation policy can be used more to enhance innovation activities in a more targeted way. More generally, we find that the functions that public sector performs in a national innovation system, should be designed and developed carefully in a balanced way, which is especially important for a small catching-up country, where the risk to create misalignments in the system is larger. -- |
| Keywords: | innovation system,catching-up countries |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:opodis:201107&r=knm |