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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2013‒05‒19
ten papers chosen by Laura Stefanescu European Research Centre of Managerial Studies in Business Administration |
| By: | Negin Salimi; Rudi Bekkers; Koen Frenken |
| Abstract: | Faced with ever-increasing pressure to innovate and perform, firms consider universities as a significant, external source of knowledge. There is a variety of ways through which such knowledge flow can take place, including academic publications, contract research, staff mobility and university patents and licenses, but also more collaborative modes such as joint research projects. This paper focuses on a specific – and promising – collaborative model, in which firms and universities are together involved in a Ph.D. project, carried out by a doctoral candidate. We model the relationship on the one hand on various aspects of governance, and the success of the collaboration on the other. Here, success is operationalized in a number of different ways, including the successful transfer, the application and the commercialization of knowledge. Our model was tested using a survey conducted at the Eindhoven University of Technology. We conclude that governance decisions have a significant impact on the ultimate success. Among other things, the choice of university supervisor plays a pivotal role. Moreover, success is more likely if there is joint decision-making by both university and partner on the content of the project, and communication between the Ph.D. candidate and their supervisor in the firm has a high frequency and quality. We believe our findings can help universities and firms to collaborate successfully. |
| Keywords: | Collaborative Ph.D. projects; governance of university-industry collaborations; collaboration success. |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:tuecis:wpaper:1305&r=knm |
| By: | Sunil Kanwar (Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi, India) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the innovation, production efficiency and productivity responses to the stronger protection of intellectual property post-Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement, with specific reference to manufacturing industry in the BRIC economy of India. Using the fact that the post-TRIPs strengthening of intellectual property rights in developing countries was largely exogenous, we are able to correct for any endogeneity biases that may obtain in the estimation. Using a large panel data set for Indian firms in the manufacturing sector spanning the period 1995-2011, we find that intellectual property reform is associated with a significant increase in the rates of technical change, production efficiency change, and productivity growth. Thus, the annual rate of technological growth spurted by about 3 percentage points or more, production efficiency grew by almost 8 percentage points, and consequently total factor productivity growth accelerated by about 0.8 percentage points in the post-reform period. This holds promise for other similar reforming countries, and helps to set at rest the misgivings one might have for the tightening of intellectual property protection. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, Efficiency, Productivity, IPRs |
| JEL: | O34 O33 O31 O11 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cde:cdewps:230&r=knm |
| By: | Bradley, Samantha R. (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics); Gicheva, Dora (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics); Hassell, Lydia (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics); Link, Albert N. (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Our descriptive analysis of a random sample of businesses that received Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program awards shows that female-owned businesses are disadvantaged, compared to male-owned businesses, in their ability to attract alternative investment funding to commercialize their technology-based innovations. Differences in the probability of receiving such financial support are most evident in the West and Northeast Census region states. Respectively, in states in those regions female-owned businesses are 17 and 9 percentage points less likely to attract alternative investment funding. |
| Keywords: | Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Technology |
| JEL: | L26 O31 O32 |
| Date: | 2013–05–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:uncgec:2013_009&r=knm |
| By: | Asadul Islam; Faridul Islam; Chau Nguyen |
| Abstract: | The paper examines the effects of skilled immigration on US wages that are due to innovation. We extend the studies by Hunt & Gauthier-Loiselle (2010), and Hunt (2011) to explore the immigration-innovation-wages nexus. Using the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) and the US Census datasets we find a significant positive effect of immigration on wages that are attributable to immigrants‘ contribution to innovation. Our findings suggest that as the share of skilled immigrants increases in a particular group, the wages of both natives and immigrants in that group get a positive boost. The effects are more pronounced through immigrants‘ impact on patent granted and patent commercialized, compared with their impact on other measures of innovations. The results also show that the immigrants are more likely to present a paper at a conference or publish in professional journals, primarily because they are more educated or concentrated in the related occupation compared to the natives. Our findings indicate that immigrants make a substantial contribution to the host economy‘s innovation which is a major driver of productivity growth. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, immigration, wages |
| JEL: | J15 J31 |
| Date: | 2013–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mos:moswps:2013-10&r=knm |
| By: | Sander Hoogendoorn (University of Amsterdam); Simon C. Parker (University of Western Ontario, Richard Ivey School of Business); Mirjam van Praag (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the impact of diversity in cognitive ability among members of a team on their performance. We conduct a large field experiment in which teams start up and manage real companies under identical circumstances. Exogenous variation in - otherwise random - team composition is imposed by assigning individuals to teams based on their measured cognitive abilities. The setting is one of business management practices in the longer run where tasks are diverse and involve complex decision-making. We propose a model in which greater ability dispersion generates greater knowledge for a team, but also increases the costs of monitoring necessitated by moral hazard. Consistent with the predictions of our model, we find that team performance as measured in terms of sales, profits and profits per share first increases, and then decreases, with ability dispersion. Teams with a moderate degree of ability dispersion also experience fewer dismissals due to few er shirking members in those teams. |
| Keywords: | Ability dispersion, team performance, field experiment, entrepreneurship, knowledge pooling, moral hazard |
| JEL: | C93 D83 J24 L25 L26 M13 M54 |
| Date: | 2012–11–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:uvatin:2012130&r=knm |
| By: | Sjoquist, David L. (Georgia State University); Winters, John V. (University of Cincinnati) |
| Abstract: | Since 1991 more than two dozen states have adopted merit-based student financial aid programs, intended at least in part to increase the stock of human capital by improving the knowledge and skills of the state's workforce. At the same time, there has been growing concern that the U.S. is producing too few college graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Using both microdata from the American Community Survey and student records from the University System of Georgia, this paper examines whether recently adopted state merit-aid programs have affected college major decisions, with a focus on STEM fields. We find consistent evidence that state merit programs did in fact reduce the likelihood that a young person in the state will earn a STEM degree. |
| Keywords: | merit aid, HOPE scholarship, college major, STEM |
| JEL: | I23 J24 |
| Date: | 2013–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7381&r=knm |
| By: | Andrei Barbos (Department of Economics, University of South Florida) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies information acquisition under competitive pressure and proposes a model to examine the relationship between product market competition and the level of innovative ac- tivity in an industry. Our paper offers theoretical support for recent empirical results that point to an inverted-U shape relationship between competition and innovation. The model presents an optimal timing decision problem where a firm endowed with an idea trades the benefits of waiting for additional information on whether this idea can be converted into a successful project against the cost of delaying innovation: a given firm's profit following innovation is decreasing in the number of firms that invested at earlier dates. By recognizing that a firm can intensify its innovative activity on two dimensions, a risk dimension and a quantitative dimension, we show that firms solve this trade-off precisely so as to generate the inverted-U shape relationship. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, Information Acquisition, Timing Games, Preemption |
| JEL: | D40 L10 |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usf:wpaper:0713&r=knm |
| By: | Todd M. Gabe; Jaison R. Abel |
| Abstract: | This paper provides an empirical analysis of the extent to which people in different occupations locate near one another, or coagglomerate. We construct pairwise Ellison-Glaeser coagglomeration indices for U.S. occupations and use these measures to investigate the factors influencing the geographic concentration of occupations. The analysis is conducted separately at the metropolitan area and state levels of geography. Empirical results reveal that occupations with similar knowledge requirements tend to coagglomerate and that the importance of this shared knowledge is larger in metropolitan areas than in states. These findings are robust to instrumental variables estimation that relies on an instrument set characterizing the means by which people typically acquire knowledge. An extension to the main analysis finds that, when we focus on metropolitan areas, the largest effects on coagglomeration are due to shared knowledge about the subjects of engineering and technology, arts and humanities, manufacturing and production, and mathematics and science. |
| Keywords: | Industrial location ; Professional employees ; Metropolitan areas - Statistics ; Information theory ; Labor market ; Geography |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednsr:612&r=knm |
| By: | Asongu, Simplice A |
| Abstract: | This seminal paper provides global empirical evidence on catch-up processes in scientific and technical publications. Its purpose is to model the future of scientific knowledge monopoly in order to understand whether the impressive growth experienced by latecomers in the industry has been accompanied by a similar catch-up in scientific capabilities and knowledge contribution. The empirical evidence is based on 41 catch-up panels which together consist of 99 countries. The richness of the dataset allows us to disaggregate countries into fundamental characteristics based on income-levels (high-income, lower-middle-income, upper-middle-income and low-income), legal-origins (English common-law, French civil-law, German civil-law and, Scandinavian civil-law) and, regional proximity (South Asia, Europe & Central Asia, East Asia & the Pacific, Middle East & North Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean and, Sub-Saharan Africa). Three main issues are investigated: the presence or not of catch-up processes, the speed of the catch-up processes and, the time needed for full (100%) catch-up. The findings based on absolute and conditional catch-up patterns broadly show that advanced countries will continue to dominate in scientific knowledge contribution. Policy implications are discussed. |
| Keywords: | Research and Development; Catch-up |
| JEL: | F42 O10 O30 O38 O57 |
| Date: | 2013–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:46959&r=knm |
| By: | Sander Hoogendoorn (University of Amsterdam); Mirjam van Praag (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | One of the most salient and relevant dimensions of team heterogeneity is ethnicity. We measure the causal impact of ethnic diversity on the performance of business teams using a randomized field experiment. We follow 550 students who set up 45 real companies as part of their curriculum in an international business program in the Netherlands. We exploit the fact that companies are set up in realistic though similar circumstances and that we, as outside researchers, had the unique opportunity to exogenously vary the ethnic composition of otherwise randomly composed teams. The student population consists of 55% students with a non-Dutch ethnicity from 53 different countries of origin. We find that a moderate level of ethnic diversity has no effect on team performance in terms of business outcomes (sales, profits and profits per share). However, if at least the majority of team members is ethnically diverse then more ethnic diversity has a positive impact on the performance of teams. In line with theoretical predictions, our data suggest that this positive effect could be related to the more diverse pool of relevant knowledge facilitating (mutual) learning within ethnically diverse teams. |
| Keywords: | Ethnic diversity, team performance, field experiment, entrepreneurship, (mutual) learning |
| JEL: | J15 L25 C93 L26 M13 D83 |
| Date: | 2012–07–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:uvatin:2012068&r=knm |