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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2015‒08‒13
seven papers chosen by Laura Ştefănescu Centrul European de Studii Manageriale în Administrarea Afacerilor |
| By: | Christian Longhi (Université Nice Sophia Antipolis; GREDEG-CNRS) |
| Abstract: | Since the development of the knowledge based economies, clusters and clusters policies have been the subject of increased interest, as sources of knowledge, innovation, and competitiveness. The paper focuses on a case study drawn from the French cluster policy, the pole of competitiveness 'Secure Communicating Solutions' in the French Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Region, based on two high tech clusters, Rousset - Gémenos and Sophia-Antipolis. The policy aims to provide the firms incentives to build network relations of heterogeneous actors to trigger innovative processes. The analysis of the collaborative R&D projects of the pole provides insights on the nature of the collective learning networks working in the clusters as well as the prevailing organizational forms resulting from the firms strategies. It show that knowledge spillovers are not simply "in the air" but very specific of the learning networks and clusters from which they belong. Clusters thus need to be analyzed jointly with networks in order to understand the processes underlying their innovation capacity. |
| Keywords: | Collective Learning Networks, Knowledge, Innovation, Clusters, Cluster Policy, Social Network Analysis |
| JEL: | L14 L38 O31 R11 |
| Date: | 2015–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2015-28&r=knm |
| By: | Tödtling, Franz (Vienna University of Economics and Business); Trippl, Michaela (CIRCLE, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | This chapter provides a review and discussion of recent conceptual and empirical contributions on the nature and geography of firms’ knowledge acquisition activities. We offer a systematic conceptual view on the pattern on knowledge sourcing, bringing into focus and combining the notions of industrial knowledge bases (sectoral contexts), which are supposed to vary considerably with respect to the transferability of their key knowledge types and regional innovation systems (regional contexts), which are supposed to differ substantially in terms of the availability of knowledge sources. The empirical part of the chapter draws on cases from Austria, Finland, Germany and Sweden and provides an analysis and comparison of knowledge sourcing activities in analytical, synthetic and symbolic industrial sectors in metropolitan, specialised industrial and peripheral regional contexts. |
| Keywords: | knowledge sourcing activities; industrial knowledge bases; regional innovation systems |
| JEL: | D83 O30 R10 |
| Date: | 2015–07–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2015_025&r=knm |
| By: | Sylvie Charlot; Riccardo Crescenzi; Antonio Musolesi |
| Abstract: | By adopting a semiparametric approach, the ‘traditional’ regional knowledge production function is developed in three complementary directions. First, the model is augmented with region-specific time trends to account for endogeneity due to selection on unobservables. Second, the nonparametric part of the model relaxes the standard assumptions of linearity and additivity regarding the effect of R&D and human capital. Finally, the assumption of homogeneity in the effects of R&D and human capital is also relaxed by explicitly accounting for the differences between developed and lagging regions. The analysis of the genesis of innovation in the regions of the European Union unveils nonlinearities, threshold effects, complex interactions and shadow |
| Keywords: | innovation; Europe; R&D; regional knowledge production function; semiparametric models; endogenous selection; random growth model |
| JEL: | C14 C23 O32 R11 |
| Date: | 2014–10–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:60088&r=knm |
| By: | Chryssoula Pentheroudakis |
| Abstract: | The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) organised the Conference "Innovation in the European digital single market - The Role of Patents". This conference aimed to provide reliable evidence based on patent data analysis to support European innovation policies for a Digital Single Market. The advancement of the digital economy in Europe does not only bring unmatched opportunities, but also a series of challenges in the area of intellectual property rights. This is particularly true for the patent system which has to strike the right balance between providing incentives for research and development investments while enabling at the same time the dissemination and re-use of technological knowledge. The difficulties of striking this balance are most apparent in the field of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), where standardization and interoperability are important for the implementation of a Digital Single Market. In order to pin down the role of patents in the new digital economy, it is important to look at the broader economic, legal, technological and policy context and achieve a better understanding of what is at stake in the current dynamics. It is a volatile landscape marked by patent wars, high litigation costs, overlapping rights, hold-up scenarios in the field of standardization and radical market shifts deriving from convergent technologies and emerging platform-centric business models. Against this background, the stakes are high with regards to many issues: interoperability, reasonable and timely access to key technologies and technical knowledge, legal certainty, unfettered competition and a secured return on investment in research and development. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, Digital Single Market, patents |
| Date: | 2015–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc96728&r=knm |
| By: | Claudio Fassio; Sona Kalantaryan; Alessandra Venturini |
| Abstract: | The objective of this paper is to analyse the role of migrants in innovation in Europe. We use Total Factor Productivity as a measure of innovation and focus on the three largest European countries – France, Germany and the United Kingdom – in the years 1994-2007. Unlike previous research, which mainly employs a regional approach, we analyse the link between migration and innovation at the sectoral level. This allows us to measure the direct contribution of migrants in the sector in which they are actually employed. Moreover, it allows a distinction between the real contribution of migrants to innovation from possible inter-sectoral complementarities, which might as well foster innovation. We control for the different components of human-capital, such as age, education and diversity of origin. To address the possible endogeneity of migration we draw on an instrumental variable strategy originally devised by Card (2001) and adapt it at the sector level The results show that overall migrants are relevant in all sectors, but some important differences emerge across sectors: highly-educated migrants show a larger positive effect in the high-tech sectors, while middle- and low-educated ones are more relevant in manufacturing. The diversity of countries of origin contributes to innovation only in the services sectors, confirming that in empirical analyses at the regional or national level the diversity measure might capture the complementarity between sectors rather than the contribution of different national skills. This implies that the diversity should not guide the migration policy which instead should be linked to the specific demand for labour of firms and not to pursue a generic search for highly skilled migrants. |
| Keywords: | Migration, innovation, highly skilled migrants, low skilled migrants, Total Factor Productivity. |
| JEL: | F22 O31 O32 |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rsc:rsceui:2015/43&r=knm |
| By: | Carlo Vercellone (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS); Francesca Bria (NESTA); Andrea Fumagalli (Dipartimento di Economia, Università di Pavia, Italie - University of Pavia, Italy); Eleonora Gentilucci (Axe Institutions - CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS); Alfonso Giuliani (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS); Giorgio Griziotti (Effimera); Pierluigi Vattimo (Università di Cosenza) |
| Abstract: | This report presents an in-depth analysis of the concept of common goods and of possible political and management variation in the context of a knowledge-based economy. The research presents an initial critical review of the literature together with a concrete analysis of the development of the commons and common goods. The report will be organised in three sections. In the first, entitled "From the theory of public goods to the new political economy of the commons" we will see how, for Ostrom's new theory of the commons, what remains as a central element defining common goods is the particular nature of certain goods, in continuity with the ahistorical and static approach to classification of goods (private, public, common, belonging to a club) driven by neo-classical inspired economic theory. In the second section we will develop the approach of Common in the singular drawn up with the contribution of numerous studies in the theoretical framework of cognitive capitalism. The third will deal with the historic and empirical analysis of the origin, sense and principal stakes at play in the dynamics of the common, starting from the key role of the transformations of labour at the foundation of a knowledge-based economy. Throughout this journey, in the three sections different crucial aspects relating to the forms of regulation open to guarantee the sustainability of the commons and promote its development as a new central form of economic and social organisation will be faced systematically. This research offers an exhaustive theoretical framework, tackling all the conceptual and historical issues on the evolution of the theory of common goods. At the same time however, it offers practical and regulative examples of models of self-governance of commons, in the context of the knowledge-based economy. This analysis offers the D-CENT project possible models of democratic management of resources and common infrastructures that are at the base of the experience of shared democracy in Spain, Iceland and Finland, with the aim of achieving middle and long-term sustainability. Specifically speaking, the analysis submitted here reports: (1) research into the market of identity and the opposing claim of social data as digital common goods and the need for public and common infrastructures of information and communication not based on the logic of the market and surveillance (D3.3); (2) models to implement a commons currency of the common that can support the activities of social movements and productive communities (D3.5); (3) the final report (D1.3) on models of sustainability and the general impact of this project. Many of the examples proposed here, from the re-municipalisation of water, the self-management of cultural spaces to the free software and makers’ movement, illustrate collective practices that establish new spaces, institutions or norms of participative and democratic sharing. These examples represent practices of re-appropriation and management of the common, new practices of labour, creation and production based on collaboration and sharing. Moreover, from the concrete experiences analysed here, the idea emerges that the concept of common goods can constitute a concrete alternative, and that includes on a legal footing (Rodotà, 2011). Therefore the common is the product of a social and institutional structure that demonstrates forms of governing and social co-operation that guarantee its production, reproduction and spread. The new institutions of the common that emerge from these constituent practices constitute a general principle of self-governance of society and self-organisation of social production, proposing a new division between common, public and private. Obviously, the success of these new practices is a complex process that must rely on institutions which accord and guarantee reproduction over time and space of the commons and common goods: ways of management based on self-governance and collaborative economics; relationships of exchange based on reciprocity and gratuitousness; legal regimes that, like the invention of copyleft for free software, guarantee the accumulation of a stock of common-pool resources (CPR); distribution norms that permit the active involvement of the commoners in the development of the commons, guaranteeing a basic income, for example. In this context, it becomes more and more essential and urgent to define the terms of an alternative model of regulating a knowledge-based society and economy at the centre of which the logic of the commons would perform an essential role. |
| Date: | 2015–04–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-01180341&r=knm |
| By: | Fındık, Derya; Tansel, Aysit |
| Abstract: | This chapter analyzes the effect of intangible investment on firm efficiency with an emphasis on its software component. Stochastic production frontier approach is used to simultaneously estimate the production function and the determinants of technical efficiency in the software intensive manufacturing firms in Turkey for the period 2003-2007. Firms are classified based on the technology group. High technology and low technology firms are estimated separately in order to reveal differentials in their firm efficiency. The results show that the effect of software investment on firm efficiency is larger in high technology firms which operate in areas such as chemicals, electricity, and machinery as compared to that of the low technology firms which operate in areas such as textiles, food, paper, and unclassified manufacturing. Further, among the high technology firms, the effect of the software investment is smaller than the effect of research and development personnel expenditure. This result shows that the presence of R&D personnel is more important than the software investment for software intensive manufacturing firms in Turkey. |
| Keywords: | Intangible assets, Software investment, Efficiency, Software intensive firms, Stochastic frontier analysis, Production Function, Firms, Turkey. |
| JEL: | L21 L22 L23 L25 |
| Date: | 2013–08–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:65955&r=knm |