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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2021‒06‒14
two papers chosen by Laura Ştefănescu Centrul European de Studii Manageriale în Administrarea Afacerilor |
| By: | BENASSI Mario; GRINZA Elena; RENTOCCHINI Francesco (European Commission - JRC); RONDI Laura |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether firm performance is related to the accumulated stock of technological knowledge associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and, if so, whether the firm’s history in 4IR technology development affects such a relationship. We exploit a rich longitudinal matched patent-firm data set on the population of large firms that filed 4IR patents at the European Patent Office (EPO) between 2009 and 2014, while reconstructing their patent stocks from 1985 onwards. To identify 4IR patents, we use a novel two-step procedure proposed by EPO (2020), based on Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) codes and on a full-text patent search. Our results show a positive and significant relationship between firms’ stocks of 4IR patents and labour and total factor productivity. We also find that firms with a long history in 4IR patent filings benefit more from the development of 4IR technological capabilities than later applicants. Conversely, we find that firm profitability is not significantly related to the stock of 4IR patents, which suggests that the returns from 4IR technological developments may be slow to be cashed in. Finally, we find that the positive relationship with productivity is stronger for 4IR-related wireless technology and for AI, cognitive computing and big data analytics. |
| Keywords: | Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR); patent applications; technology development; firm performance; longitudinal matched patent-firm data; Industry 4.0 |
| Date: | 2021–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:wpaper:202101&r= |
| By: | Plechero, Monica (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice); Grillitsch, Markus (CIRCLE, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | Industry 4.0 requires from manufacturing firms to become more innovative in order to remain relevant and competitive. To step-up firm innovation, several studies in Innovation and Economic Geography foreground that firms need to combine knowledge in novel ways either within local industrial structures or over distance. The contribution of this paper is to investigate in-depth how manufacturing firms with traditional roots combine new generative knowledge in and beyond a local production system (LPS), what enables them to access and integrate such knowledge from external sources, and how this relates to the firms’ innovation performance, with a focus on radical and varied forms of innovation. The contribution of this paper lies also in a mixed-methods research approach, which combines a population-based survey of mechatronics firms in an Italian LPS, with in-depth interviews. This allows for a qualitative interpretation of the causes of the identified distributions and correlations. The main finding of the paper is that firms generating radical innovations and varied forms of innovation combine unrelated types of knowledge in-house and through external sources. The pattern is that the traditional manufacturing knowledge of mechatronics firms still prevails but that firms increasingly complement this with new knowledge, in particular science-based analytical knowledge. Firms that have acquired complementary knowledge in-house are able to access new knowledge nationally or internationally. Even though firms source knowledge relatively frequently within the local production system, the firms who access new knowledge nationally and internationally stand out in terms of their innovation performance. |
| Keywords: | Industry 4.0; knowledge bases; local productive system; innovation; manufacturing firms |
| JEL: | O33 R11 |
| Date: | 2021–06–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2021_005&r= |