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on Small Business Management |
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Issue of 2011‒03‒12
six papers chosen by Joao Carlos Correia Leitao University of Beira Interior and Technical University of Lisbon |
| By: | Spyros Arvanitis (KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich, Switzerland); Barbara Fuchs (KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich, Switzerland); Martin Woerter (University of Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein) |
| Abstract: | Research about users as a source of innovation has been largely restricted to case studies exploring specific innovation projects at the firm level. This study assesses empirically the relationship between external end users’ knowledge as an input factor to innovation and firms’ innovation success. The results strongly support the hypotheses: (i) that external end users have the potential to essentially improve the innovative performance of firms; (ii) that the technique of interaction during the innovation process and the characteristics of involved external users matter as well. The more firms make use of emphatic design and select specific users to acquire hard-to-articulate customer needs, the stronger is the relationship between access to external end users’ knowledge and firm innovation success measured in sales of innovative products. |
| Keywords: | user innovation, user interaction, lead user, innovation performance |
| JEL: | O31 |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kof:wpskof:11-276&r=sbm |
| By: | Erik Stam; Bart Nooteboom |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses the nature of entrepreneurship and its relation to innovation along a cycle in which exploration and exploration follow upon each other. We place the roles of entrepreneurship in innovation policy within this cycle of innovation. Different types of innovation along the cycle of innovation are realized with different forms of entrepreneurship, which are constrained or enabled by different legal institutions. One of the key roles of governments is to design, change or destruct institutions in order to improve societal welfare. The question is what governments should do in the context of innovation policy. Here, social scientists can make a contribution by providing insight into what entrepreneurship and innovation is (theories about these phenomena), and how institutions affect them in reality (empirical evidence about their effects). This requires social scientists to be engaged scholars and to provide new policy options as an honest broker between the academic world and the policy world. The key question of this paper is: How can policy best enable innovation based entrepreneurship? The answer is derived from looking at both theoretical tenets and empirical evidence using an institutional design perspective, which aims at providing arguments for the design, change and/or destruction of institutions, given the goals of the governments. We provide an overview of some (empirically tests of) institutions that enable or restrain particular types of entrepreneurship. Examples of these institutions are intellectual property rights and the Small Business Innovation Research program, employment protection, and non-compete covenants. |
| Keywords: | entrepreneurship, innovation, institutions, innovation policy |
| JEL: | E61 G38 H57 K29 L26 L53 M13 O12 O31 O33 O38 |
| Date: | 2011–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:use:tkiwps:1103&r=sbm |
| By: | Barge-Gil, Andrés; López, Alberto |
| Abstract: | R&D is considered to be the main source of innovation. We argue that R&D is too broad a measure, including activities differing in purposes, culture, people, management and other features. However, empirical studies have not analyzed them separately, mainly due to the lack of data. Using firm-level data, the aim of this paper is to estimate the differentiated effect of research and development on different innovation outputs. Results show that both research and development activities are important. However, we find that development activities are more important for product innovation, while the effect of research activities is higher on process innovation. Moreover, we analyze differences by technological intensity of the sector. When analyzing product and process innovations, we find evidence supporting the existence of higher payoffs to development and, especially to research in low-tech sectors when compared with high-tech ones. |
| Keywords: | R&D, patents, product innovation, process innovation, impact |
| JEL: | O3 L60 |
| Date: | 2011–02–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:29083&r=sbm |
| By: | Niels Bosma; Erik Stam; Sander Wennekers |
| Abstract: | This paper presents the results of the first international comparative study of intrapreneurship and independent entrepreneurship. The prevalence of intrapreneurship is about twice as high in high income countries as in low income countries. We find that at the individual level, intrapreneurs are much more likely to have the intention to start a new independent business than other employees. However, there is a negative correlation between intrapreneurship and early-stage entrepreneurial activity at the macro level. One explanation for these contrasting outcomes is the diverging micro level effect of education on intrapreneurship (positive effect) and early-stage entrepreneurial activity (negative effect). |
| Keywords: | intrapreneurship, comparative entrepreneurship, economic development, industrial organization, multi-level analysis |
| Date: | 2011–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:use:tkiwps:1104&r=sbm |
| By: | A. Blasco |
| Abstract: | Recent models of multi-stage R&D have shown that a system of weak intellectual property rights may lead to faster innovation by inducing firms to share intermediate technological knowledge. In this article I introduce a distinction between plain and sophisticated technological knowledge, which has not been noticed so far but plays a crucial role in determining how different appropriability rules affect the incentives to innovate. I argue that the positive effect of weak intellectual property regimes on the sharing of intermediate technological knowledge vanishes when technological knowledge is sophisticated, as is likely to be the case in many high tech industries. |
| JEL: | L10 O30 |
| Date: | 2011–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp733&r=sbm |
| By: | Karlsson, Charlie (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology) |
| Abstract: | An extensive amount of studies have been devoted to the importance of the creative process. Creativity is critical to research and in particular to innovation, a key feature of economic competitiveness. Most of the previous studies have dealt with the creativity of individuals, the creativity of teams and the importance of the organisational context. This chapter, however, emphasises the role of the characteristics of the local and regional economic milieu where the creative process takes place and the local and non-local networks of such milieus. Both the local ‘buzz’ related to interaction and learning opportunities, and non-local networks associated with integration of different milieus, offer special but different advantages for creative activities. The milieu will play an important role in creativity by supplying both a large number of incompatible ideas and good conditions for bringing them together in order to gain new, profound insights. Local accessibility, i.e. clustering, of incompatible ideas and the interregional accessibility to incompatible ideas in other regions are a function of the network characteristics of the local milieu. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the spatial concentration of creativity and the role of clustering and networks in stimulating creative regional economic milieus. One of the arguments of the chapter highlights how clustering of creative agents and creative processes in specific locations generates creative advantages that stimulate creativity and the in-migration of creative agents. Furthermore, the chapter stresses the idea that a better connected economic milieu to other economic milieus via networks transmitting new ideas, information knowledge, etc., will generate higher creative potential of that economic milieu. |
| Keywords: | creativity; creative process; clusters; artistic clusters; network theory; regional economics; local milieu; local and non-local interaction; innovation |
| JEL: | O31 R11 |
| Date: | 2010–10–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0235&r=sbm |