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on Small Business Management |
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Issue of 2012‒06‒25
seven papers chosen by Joao Carlos Correia Leitao University of Beira Interior and Technical University of Lisbon |
| By: | Antonioli,Davide; Marzucchi,Alberto; Montresor,Sandro |
| Abstract: | The paper aims at evaluating the additionality of innovation policy in terms of innovative behaviours at the regional level. Innovation behaviours are distinguished, depending on their occurrence within and across the firms and the regional boundaries.The policy role with respect to them is evaluated for a sample of firms in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, by making use of an original, survey-based dataset, to which a Propensity Score Matching approach is applied. Funded firms are more likely to upgrade their competencies, when compared to similar non subsidised companies. On the other hand, their innovation cooperation with other business partners is not significantly affected by the policy, both within and outside the region, unless in the interaction with particular partners. All in all, the investigated innovation policy in the ER region seems to show more of what could be termed ‘cognitive capacity additionality’, rather than ‘network additionality’. |
| Keywords: | Innovation Cooperation, Regional Innovation Systems, Behavioural Additionality |
| JEL: | O32 O38 R11 R58 |
| Date: | 2012–06–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ing:wpaper:201205&r=sbm |
| By: | Link, Albert N. (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics); Scott, John T. (Dartmough College) |
| Abstract: | This note describes several performance characteristics of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The numerical examples are based on our analysis of the 1,878 randomly selected projects conducted at firms that responded to the 2005 National Research Council survey. The data show that firms receiving SBIR funding are able to overcome the initial technology-based hurdles that small, entrepreneurial firms frequently face, thus facilitating a more permanent and possibly longer-term employment growth. |
| Keywords: | Small Business Innovation Research program; R&D; Employment growth |
| JEL: | L26 O31 |
| Date: | 2012–06–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:uncgec:2012_007&r=sbm |
| By: | Hvide, Hans K. (University of Aberdeen); Kristiansen, Eirik Gaard (Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)) |
| Abstract: | We study how firm-specific complementary assets and intellectual property rights affect the management of knowledge workers. The main results show when a firm will wish to sue workers that leave with innovative ideas, and the effects of complementary assets on wages and on worker initiative. We argue that firms protected weakly by complementary assets must sue leaving workers in order to obtain positive profits. Moreover, firms with more complementary assets pay higher wages and have lower turnover, but the higher pay has a detrimental effect on worker initiative. Finally, our analysis suggests that strengthening firms' property rights protection reduces turnover costs but weakens worker initiative. |
| Keywords: | entrepreneurship, innovation, intellectual property rights, litigation, personnel economics, R&D, start-ups, worker mobility |
| JEL: | J30 J60 |
| Date: | 2012–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6609&r=sbm |
| By: | Vanessa OLTRA; Maïder SAINT-JEAN |
| Abstract: | This article tries to apprehend the technological trajectories that develop in Aquitaine region in the field of green chemistry (GC). Breschi’s research works are used to stress that spatial patterns of innovation vary greatly amongst sectors according to the specific features of the underlying technology, as summarized by the concept of technological regime. In such a perspective, we take into account the role of industrial structures and technological regimes to apprehend regional trajectories of innovation in the field of GC. In order to characterize such trajectories, an empirical analysis is carried out by using patent data for the period 1990-2009. We end up with an original database of GC patents for the Aquitaine region which enables us to emphasize the concentration of innovative sources as well as the specialization fields in relation with the regional industrial structure. |
| Keywords: | Green chemistry, Regional trajectories of innovation, Technological Regime, Patents |
| JEL: | O30 R11 L65 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2012-14&r=sbm |
| By: | Bettiol, M; Di Maria, E; Finotto, Vladi |
| Abstract: | Marketing literature has emphasized the factors hampering marketing planning and strategizing in small firms, in particular resource scarcity, lack of specialized structures and competences. Recent streams of literature in entrepreneurial marketing have nonetheless shown that small firms do engage in peculiar marketing strategies and activities that do not necessarily reflect codified processes observed in large organizations. Within this line of research, the article aims at contributing to extant theory in entrepreneurial marketing placing under scrutiny the generative moments of marketing strategies in small firms. Through the integration of literature in entrepreneurial marketing and in entrepreneurship and through the analysis of four case studies, the article proposes a conceptual framework that emphasizes the centrality of entrepreneurial sensemaking in small and medium-sized enterprises’ marketing strategies. We posit that entrepreneurs are engaged in the construction of interpretive frameworks that, when explicated and made accessible to consumers and stakeholders, legitimate novel business ideas and logics. These interpretive frameworks structure the content and processes of marketing activities. Theoretically, the article aims at contributing to the debate on marketing in small businesses shedding light on the processes underlying the formation of marketing strategies. Propositions are offered to guide future empirical research based on the proposed conceptual framework. |
| Keywords: | Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Sensemaking |
| JEL: | M31 M13 |
| Date: | 2012–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:39405&r=sbm |
| By: | Leyden, Dennis (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics); Link, Albert N. (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a formal context for understanding the role that universities play in facilitating the transmission of knowledge to private-sector firms so as to generate economic growth. To the degree the university seeks to act as a complement to private-sector firm-with-firm collaborative R&D, it needs to structure its programs so that firm revenues increase and firm R&D costs, if they rise at all (and a fall would be better), rise by a smaller proportion than revenues increase. Such a structure is consistent with university interests but requires that the university be subsidized. In the absence of such support, it is unlikely that the university will have much success. The university will have to cover its costs through a fee charged to participating firms, and that will result in university being seen as a substitute rather than a complement to firm-with-firm collaborative R&D. However, while there may be good reasons why such subsidization is rational from an efficiency perspective, such arguments, as current governmental fiscal pressures in the US and other countries reveal, may not be persuasive with legislatures. Hence, there is a fundamental policy tension. |
| Keywords: | Collective entrepreneurship; Knowledge spillovers; University collaboration |
| JEL: | D73 L26 O31 |
| Date: | 2012–06–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:uncgec:2012_008&r=sbm |
| By: | Sdiri, Hanen; Ayadi , Mohamed |
| Abstract: | Recently, outsourcing services became an important component of the organizational strategy of the firm. However, a large number of studies focused mainly on the determinants of outsourcing ignoring its structural effects. The aim of this paper is to examine to what extent outsourcing relationships can be a source of innovation in industrial services using a sample of 108 Tunisian service firms. Specifically, we are interested in the domestic outsourcing of auxiliary activities. Our results support the evidence of positive effects of outsourcing service activities on the capacity of innovation. This suggests that outsourcing allows Tunisian service firms to create value, to increase flexibility and to improve the quality of their services. |
| Keywords: | Innovation; Externalisation; Secteur des services |
| JEL: | D23 L21 O32 O31 L80 |
| Date: | 2012–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:39359&r=sbm |