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on Small Business Management |
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Issue of 2013‒04‒27
seven papers chosen by Joao Carlos Correia Leitao University of Beira Interior and Technical University of Lisbon |
| By: | KANI Masayo; MOTOHASHI Kazuyuki |
| Abstract: | There is a growing trend of open innovation in the new product development process, while technology insourcing has not been investigated very well as compared to technology outsourcing in empirical literature. In this paper, we examine the factors that determine whether to acquire external knowledge and how to assimilate it in the process of new product development by using novel dataset at the product level, conducted by RIETI in 2011. We distinguish whether technology partners are also business partners such as suppliers or customers, and show their distinct patterns. In the case that technology partners are not business partners, patents play an important role in moderating transaction costs in the partnership, while co-specialization of technology and its complementary assets with partners is found for cases in which technology partners are also business partners. |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:13033&r=sbm |
| By: | Casey, Eddie; O'Toole, Conor |
| Abstract: | The financial crisis has brought to the fore concerns regarding small- and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) capacity to access traditional bank lending. Using European firm-level data on SME access to finance since the onset of the financial crisis, we find that bank-lending constrained SMEs are significantly more likely to avail of alternative forms of external finance, controlling for firm-level and country-level characteristics. We then determine the implications that usage of alternative forms of finance can have for certain economically desirable business activities. In particular, we find that using alternative finance substantially reduces the likelihood of business fixed investment. This effect is not evident for business innovation. |
| Keywords: | data/investment |
| Date: | 2013–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esr:wpaper:wp450&r=sbm |
| By: | Charlotte Schlump (Philipps-Universität Marburg); Thomas Brenner (Philipps-Universität Marburg) |
| Abstract: | Cooperation in innovation processes has become crucial for the competitiveness of many firms. This paper focuses on technology-oriented East German firms and analyses details of their cooperation behaviour by studying the relationships between geographic and social proximity, the importance and frequency of cooperative interaction and the attributes of innovation cooperation partners that influence the importance of cooperation. Data is collected in two questionnaires and analysed by regressions. It is found, among other results, that cooperation that is established via personal contacts is, on average, more helpful and important for firms but involves less frequent interaction. |
| Keywords: | cooperation, firm, East Germany, policy |
| JEL: | D20 I28 O32 R11 |
| Date: | 2013–04–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pum:wpaper:2013-06&r=sbm |
| By: | Cevikarslan, Salih (UNU-MERIT, and SBE, Maastricht University) |
| Abstract: | The aims of this paper are twofold. The first is to analyse the interaction between research and development (R&D) activities of firms and heterogeneous consumer preferences in structuring the evolution of an industry. The second is to explore the heterogeneity in firms' innovation strategies. Is heterogeneity sustainable in the long-term and what happens to the market shares of firms having different innovation strategies when a structural market characteristic (market size) or a behavioural rule (R&D intensity) is changed? To answer these research questions, an evolutionary, multi-agent based, sector-level innovation model is designed. The model addresses supply and demand sides of the market simultaneously with the co-evolution of heterogeneous consumer preferences, heterogeneous firm knowledge bases, and technology levels at the micro level. |
| Keywords: | Heterogeneity, innovation strategies, evolutionary economics, agent-based modelling |
| JEL: | B52 L11 O33 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:unumer:2013019&r=sbm |
| By: | Idota, Hiroki; Bunno, Teruyuki; Tsuji, Masatsugu |
| Abstract: | ICT is expected to play an important role for innovations in Japanese SMEs. In this paper, how ICT use promotes innovation is clarified. In addition, what kind of business strategy SMEs should follow is attempted to achieve innovation by focusing on the behavior of the top management as well as employees. A mail survey was conducted in February 2012 to innovative SMEs. An ICT advancement index is constructed based on the sales management system, groupware, internal SNS and SCM. Logistic regression analysis is applied for verifying the four hypotheses by using the ICT index. The results obtained reveals that SNEs that used ICT for new product development such as collecting customers' needs achieve more product as well as process innovation. And it is confirmed that SMEs which positively share information using ICT achieve more process innovation. And top management should demonstrate the leadership, and manage the product innovation process through top-down including the promotion of ICT use. On the other hand, not only the manager but also the employees have to act flexibly and autonomously to share information by ICT are important in the process innovation that is required to restructure existing business processes. -- |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:itsb12:72548&r=sbm |
| By: | Mohnen, Pierre (UNU-MERIT, and SBE, Maastricht University); Hall, Bronwyn H. (University of California at Berkeley, NBER, UNU-MERIT, and SBE, Maastricht University.) |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the existing evidence regarding the effects of technological and non-technological innovations on the productivity of firms and the existence of possible complementarities between these different forms of innovation. |
| Keywords: | innovation, productivity |
| JEL: | O30 O31 O33 O40 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:unumer:2013021&r=sbm |
| By: | Van Leeuwen, George; Polder, Michael |
| Abstract: | E-business systems are increasingly considered as important examples of ICT related innovations embodied in software applications, the adoption of which is essential for capturing the potential fruits of several ICT externalities. For analysing the importance of this type of embodied technological progress several routes are open. One route is to look at the data that can be used. In this paper we apply the same modelling strategy to two different types of data: 1) cross-country-industry micro-aggregated data obtained after applying Distributed Micro data Analysis (DMD) and 2) firm-level data, in this case for the Netherlands. Today, the econometric analysis based on firm-level data is often more advanced and more complicated from an econometric point of view than the analysis on aggregated data. We show that DMD can be extended to enable the estimation of more complicated models that feature recent directions in micro-econometric analysis on firm-level data. Our application concerns the innovative use of E-business systems by firms. Using a rich set of cross-country-industry data constructed and tailored by DMD for this purpose, we analyse the adoption of three E-business systems (Eterprise Resourc Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management). We investigate the complementarities in joint adoption and the productivity effects of adopting systems simultaneously or in isolation. The same exercise is repeated on firm-level data for the Netherlands. Our example illustrates that international benchmarking with more elaborate models on cross-country-industry panel data is feasible after using DMD to tailor the underlying firm-level data for specific research questions. This is an important result in the light of the restrictions on pooling cross-country micro data due to confidentiality rules. We find that the results are more diverging for the estimation of complementarities at the adoption stage than for the productivity effects of (joint) adoption. This result implies that measurement error and unobservable heterogeneity plays a greater role when explaining adoption pattern at the firm-level than at the aggregate level. |
| Keywords: | DMD, ICT, innovation, innovation complementarities, productivity |
| JEL: | D2 D24 D8 L2 L21 |
| Date: | 2013–03–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:46479&r=sbm |