|
on Small Business Management |
| By: | Hammer, Andrea |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the agglomeration of Knowledge Intensive Service (KIS) firms in urban areas. In accordance with the Regional Innovation Systems approach it is argued that cities provide crucial innovation advantages working as centripetal forces for KIS. Applying multivariate logit regressions to a company survey of the city of Karlsruhe, the second largest city of the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg, shows positive effects of local cooperation and urban infrastructures on the innovation probability of KIS firms. However, the effects vary with the type of innovation pursued, thus demonstrating a high complexity of local relations conducive to KIS firm innovation. |
| Keywords: | Knowledge Intensive Services,Regional Innovation Systems,urban innovation,innovation in services,local cooperation,urban infrastructure |
| JEL: | R48 L92 Q55 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:kitwps:63&r=sbm |
| By: | Bashir, Sadaf; Matzat, U.; Sadowski, B. M. |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes processes and effects of ICT enabled innovation in the Dutch design sector. Although the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is considered as vital in the design sector, little is known about whether and how ICTs affect the firm performance of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) in the industry. In introducing a conceptual distinction between ICT supporting the information processing and communication, the paper first examines the determinants of ICT adoption. Next, we analyze the effects of ICT adoption on product and process innovation as well as on firm performance, focusing on the mediating role of the innovation processes. The analyses rest on survey data of a sample of 189 Dutch companies in the Web, Graphic, and Industrial Design Sector in the Netherlands. The results indicate that information processing role of ICT supports the exploitation and communication role facilitates the exploration in organizational learning. The exploitation enables process innovation while exploration enables product innovation. Lastly, Information processing technologies and product innovation are important determinants of superior firm performance. |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:itse14:101389&r=sbm |
| By: | Bjerke, Lina (Jönköping International Business School (JIBS), Economics, Finance and Statistics.); Johansson, Sara (Jönköping International Business School (JIBS), and Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies (CESIS).) |
| Abstract: | Recent literature on firm innovation emphasize the importance of combinations of different knowledge sources in innovation processes. Moreover, the literature on firm collaboration has evolved stepwise: (1) knowledge networks tend to be geographically bounded, and (2) proximity in other dimensions than physical distance, such as cognitive and organisational proximity, may influence the evolution and influences of networks. The results from this empirical study support these ideas by indicating that firms’ probability to innovate is enhanced when they collaborate. However, not all types of collaborations are as important. By using data from a survey on innovation and collaboration of 636 firms in the county of Jönköping, Sweden, we find that extra-regional collaboration matters the most for the innovation performance of these firms. Moreover, collaborations tend to be most favourable for innovation when the collaborators involved has some organisational or cognitive proximity. Collaborations that imply vertical linkages in the value added chain appear to more important than horizontal linkages. |
| Keywords: | Innovation; innovation networks; innovation survey; proximity; firm collaboration |
| JEL: | C83 O31 R10 |
| Date: | 2014–11–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0383&r=sbm |
| By: | Hall B.H.; Sena V. (UNU-MERIT) |
| Abstract: | We use an extended version of the well-established Crepon, Duguet and Mairesse model 1998 to model the relationship between appropriability mechanisms, innovation and firm-level productivity. We enrich this model in several ways. First, we consider different types of innovation spending and study the differences in estimates when innovation spending rather than RD spending is used to predict innovation in the CDM model. Second, we assume that a firm simultaneously innovates and chooses among different appropriability methods formal or informal to protect the innovation. Finally, in the third stage, we estimate the impact of the innovation output conditional on the choice of appropriability mechanisms on firmsf productivity. We find that firms that innovate and rate formal methods for the protection of Intellectual Property IP highly are more productive than other firms, but that the same does not hold in the case of informal methods for the protection of a firmfs IP, except possibly for large firms as opposed to SMEs. We also find that this result is strongest for firms in the services, trade, and utility sectors, and negative in the manufacturing sector. |
| Keywords: | Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope; Technological Change; Research and Development; Intellectual Property Rights: General; Intellectual Property Rights; |
| JEL: | O34 O30 L25 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2014059&r=sbm |
| By: | Thais Lærkholm Jensen; Søren Leth-Petersen; Ramana Nanda |
| Abstract: | We study how a mortgage reform that exogenously increased access to credit had an impact on entrepreneurship, using individual-level micro data from Denmark. The reform allows us to disentangle the role of credit access from wealth effects that typically confound analyses of the collateral channel. We find that a $30,000 increase in credit availability led to a 12 basis point increase in entrepreneurship, equivalent to a 4% increase in the number of entrepreneurs. New entrants were more likely to start businesses in sectors where they had no prior experience, and were more likely to fail than those who did not benefit from the reform. Our results provide evidence that credit constraints do affect entrepreneurship, but that the overall magnitudes are small. Moreover, the marginal individuals selecting into entrepreneurship when constraints are relaxed may well be starting businesses that are of lower quality than the average existing businesses, leading to an increase in churning entry that does not translate into a sustained increase in the overall level of entrepreneurship. |
| JEL: | D14 D31 G21 G28 L26 |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20583&r=sbm |
| By: | Lefebvre, Virginie M.; Molnàr, Adrienn; Kühne, Bianka; Gellynck, Xavier |
| Abstract: | In today business world where knowledge and resources are increasingly spread among organizations, enterprises often develop a wide variety of relationships with other organizations in order to access new technologies, know-how and resources. Increasingly, the use of external resources for innovation – also referred as inbound open innovation in literature – is seen as a key factor to remain innovative and hence competitive. While the impact of open innovation on the firm’s innovativeness and performance has received quite some attention by scholars, the mechanisms that push firm to open up their innovation process remain under investigated. The aim of this paper is to contribute to fill in this gap by developing and testing empirically a research framework on the firm specific factors impacting the firm’s degree of openness. In order to reach the research objective, an extensive literature review was performed based on which several research hypotheses were developed. A web-questionnaire was then designed and distributed to the CEOs of food SMEs in Europe. A major result of this study is that network competence – defined as the firm’s ability to establish and use relationships with other organization – drives the firm’s openness in terms of ambidexterity (i.e. new versus existing relationships) and breadth (number of external sources or search channels that the firm relies upon in its innovative activities). |
| Keywords: | Open innovation, network competence, low-tech sector, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iefi13:164739&r=sbm |
| By: | G. Parmentier (CERAG - Centre d'études et de recherches appliquées à la gestion - CNRS : UMR5820 - Université Pierre-Mendès-France - Grenoble II); Vincent Mangematin (MTS - Management Technologique et Strategique - Grenoble École de Management (GEM)) |
| Abstract: | The digital creative industries exemplify innovation processes in which user communities are highly involved in product and service development, bringing new ideas, and developing tools for new product uses and environments. We explore the role of user communities in such co-innovation processes via four case studies of interrelations between firms and their communities. The digitization and virtualization of firm/community interactions are changing how boundaries are defined and how co-innovation is managed. The transformation of innovation management is characterized by three elements: opening and redefining firm boundaries; opening of products and services to community input and reducing property rights; and reshaping organization and product identities. Innovation in collaboration with user communities requires firms to orchestrate their communities and their inter-relationships to encourage the creativity and motivation of users, and develop the community's innovatory capacity. |
| Keywords: | Online communities; User; Innovation; Video game; Community management; Co-innovation |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00848861&r=sbm |
| By: | Limbach, Felix |
| Abstract: | The contribution of this paper is manifold. First, it provides a cooperation taxonomy for partnerships between telecommunication operators and Over-The-Top service providers. Second, it explores the impact of cooperative service provisioning on the telecommunication operator's business model. As a result of a literature review seven types of service cooperation are identified. A business model ontology is used to assess value creation activities, customer relations and financial aspects for three generic value creation patterns. Results indicate that cooperation facilitates innovation, quality, service differentiation and tailored customer services. |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:itse14:101388&r=sbm |
| By: | Alina Sorgner; Michael Fritsch; Alexander Kritikos |
| Abstract: | Based on representative micro data for Germany, we compare the incomes of self-employed with those of wage workers. Our results show that the median self-employed entrepreneur with employees earns significantly more than the median salaried employee, while the median solo entrepreneur earns less. However, solo entrepreneurship pays for those with a university entrance degree but no further professional qualification as well as for those who were in the upper percentiles of the income distribution in their previous salaried job. Surprisingly, the variation in hourly incomes of solo entrepreneurs is higher than that of entrepreneurs with employees. |
| Keywords: | Income, entrepreneurship, self-employment, start-ups, Germany |
| JEL: | L26 D22 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1425&r=sbm |
| By: | Ajay Agrawal; Carlos Rosell; Timothy S. Simcoe |
| Abstract: | We exploit a change in eligibility rules for the Canadian Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SRED) tax credit to gain insight on how tax credits impact small-firm R&D expenditures. After a 2004 program change, privately owned firms that became eligible for a 35 percent tax credit (up from a 20 percent rate) on a greater amount of qualifying R&D expenditures increased their R&D spending by an average of 15 percent. Using policy-induced variation in tax rates and R&D tax credits, we estimate the after-tax cost elasticity of R&D to be roughly -1.5. We also show that the response to changes in the after-tax cost of R&D is larger for contract R&D expenditures than for the R&D wage bill and is larger for firms that (a) perform contract R&D services or (b) recently made R&D-related capital investments. We interpret this heterogeneity as evidence that small firms face fixed adjustment costs that lower their responsiveness to a change in the after-tax cost of R&D. |
| JEL: | H2 H71 O25 O31 O38 |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20615&r=sbm |