meta paradigm change and the theory of the firm many seemingly unrelated debates on the theory of the firm are in fact part of a single deeper transformation of the social sciences as the foundational assumptions of 20th century social science have slowly been shown by science to be false new sub paradigms have emerged which cumulatively drop i theoretical assumptions about markets to explain firms ii epistemological assumptions about knowledge to explain diversity and iii metaphysical assumptions about causality to explain technical change debates occur across each of these levels

steam as a general purpose technology a growth accounting perspective the contribution of steam to british economic growth in the nineteenth century is estimated using growth accounting methods similar to those recently employed to examine the role of ict the results indicate that steam contributed little to growth before 1830 and had its peak impact about a hundred years after watt s famous invention only with the advent of highpressure steam after 1850 did the technology realise its potential compared with ict steam s impact on the annual rate of growth was modest it is unlikely that these conclusions are vulnerable to quantification of hitherto unmeasured tfp spillovers

industrial evolution through complementary convergence the case of it security the article addresses the dynamics through which product markets become derailed from early product life cycle plc tracks and engaged in complementary convergence with other product markets or industries we compare and contrast the theories that can explain respectively the plc and the derailing of this cycle into a process of complementary convergence the article challenges the standard industry conception and proposes a distinction between the emergent industrial sector the emergent product market or niche and the industry as a more well established entity based on empirical evidence from the it security sector two trajectories of complementary convergence are identified lower order integration the integration of different product markets in a sectoral context and higher end integration the integration of product markets into the offerings of established industries while young ventures dominate lower order integration incumbents in established industries dominate higher order integration for both trajectories mergers and acquisitions represent a central means for realizing convergence copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

risk aversion and the earnings of us immigrants and natives the literature on the earnings of natives and immigrants has heretofore ignored differences in compensating wages for job risks it is possible that the risk involved in migration may indicate a greater willingness on the part of immigrants to accept riskier jobs than natives alternatively immigrants may attempt to protect their migration investment by choosing occupations with less risk indicating a higher degree of risk aversion this paper examines differences in risk aversion between us immigrants and natives and corresponding differentials in wage premiums for job risk our analysis suggests that on average immigrants are exposed to 21 less risk than natives but receive a 25 higher risk premium the higher degree of risk aversion of immigrants and their lower exposure to risk and thus lower earnings explains 5 of the higher observed earnings of natives we also find that earlier immigrant cohorts pre 1970 are employed in riskier jobs than are recent cohorts but the difference accounts fo

technological discontinuities and the challenge for incumbent firms destruction disruption or creative accumulation the creative destruction of existing industries as a consequence of discontinuous technological change is a central theme in the literature on industrial innovation and technological development established competence based and market based explanations of this phenomenon argue that incumbents are seriously challenged only by competence destroying or disruptive innovations which make their existing knowledge base or business models obsolete and leave them vulnerable to attacks from new entrants this paper challenges these arguments with detailed empirical analyses of the automotive and gas turbine industries we demonstrate that these explanations overestimate the ability of new entrants to destroy and disrupt established industries and underestimate the capacity of incumbents to perceive the potential of new technologies and integrate them with existing capabilities moreover we show how intense competition in the wake of technological discontinuities driven entirely by incumbents may instead result in late industry shakeouts we develop and extend the notion of creative accumulation as a way of conceptualizing the innovating capacity of the incumbents that appear to master such turbulence specifically we argue that creative accumulation requires firms to handle a triple challenge of simultaneously a fine tuning and evolving existing technologies at a rapid pace b acquiring and developing new technologies and resources and c integrating novel and existing knowledge into superior products and solutions

characterizing the technology firm an exploratory study abstract technology firms occupy a central position in modern economies they drive economic growth productivity gains and have created new industries and innovative products many will agree that technology firms are distinguished from others in their emphasis on technological activities since this observation is too general researchers suggested a variety of specific criteria and definitions a number of definitions of technology firms appear in the literature but many are arbitrary and simplistic and none gained wide acceptance similarly the number of characteristics suggested is large reflecting a variety of perspectives and interests in this case too no agreement exists as to which are the important ones also many seem to be interrelated capturing different aspects of the same underlying concepts this paper is concerned with the issue of definition and classification of technology firms we demonstrate the usefulness of a different approach to the definition and classification problem we rely on executives evaluations of their firms technology profile and level an analysis of these evaluations reveals the underlying dimensions the executives used in making their judgments we regard the dimensions we uncover as capturing the essence of technology firms and use them to classify the firms we study the specific characteristics the executives used to evaluate their firms were derived from a systematic scan of the literature thus the list represents the set of characteristics early researchers viewed as describing and defining technology firms the connection to early work enhances our findings validity and lends some credence to our belief that the three dimensions we uncover r d activities which are closely associated with a set of organizational elements and market conditions product strategy and corporate culture can be used by others to define technology firms and classify firms according to their technology level in our study we use these three dimensions to classify the firms studied we show that the commonly used practice of classifying firms as high and low technology according to the industry to which they belong is flawed our goal in this study is not to offer a new or better definition and characterization of technology firms or to offer the best approach to the generation of the classification criteria rather we demonstrate here the usefulness of a different approach to the problem while our approach does suffer from limitations it has important advantages we hope future studies will confirm not only the usefulness of our approach but also the general applicability of the specific criteria we identify in this study

wages and hazardous working conditions the purpose of this paper is to provide a new empirical test for the existence of wage premiums paid to workers who are exposed to dangerous or unhealthy working conditions prior empirical studies have encountered problems with omitted ability data omitted working conditions data and measurement error the empirical model presented in this paper uses a difference specification to eliminate bias from omitted ability data by assuming that all hazardous working conditions are measured by a single endogenous unobserved variable this empirical model also eliminates bias due to omitted working conditions and measurement error the empirical model is estimated using the 1973 7 version of the quality of employment survey the unique data in this survey facilitate estimation of a model in which working conditions are assumed to be unobservable using a two stage technique for consistent and efficient estimation the empirical results reported in this paper show that a compensating difference for hazardous work

i take care of my own a field study on how leadership handles conflict between individual and collective incentives from the early literature on the role of firm managers alchian and demsetz 1972 to the industrial organisation on contracts and mechanism design laont and martimort 2009 economists have given a lot of attention to find solutions to the imperfect alignment between individuals incentives and an organisation s collective goals prendergast 1999 in that literature a key role of managers is to monitor individuals to reward behaviour aligned with the collective goals and reduce sub optimal behaviour such as shirking how ever another strand of literature since akerlof 1982 has put forward a vision of reciprocal behaviour between an organisation s leadership and its members gifts high wages recognition from the organisation are reciprocated by high effort from the members of the organisation by rewarding individual members rather than strictly monitoring them organisations may benefit from greater effort and cohesion experimental research in organizational economics has provided mixed results suggesting that agents do react to personal incentives but also that reciprocal behaviour can play a substantial role camerer and weber 2012

schumpeterian innovation and entrepreneurs in capitalism a case study of the u s biotechnology industry abstract this paper uses the theoretical framework developed by joseph schumpeter to examine the first ten years of the u s biotechnology industry the role of the entrepreneur scientist inventor manager and capitalist are distinguished there is a discussion of the obstacles the small firms have had to overcome to create a new economic space in the marketplace it is argued that the earlier schumpeter of the theory of economic development and business cycles emphasizing the role of small firms more accurately describes the u s biotechnology industry in 1985 than schumpeter s later work capitalism socialism and democracy which postulated that the large established firms have preempted the role of small firms in innovation a discussion of the role of large established firms and the small entrepreneurial firms presents the tensions inherent in the cooperative arrangements between these two types of business enterprises the role of small biotechnology firms in reducing these innovations to practice and in their ability to continue to grow demonstrates that the independent entrepreneur recognized by the early schumpeter has been very active in the biotechnology industry

an evolutionary approach to technological innovation in agriculture some preliminary remarks abstract this article proposes an interpretation of the process of technological innovation in agriculture we begin with a criticism to the idea of agriculture as a particular environment in economic analysis we argue that some dynamic concepts from economics of innovation especially as seen by the evolutionary literature can be used as an adequate theoretical reference to study innovation in agriculture we then suggest an interpretation in terms of technological trajectories in order to explain the complexity of the technological regime in agriculture finally we discuss the present stage of transformation in this technological regime and the perspectives of the arising new trajectories

fooled by performance randomness overrewarding luck we provide evidence of a violation of the informativeness principle whereby lucky successes are overly rewarded we isolate a quasi experimental situation where the success of an agent is as good a

gradual catch up and enduring leadership in the global wine industry the wine industry is an extremely interesting sector from a catch up point of view because the latecomers in the international market have changed how wine is produced sold and consumed and in doing so they have challenged the positions of incumbents until the end of the 1980s the european countries and particularly france and italy dominated the international market for wine subsequently significant changes in the market namely decreases in consumption by traditional consuming countries the entry of new inexperienced consumers and the increasing importance of large distribution have threatened this supremacy initially the usa and australia and later emerging countries such as chile and south africa gained increasing market shares in both exported volumes and value at the expense of incumbents however some of these newcomers e g australia have shown slower growth opening opportunities for newer entrants such as argentina and new zealand at the same time some of the incumbents especially italy have innovated challenging the leadership of france in key markets such as the usa in this article we investigate the different catch up cycles in the global wine sector that occurred between the 1960s and 2010 through a detailed analysis of export volumes values and unit prices we address issues related to the increasing share in the global market of latecomer countries and the relative decline of the incumbents as well as possible changes in the market leadership within these two groups

inter industry technology flows in the united states abstract this paper presents for the u s economy a technology flows matrix tracing 1974 industrial r d expenditures from their industries of origin to industries in which the use of resulting products and processes was anticipated the distinction between origin and using industries is crucial to understanding the links between r d and productivity growth a regression analysis reveals high social rates of return and substantial productivity impacts from r d attributed to industries of use

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

the myth of the biotech revolution an assessment of technological clinical and organisational change abstract this paper argues that despite being widely promoted by academics and consultants the empirical evidence does not support the existence of a biotech revolution nor does the data support the widely held expectations that biotechnology is having a revolutionary impact on healthcare or economic development the revolutionary model is therefore a misleading basis for policy making as it over estimates the speed and extent of any changes in productivity or the quality of therapeutics instead the evidence suggests biotechnology is following a well established incremental pattern of technological change and creative accumulation that builds upon rather than disrupts previous drug development heuristics

innovation in low and medium technology industries the role of low and medium technology lmt firms and industries in modern economies is complex and frequently misunderstood significantly the title of hatzichronoglou s 1997 widely used revision of the oecd classification of sectors and products refers explicitly only to high technology by implication the remainder of the economy is known by what it is not high technology and what it does not do spend more than five percent of revenues on research and development arguably this has contributed to an unfortunate tendency to understate the importance of technological change outside such r d intensive fields as information and communications technology ict and biotechnology hirsch kreinsen et al 2006 h hirsch kreinsen d jacobson and p l robertson low tech industries innovativeness and development perspectives a summary of a european research project prometheus 24 2006 pp 3 21 full text via crossref view record in scopus cited by in scopus 7 hirsch kreinsen et al 2006 although their products and production processes may be highly complex and capital intensive lmt enterprises are often regarded as being somewhat old fashioned or even passe in comparison to high tech industries their markets are generally mature and may be slow growing and subject to over capacity and high levels of price competition during the globalisation movement of the past few decades some lmt activities have been prime candidates for relocation from highly industrialised to newly industrialising economies when they manage to survive in older economies lmt sectors acquire unfortunate tags such as rust belt

impact on firms of the use of knowledge external sources a systematic review of the literature this study summarizes the main conclusions from a systematic review of the empirical literature regarding the impact on firms of the use of knowledge external sources universities research institutes and knowledge intensive business services with the aim to organize the literature we classify the different works according to the research question addressed i which firms use knowledge external sources ii do firms using knowledge external sources achieve better results and iii which firms benefit the most from using knowledge external sources stylized facts are that larger more r d intensive and high tech firms are more likely to use knowledge external sources and that use of knowledge external sources is associated to firms higher technical results less attention has been paid to the third question and evidence is not conclusive several recommendations for future research emerge first to take in greater consideration methodological issues so that potential biases in the results caused by sample selection and endogeneity are handled properly second to pay more attention to heterogeneous outcomes third to use continuous indicators of depth and breadth of links allowing for non linear relationships and fourth to extend evidence for developing countries and service industries

the influence of market demand upon innovation a critical review of some recent empirical studies abstract a number of recent empirical studies of technical change at the level of the individual firm have concluded that market demand is the dominant influence upon the innovation process calling forth innovations in market economies the pace of innovation in the private sector heavily influences the growth of national output and productivity and these studies and their conclusions have therefore received much attention having been extensively quoted in discussions of appropriate government policy for the encouragement of innovation this paper reviews a number of these studies and concludes that their findings and the interpretations of their findings in the secondary literature are seriously flawed and in many cases invalid the proposition that market demand governs the innovation process is by no means conclusively demonstrated in these studies and they are therefore inadequate and inappropriate guides for the formulation of policy most of the studies examined employ a working definition of demand factors which is so broad as to embrace a range of possible influences upon innovation which should more properly be classified elsewhere the concept of demand utilized in these studies bears little resemblance to the more restrictive and precise definition of market demand found in economics in addition the phenomena analyzed in these studies are a very heterogeneous lot the studies do not address identical empirical questions and their findings are as a result neither uniform nor unambiguous both demand and supply side influences are crucial to understanding the innovation process and it is the exclusive preoccupation with only one set of these forces which is criticized in this paper some implications of the criticism for government policy toward innovation are discussed in the conclusion

in defence of the linear model an essay this essay discusses the strength and weaknesses of the so called linear model lm of innovation it is a reaction to the habit of criticising it as over simplistic mechanistic or simply blatantly wrong we argue that while some criticisms are of course well grounded many others are instead based on loose interpretations and unwarranted assumptions in order to separate the wheat from the chaff this essay first presents a comprehensive description of the linear model and differentiates it from the caricature many refer to second we discuss the main criticisms put forward and argue that many of them are not at all destructive but can be easily accepted within a refined version of the lm third we discuss the policy implications often derived or said to derive from the lm to argue that the lm itself is distinctively policy neutral other assumptions have to be added to justify alternative policy implications

ownership and firm innovation in a transition economy evidence from china we examine innovation performance of firms in a transition economy from an ownership perspective we focus specifically on the relationship between ownership structures and firm innovation performance drawing on data from 548 chinese firms we find volume of patent registration to be most strongly influenced by foreign ownership in the firm along with firm affiliation within a business group the influence of state and institutional ownership on innovation performance is positive but lagged contrary to expectations insider ownership leads to lower innovation performance and concentrated ownership has no significant impact our study has two principal contributions firstly we utilize a comprehensive treatment of ownership characteristics overcoming weakness in previous studies that have used a more narrow focus on ownership type secondly we contribute to understanding of how firms in transition economies build indigenous capabilities for innovation by drawing attention to the interplay of foreign and domestic control of agents innovation

the dynamo and the computer an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox the dynamo and the computer an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox author s paul a david source the american economic review vol 80 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundred and second annual meeting of the american economic association may 1990 pp 355 361 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2006600 accessed 08 12 2010 01 40

the provision of incentives in firms i ncentives are the essence of economics despite many wide ranging claims about their supposed importance there has been little empirical assessment of incentive provision for workers the purpose of this paper is to critically overview existing work on the provision of incentives since the interests of workers and their employers are not always aligned a large theoretical literature has emphasized how firms design compensation contracts to induce employees to operate in the firm s interest this literature has reached into many areas of compensation and has pointed to a multitude of different mechanisms that can be used to induce workers to act in the interests of their employers these include piece rates options discretionary bonuses promotions profit sharing efficiency wages deferred compensation and so on my objective here is to evaluate this literature in the light of a growing empirical literature on compensation where possible i will address the literature from two perspectives first an underlying assumption of this literature is that individuals respond to contracts that reward performance accordingly i consider whether agents behave in this way and whether these responses are always in the firm s interest second i address whether firms write contracts with these responses in mind in other words do contracts look like the predictions of the theory incentives are provided to workers

globalisation of knowledge production and regional innovation policy supporting specialized hubs in the bangalore software industry abstract this paper is concerned with the changing role of regional innovation systems and regional policies in supporting the transition of indigenous firms in developing countries from competing on low costs towards becoming knowledge providers in global value chains special attention is paid to policies supporting the emergence and development of the regional innovation system in this transition process regional innovation systems in developing countries have very recently started to be conceptualised as specialized hubs in global innovation and production networks asheim b coenen l vang lauridsen j 2007 face to face buzz and knowledge bases socio spatial implications for learning innovation and innovation policy environment and planning c government and policy 25 5 655 670 chaminade c vang j 2006a innovation policy for small and medium size smes in asia an innovation systems perspective in yeung h ed handbook of research on asian business edward elgar cheltenham maggi c 2007 the salmon farming and processing cluster in southern chile in pietrobello c rabellotti r eds upgrading and governance in clusters and value chains in latin america harvard university press a specialized hub refers to a node in a global value chain that mainly undertakes one or a few of the activities required for the production and development of a given good or service or serves a particular segment of the global market in global value chains firms in developing countries have traditionally been responsible for the lowest added value activities however a few emerging regional innovation systems in developing countries are beginning to challenge this scenario by rapidly upgrading in the value chain there is however still only a poorly developed understanding of how the system of innovation emerges and evolves to support this transition process and what the role of regional innovation policy is in building the regional conditions that support indigenous small and medium size enterprises smes in this transition process this paper aims at reducing this omission by analyzing the co evolution of the strategies of indigenous smes and the regional innovation system of bangalore india

firm behaviour and innovative performance an empirical exploration of the selection adaptation debate innovation is a complex trade off between routinisation and change between reliability and accountability of firms and timely adaptation this innovator s dilemma confronts innovation theory with the question how to align routinisation with innovation induced organisational change and consistent performance obviously it is a complex issue dominant innovation theory neglects this subject due to its pro innovation bias while evolutionary organisation and innovation theory give opposite perspectives on this problem the adaptation perspective considers pro active behaviour as the best condition for innovative performance whereas the selection perspective advances inert firm behaviour as the best alternative to achieve successful innovations our research question focuses on the explanatory value of either the selection or the adaptation perspective for the innovative performance of industrial firms our empirical findings confirm the adaptation perspective and reject the selection perspective comparatively firm behaviour involving the highest risks and uncertainties e g high environmental dynamics and high levels of adaptive activity contributes most significant to the explanation of innovative performance inert risk averse behaviour conversely does not improve or even impedes innovative performance compared with other types of firm behaviour

technological capabilities invisible infrastructure and the un social construction of predictability the overlooked fixed costs of useful research the paper explores the idea that unpredictability is a much more pervasive and important feature of technical change than is traditionally supposed it explains how economically important interactions between scientific explanations and technology require the construction of very specific artificially predictable conditions where explanations implications match technologies behaviour the iterative construction of these localised predictable conditions from unpredictable starting materials relies on generates and is made easier by reusable social and physical infrastructure the paper develops a non tautological model of technological capabilities and provides a novel explanation for a range of empirical findings theoretical and policy implications are reported

firm technological trajectory as a driver of eco innovation in young small and medium sized enterprises abstract few studies have focused on green innovation in young small and medium sized enterprises instead research tends to focus on large companies with formal research and development departments studying the influence of the firm s current technological strategy as well as the regulatory framework as a key driver of eco innovation this paper proposes that the combination of a firm s technological trajectory and its current research and development strategy are key determinants of eco innovation the authors investigate these relationships with panel data on 212 young firms in spain analysing their innovation strategy and behaviour during their first 10 years of activity the results show that the firms cluster into four technological trajectories but only market oriented innovators engage significantly more in eco innovation these firms are characterized by a high use of formal appropriability mechanisms market opportunity recognition arising from cooperation and high knowledge cumulativeness this paper sheds light on whether and the extent to which a firm s technological trajectory is a driver of eco innovation it confirms that firms that search for opportunities and have a continuous collaboration with market players are more prone to develop eco innovations additionally it shows that path dependence occurs in the development of eco innovations in that a highly developed innovation capacity leads to additional green innovation in the future the findings indicate that young small firms need to develop innovation capabilities that also enable them to adopt advanced technology before striving to become greener the paper concludes that policies designed to stimulate cooperative networking with other market players an upgrading of technological capabilities and the adoption of new technologies are all desirable because they contribute to improving the environmental impact of firms innovations

buying big into biotech scale financing and the industrial dynamics of uk biotech 1980 2009 this article explores how the uk s biotech firms have evolved in response to their financial environment as investors expectations about the potential of biotech have changed funding options have opened up and closed down leading firms to develop new business models and routes of technology development after a favorable period new constraints on stock market funding have forced uk biotech firms to compress their life cycles constraining their ability to generate the late stage drug candidates sought by large pharmaceutical firms these changes are analyzed within a neo chandlerian framework in the context of a selection environment where rather than firms of varying inefficiencies being selected by an efficient market we find entrepreneurs submitting themselves to an inefficient investment selection process at the intersection of industries attempting to achieve their own scale economies the article highlights the importance of the scale of investment at the firm and industry level and suggests that decline in the size of the industry can have adverse consequences for investment and firm performance in this setting

health and wage a simultaneous equation model with multiple discrete indicators in this article we propose all econometric approach for estimating the simultaneouls effects of health and wages in a structural equations framework in the theoretical works of grossmana 1972a 1972b health is viewed as anl elldogen1oulsly determined capital stock the demand for health should rise with the wage rate as the rate of return to health investment increases with wage onl the other hand better health should raise market productivity and hence wages since health capital is an abstract theoretical concept it can hardly be measured quantitatively however most population surveys include various health indicators these indicators are usually discrete variables in the empirical work of grossman and benham 1974 these qualitative indicators are treated as continuous variables and two stage least squares estimation techniques are used this specification raises various econometric problems see e g goldberger 1964 pp 248 255 domencich and mcfadden 1975 and nerlove and press 1973 a satisfactory specification should take into account the discrete nature of the indicators our specification generalizes the dummy variables simultaneous equations system of heckman 1978 the measurement models of joreskog and goldberger 1975 and is closely related to the models of muthe n 1976 1979 muthen studies full information maximum likelihood procedures for estimation except for very simple cases this does not generally yield feasible or tractable procedures in this article we introduce a tractable procedure for statistical estimation and testing this specification and the estimation procedure is then applied to study the joint dependence of health and wages another departure of our approach from others is that we will test and correct the possible incompatibility of the various health capital indicators in the population surveys one may have subjective health indicators such as self evaluation of health which may reflect different populations perception of health we propose a statistical procedure for testing measurement compatibility and if required for correcting this problem this article is divided into two parts initially we describe the model specification estimation and statistical tests in a general simultaneous equation model with multiple discrete indicators in the second part of the paper we consider specification of a simultaneous equation model for health and wages the model

incentives performance and choking in darts this paper examines how within match variation in incentives affects the performance of darts players the game of darts offers an attractive naturally occurring research setting because performance can be observed at the individual level and without obscuring effects of risk considerations and behavior of others we analyze four data sets covering a total of 29 381 darts matches of professional amateur and youth players we find that amateur and youth players display a sizable performance decrease at decisive moments professional players appear less susceptible of such choking under pressure our results speak to a growing literature on the limits of increasing incentives as a recipe for better performance

invention and innovation in the chemical industry demand pull or discovery push abstract this paper describes a study of the determinants of the rate direction and scale of inventive and innovative activity in the chemical industry over the period 1830 1980 statistical data are interpreted in the light of case study material in three major sectors dyestuffs plastics and pharmaceuticals theories of technical change and economic growth particularly those of schmookler and schmpeter are examined in relation to this material on the chemical industry the findings suggest that the importance of demand pull and discovery push factors and the validity of schmookler s and schumpeter s theories vary over an industry s life cycle

patterns of innovation and organizational demography in emerging sustainable fields an analysis of the chemical sector this paper examines the patterns of environmental innovation in the chemical sector and focuses in particular on detecting whether the rise of sustainable chemistry technologies sct has stimulated the emergence of new organizations this question is important to assess the extent to which sct are sustaining the technological advantage of industry incumbents or are creating opportunities for new firms aspiring to develop radically new environmental innovations we found that sct still represent a relatively low proportion of chemical technologies and that they have not stimulated in a significant way the emergence of new firms however the importance of new firms has grown in the last 20 years and their technologies seem to have a higher potential of radicalness than incumbents technologies this indicates that although incumbents advantage remains strong a small group of young firms has started to weaken such advantage moreover the important role played by research organizations in generating sct may signal that technological opportunities are expanding and that some governments in particular the us government are committed to develop sct these results suggest that if supported by effective policies technological ferment in the field which at the present appears still limited has a potential of growth

sectoral systems of innovation and production the concept sectoral system of innovation and production provides a multidimensional integrated and dynamic view of sectors it is proposed that a sectoral system is a set of products and the set of agents carrying out market and non market interactions for the creation production and sale of those products a sectoral systems has a specific knowledge base technologies inputs and demand agents are individuals and organizations at various levels of aggregation they interact through processes of communication exchange co operation competition and command and these interactions are shaped by institutions a sectoral system undergoes change and transformation through the co evolution of its various elements 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

some determinants of cost distributions in the process of technological innovation abstract industrial research and development r d is a set of activities within the broader set of decisions and activities the process of technological innovation ti it is technology transfer commercialization of the innovation that leads to technology diffusion that permits production and employment expansion and hence economic growth an important goal of industrial policy firms managements and government policy makers should recognize the close relationships among the phases of ti and direct their policy planning budgeting and control decisions to the complete process many policies currently focus their attention to only one or a few points such as r d in this study we conducted a detailed cost analysis of a limited number of innovation projects and studied the distributions of ti cost over the process phases we find that almost half of ti costs are devoted to r d which implies that government support of this phase is important different cost patterns emerge when we classify innovations by industrial sectors firms sizes and project complexity complex innovations require larger and more variable risky r d budgets smaller firms need more assistance in technology transfer these are only a few important policy implications this study emphasizes the importance of post r d phases and concludes that differential industrial policy may be required for technological innovations

the roles of science in technological innovation abstract one of the central issues in science policy during the past decade has been the extent to which the national levels of expenditure on scientific education and research influence the standard of living this paper provides empirical evidence to show that the pay off from this investment in science is more complex and indirect than previously supposed

the contrasting roles of government in the development of biotechnology industry in the us and germany abstract during the last 30 years biotechnology development has charted different paths in the us and in germany even though in germany federal support programs started very early to target biotechnology the innovative performance of this sector has been lagging behind that of the us where the federal support was less direct this article compares the two national science and technology s t policies and analyzes the political economic and social factors that determined the different paths the paper concludes that an indirect s t policy that tries to spread the factors thereby enabling a preferable economic ecology for biotech development is more successful than an interventionist policy political action however is limited and can only enhance science and technology development if the policies mesh with the social and economic dispositions

analyzing literature based innovation output indicators the italian experience abstract this paper presents the results of a study on the product innovations introduced in the italian market in 1989 and reported in a selected number of trade journals the analysis of data collected by means of this literature based counting procedure confirms that r d oriented industries and large firms do not in italy have a marked competitive advantage in innovation the country appears to be instead characterized by a significant presence of consumer goods industries and small firms in innovation our data indicate a statistically significant association between trade competitiveness and strength in product innovation and show the comparatively higher capacity for product innovation of some of the industries in which italy achieves a positive performance in international trade moreover the presence of spillovers at the regional level from both private and public r d expenditures proves to be positively correlated with the development of product innovations finally small firms with fewer than 50 employees appear to be more innovative than is usually believed to be the case

the role of knowledge in r d efficiency past research has recognized that both demand and capability influence the allocation of r d resources scholars have had an easier time getting a grip on demand than on capability while it has been recognized that knowledge is an important part of capability to date formalization of knowledge and its role in r d activity has been unsatisfactory this paper models the role of knowledge in r d various sources of such knowledge are considered the model throws a different light on analyses that employ a knowledge capital stock and also illuminates the dual private and public nature of technological knowledge

technologies products and organization in the innovating firm what adam smith tells us and joseph schumpeter doesn t adam smith s insights into the increasingly specialized nature of knowledge production are crucially important in understanding the contemporary problems of managing innovating firms products and firms are based on an increasing range of fields of specialized technological understanding competition is not based on technological diversity but on diversity and experimentation in products etc firms rarely fail because of an inability to master a new field of technology but because they do not succeed in matching the firm s systems of coordination and control to the nature of the available technological opportunities copyright 1998 by oxford university press

biotechnology as a new techno economic paradigm that will help drive the world economy and mitigate climate change abstract a techno economic paradigm embraces a whole constellation of technically and economically interrelated innovations and influences most industries and an entire phase of economic development its full potential to drive and shape economic growth can only be realized after far reaching reforms have been made in the socio institutional frameworks of major economies and the world economy in close association with ict biotechnology or the trio of biotechnologies red biomedicine green plant breeding and white industrial is now capable of such a role although the necessary reforms remain to be made this paper shows how far and in what sense it has reached technological maturity and what mismatches between it and the socio institutional framework are obstructing its further development and diffusion it argues that biotechnology green and white is needed to play a key role in the struggle against climate change which in turn can be expected to draw out its potential