Patents,Competition, and Firms’ Innovation Incentives

This paper presents fresh evidence on the interaction between industrial property rights (patents) and competition, and their joint effect on firms’ innovation. We use panel data of Spanish manufacturing firms for 1990–2006, as well as external information on European Patent Office and US Patent Office patent counts. We construct a new synthetic measure of competition and estimate the impact of patents on this measure at the industry level. Then, the effect of industry-wide competition and patenting on firms’ innovation is estimated at the firm level. Our results suggest that patents reduce the level of competition in the industry, whereas the effect of competition on innovation varies with the type of innovation indicator. Thus, by lowering competition, patents in an industry exert an indirect effect on innovation besides their direct effect. In addition, interaction effects between patents and competition indicate that patents soften the impact of competition changes on firms’ innovation.     

Industrial Knowledge Bases as Drivers of Open Innovation?

The article presents an analysis of a large-scale survey with the aim of understanding differences in the open, interactive and distributed nature of external innovation relations amongst firms belonging to different industrial knowledge bases. The thesis is that the source of critical innovation relevant knowledge differs between industrial knowledge bases, making the character and the need of openness contingent on these specificities. Accordingly, we anticipate that we will observe systematic variations in how industries access and combine innovation-related external knowledge. In our analyses we attempt to address a gap in the literature by examining how industrial knowledge bases affect the recombination of knowledge by analysing the different extents, forms (formal and informal) and geography of inbound open innovation. The article illustrates that features and structures of inbound open innovation align, to a large extent, with the industries' knowledge bases and that there is a interplay between an industry's knowledge base, the internal organisation of innovation processes and the channels and geography of inbound open innovation.     

Innovation and growth in KIBS: the role of clients’ collaboration and service customisation

In this paper, we analyse KIBS firms and posit that two core attributes of KIBS, namely collaborative relationships with clients and product customisation, foster the ability to develop successful, new product innovations. We disentangle the role of customisation and collaboration choices by looking at how they jointly affect the impact of innovation over firms’ performance, asking to what extent and how firms should collaborate with clients and customise their services. We test our hypotheses on a sample of Italian KIBS firms. Our results show that product innovations that are new to the industry are relevant and, counter intuitively, show that most growing KIBS firms do not have the highest service customisation and collaboration breadth with their clients. Most growing firms develop mass customisation strategies and they leverage on focused collaboration strategies with clients.     

Team consolidation,social integration and scientists’ research performance: An empirical study in the Biology and Biomedicine field

The effects of team consolidation and social integration on individual scientists’ activity and performance were investigated by analysing the relationships between these factors and scientists’ productivity, impact, collaboration patterns, participation in funded research projects and programs, contribution to the training of junior researchers, and prestige. Data were obtained from a survey of researchers ascribed to the Biology and Biomedicine area of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research, and from their curricula vitae. The results show that high levels of team consolidation and of integration of the scientist within his or her team are factors which might help create the most favourable social climate for research performance and productivity. Researchers who carried out their activity in a social climate characterized by these factors participated in more domestic research projects and supervised more doctoral dissertations than the rest of their colleagues. They were also more productive, as shown by the higher number of papers published in journals included in the Journal Citation Reports and the higher number of patents granted. These metrics are the main indicators taken into account in the evaluation of the research activity of Spanish scientists, and are therefore the activities that scientists invest the most energy in with a view to obtaining professional recognition. The results corroborate the importance of research teamwork, and draw attention to the importance of teamwork understood not as two or more scientists working together to solve a problem, but as a complex process involving interactions and interpersonal relations within a particular contextual framework     

Knowledge Transfer and Innovation in Germany and Britain: ‘Intermediate Institution’ Models of Knowledge Transfer under Strain?

This article investigates the links between knowledge transfer activities and innovation performance in Germany and Britain through a detailed comparison of matched samples of electronics production and research establishments in the two countries. In contrast to mature industries such as mechanical engineering, German performance in electronics is not found to be greatly enhanced by the role played by intermediate research institutes in “bridging the gap” between the academic science base and business enterprises.     

Innovation Subsidies: Does the Funding Source Matter for Innovation Intensity and Performance? Empirical Evidence from Germany

In this paper we analyze the effect of European and national funding on innovation input and output at the firm level. In terms of innovation input, we do not find evidence that one policy crowds out the effect of the other. Instead, the policies are complements. In terms of output, we find that subsidy recipients are more active with respect to patenting. A citation analysis of patents reveals that the subsidy recipients file patents that are more valuable (in terms of forward citations) than those filed in the counterfactual situation of receiving no public support. These results suggest that public funding triggers socially beneficial research projects and that the co-existence of national and European policies does not lead to crowding-out effects when compared to a hypothetical world of a closed economy with no supplemental European policies.     

Openness and Innovation Performance: Are Small Firms Different?

We explore whether and how the benefits of openness in innovation are different for small plants (less than 50 employees) compared to medium and large plants. Using panel data from Irish manufacturing we find that the contribution of the “breadth” of openness (i.e., the variety of plants' innovation linkages) on innovation performance is stronger for small plants than for larger plants. Both small and larger plants face diminishing returns as the breadth of openness increases, but small plants experience negative returns at lower level of the breadth of openness than larger plants. Our results suggest that small plants can gain significantly from using wider set of innovation linkages, but for such plants appropriate partner choice is a particularly important issue. Small plants also gain significantly more than larger ones from investing in the linkages within the supply chain.     

Self reliance and Innovation of Qinshan Phase Ⅱ NPP Project

This article mainly describes the selfreliance and innovation of Qinshan nuclear power project of phase II,inbetween it contains new reactor core design, as well as related experimental and calculation analysis, especially for new reactor design produced fluidinduced vibration model test, theoretical analysis and testing inbuilt reactor; aiming at twoloop NSSS a series improvement made for safety systems and related safety analysis to enhance their reliability and redundancy; according to specialty of twoloop NSSS an optimization made for NPP parameters and design of related equipments, for the purpose to make the output of NPP maximal; design of main reactor building and TG building also improved according to characteristics of twoloop NSSS and site conditions. CRDM and refueling machine are researched and manufactured on base of selfreliance, their performance are better than design requirements, large portion of key equipments are localized through different way. In construction first time realized the integrated erection of containment dome. During the commissioning nonnuclear steam driving of TG set, as well as 500 kV high voltage rising using emergent diesel generator, etc. are carried out. In period of operation still continuous innovation and improvement are made, so that to keep the good record of operation.     

Organization and Management of Deep knowledge Resources for Product Innovation

Product innovation,for a truly strong solution,needs deep knowledge.Based on this point,the authors draw a conclusion that patents are the main resource of deep technique knowledge.There are five levels of newly organized patents.The main results of the studies on patents are various tech-nique effects.The database of effects is organized and managed according to the form of function-effect structure.     

Research on the Relationship Between Absorbed Slack and Technology Innovation

Henderson&Clark(1990 )arguedthattheresourcesdonotalwaysflowtotheinnovationswimmingly ,espe ciallyintheenterpriseswhoseleadingpowersupportthenormalbusiness .Becausetheprocessofinnovationneedsresources ,thesearchingforslackresourcesbecomesvernecessary (Cheng&Kesner ,1997) .Cyert&March(196 3)pointedoutthattheslackplaysacrucialroleinallowingorganizationstoinnovatebypermittingthemtoexperimentwithnewstrategiesandinnovativeprojectsthatmightnotbeapprovedinamoreresource constraineden vironment.Somesc…     

How Similar is Innovation in German,Italian and Spanish Medium-Technology Sectors? Implications for the Sectoral Systems of Innovation and Distance-to-the-Frontier Perspectives

This study analyzes innovation activities in medium-technology sectors in Germany, Italy and Spain and checks whether cross-country similarities or differences prevail. The results have important implications for the Sectoral Systems of Innovation and the Distance-to-the-Frontier frameworks. While the Sectoral Systems of Innovation predicts the existence of technology-related similarities in innovative patterns in the same sectors across countries, the Distance-to-the Frontier suggests the existence of relevant differences related with the level of technological development of each national sector. Using Community Innovation Survey data and adapting an econometric strategy first devised by Griffith, Huergo, Mairesse and Peters [Innovation and Productivity Across four European Countries, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 22(4), 483–498, 2006], I test whether similarities or differences prevail across country in different features of innovation activity. The results show that relevant differences between the three countries exist in the intensity of R&D activities and in the economic impact of different types of innovations, providing support to the Distance-to-the-Frontier hypothesis. On the contrary, cross-country similarities emerge among the sources of knowledge used to develop innovations, in line with the Sectoral Systems of Innovation framework. The results highlight the importance to take into account both frameworks for a useful analysis of innovation within sectors and across countries.     

Innovation and Firm Growth: Is R&D Worth It?

The paper contributes to an emerging literature that critically questions the degree to which R&D, at the centre of national and transnational innovation policies, results in firm growth. The differences in how innovation affects firm growth is explored for small and large publicly quoted US pharmaceutical firms between 1950 and 2008. We observe that the positive impact of R&D on firm growth is highly conditional upon a combination of firm-specific characteristics such as firm size, patenting and persistence in patenting. For small firms, R&D boosts growth for only a subset of firms: namely, those that patent persistently for a minimum of five years. For large pharmaceutical firms, on the other hand, R&D may have a negative impact on growth; potentially resulting from the low R&D productivity these firms have suffered from since the mid-1990s. These results raise important issues around the R&D and firm growth relationship for small and large firms as well the role of persistence in innovation for boosting firm performance.     

Open Sesame? Open access priorities,incentives, and policies among higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates

Scientometrics - Higher education institutions (HEIs) have an instrumental role in the move towards Open Access (OA) by shaping the national strategies, policies, and agendas. This study sets out...