Angathevar Baskaran

Building Technological-Innovation-Based Strategic Capabilities at Firm Level in China: A Dynamic Resource-Based-View Case Study

This paper focuses on the 10-year-long practice of mobilizing key resources to build strategic capabilities based on technological innovation in a textile company in China. We propose an analytical framework on the basis of RBV theory and value chain analysis and adopt a dynamic perspective to determine the pattern and process of how different bundles of the key resources contributed to the strategic capabilities in our case company. We found that the firms technological-innovation-based strategic capabilities were broadly influenced by neither technological resources, nor innovation resources, but organizational culture, human resources and organizational structure, among which human resources is the most dynamic one. For firms with ambition to maintain a high level of strategic capabilities it is imperative they develop and enhance their organizational culture in a flexible organizational environment. For firms with the objective of transforming or transplanting their existing capabilities, it is likely to be effective if they change or transfer the human resources, respectively.

Competence building in complex systems in the developing countries: the case of satellite building in India

Since 1975, India has built 25 satellites under the satellite programme. By judicially combining the foreign technological imports and local knowledge, India appears to have acquired a high level of capability to build very complex and world-class satellites for remote sensing and communications. This paper analyses the process of technological learning in satellite building in India. Particularly, it illustrates the role of foreign imports and the local efforts at different phases during this process. This paper demonstrates that achieving the goal of technological self-reliance in a developing country like India, particularly in a complex area like satellite systems, is unlikely to be possible without significant foreign imports in the formative period. It also demonstrates that without strong indigenous effort India would not have reached threshold capability in the accumulative phase. Foreign imports and local knowledge appears to have played a complementary role in competence building in satellite technology in India.

Technology Business Incubators in China and India: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract Technology Business Incubators (TBIs) in China and India are compared by employing an analytical framework that combines national system of innovation (NSI) concept and a modified TBI integrative framework. Two research questions are investigated: (1) What are the management polices & practices of and incubation services offered by the TBIs in China and India? (2) How successful are the TBIs in China and India? Data are gathered through interview and questionnaire survey and from secondary sources using ‘triangulation’ technique to increase the validity of the results. Our findings reveal that there are a number of similarities (including objectives, selection criteria for tenants, funding of new ventures, and various basic services provided) and differences (including ownership/ legal status, nature of structure and governance, funding, value-added and specialists services provided to the tenants, incubation period, and number of TBIs, tenants, employees, and revenues) between the TBIs of China and India. The findings also suggest that both systems evolved in a particular path way due to specific national context, which led to most of these differences. Our study is important as it provides comparative insights into TBI systems fostering entrepreneurship development in two large and fast growing emerging economies, which show not only how both can learn from each other but also provide policy lessons for other countries.

Exploring the impact of national system of innovation on the outcomes of foreign direct investment

This paper attempts to explore the possible relationship between the characteristics of a National System of Innovation (NSI) and their impact on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) outcomes, particularly in developing countries. We employ a heuristic NSI-FDI conceptual framework linking the robustness of NSI to the benefits or lack of it from FDI. We create a taxonomy of NSIs as well-functioning/strong, relatively well-functioning and weak and try to empirically find out how each NSI type is related to the corresponding FDI outcomes. We examine whether a strong NSI can bring a high-end benefit from FDI, whether those with a weak NSI are at the low end of the FDI potential benefit spectrum, and whether a relatively well-functioning NSI is linked to medium or average FDI outcomes. We used descriptive data from selected developing economies – China, India, South Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia – and applied this conceptual framework. Despite some data limitations, our case studies show that the characteristics and robustness (or lack of robustness) of NSI can impact on how FDI flows to a country and the kinds of outcomes it will produce, other things being equal. Therefore, how countries build their NSI matters significantly to national policy making.

Duality in national innovation systems: the case of India

The concept of national innovation systems helps to understand the process of acquiring technological capabilities between different countries. This paper develops that concept further to understand the uneven nature of technology accumulation in different sectors, particularly the strategic and the civil, within a country. This phenomenon is clearly witnessed in some developing countries. The factors governing innovative performance in complex strategic (dual-use) technologies differ in important respects from those affecting performance in most civil technologies. They tend to require different institutional approaches and can lead to uneven technological capabilities within a particular economy. These factors have created an environment conducive to technological learning that is qualitatively different from that in which most civil technological learning takes place. India makes an interesting case study of such uneven technological learning. This paper analyses the factors that contribute to duality in national innovation systems and examines the case of India. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Financing Social Innovation for Poverty Reduction: A Case Study of Microfinancing and Microenterprise Development in Bangladesh

Microfinancing is widely perceived to contribute towards social innovation for poverty reduction. We examined the Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction (CFPR) programme implemented by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) between 2002 and 2007, as it used an innovative approach to microfinancing by transferring assets rather than cash to ultra poor participants. We examined two aspects: (i) the impact of microfinancing through asset transfer instead of cash on social innovation leading to poverty reduction; (ii) the factors that contributed to positive or negative impact on the economic conditions and poverty levels of the participant households and the trajectories of changes experienced by the success and failure cases. For this, we employed survey data from twenty-one beneficiaries and eight in-depth interviews among these households. The study found that participants who demonstrated proper planning, hard work and personal interest in the enterprise through microfinancing have witnessed improved quality of life and poverty reduction, while lack of motivation, absence of proper planning and certain social barriers resulted in failure. Our study makes two major contributions: (i) it fills a gap in the literature on microfinancing of social innovation to help ultra poor households to graduate out of poverty; (ii) it provides policy alternatives for designing appropriate microfinancing programmes for ultra poor which can produce high success rates in reducing poverty through social innovation not only in Bangladesh, but also in other developing countries.

Technology accumulation in the ground systems of India's space program: the contribution of foreign and indigenous inputs

Abstract Since the late 1960s, India has accumulated major ground systems capabilities in its space program. This article discusses the process of building competence and technological learning, with a specific focus on the role of international collaboration, foreign imports, and indigenous efforts during the technology acquisition and building of rocket launching systems, satellite control and tracking systems, and earth stations. It highlights the importance of foreign technology inputs, particularly in the formative phase, where they are extremely helpful for building competence in developing countries like India. It demonstrates that strong indigenous efforts, combined with foreign imports, were vital in helping India achieve threshold capability and sustain technological change in the accumulative phase. It illustrates that foreign imports and indigenous efforts played complementary roles in building competence in Indias ground systems technology.

Strengthening regional integration/cooperation with the Neighbourhood System of Innovation conceptual framework: the case of China and ASEAN

Traditional neo-classical market approach to regional integration/cooperation mainly focuses on trade and investment. The paper proposes an innovation system approach to regional integration/cooperation as an alternative that focuses on knowledge, learning, innovation, and competence (KLIC) building without excluding trade and investment. The underlying argument is that while liberal trade and investment conceptual framework takes a narrow economic gain and loss approach, the system of innovation approach includes economic and non-economic variables by including KLIC, and broad economic and social gain. The paper presents the Neighbourhood System of Innovation (NeSI) conceptual framework which captures the reciprocal interactions between national innovation systems (NSI) of larger ‘regional economic pole’ (REP) and smaller economies (or among NSIs of the smaller economies) in the ‘Neighbourhood’ region. The case of China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (REP and Neighbourhood, respectively) is used to demonstrate the usefulness of NeSI framework and its possible application to other similar cases. The aim of the paper is not to produce a path-breaking theory, but to present a different perspective through innovation systems approach as an alternative to enhance understanding of regional integration and cooperation dynamic processes.

Prometheus Bound: Accounting and the Creation of the New Science Paradigm

The argument presented in this paper is that accounting has been significantly implicated in the changing location of science as a social practice in the United Kingdom during the past two decades. Accounting has facilitated the commodification of scientific knowledge products, making science a closed and private activity rather than an open and codifiable one. This shift has adversely disrupted the preexisting trust in science exhibited by the public. In an ironic twist, it appears that accounting may now offer the prospect of creating a new public governance of science via economic and financial market mechanisms.

Commodified science and social wellbeing

This paper explores the increasing trend towards the commodification of public research and development (R&D) and the impact of this on social wellbeing. In many developed countries, the changes introduced by governments to funding mechanisms for universities and public research institutions has led to a fundamental shift in the focus of public R&D. The focus has shifted from creating useful public, codifiable knowledge to creating a knowledge commodity driven by commercial imperatives. Although there may be an economic argument to be made for the virtues of such change, we argue here that the potential costs to social wellbeing have been largely, and dangerously, ignored.