Bernd Ebersberger

Why do Firms Co-operate for Innovation? - A comparison of Austrian and Finnish CIS 3 results

This paper analyses differences in the cooperative behaviour of innovative firms in Finland and Austria. We use data from the third wave of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS3). Descriptive statistics indicate that the rate of innovators is quite similar in Austria and Finland, while the number of cooperating enterprises is considerably higher in Finland. Econometric analysis reveals that a number of factors that determine cooperative arrangements are only significant in one or the other country. We conclude that cooperative behaviour in the two countries is much more dependent on national factors and much deeper rooted in the underlying innovation systems than the existing literature may assume.

OPEN INNOVATION PRACTICES AND THEIR EFFECT ON INNOVATION PERFORMANCE

This paper develops an indicator framework for examining open innovation practices and their impact on performance. The analysis, which is based on Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data for Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Norway, yields a number of interesting results. First, we find that open innovation practices have a strong impact on innovation performance. Second, results suggest that broad-based approaches yield the strongest impacts, and that the collective of open innovation strategies appear more important than individual practices. Third, intramural investments are still important for innovative performance, stressing that open innovation is not a substitute for internal knowledge building.

Product Innovation and the Complementarities of External Interfaces

This paper investigates the relationship between new product introduction, and three constructs (search, collaboration and external R&D) developed to capture the different means by which firms link internal R&D to external inputs. By including interaction effects and applying detailed marginal effects analysis, it sheds new light on a research question, which has generated much empirical ambiguity. Search diversity and collaboration diversity measure the extent to which different types of information sources and collaboration partners are used. Both affect innovation performance positively, and are complementary to each other. External R&D measures the relative importance of contract R&D, and is found to have a conditional negative impact which is reduced by search and reinforced when combined with collaboration. When including interaction effects involving the overall R&D intensity of firms, our findings suggest the existence of two competing ideal types of open innovation strategy and organization.

National innovation policy and global open innovation: exploring balances, tradeoffs and complementarities

The aim of this article is to suggest a framework for examining the way national policy mixes are responding to the challenges and opportunities of globally distributed knowledge networks, cross-sectoral technology flows and consequently open innovation processes occurring on an international scale. We argue that the purpose of public research and innovation policy remains one of developing and sustaining territorial knowledge bases capable of growing and supporting internationally competitive industries. But the rules of the game have changed. Public policy now needs to carefully balance between: a) promoting the formation of international linkages for knowledge sourcing and information exposure; b) providing incentives for domestic industry intramural RD and c) sustaining domestic networking to allow accumulated knowledge to diffuse and recombine. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

The relationship between international innovation collaboration, intramural R&D and SMEs’ innovation performance: a quantile regression approach

In the current global economic landscape, it is virtually impossible for any single firm to stay abreast of all relevant technological advances. Thus integration in global innovation networks is becoming more and more important for competitiveness and growth. However, the fact that international collaboration is organizationally demanding raises important questions concerning the relative importance of international collaboration and intramural R&D for innovation performance, and how they interact in determining it. These questions are particularly relevant in the context of SMEs due to the narrower internal knowledge bases of smaller organizations. In the following they are investigated using Norwegian innovation survey data and quantile regression. Firms in the upper quantile of the innovation performance distribution face a trade-off between engaging in global innovation collaboration and engaging in systematic R&D, where both individually have a positive effect. This is consistent with baseline OLS findings. By contrast, firms in the lower quantiles of the distribution are found to strengthen their performance by means of R&D only. Consequently, the baseline OLS regression results fail to capture the determinants of innovation performance for the population of SMEs that are not already strong innovation performers. This leads to a risk of excessive SME innovation policy emphasis on inducing international collaboration.

On the Link between Urban Location and the Involvement of Knowledge-Intensive Business Services Firms in Collaboration Networks

Herstad S. J. and Ebersberger B. On the link between urban location and the involvement of knowledge-intensive business services firms in collaboration networks, Regional Studies. Knowledge-intensive business services firms can play a key role in modern economies by linking localized collaboration networks to global knowledge flows, and by actively serving in support of knowledge diffusion across institutional and sectoral divides. The extent to which they do is dependent on the resources available locally. This paper uses the unique establishment-level innovation data available in Norway to investigate whether location in urban labour market regions influences the geographical scope of collaborative linkages maintained within and outside the realm of clients. It proceeds to consider whether the diversity of partner types used locally, domestically and abroad differ between locations.

Into thin air: using a quantile regression approach to explore the relationship between R&D and innovation

Applying quantile regression to 760 Finnish firms, we show that the relationship between R&D and firm performance is less straight forward than so far assumed. OLS regression analysis fails to capture the effect of R&D expenditure at different locations on the performance distribution. We reveal that R&D matters, especially on the medium quantiles, while regressing against the upper quantiles of the economic gains from innovation distribution exhibit decreasing returns scale in R&D. Our results confirm that Gaussian statistics fail to capture the most interesting part of the distribution – namely the extreme observations located in the tails.

Urban agglomerations, knowledge-intensive services and innovation: establishing the core connections

This paper investigates how resources available in urban agglomerations influence the organizational form, innovation activity and collaborative linkages of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) firms. Compared with their counterparts elsewhere, KIBS located in Norwegian large city labour market regions are more likely to be independent of multi-establishment business organizations and thus reliant on resources available externally, in their locations. This is most pronounced in the central and Western business districts of the capital, wherein independent KIBS exhibit high turnover of professionals and are less inclined to engage actively in innovation. Yet, those that do engage use the capital region economy as a platform for engaging with both domestic and international collaboration partners. Only by consecutively analysing these aspects and accounting for the selection processes involved is the empirical analysis able to uncover contrasting firm-level responses to the same urban economy resource base.

Does the composition of regional knowledge bases influence extra-regional collaboration for innovation?

There is a growing research interest in the relationship between the composition of regional knowledge bases and the extra-regional collaborative ties maintained by actors during their development work. To investigate this relationship, we use patent data to characterize European NUTS 3 regions by their (i) comparative technological specializations; and (ii) related technological variety. We find domestic, extra-regional collaboration to be negatively associated with regional technological specialization and related technological variety. At the same time, we find related technological variety to serve in support of international innovation collaboration.

MNCs between the Local and the Global: Knowledge Bases, Proximity and Distributed Knowledge Networks

The strategies and decisions of MNCs of how to organize their innovation work, and where to locate their R&D facilities are contingent upon a number of different structural properties connected to the companies, their products and productions, institutional frameworks and local embeddedness. One important characteristic of companies is the dominant knowledge base(s) of their activity, which determine the need for proximity to collaboration partners and presence in specific territorial environments. Another important characteristic is the institutional and relational proximity between subsidiaries and MNC HQs. This paper discusses these structural properties against the background of existing research, and proceeds to conduct a two-step empirical analysis using Norwegian community Innovation survey data. First, it investigates the relationship between knowledge bases, forms of MNC affiliation and the geographical scope of the external collaborative network maintained internationally by Norwegian enterprises. This reveals that the analytical knowledge base and MNC affiliation both increase this scope. Second, it investigates the extent to which parent MNC subsidiary presence in a specific world region impact on the diversity of collaborative relationships maintained in the same region. For synthetic knowledge based enterprises, the presence of a daughter subsidiary in a given world region has a strong, positive impact on external collaboration in the same region. These findings are consistent with the notion that the synthetic knowledge base is subjected to stronger forces of co-localization and embeddedness than the analytical