Christoph Grimpe

Balancing Internal and External Knowledge Acquisition: The Gains and Pains from R&D Outsourcing

The outsourcing of research and development (R&D) activities has frequently been characterized as an important instrument to acquire external technological knowledge that is subsequently integrated into a firms own knowledge base. However, in this paper we argue that these ‘gains’ from R&D outsourcing need to be balanced against the ‘pains’ that stem from a dilution of firm-specific resources, the deterioration of integrative capabilities and the high demands on management attention. Based on a panel dataset of innovating firms in Germany, we find evidence for an inverse U-shaped relationship between R&D outsourcing and innovation performance. This relationship is positively moderated by the extent to which firms engage in internal R&D and by the breadth of formal R&D collaborations: both serve as an instrument to increase the effectiveness of R&D outsourcing.

Specialized Search and Innovation Performance – Evidence Across Europe

Searching for external knowledge has frequently been characterized as crucial for firm success. However, little is known about how the direction of search strategies influences innovation performance. In this paper, we argue that firms need to specialize their search strategy and that its effectiveness is moderated by R&D investments and potential knowledge spillovers from a firms environment. Based on a sample of more than 5,000 firms from five European countries, our results show that being open for innovation generally pays off. However, both moderating factors have a crucial role to play: On the one hand, in-house R&D investments are most effective when combined with a market-oriented search strategy. On the other hand, a technologically advanced environment requires firms to reach out to scientific knowledge sources in order to access novel knowledge and to enhance innovation performance. We develop targeted management recommendations based on these results.

The role of internal capabilities and firms' environment for sustainable innovation: evidence for Germany

Over the past decade, sustainable innovation has occupied a top‐ranking position on the agenda of many firms. Sustainable innovation can be broadly defined as an innovation that has to consider environmental and social issues as well as the needs of future generations. Although sustainable innovation provides considerable new opportunities for companies it goes along with an increased complexity. This in turn requires certain organizational routines and capabilities to deal with the upcoming challenges. We explore what the specific driving forces are that increase the degree of sustainable innovation within a firms innovation activities. We test them empirically for more than 1,100 firms in Germany and find that firms need to invest in internal absorptive capacities and to draw both broadly and deeply from external sources for innovation. In that sense, investments in employee training turn out to be more important than technological R&D expenditures.

Formal and Informal Knowledge and Technology Transfer from Academia to Industry: Complementarity Effects and Innovation Performance

Literature has identified formal and informal channels in university knowledge and technology transfer (KTT). While formal KTT typically involves a legal contract on a patent or on collaborative research activities, informal transfer channels refer to personal contacts and hence to the tacit dimension of knowledge transfer. Research is, however, scarce regarding the interaction of formal and informal transfer mechanisms. In this paper, we analyze whether these activities are mutually reinforcing, i.e., complementary. Our analysis is based on a comprehensive data-set of more than 2,000 German manufacturing firms and confirms a complementary relationship between formal and informal KTT modes: using both transfer channels contributes to higher innovation performance. The management of the firm should therefore strive to maintain close informal relationships with universities to realize the full potential of formal KTT.

Are all academic entrepreneurs created alike? Evidence from Germany

Using data from a large survey of German researchers in public science and based on a formal structure, this paper examines determinants of academic entrepreneurship. The key contribution is to discern factors driving research-driven entrepreneurship versus overall academic entrepreneurship. The extant literature has almost exclusively focused on the latter and implicitly assumed academic entrepreneurs to commercialize their research. Results show that, despite some plausible similarities in the determinants, there are significant differences. In particular, while both entrepreneurship categories benefit from greater patent applications, more time spent on consulting by the researcher and from participation in European conferences, research leaders and engineering science disciplines are more likely to lead to research-driven entrepreneurs. However, the positive influences of university employment (compared with being employed at a public research organization) on overall academic entrepreneurship fail to show up in research-driven entrepreneurship. One implication is that universities may be unduly patting themselves on the back – they might yield more entrepreneurs, but not necessarily research-driven entrepreneurs.

Demand‐oriented innovation strategy in the European energy production sector

Purpose – This paper aims to use a lead market approach for each of 25 European Union member states (EU‐25) to assess the likelihood that locally preferred innovation designs in the Energy Production Sector will become successful in other countries. Based on the lead market analysis, it aims to outline implications for innovation management.Design/methodology/approach – The paper identifies and operationalises indicators to measure and compare the lead market properties of the energy production sector at international level. The indicators used are taken from the Community Innovation Surveys, the Eurostat/OECD PPP and Expenditure Database, the UNCTAD FDI‐Database, the EU Business Demography Statistics, and the Eurostat Foreign Trade Database (Comext).Findings – French energy production companies proved the most effective at orienting their product innovations towards the needs of customers in international markets. The companies in other countries within the EU trade on home markets that exhibit barriers ...

Market and Technology Access Through Firm Acquisitions : Beyond One Size Fits All

Firm acquisitions have been shown to serve as a way to gain access to international markets, technological assets, products or other valuable resources of the target firm. Given this heterogeneity of takeover motivations and the skewness of the distribution of the deal value we show whether and how the importance of different takeover motivations changes along the deal value distribution. Based on a comprehensive dataset of 652 European mergers and acquisitions in the period from 1997 to 2003, we use quantile regressions to decompose the deal value at different points of its distribution. Our results indicate that the importance of technological assets is indeed higher for smaller target firms. The findings support the view on small acquisition targets to complement the acquirer?s technology portfolio while larger acquisition targets tend to be used to gain access to international markets.

Antecedents and Consequences of Business Model Innovation: The Role of Industry Structure

Abstract What makes firms innovate their business models? Why do they engage in innovating how they create, deliver, and capture value? And how does such innovation translate into innovation performance? Despite the importance of business model innovation for achieving competitive advantage, existing evidence seems to be confined to firm-level antecedents and pays little attention to the impact of industry structure. This study investigates how different stages of an industry’s life cycle and levels of industry competition affect firms’ business model innovation, and how such innovation translates into innovation performance. Based on a cross-industry sample of 1,242 Austrian firms, we introduce a unique measure for the degree of innovation in a firm’s business model. The results indicate that the degree of business model innovation is highest toward the beginning of an industry life cycle, that is, in the emergent stage. Competitive industry pressures turn out to be negatively related to the degree of business model innovation. Moreover, we find that the degree of a firm’s business model innovation, conditional on it having introduced a new product or process recently, positively influences innovation performance. Our findings contribute to the ongoing dialog on the role of industry structure in business model innovation, and provide implications for the management of business model innovation.

Scientific excellence and extramural research grants: Beggars can't be choosers?

Several reviews and impact assessment studies have concluded that the Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP6) succeeded in fostering scientific excellence and attracting the “A Team” in public science. However, these studies typically fail to contrast their findings with the variety of funding opportunities available to public science. Based on a sample of more than 1,000 scientists at universities and public research institutes in Germany, this paper finds that highly credentialed faculty typically chose other funding opportunities than FP6, for example grants from science foundations or industry. In fact, FP6 only seems to be attractive for the scientific “B Team” that works rather application oriented. The findings further indicate that an FP6 participation substitutes for other grant programmes while the latter are complementary to each other. If this is intended to be changed other funding priorities will be required, for example smaller team sizes, less predefined research topics, a reduced administrative burden, and a higher quality of the peer review system.

Integration and Reorganisation of Industrial R&D: Deficits and Perspectives of Empirical Research

In todays business context, Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) have occupied a top-ranking position in their relevance for corporate strategies and growth. Presumably, every second transaction is intended to improve the acquirers innovative capabilities by combining technologies of both companies. This, however, typically requires a complex post-merger integration project of the Research and Development (R&D) units. Particularly, the integration of R&D seems to have a significant share in sustaining a companys innovative capabilities, as it is a prerequisite for exploiting economies of scale and scope or eliminating redundancy. Surprisingly, there are very few studies dedicated to this research problem. Moreover, these studies exhibit substantial shortcomings with respect to content and methodology and thus only offer fragmentary insights. The purpose of this paper is hence to provide a review of empirical studies and to develop theoretical propositions to shape a conceptual framework for the further study of post-merger integration problems in R&D.