Gabriele Pellegrino

Is Money All? Financing versus Knowledge and Demand Constraints to Innovation

The paper adds to the scattered empirical evidence on the role of obstacles to innovation in a three-fold way. First, we correct for the usual sample selection bias by filtering out firms not interested in innovation from ‘potential innovators’. Second, we assess what mostly affects firms’ propensity to realize innovative outputs. Third, we do so in a panel framework by using an unbalanced panel of UK firm for the period 2002 - 2010. We find that demand- and market-related factors are as important as financing conditions in determining firms’ innovation failures. This evidence puts much of the latest hype on finance in perspective.

Barriers to innovation and firm productivity

ABSTRACT The paper analyzes the effect of financial, knowledge, demand, market structure and regulation barriers to innovation on firms’ economic performance. It contributes to the literature on barriers to innovation by accounting for the heterogeneous effects that each barrier has on firms across the productivity distribution. We do so by employing both quantile regression techniques and matching estimators on this UK CIS panel 2002–2010 merged with the Business Structure Database. While we find evidence that both the cost and also the availability of finance negatively affect productivity across the whole distribution, the lack of qualified personnel mostly hinders high productivity firms. Moreover, quantile regression reveals some interesting variation in effect sizes across the (conditional) productivity distribution.

Don't Stop Me Now: Barriers to Innovation and Firm Productivity.

This paper analyses the effect of financial, knowledge, demand, market structure and regulation barriers to innovation on firms’ economic performance. It contributes to the literature on barriers to innovation in a two-fold way. First, it disentangles the mediated effect of obstacles, via product, process and organisational innovation, on labour productivity. Second, it accounts for the differentiated effect that each of the barriers has on firms positioned along the productivity distribution. We do so by employing both quantile regression techniques and propensity score matching on the UK CIS panel 2002-2010 merged with the Business Structure database. While we find evidence that financial obstacles negatively affect productivity across the distribution, and are more pronounced for young rather than small firms, knowledge and regulatory obstacles mostly affect high productivity firms. Interestingly, the perceptions of market structure and demand obstacles are positively associated to productivity performance, confirming their “revealed” rather than “deterring” nature.

Innovation strategies and firm growth

In this work, we explore the relations between sales growth and a set of innovation indicators that capture the different sources, modes and results of the innovative activity undertaken within firms. We exploit a rich panel on innovation activity of Spanish manufacturing firms, reporting detailed CIS-type information continuously over the period 2004-2011. Standard GMM-panel estimates of the average effect of innovation activities reveal significant and positive effect for internal R&D, while no effect is found for external sourcing of knowledge (external R&D, acquisition of embodied and disembodied technologies) as well as for output of innovation (process and product innovation). However, fixed-effects quantile regressions reveal that innovation activities, apart from process innovation and disembodied technical change, display a positive effect on high-growth performance. Finally, we find evidence of super-modularity of the growth function, revealing complementarities of internal R&D with product innovation, and between product and process innovation.

Barriers to Innovation: Can Firm Age Help Lower Them?

This paper examines how firm age can affect a firm’s perception of the obstacles (deterring vs. revealed) that hamper and delay innovation. Using a comprehensive panel of Spanish firms for the period 2004-2011, the empirical analysis conducted shows that distinct types of obstacle are perceived differently by firms of different ages. First, a clear-cut negative relationship is identified between firm age and a firm’s assessment of both the internal and external shortages of financial resources. Second, young firms seem to be less sensitive to the lack of qualified personnel when initiating an innovative project than when they are already engaged in such activities. By contrast, the attempts of mature firms to engage in innovation activity are significantly affected by the lack of qualified personnel. Finally, mature incumbents appear to attach greater importance to obstacles related to market structure and demand than is the case of firms with less experience.

What firms don’t know can hurt them: Overcoming a lack of information on technology

The availability of information on technology is a key factor in the innovation process. Firms that lack such information thereby face a major barrier to innovation. Yet little is known about the types of companies that lack this information. This paper examines what characterises firms that lack information on technology and analyses how innovative companies can overcome this gap in their knowledge. Empirical analysis was conducted with the Panel of Technological Innovation (PITEC), based on the information from the Spanish version of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). The analysis leads to three principal conclusions. First, a large number of firms perceive the lack of information on technology as a barrier to innovation. Second, there are notable sector differences in the way firms perceive this barrier: High-tech firms perceive lower levels of this barrier. Third, not all sources of information on technology are equally effective at overcoming this barrier. The most useful sources are consultants, commercial laboratories and private R&D institutes.

Innovation Persistence and Employment Dynamics

This paper examines the effect of persistence in product and process innovations on the employment dynamics of a representative sample of Spanish manufacturing firms observed over more than 20 years. We build on a conceptual framework that links innovation persistence, employment growth and the persistence of this growth in the long-run. Using dynamic panel GMM and survival analysis techniques, we find that persistence in product innovation affects both employment growth and the sustainability of job creation over time significantly, whilst persistence in process innovation does not play any relevant role. The evidence we provide supports the notion that product innovation is more effective in spurring sustained employment growth when carried out systematically.