Maryann P. Feldman

Innovation in Cities: Science-Based Diversity, Specialization and Localized Competition

Whether diversity or specialization of economic activity better promotes technological change and subsequent economic growth has been the subject of a heated debate in the economics literature. The purpose of this paper is to consider the effect of the composition of economic activity on innovation. We test whether the specialization of economic activity within a narrow concentrated set of economic activities is more conducive to knowledge spillovers or if diversity, by bringing together complementary activities, better promotes innovation. The evidence provides considerable support for the diversity thesis but little support for the specialization thesis.

R&D Spillovers and Recipient Firm Size

The findings in this paper provide some insight into how small firms are able to innovate. Using a production function approach to relate knowledge generating inputs to innovative output, the empirical results suggest that small firms are the recipients of R&D spillovers from knowledge generated in the R&D centers of their larger counterparts and in universities. Such R&D spillovers are apparently more decisive in promoting the innovative activity of small firms than of large corporations. Copyright 1994 by MIT Press.

The Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography

This is the most comprehensive and significant statement about the value and potential of economic geography in thirty years. More than forty leading economists and geographers from around the world investigate the rival theories and perspectives that have sustained the recent development of economic geography, and offer stimulating insights into the emerging global economy of the twenty-first century. The editors have outstanding reputations for original research at the boundaries of economics and geography. They have taught in leading U. S. and European universities, and have contributed to significant debates about the theory of economic geography and its applications to public policy. The handbook is devoted to the frontiers of the field, eschewing nostalgia for the past in favour of contributions relevant to the emerging global economy of the twenty-first century. From general statements about the history and evolution of the field to statements about the crucial problems of economic geography, it is concerned with the rival theories and perspectives that have sustained the recent growth of economic geography. Always provocative and challenging, it will continue to define the terms of debate for the coming decade. Contributors to this volume - Gordon L Clark, Maryann Feldmann, Meric Gertler Allen Scott Paul Krugman Jamie Peck Ed Glaeser Eric Sheppard Tony Venables and Howard Shatz Michael Storpor John Gallup, Andrew Mellinger, and Jeffrey Sachs Michael Watts Risto Laulajainen Adam Tickell Michael Porter Peter Dicken Neil Wrigley Erica Schoenberger David B. Audretsch Bengt-Ake Lundvall and Peter Maskell Maryann Feldman Cristiano Antonelli Bjorn Asheim Beat Hotz-Hart Ron Martin Gordon Hanson Linda McDowelll John Kain Eric Swyngedouw Amy Glasmeier R. Kerry Turner David Angel Tetsuo Abo John Holmes Ash Amin Nigel Thrift

Knowledge spillovers and the geography of innovation

This chapter focuses on the geographic dimensions of knowledge spillovers. The starting point comes from the economics of innovation and technological change. This tradition focused on the innovation production function however it was aspatial or insensitive to issues involving location and geography. However, empirical results hinted that knowledge production had a spatial dimension. Armed with a new theoretical understanding about the role and significance of knowledge spillovers and the manner in which they are localized, scholars began to estimate the knowledge production function with a spatial dimension. Location and geographic space have become key factors in explaining the determinants of innovation and technological change. The chapter also identifies new insights that have sought to penetrate the black box of geographic space by addressing a limitation inherent in the model of the knowledge production. These insights come from a rich tradition of analyzing the role of both localization and urbanization economies, by extending the focus to the organization of economic activity within a spatial dimension and examine how different organizational aspects influence economic performance. While the endogenous growth theory emphasizes the importance of investments in research and development and human capital, a research agenda needs to be mapped out identifying the role that investments in spillover conduits can make in generating economic growth. It may be that a mapping of the process by which new knowledge is created, externalized and commercialized, hold the key to providing the microeconomic linkages to endogenous macroeconomic growth.

The New Economics Of Innovation, Spillovers And Agglomeration: Areview Of Empirical Studies

This paper reviews recent empirical studies of location and innovation. The objective is to highlight the questions addressed, approaches adopted, and further issues that remain. The review is organized around the traditions of measuring geographically mediated spillovers and productivity studies that introduce a geographic dimension. The first part identilies four separate strains in thc empirical spillover literature: innovation production functions; the linkages between patent citations. defined as paper trails: the rnobility of skilled labor based on the notion that knowledge spillovers are transmitted through people; and, last, knowledge spillovers embodied in traded goods. The second part considers the composition of agglomeration economies, the attributes of knowlcdge, and the characteristics of firms.

Real Effects of Academic Research: Comment

Compares Jaffes work on the use of patents as a measure of the spillover of university research with the work of Acs and Audretsch in which innovation activity is measured by number of innovations. Jaffes work, which modified the knowledge production function proposed by Griliches, showed a positive relationship between corporate patent activity and commercial spillovers from university research. This research approach was criticized by many. In 1987, Acs and Audretsch proposed measuring innovative activity by the number of innovations recorded in 1982 by the U.S. Small Business Administration. It was believed that using number of innovations, using those provided a more direct measure than Jaffes work because inventions that were not patented but were introduced into the market were counted and inventions that were patented but never introduced were not counted. This analysis seeks to compare the two works. Jaffe used a pool of data that spanned an eight-year period while Acs and Audretsch considered a single year, 1982. It is shown that using a single year sample in Jaffes model does not greatly alter the results, which means that both private corporate expenditures on R&D and university expenditures on research both positively and significantly influence patent activity. The impact of university spillovers is greater on innovations than patents using Jaffes model. By directly substituting the innovation measure for the patent measure, this research approach shows further support for Jaffes findings and arguments. (SRD)

Innovative Clusters and the Industry Life Cycle

The purpose of this paper is to link the propensity for innovative activity to spatially cluster to the stage of the industry life cycle. The theory of knowledge spillovers, based on the knowledge production function for innovative activity, suggests that geographic proximity matters the most where tacit knowledge plays an important role in the generation of innovative activity. According to the emerging literature of the industry life cycle, tacit knowledge plays the most important role during the early stages of the industry life cycle. Based on a data base that identifies innovative activity for individual states and specific industries for the United States, the empirical evidence suggests that the propensity for innovative activity is shaped by the stage of the industry life cycle. While the generation of new economic knowledge tends to result in a greater propensity for innovative activity to cluster during the early stages of the industry life cycle, innovative activity tends to be more highly dispersed during the mature and declining stages of the life cycle, particularly after controlling for the extent to which the location of production is geographically concentrated. This may suggest that the positive agglomeration effects during the early stages of the industry life cycle become replaced by congestion effects during the latter stages of the industry life cycle.

Academic Entrepreneurs: Organizational Change at the Individual Level

This study explores the process of organizational change by examining localized social learning in organizational subunits. Specifically, we examine participation in university technology transfer, a new organizational initiative, by tracking 1,780 faculty members, examining their backgrounds and work environments, and following their engagement with academic entrepreneurship. We find that individual adoption of the new initiative may be either substantive or symbolic. Our results suggest that individual attributes, while important, are conditioned by the local work environment. In terms of personal attributes, individuals are more likely to participate if they trained at institutions that had accepted the new initiative and been active in technology transfer. In addition, we find that the longer the time that had elapsed since graduate training, the less likely the individual was to actively embrace the new commercialization norm. Considering the localized social environment, we find that when the chair of the department is active in technology transfer, other members of the department are also likely to participate, if only for symbolic reasons. We also find that technology transfer behavior is calibrated by the experience of those in the relevant cohort. If an individual can observe others with whom they identify engaging in the new initiative, then they are more likely to follow with substantive compliance. Finally, when individuals face dissonance, a situation where their individual training norms are not congruent with the localized social norms in their work environment, they will conform to the local norms, rather than adhering to the norms from their prior experience.

Equity and the Technology Transfer Strategies of American Research Universities

American universities are experimenting with new mechanisms for promoting the commercialization of academic research and generating revenue from university intellectual property. This paper discusses mechanisms available to universities in managing the commercialization of intellectual property, considering equity as a technology transfer mechanism that offers advantages for both generating revenue and aligning the interests of universities, industry and faculty. Employing data from a national survey of Carnegie I and Carnegie II institutions, we document the recent rise in university equity holdings. We present and estimate a model that considers the universitys use of equity to be a function of behavioral factors related to the universitys prior experiences with licensing, success relative to other institutions, and the organization of the technology transfer office, as well as structural characteristics related to university type.

Knowledge Complementarity and Innovation

This paper uses an innovation production function to relate the presence of geographically-mediated complementary knowledge resources to the innovative activity of small and large firms. The empirical results suggest that small firm innovation appears to benefit from the presence of external institutions and resources. Although large firm innovative activity benefits from the presence of knowledge resources, location appears to be especially beneficial to small firm innovative activity.