Stéphane Lhuillery

Northern and southern innovativity: a comparison across European and Latin American countries

This paper compares the role of innovation and economic performance across European and Latin American countries, using firm-level data from France, Spain, Switzerland, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. We implement a standard structural model linking R&D intensity, innovation and productivity. We find evidence revealing structural differences between Europe and Latin America, but also the presence of heterogeneity within each. In particular, firms tend to engage in innovation activities in order to achieve better economic performance on a similar basis among countries, but their interaction with national systems is weaker in developing countries. The fact of being a foreign subsidiary of a foreign multinational is found to have a heterogeneous effect on innovativity, whereas it leads to increased productivity in every country.Cet article compare le rôle de linnovation et des performances économiques entre pays Européens et Latino-Américain en utilisant des données individuelles dentreprises provenant de France, dEspagne, de Suisse, dArgentine, du Brésil et du Mexique. Nous utilisons pour cela un modèle structurel classique reliant intensité de R&D, innovation et productivité. Nous montrons des différences structurelles entre lEurope et lAmérique Latine mais également une hétérogénéité à lintérieur de chacune de ces deux régions. Notamment, les firmes ont tendance à sengager dans des activités dinnovation, dans le but dobtenir de meilleurs résultats, sur des bases similaires dans les différents pays. Cependant, les interactions de ces firmes avec leur système national dinnovation sont plus faibles dans les pays en développement. Le fait dêtre la filiale dune firme étrangère a un effet hétérogène sur la capacité dinnovation, alors que cela conduit à une amélioration de la productivité dans chaque pays.

A Functional Perspective on Learning and Innovation: Investigating the Organization of Absorptive Capacity

We investigate the intra-organizational antecedents of firm-level absorptive capacity (AC). Specifically, we examine how the functional areas of R&D, manufacturing and marketing contribute to the absorption of knowledge coming from different external knowledge sources. The econometric results on a representative sample of Swiss firms show that non-R&D-based AC plays a significantly different role compared to the standard R&D-based one that is typically considered in studies on AC. We also reveal that AC is organized through a specialization of external knowledge absorption across functional areas. In particular, we find: (1) R&D is particularly important as an absorber of knowledge from public research organizations for product innovation; (2) manufacturing is important as an absorber of supplier knowledge for product innovation and of competitor knowledge for process innovation; and (3) marketing helps to absorb customer knowledge for product and process innovation as well as competitor knowledge for product innovation. We further investigate the differences between product and process innovation and find that marketing-based AC is more important for the former, although the overall analysis of these differences is less conclusive. In short, we show how functional areas play a role in the organization of AC and that firms may need an ambidextrous strategy to innovate effectively based on both upstream- and downstream-based AC.

Voluntary Technological Disclosure as an Efficient Knowledge Management Device: An Empirical Study

This paper investigates three questions related to endogenous information and knowledge disclosure by firms: Which industry sectors are more apt to disclose information and knowledge? Why is such knowledge released? Is knowledge disclosure an efficient strategy? An empirical analysis on four French data sets that focus on appropriation, the practices of innovation, and the related payoffs suggests answers to these questions. A firm with high R&D intensity, from a high-tech sector, participating in R&D partnerships is found to be more likely to engage in disclosure. Firms in the sample were found to ‘leak’ their knowledge to public laboratories to a greater degree than to other private sector firms. Leakage also was found to be associated with improved innovation performance. This research helps broaden the literature on knowledge management practices to include not only the pursuit of formal intellectual property rights such as patents but also less formal inter-organizational knowledge transmission mechanisms.

Do Firms Know the Scope of their R&D Network? An Empirical Investigation of the Determinants of Network Awareness on French Survey Data

Although research and development (R&D) networks influence the innovation performance of their members, firms may not be fully aware of the scope of their network. In particular, due to cost reasons, they may not be fully informed of their “indirect ties”, that is, of the ties between their partners and other firms. To investigate this issue, the paper uses a survey inquiring about whether firms are aware of the ties that their main direct R&D partners may (or may not) have between themselves. Our results show that responding firms are more informed about their partners other collaboration projects when the partnership is more directly linked to intangible R&D capital, when at least one partner is a public research organization or when the partnership is needed to access a new market. Network awareness is also higher when both R&D partners are from the same type (e.g. public research organization, companies, technical centers). Firms with a high R&D intensity or with a large size, as well as those affiliated to a group, are less likely to know their indirect ties. Finally, network awareness is lower in high-technology industries.

Structural changes in industrial R&D in Europe and the US: towards a new model?

We analyse the structural changes that have characterised the organisation of industrial R&D over the last 25 years. Taking Mowerys work (Industrial and Corporate Change, 2009, 18(1), 1–50) on the US as a starting point, we reconsider the different aspects of structural change he examined, discuss their impact and the overall logic underlying them. We then examine Europe to discover to what extent these structural changes have occurred in recent years. While a certain structural evolution is perceptible, it is not on the same scale as that analysed for the US. Finally, we consider the extent to which the new structures are more or less ‘efficient’ than previous ones. We conclude with the implications for R&D and innovation policy implications. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Measurement of innovation

There is a growing interest in broadening the measurement scope of innovation to consider “creative” activities, suggesting that the usual indicators of innovation satisfy neither scholars nor policy makers. Conceptually, there is little difference between innovative and creative activity. However, it is difficult to know to what extent the current measures that capture innovation are relevant for creativity. Can the new measures for creativity benefit from the experience accumulated through R&D and innovation? Our chapter provides insights and lessons learned from using measures of innovative activities for scholars who are interested in capturing creative activities. We underscore the difficulties faced when measuring innovation and draw some parallels between these difficulties and the efforts undertaken to measure creativity.

Organisation and location of academic sourcing at the firm level

Thanks to the second French Community Innovation Survey, a measurement of the importance of public research organisations as a useful source of innovation for manufacturing firms is available. We thus provide an exploratory econometric model where the internal R&D organisation and location of business units at the city level are both considered as explaining factors for the absorptive capacity dedicated to academic knowledge. Size, R&D intensity and organisation are found to be significant determinants of academic sourcing. The influence of local public research organisations on innovation is however found rather small and not restricted to urban areas.