Steven Casper

Managing competences in entrepreneurial technology firms: a comparative institutional analysis of Germany, Sweden and the UK

Innovative firms face two major kinds of risks in developing new technologies: competence destruction and appropriability. High levels of technical uncertainty and radical changes in knowledge in some fields generate high technical failure risks and make it difficult to plan research and development programmes. They therefore encourage high levels of flexibility in acquiring and using skilled staff. Appropriability risks, on the other hand, encourage innovative firms to develop organisation-specific competences through investing in complementary assets, such as marketing and distribution capabilities, that involve longer-term employer-employee commitments to building complex organisations. These connections between technology risks and employment policies help to explain why different kinds of market economies with contrasting labour market institutions develop varied innovation patterns. This study focuses on subsectors of the computer software and biotechnology industries in three distinct Europea n countries, UK, Germany and Sweden, that vary in their level of technical change and appropriability.

Institutional Adaptiveness, Technology Policy, and the Diffusion of New Business Models: The Case of German Biotechnology

The German economy has been widely seen as failing to develop the commercial innovation competencies necessary to compete in new technologies. Starting in the mid-1990s, the German government instituted a series of new technology policies designed to orchestrate the development of small entrepreneurial technology firms. These policies have fostered several hundred new high-technology start-ups in Germany. This development represents an interesting challenge to prevailing institutional theory, which tends to view the characteristics of organizations as strongly constrained by the orientation of a number of key national institutional frameworks. Focusing on biotechnology, this article examines the relative importance of national institutional frameworks as opposed to sector-specific policies that are presently pervasive in Germany. Analysis of the new firms demonstrates that Germanys new technology policies have facilitated important extensions within the business system that have, for the first time, allowed the systematic promotion of entrepreneurial technology companies. However, the dominant strategies of market specialization and company organizational patterns found within these companies have been strongly influenced by incentives and constraints created by long-established national institutional structures. Technology policy has, however, promoted institutional adaptiveness by providing opportunities for firms to experiment with or reconfigure elements of relatively stable national institutional frameworks to create new business practices.

Can High-technology Industries Prosper in Germany? Institutional Frameworks and the Evolution of the German Software and Biotechnology Industries

The paper explores the influence of institutional frameworks on the evolution of the German software and biotechnology sectors. It links institutional constraints to poor performance of German firms in high volume market niches characterized by turbulent technological change and substantial financial risk. However, German firms are prospering in software services and “platform technologies” in biotechnology. The company organizational structures and investment strategies needed to excel in these market segments provide a close “fit” with incentives created within the German economy.

Institutional frameworks and innovation in the German and UK pharmaceutical industry

Abstract This paper analyzes how governance structures impact the innovation capabilities of leading German and UK firms in the pharmaceutical industry. Our main objective is to show how variation in national institutional frameworks influences the innovation process, and thus, relative performance. There are two main conclusions. First, the corporate governance structure allowed leading UK firms to more quickly adapt than German firms to rapidly changing external environmental conditions in the global pharmaceutical industry. Secondly, leading UK firms have an advantage in generating innovative drugs (“blockbusters”) than do German firms due to the nature of the institutional framework in which they are embedded.

Global Quality Norms within National Production Regimes: ISO 9000 Standards in the French and German Car Industries

This article examines the impact of ISO 9000 upon different national production regimes. It asks how ISO 9000 has influenced the reorganization of industry, and how this reorganization has affected the production systems of different advanced industrial countries, in this case France and Germany. The paper argues that within the wider context of increased international competition within the car industry, ISO 9000 technical norms have facilitated a modernization of supplier network practices and work organization in both countries. Yet, at the same time, the implementation of ISO 9000-based quality management systems within firms and the reorganization of relationships across firms have tended to reproduce the previously existing architectures of authority and risk distribution, but within the context of modernized technical practices. In France, the quality standards reproduced, while modernizing, the underlying Taylorist company organization and the hierarchical links between final assemblers and their suppliers. In Germany, in contrast, ISO 9000 norms became embedded within new production concepts that reinforced the autonomy of skilled workers. In inter-firm relationships, they act as an informal insurance clause against new liability risks associated with network forms of organization, thus safeguarding the autonomy of small firms.

Commercializing Science in Europe: The Cambridge Biotechnology Cluster

The article examines the variety of linkages firms have established with university science. These include using universities as a source of ideas for start-ups, scientific collaboration between firms and laboratories, the role of scientists on the scientific advisory boards of firms, and the role of universities in supplying firms with a labour market for talented scientists. These linkages are plentiful across Cambridge area biotechnology firms. However, and perhaps surprisingly, our evidence shows that a key actor, the University of Cambridge does not dominate the scientific linkages of the areas firms. A large percentage of Cambridges firms do not derive from its university. The majority of scientific collaborations are not with University of Cambridge laboratories, nor do Cambridge scientists dominate the scientific advisory boards of firms. Moreover, the majority of scientists within area biotechnology firms appear not to have left University of Cambridge laboratories to move to industry.

Examining the Marketplace for Ideas: How Local are Europe's Biotechnology Clusters?

This book offers a novel insight into the economic dynamics of modern biotechnology, using examples from Europe to reflect global trends. The authors apply theoretical insight to a fundamental enigma of the modern learning society, namely, how and why the development of knowledge and ideas interact with market processes and the formation of industries and firms.

New-technology clusters and public policy: Three perspectives

Regional technology clusters are an important source of economic growth within the knowledge economy. The success of Silicon Valley in particular has shown that university discoveries can spill over into regional economies to drive the emergence and growth of major new industries. From a public policy standpoint, the goal of ‘creating more Silicon Valleys’ has emerged as a major goal of recent technology policy. Evidence suggests that regional clusters focused on high technology only rarely develop. How do regional technology clusters emerge, and what makes them sustainable? A large literature has emerged attempting to answer this question. This article surveys three major perspectives on technology clusters: (1) approaches focused on universities as the anchor of regional clusters; (2) theories focusing on the development of social networks within clusters; and (3) institutional explanations. Each of these three approaches focuses on factors that are unquestionably important in explaining why some regions develop successful clusters while others do not. Each approach also yields a clear policy perspective and has itself influenced public policy. At best, each approach can, however, yield only a partial explanation of cluster success, but in combination they do reveal how complementary the perspectives are. A holistic approach that combines insights from the three approaches yields a reasonably clear understanding of key factors that explain why some regions successfully develop technology clusters while others do not.

Varieties of capitalism: comparative institutional approaches to economic organization and innovation

Innovation and Institutions is an extensive elaboration on the make up of systems of innovation. It examines why some countries are more innovative than others, why national styles of innovation differ, and goes on to explore why some countries make radical innovations but fail to successfully market them, whilst others making incremental innovations have more commercial success.

Bounded careers in creative industries: Surprising patterns in video games

Abstract We contribute empirical evidence to the literature on careers in creative industries. It has been argued that boundaryless career patterns are at the core of creative industries. We question this widely held argument and show that the most innovative Japanese video game developers make use of employment models that prioritise stable employment and bounded careers linked to it. The paper makes several contributions: First, it carefully describes career development patterns of Japanese video game developers, which have so far not been documented. We hereby contribute to the literature on creative industries by adding an important empirical case of bounded career patterns. Second, we try to explain why Japanese firms stick to traditional practices by addressing the link of bounded careers to integrative capabilities, and discuss what this means for creative industries in general and for video games in particular. We argue that integrative capabilities matter also in creative industries.