25 research outputs found
University-Industry Technology Transfer: Empirical Findings from Chinese Industrial Firms
The knowledge and innovation generated by researchers at universities is transferred to industries through patent licensing, leading to the commercialization of academic output. In order to investigate the development of Chinese university-industry technology transfer and whether this kind of collaboration may affect a firm's innovation output, we collected approximately 6400 license contracts made between more than 4000 Chinese firms and 300 Chinese universities for the period between 2009 and 2014. This is the first study on Chinese university-industry knowledge transfer using a bipartite social network analysis (SNA) method, which emphasizes centrality estimates. We are able to investigate empirically how patent license transfer behavior may affect each firm's innovative output by allocating a centrality score to each firm in the university-firm technology transfer network. We elucidate the academic-industry knowledge by visualizing flow patterns for different regions with the SNA tool, Gephi. We find that innovation capabilities, R&D resources, and technology transfer performance all vary across China, and that patent licensing networks present clear small-world phenomena. We also highlight the Bipartite Graph Reinforcement Model (BGRM) and BiRank centrality in the bipartite network. Our empirical results reveal that firms with high BGRM and BiRank centrality scores, long history, and fewer employees have greater innovative output
Global value chains from an evolutionary economic geography perspective: a research agenda
The research agendas of evolutionary economic geography (EEG) and global value chains (GVCs) have developed more or less independently from each other, with little interaction so far. This is unfortunate because both streams of literature have a lot to offer each other. This paper explores how, looking at four strands in the GVC literature. Promising crossovers between EEG and the GVC literature are identified, but also some missing links that need to be taken up in future research. These new research avenues, promoting the adoption of an evolutionary perspective on GVCs, are expected to enrich both literatures in mutual ways.publishedVersio
Gender bias in team formation: The case of the European Science Foundation's grants
This paper investigates gender bias (if any) when teams are formed. We use data from the European Science Foundation to estimate if female scientists have the same opportunities as their male colleagues to join a team when applying for funds. To assess gender bias, we construct a control group of scientists with the competencies for being invited to join the team but do not join. By comparing the proportion of female scientists in the control group with the one in the observed teams, we find a gender bias against female scientists only when a project leader is a male scientist. At the same time, we do not observe gender bias when the project leader is a female scientist
Multinational firms in (global) cities: mimicry, knowledge networks, and economic growth
This dissertation examines the dynamic interrelationship between MNEs and cities. First, it examines cities as MNEs’ foreign direct investment location choice and imitation processes within these FDI location choices. Imitation not only enhances the attractiveness of the city by contributing to the generation of agglomeration economies and by encouraging additional imitation, but it also contributes to the further development of the international connectivity of the city and the creation of global knowledge networks. Second, this dissertation introduces a new measure of international connectivity of cities in terms of collaboration on innovation. In addition, it elaborates on the interrelated roles of different types of international connectivity on city economic growth and the influence of this connectivity on the surrounding areas of the city. The dissertation has four contributing chapters, in addition to an introduction (Chapter 1) and general conclusion (Chapter 6).
Chapter 2 examines the role of domestic cultural characteristics and investor heterogeneity in shaping imitation of foreign direct investment location choices by MNEs. While existing research has indicated that firms may imitate their peers in order to gain legitimacy among stakeholders, a national cultural dimension has rarely been included. The chapter argues that imitation processes depend on the presence of three cultural traits of home countries, i.e. collectivism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance, which can jointly act as domestic conformity forces strengthening the incentive to imitate. This influence is most salient in particular for firms that lack substantial domestic legitimacy and those that have limited multinational operations. The empirical findings, using a conditional logit model on a sample of 1050 greenfield manufacturing investments in the United States by 662 firms based in 35 different home countries, confirm that the tendency to engage in imitation is stronger for firms based in home countries characterized by greater collectivism and overall national conformity forces. Furthermore, the empirical findings conclude that less legitimate firms and firms with limited multinational operations are significantly responsive to two domestic cultural traits, i.e. collectivism and power distance. This may imply that targeted policies in attracting FDI from countries with such domestic conformity forces may prove to be more effective by follow up investments, yet it will attract in particular smaller and younger firms and firms with limited multinational operations.
Chapter 3 puts forward a new measurement of international connectivity of global cities focusing on collaborations in innovation, by drawing on a novel and extensive database of geocoded patent inventor addresses. While existing research has mainly measured international connectivity by the worldwide office networks of advanced producer services firms (e.g. consulting, accounting and insurance firms) in cities, a more inclusive understanding of city connectivity remains absent. Hence, this chapter looks at international connectivity based on another central function of global cities, i.e. their role as prominent spaces for knowledge exchange and collaboration on innovation. The findings of this chapter, focusing on the 125 cities in 46 countries, confirm the role of global cities as prominent places for knowledge exchange and collaboration of innovation and the growing importance of international collaboration for innovation.
Chapter 4 compares the new measure of connectivity based on innovation collaboration to the traditional indicator on advanced producer services for 129 cities in 76 countries. The findings suggest broadly similar trends, but also highlight some important differences suggesting specialization advantages of a strong position in one of the two networks. When analyzing the simultaneous and interrelated influences of the knowledge network and the advanced producer services network of cities on their economic growth using a fixed effects panel regression, the findings suggest that both aspects of cities’ international connectivity may allow their economies to grow, but that they reduce each other’s association with city economic growth. This suggest that specialization in one type of network and connectivity and building on existing strengths may be more beneficial.
Chapter 5 analyses the influence of global city international connectivity on collaborative linkages of the city with the surrounding area of these global cities. It argues that the international connectivity may render global cities less likely to establish intensive local innovation linkages with surrounding areas, but that the nature of this relationship may depend on the characteristics of the global city and their surroundings. More specifically, we argue that global linkages are more detrimental to the establishment of local linkages if the global city is a technology leader, but less so if the surrounding area has a greater absorptive capacity and features a smaller travel distance to the global city. The findings, based on the collaborative linkages of 21 US global cities and 614 surrounding counties using a fixed effects Poisson regression model, provide clear indications of international connectedness being associated with local disconnectedness. However, it also suggests that the relationship between global city international connectivity and their local linkages depends on the characteristics of both the global city and their surrounding area. This illustrates that knowledge exchange does not always cause an equal spread of opportunities across geographies and calls for innovation policies focusing on improving the knowledge convergence between the surrounding areas and cities.
Generación de conocimiento y conectividad internacional en España: un análisis a través de patentes
Esta tesis doctoral se enmarca en el contexto amplio que ha venido perfilando tanto la importancia de la generación del conocimiento y su transmisión como la elevada conectividad internacional, apoyada por las (TIC), en el desarrollo industrial y el avance económico y social que ha acompañado el proceso de la globalización de la actividad económica, científica y tecnológica. La innovación y las redes globales tienen implicaciones importantes para la formulación de políticas (OCDE, 2008) y, al mismo tiempo, la vinculación entre instituciones de investigación y el ámbito productivo local, sigue siendo una cuestión relevante para la toma de decisiones de política pública. Tal es así que, en pleno proceso de cambio tecnológico, ante la emergencia de la denominada cuarta revolución industrial (o industria 4.0) y ante el reto de la digitalización y el desarrollo sostenible, gana todo el sentido estudiar las formas que adopta la conectividad internacional, las claves de la generación de entornos innovadores y el problema de la brecha de género, en la generación de las tecnologías más dinámicas. Ello justifica realizar esta investigación haciendo uso de un análisis minucioso del indicador de patentes españolas en la Oficina de Patentes de Estados Unidos (USPTO)..
External collaborations in multinational pharmaceutical companies
Traditionally, the internal research and development (R&D) departments of multinational
companies (MNCs) have served as a main driver of MNCs innovative capacity. Today’s high
pace of change and competitive landscape have forced MNCs however to look beyond their
organizational boundaries and to involve external organizations in their R&D for technological
advancement and innovation. In particular, MNCs are using R&D collaborations as a means to
create and access new knowledge. Collaborations are particularly relevant in science-based
sectors such as the pharmaceutical industry where R&D mainly relies on complex and basic
scientific knowledge. In this sector, the sources of expertise are widely dispersed and drug
discovery and development requires coordination between different actors. The globalization
trend has facilitated collaborations across long distances and companies have adopted a
combination of long and short distance collaborations in their innovation process.
The role of geographic proximity in collaboration continues to puzzle researchers. In fact, it
may be more complex than previously addressed in the literature, most of which has considered
external collaborations in a MNC as a homogenous entity in terms of knowledge. A MNC
consists of different R&D units that specialize in different research areas and are active at
different stages of the innovation process. Furthermore, a MNC collaborates with a large
variety of external organizations and individuals. Thus, R&D collaborations in a MNC can be
considered heterogeneous in terms of the knowledge and actors involved. The various types of
knowledge and actors well differ in how important the role of geographic proximity is for
successful collaborations.
This thesis studies the role of geographic proximity in the R&D collaborations of MNCs when
creating, accessing and embedding different types of knowledge. In particular, I examine these
aspects by differentiating between (1) the nature of knowledge (basic science vs clinical
science, core vs explorative knowledge), and (2) the actors involved on the organization level
(university, hospital, research institute and company) as well as on the individual level (star
scientists). The different levels of analysis describe different aspects of the R&D collaboration
and how these affect the internal knowledge of MNCs.
I used co-publications and patents as a proxy for R&D collaborations and analysed the role of
geographic proximity using descriptive, social network and econometric analysis. The results
show an increasing openness of pharmaceutical MNCs to collaborate over the past 20 years in
terms of the organizations and countries involved in drug discovery and development. While
the main patents behind innovative drugs are still mainly owned by companies themselves,
external organizations increasingly contribute indirectly to knowledge creation, as visible from
an increasing proportion of cited patents and publications from external organizations. This
substitutes for biotech and pharmaceutical companies decreasing investments in R&D.
Furthermore, considering the nature of knowledge, the results show that collaborations in basic
science and core knowledge areas are more positively affected by geographic proximity than
collaborations within clinical science and knowledge exploration of the MNCs. I also find that
different types of actors embed different natures of knowledge. The knowledge accessed by MNCs from universities is more positively affected by geographic proximity during the
collaborative process, compared to hospitals or companies. However, highly skilled individual
scientists who work at MNCs (star scientists), can help to maintain local collaborations.
Based on these findings I conclude that the role of geographic proximity in R&D collaborations
of MNCs varies between the types of collaboration and must be more precisely assessed
distinguishing between each R&D collaboration between a MNC and another organization or
actor. This thesis underlines the crucial role of R&D collaborations for MNCs and emphasizes
the importance of geography for the R&D management of MNCs to create and access
knowledge effectively in collaborations. From a policy perspective, the importance of different
knowledge types in R&D collaborations should be kept in mind when facilitating the
development of R&D collaborations, particularly when local actors are trying to attract foreign
MNCs
Essays on the antecedents, outcomes and multiplexity of informal innovation networks in an industrial cluster
Innovation scholars have been studying social networks for a long time. The
two major research concerns have been to understand the origin of social
structures and their consequences on innovation. Considerable attention has
been given to the analysis of network structures that favour innovation. This
stream of research focuses on the structural properties of networks and their
effects on innovation. On the flip side, a large number of studies have
investigated the underlying mechanisms and driving forces behind these
network structures. This stream of research focuses on the individual, dyadic
and structural-level drivers of network formation.
Despite these numerous contributions, there are at least three issues in
innovation-related network studies that require further investigation. First,
multiplexity has received little attention in innovation studies. Notably, scholars
have overlooked the formation of multiplex innovation networks. Thus, there is
a need to analyse the individual, dyadic and structural level drivers of the
formation of multiplex innovation networks. Second, network research is
dominated by studies conducted in the western context, and there is a lack of
contributions from developing countries. Scholars have also highlighted this
issue in recent studies. Third, innovation scholars have mainly focused on
undirected networks and formal collaborations, and little attention has been
paid to studying directed informal networks. Thus, this thesis aims to fill these
research gaps and investigates the antecedents, outcomes and multiplexity of
directed and informal innovation networks. The thesis constitutes three papers.
The first paper, “Proximity and its impact on the formation of product and
process innovation networks”, contributes to the stream of literature
investigating the dyadic-level antecedents of the formation of multiple
networks. It analyses the role of multi-dimensional proximity (a dyadic-level
driver) in the formation of product and process innovation networks. Using
multiple regression quadratic assignment procedure (MRQAP), a social
network analysis technique, I study these networks among seventy-three firms
in the Lahore textile cluster in Pakistan. I find a significant influence of four
dimensions of proximity on the process of network formation. Notably, the
impact of social, cognitive and organisational dimensions of proximity is found
to be stronger for process innovation network than for product innovation
network. Contrarily, geographic proximity plays a more critical role in network
formation for product innovation than process innovation.
The second paper, “Formation and dynamics of product and process
innovation networks: evidence from a textile cluster in Pakistan”, also
contributes to individual-level and network-level drivers of multiplex network
formation. It investigates the influence of individual and relational attributes of
actors, as well as endogenous network mechanisms on the formation of
product and process innovation networks. Using exponential random graph
models (ERGM), this study examines the effect of absorptive capacity and
innovative capacity as individual-level attributes; business relations as a
dyadic-level factor; and popularity, activity, reciprocity, multi-connectivity and
transitivity as network-level characteristics, on the formation of product and
process innovation networks. The study finds that individual attributes,
relational attributes and endogenous network mechanisms show a significant
influence on the formation of both innovations networks.
The third paper, “Influence of a firm’s network position on its innovation
outcome in a mature industrial cluster”, employs a social network perspective
to investigate the influence of firms’ structural and relational embeddedness
on their innovation outcome in a directed network in an industrial cluster. From
the structural embeddedness perspective, the paper argues that a central
position in an informal advice network does not bring equal innovation benefits
to advice-seekers and advice-givers. Notably, in a mature industrial cluster, it
is expected that the number of advice giving ties (popularity) positively
influences the innovation outcome of firms, whereas the number of advice-seeking
ties (activity) negatively affects the firms’ innovation. From the
relational embeddedness perspective, the paper investigates the effect of
strong and weak ties on the innovation outcome of firms in a mature industrial
cluster. It expects a positive relationship between firms’ innovation output and
strong ties, and a negative relationship between weak ties and the innovation
output of firms. The findings suggest that activity has a significant negative
impact on the innovation outcome of firms, while popularity shows a significant
positive impact on the innovative outcome of firms. Strong ties show a positive
and significant impact on innovation, while weak ties demonstrate a significant
adverse effect on innovation. The study also finds that absorptive capacity fully
mediates the relationship between advice-giving ties and innovation, and
partially mediates the relationship between advice-seeking ties and innovation.
This work has implications for cluster policymakers as well as research and
development managers
Analysis of the International Cooperation Network in Alternative Energy Production Technology Development Based on Co-Patents
This paper analyses international cooperation in alternative energy production research and development. Therefore, patents of the technological domain, registered at the European Patent Office from 1997 until 2016, are analysed. International cooperation is considered when patents involve co-assignment or co-inventorship comprising two or more different countries. Generally, international R&D cooperation tends to be increasing over time in alternative energy production. In total, 2234 co-patents from 87 countries are identified. Through social network analysis the cooperative relationships between countries are examined. The most significant states of the network are the United States of America and Germany. Innovative clusters and strong partnerships are identified. Alternative energy technologies that involve international cooperation most extensively are harnessing energy from manmade waste, solar energy and bio-fuels. The paper clarifies which countries are cooperating with each other for what purpose. The findings can be used for establishing R&D strategies in the domain of alternative energy production