Firm heterogeneity within industries: How important is “industry” to innovation?

In this paper we assess how important “industry” is to innovation. Our empirical estimates suggest that “industry factors” matter little to how firms’ search for new innovations. These results offer empirical support to recent evolutionary theory where firms have heterogeneous capabilities and pursue different approaches to innovation. Structural variables at the industry level do however have a substantial influence on the firm level propensity to innovate. This result supports “sectoral innovation system” approaches where firms are “constrained” by technological regimes underlying industry evolution. Hence, the driving forces behind technological evolution are found at both the firm and industry level.

Spatial dependence and Kaldor's laws: Evidence for the European regions

In this paper we provide an outline of Kaldor's growth model and tests its relevance to the economic experience of European regions during the 1984-1992 period. The Kaldor's first law asserts that manufacturing is the engine of economic growth. The second proposition, also known as Verdoorn's law, states that there is a strong positive relation between the productivity growth in manufacturing and the output growth of manufacturing. The third law suggests that overall productivity growth is positively related to output growth in manufacturing and negatively related to the employment of non manufacturing sectors. The empirical results, corrected for the presence of spatial autocorrelation, indicates that Kaldor's second and third laws are compatible with the economic growth of European regions during the period 1984-1992. Keywords: Kaldor's laws, regional economics, spatial autocorrelation

Geospatial Narratives and their Spatio-Temporal Dynamics: Commonsense Reasoning for High-level Analyses in Geographic Information Systems

The modelling, analysis, and visualisation of dynamic geospatial phenomena has been identified as a key developmental challenge for next-generation Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In this context, the envisaged paradigmatic extensions to contemporary foundational GIS technology raises fundamental questions concerning the ontological, formal representational, and (analytical) computational methods that would underlie their spatial information theoretic underpinnings. We present the conceptual overview and architecture for the development of high-level semantic and qualitative analytical capabilities for dynamic geospatial domains. Building on formal methods in the areas of commonsense reasoning, qualitative reasoning, spatial and temporal representation and reasoning, reasoning about actions and change, and computational models of narrative, we identify concrete theoretical and practical challenges that accrue in the context of formal reasoning about `space, events, actions, and change'. With this as a basis, and within the backdrop of an illustrated scenario involving the spatio-temporal dynamics of urban narratives, we address specific problems and solutions techniques chiefly involving `qualitative abstraction', `data integration and spatial consistency', and `practical geospatial abduction'. From a broad topical viewpoint, we propose that next-generation dynamic GIS technology demands a transdisciplinary scientific perspective that brings together Geography, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognitive Science. Keywords: artificial intelligence; cognitive systems; human-computer interaction; geographic information systems; spatio-temporal dynamics; computational models of narrative; geospatial analysis; geospatial modelling; ontology; qualitative spatial modelling and reasoning; spatial assistance systemsComment: ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (ISSN 2220-9964); Special Issue on: Geospatial Monitoring and Modelling of Environmental Change}. IJGI. Editor: Duccio Rocchini. (pre-print of article in press

Case Based Reasoning for Chemical Engineering Design

With current industrial environment (competition, lower profit margin, reduced time to market, decreased product life cycle, environmental constraints, sustainable development, reactivity, innovation…), we must decrease the time for design of new products or processes. While the design activity is marked out by several steps, this article proposed a decision support tool for the preliminary design step. This tool is based on the Case Based Reasoning (CBR) method. This method has demonstrated its effectiveness in other domains (medical, architecture…) and more recently in chemical engineering. This method, coming from Artificial Intelligence, is based on the reusing of earlier experiences to solve new problems. The goal of this article is to show the utility of such method for unit operation (for example) pre-design but also to propose several evolutions for CBR through a domain as complex as the chemical engineering is (because of its interactions, non linearity, intensification problems…). During the pre-design step, some parameters like operating conditions are not precisely known but we have an interval of possible values, worse we only have a partial description of the problem.. To take into account this imprecision in the problem description, the CBR method is coupled with the fuzzy sets theory. After a mere presentation of the CBR method, a practical implementation is described with the choice and the pre-design of packing for separation columns

The Evolution of an Industrial Sector with a Varying Degree of Roundaboutness of Production

The evolutionary model presented in this paper depicts an industrial sector with a varying degree of economic roundaboutness, i.e. vertical division of labour between producers and users of different types of intermediate products that are ultimately used for the production of a single final product. To include this vertical aspect of industrial dynamics, the model adds the concept of production trees to the evolutionary models of Schumpeterian competition. The specification of this concept suggests the use of the notions of graph theory and the related algorithms of computer science in the treatment of industrial novelty, including structural innovations. Although the model is developed within the Nelson and Winter tradition, the introduction of the 'Austrian' issue of roundaboutness implies a major extension of the research agenda, including production- structure innovations, the emergence and functioning of markets for intermediate products, ways of coping with the instability of upstream markets, the spread of the effects of an upstream innovation, and the measurement of the degree of roundaboutness and of overall productivity. The model reflects a Schumpeterian version of the Böhm-Bawerkian vision of the emergence of increased long-term roundaboutness of production. The Schumpeterian approach implies an innovation- and entrepreneur-driven process of vertical disintegration and reintegration.Roundaboutness, production graphs, evolutionary economic modelling, Nelson and Winter

Reluctant Bedfellows or Model Marriage? : Postmodern Thinking Applied to Mainstream Public Sector Health Services Research Settings

An important mobilisation of postmodernism is as a way of thinking that pays particular attention to the play of differences in human thought and experience. Informed by the Derridean theory of deconstruction, the current discussion critically examines an original piece of health services research undertaken by the author, which aimed to derive propositions about how health service researchers disseminated research information to those in daily practice in the United Kingdom (UK) National Health Service (NHS). The objective is to provide an analytical review of those tacit and oftentimes suppressed, marginalized or hidden, forms of knowledge that may be conveniently overlooked or glossed over in mainstream health services research, which is largely produced by university-based researchers who remain subject to traditional academic pressures. Following a review of the theory and practice of deconstruction, Boje and Dennehy’s (1994) specific seven-point ‘deconstruction methodology’, based on drawing empirical data through bipolar opposite themes, is deployed before concluding with a consideration of the implications of a postmodern analysis of mainstream healthcare practice, policy and organisation settings, which have a central role to play in delivering service improvement in the new financial environment