Harnessing the 'essential tension' of design: The complex relationship between the firm and designer consultants

A central factor which characterizes design-related innovative activities is that a major source of knowledge – that is designers – is very often located outside the firm. This raises a central management issue for the firm and unavoidably generates a tension between designer consultants and the firm which I name the essential tension. The aim of this paper is to shed some light on this complex relationship on the ground of the evidence provided by a multiple case study. The findings confirm that designer consultants can make a substantial contribution in enhancing firms’ innovation capabilities. We show that a better understanding of the types of knowledge that designers need for their activity is key. This affects the way designer consultants are integrated within the organizational structure of the firm, and it also impinges on the strategies put forward by firms to manage this relationship in order to gain a competitive advantage driven by innovation. Implications include the crucial role played by the product manager, the strategies to foster trust and to coordinate designers.industrial design, innovation, product development, case study

Skills, social insurance, and changes in innovation investment after the onset of the financial crisis in Europe

This paper compares investments in innovation from the early days of the financial crisis up to mid 2009 using a survey covering more than 5,000 firms across twenty one European countries. Our interest is in how differences in labour market institutions and human capital affect a firm’s innovation investment during the recent financial crisis. We find that continuity of investment in innovation in Europe during the onset of the financial crisis in 2008-9 was strongest in countries which have both high earnings replacement rates and high participation in vocational education and training; countries with just one were more likely to see reduced innovation, while we find no effect (either positive or negative) from job security

The globalisation of intellectual property rights: four learned lessons and four theses

Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) have become ubiquitous in the current debate and have emerged as the key issue of global innovation policy. The ‘Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights’ (TRIPS) Agreement, signed in 1994 as a founding element of the World Trade Organisation, represents the most important attempt to establish a global harmonisation of Intellectual Property protection. The aim of this article is to re-examine critically what has become the common wisdom around IPRs, TRIPS and their effects. We argue that supporters of IPRs in western corporations and governments as well as detractors in global movements and developing countries have overestimated their importance in the process of generation and diffusion of knowledge and innovation. On the basis of some key learned lessons on the nature of innovation and technological change, we assess four theses about TRIPS and its impact on the global generation and distribution of knowledge. Finally, the policy implications concerning international organisations and technological transfer are discussedglobalisation of IPRs, innovation, technological transfer

Innovation in Times of Crisis: The Uneven Effects of the Economic Downturn across Europe

This article addresses the impact of the current economic downturn on innovation across Europe. Using micro and macro data we investigate to what extent some characteristics of a country affect the reaction of its firms in terms of innovation investment. It emerges that the effects of the economic downturn in terms of firms’ innovation investment are not the same across European countries. The competences and quality of the human resources, the specialization in the hi-technology sector together with the depth of the financial system seem to be the structural factors which are able to offset the effect of the economic downturn on innovation investments of firms across Europe. Finally, some considerations about policies during the crisis are discussed.innovation investment, business cycles, national innovation systems, European Innovation Policy, financial crisis

The role of internationalization as a determinant of innovation performance: an analysis of 42 countries

This paper analyses the impact of internationalization on the innovation performance of 42 countries. Innovation performance – the dependent variable – is measured by the number of triad patents and PCT applications that originate from a country. The following internationalization variables – independent variables – are used: inward and outward stock of FDI, exports and imports as well as the number of parent companies in a country. Information on patents and the internationalization variables, together with further explanatory variables, including the number of scientific articles in a country, the number of Internet users, the R&D intensity and the share of value added in services, are collected for the years 1990 to 2008. Regressions are performed for all countries together, and, then, for two groups of countries clustered on the basis of their GDP per capita. We estimate two linear models, one based on pooled data estimating the classic linear model, and one on panel data, estimating a fixed effects linear model. The values of our dependent variables lead by up to six years for two reasons: to account for the time that elapses between an invention and the recording of the patent statistic, and, to address at least to some extent, issues associated with endogeneity in our independent variables. The paper finds support for a positive impact of internationalization on countries’ innovation performance. Our analyses suggest that competing in international markets via outward FDI and exports increases the scope of learning and the need to innovate. We find evidence of a negative relationship between patenting and inward FDI as well as imports. We interpret our results to indicate that (a) the inward inflow of investment or products can be less innovation-intensive than a country’s domestic activities which would be the case for more advanced and innovation-active countries; or (b) that a country does not have a sufficient absorption capacity to benefit from inflows

The retreat of public research and its adverse consequences on innovation

In the last decades a major trend has been ignored: both the quota of public R&D and its share over the total R&D investment has shrunk in most OECD countries. As a result, a larger fraction of knowledge is today generated in the private sector. We argue that this is a major problem since public research and private research differ along a number of characteristics. This has implications for innovation and welfare. Through the lens of the public goods theory and the evolution of R&D for the period 1981-2012 we try to explain why

Charge doping and large lattice expansion in oxygen-deficient heteroepitaxial WO3

Tungsten trioxide is a versatile material with widespread applications ranging from electrochromic and optoelectronic devices to water splitting and catalysis of chemical reactions. For technological applications, thin films of WO3 are particularly appealing, taking advantage from high surface-to-volume ratio and tunable physical properties. However, the growth of stoichiometric, crystalline thin films is challenging because the deposition conditions are very sensitive to the formation of oxygen vacancies. In this work, we show how background oxygen pressure during pulsed laser deposition can be used to tune the structural and electronic properties of WO3 thin films. By performing X-ray diffraction and low-temperature transport measurements, we find changes in WO3 lattice volume up to 10%, concomitantly with an insulator-to-metal transition as a function of increased level of electron doping. We use advanced ab initio calculations to describe in detail the properties of the oxygen vacancy defect states, and their evolution in terms of excess charge concentration. Our results depict an intriguing scenario where structural, electronic, optical, and transport properties of WO3 single-crystal thin films can all be purposely tuned by a suited control of oxygen vacancies formation during growth

Does diversity undermine the provision of local public services in European regions?

The next Europe of regions will profoundly differ from the one we have observed so far. In fact, the current challenge in most European countries and regions comes from migration which is making the populations of Europe more and more heterogeneous. This puts great pressure on the welfare states and particularly on the provision of local public servic es. This work investigates i) whether national diversity reduces the performance of local public services, and ii) to what extent this problem is moderated by regional autonomy. The empirical analysis is based on 167 European regions: we employ a composite indicator developed by The QOG Institute to measure the citizens’ perception about local public services, and the Regional Authority Index developed by Hooghe et al. ( 2008a) to measure the level of regional autonomy; we calculate a regional diversity index based on nationalities using census data. We find that diversity is negatively correlated with the performance of local public services, and regional autonomy only partially moderates this problem

Academic inventors: collaboration and proximity with industry

This paper addresses a number of fundamental research questions on university-industry (U-I) collaborations. Are U-I collaborations intrinsically different from other forms of collaboration, such as inter-firm or inter-university collaborations? Are they more difficult to form? Is their output qualitatively different? What factors facilitate their development? By looking at the collaborative behavior of all Italian inventors over the 1978-2007 period, the empirical analysis shows that U-I collaborations are less likely to happen when compared to other types of collaboration, and suggests that they tend to generate patents of more general applicability in subsequent inventions. As emphasized by the literature, geographical proximity plays an important role in facilitating all forms of collaboration. At the same time, it works as a possible substitute for institutional proximity, facilitating U-I collaborations. However, the involvement of ‘star inventors’ on both sides of the collaboration can play an equally important role in ‘bridging’ universities and industry

Does training help in times of crisis? Training in employment in Northern and Southern Italy

This paper explores the relative effectiveness of training in securing continued employment in a time of economic downturn, within the context of the Italian territorial dualism. We use a panel on 4,861 individuals for the period 2008-2011 and focus on how the effects of training differ between the South and the Centre-North of Italy, and also across workers with different levels of education