Collected worker experiences, knowledge management practices and service innovation in urban Norway

Knowledge‐intensive services firms prefer to locate in cities that provide access to rich information flows and abundant opportunities for learning‐by‐recruiting. Focusing specifically on such locations, this paper explores how innovation is associated with work experiences ‘collected’ by employees through their recent career paths and the implementation by current employer firms of practices to manage knowledge. Strong complementarities are found using a unique Norwegian dataset: The statistical association between practices and innovation outcomes depends strongly on variety of experience‐knowledge among employees. Conversely, while said variety does not affect innovation in the absence of dedicated practices, it strongly does in their presence.publishedVersio

Learning through urban labour pools: Collected worker experiences and innovation in services

Knowledge-intensive services firms (KIS) depend on the skills and networks of employees, and tend to cluster in large-city regions. This raises the fundamental question of whether KIS ‘learn through urban labour pools’ in manners that have implications for innovation. To address it, a distinction is in this paper made between ‘related variety’ (RV) and ‘unrelated variety’ (URV) of work-life experiences collected by employees and combined in firms. The empirical analysis uses innovation survey and register data to demonstrate that higher levels of URV among staff in urban KIS inspire innovation activity, and increase the probability of innovation success. Outside cities, where KIS on average have more specialised knowledge bases, innovation responds negatively to URV and positively to RV. As a result, the sign, size and significance of urban-rural dividing lines in innovation propensities depend on whether firms have cultivated the skill profiles that are most conducive to innovation in their locations. Constraints faced specifically by KIS outside cities in this respect are identified and implications for policy drawn.acceptedVersio

External shocks and enterprises' dynamic capabilities in a time of regional distress

We study if dynamic capabilities alleviate enterprises' revenue losses after an external shock. Contextually, we study Norwegian enterprises before and after the price decline of crude oil in 2014, which strongly affected economic activities across industries in some regions, while others were practically unaffected. Empirically, we combine data of regional oil dependency and enterprise- and person-level data before the decline and enterprise-level revenues before and after the decline. Analyses of 4,060 enterprises in 51 labor market regions show that unrelated education diversity alleviates revenue losses for enterprises in strongly affected regions, while related education diversity has an opposite negative effect. R&D investments and innovation alter revenue growth, but as the effects are consistent across more or less affected regions, the concepts are static enterprise resources and not dynamic capabilities.publishedVersio

Changing industrial trajectories through business model innovation: a case study of the oil and gas industry in Norway

The oil and gas industry is expected to develop and restructure into a sustainable energy industry. This in-depth case study investigates how business model innovation can contribute to industrial restructuring. Our findings imply that, while there is no ‘one size fits all’ business model, most oil and gas companies will need to innovate their customer segments, value propositions, key resources, key partners and cost structures to succeed. The oil and gas industry landscape significantly influences the need for adapting the business model to changing market forces, industry forces, key trends, and macroeconomic forces pushing for sustainable change, the emergence of new technologies and markets, and changes in market conditions. Our findings demonstrate that the need for change differs from the willingness to change. The production companies’ willingness to change is currently low as production is still highly profitable, while the supplier companies’ willingness is high because it is not profitable to expand. Oil and gas companies will face several internal barriers in the process, including challenges with the dominant logic of the company, deficient managerial knowledge, the uncertainty and complexity of new business models and limited business model routines or processes.publishedVersio

One coast, two systems: Regional innovation systems and entrepreneurial discovery in Western Norway

This paper introduces an analytical framework for understanding how specialized and diversified regional innovation system (RIS) differ in the way an entrepreneurial discovery process (EDP) is likely to unfold. To analytically explore the proposed framework, we deploy a sequential explanatory design approach, using quantitative data to analyze the regional industry structure of the city regions of Bergen and Stavanger in Western Norway, followed by a qualitative analysis of interviews with key stakeholders in both regions. We find that the city regions face unique challenges that align with an understanding of their respective RIS categorization, providing evidence that the framework proposed serves as a useful guide in understanding the development of an EDP.publishedVersio

Translating in practice: On the role of translation in entrepreneurial discovery processes in Norway

The article examines a key component of regional smart specialisation strategy, namely the entrepreneurial discovery process (EDP) and how it unfolds in three regions in Norway. The authors seek to understand the interpretation and operationalisation of the EDP by conducting a constructivist thematic analysis of regional strategy documents and associated material in Rogaland, Vestland, and Nordland. They find that while similarities exist in the use of the EDP, the regions differ markedly across several key dimensions, most notably the interpretation of the EDP and its implementation across the regions. To have a better understanding of these differences in a region’s EDP, they propose the integration of translation theory with more conventional theoretical approaches on understanding regional policy differences. The authors shed light on the diffuse understandings of the EDP in practice across regions, thereby providing richer evidence of how the interpretations can differ considerably even within one country, and they conclude that this indicates the relevance of translation theory for future regional comparative studies of smart specialisation.publishedVersio

Innovation, Space, and Diversity

PhD thesis in managementBackground This PhD thesis aims at combining different perspectives from the literature on organizational theory, innovation, and economic geography and addresses how firms1 communicate and connect within the contexts of innovation processes. The literature concerned with organizational theory has had a tendency to overlook the significance of external surroundings and rather overemphasize within-firm relations and capabilities2. On the other hand, the literature on economic geography sometimes fails to consider that firms are heterogeneous leading to studying firms in a static manner. The thesis aims at contributing to the existing body of literature that connects these approaches by looking at how firms organize their innovation activities in relation to their contexts and how firms create external knowledge linkages. This in turn reflects firms’ internal competences, as firms’ internal capabilities guides firms’ ability to find new knowledge, connect to partners and innovate, hence their absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal 1990, 67). At the same time, the external environment influences firms’ internal competence. The underlying mechanism is that people are inseparable from their environments because “environments only exist through the people behaving in them knowing them” (Schneider 1987, 439). One premise is thus that innovation is an interactive process where people with different competence meet in order to solve problems (Østergaard, Timmermans, and Kristinsson 2011, Bathelt, Malmberg, and Maskell 2004, Lundvall 1992). There is a need for increased understanding of how these interactive processes are organized, which actors are involved, and how these activities play out in space, gaining such understanding by both considering firms’ internal and external knowledge and competence. One example is that having diverse human resources could lead to reaching an equally diverse marketplace (Cox 2001) and access to broader knowledge, which in turn is important for innovation (Laursen and Salter 2006). This PhD aims at gaining insight on the interdependencies of firms and external knowledge linkages in innovation, particularly focusing on the role of diversity. The overall research question is: how does diversity and space affect innovation? Research Design: Data and Methods The four individual papers take advantage of different data and methods. Paper I and III draws on large and unique datasets that consist of public enterprise registers gathered on an annual basis covering all employer firms and all workers in private sectors in Norway. These data are often referred to as Linked Employer – Employee Data (LEED). The LEED are then merged with an extended version of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). Paper II builds on the survey data from approximately 500 firms in Norway with more than ten employees, covering all sectors and regions. Paper IV takes advantage of a panel data set consisting of 1500 firms in the Norwegian upstream oil and gas industry. All of the four individual papers aim at measuring different aspects of innovation at different stages in the innovation process. The simplified definition of innovation is: a “new idea, device or method” or “the act or process of introducing new ideas, devices or methods” (Merriam-Webster 2016). Innovation is both the process of e.g. developing new markets and/or new products, or new methods of production, as well as the outcome: e.g. increase in value added, or a new product. Although innovation is not a chronological process without any setbacks or loops (Kline and Rosenberg 1986), the innovation process goes through stages that are distinct in time, i.e. patenting, product and process innovations, and launching these product in markets and an increase in revenue at the bottom line caused by innovations. In Paper I, innovation is measured in three ways: firstly by the decision to engage in systematic development work, secondly by patent, and thirdly by product and process innovation. Paper II measures innovation by product innovation (and new-to-market product innovation) and process innovation (and new-to-industry process innovation). Paper III measures innovation by looking at whether firms have launched goods and/or services in international markets. Paper IV measures the effects of industrial agglomeration on firms’ value added, where increased innovation is an important underlying factor leading to increased productivity for firms that are geographically co-located. Hence, all of the four individual papers offer a distinct and different outlook on innovation, including product innovation, effects on productivity, and new processes or underlying mechanisms of collaboration and market entry. Various econometric analyses are employed in the different papers, and mostly similar techniques are used. Results All of the four individual papers demonstrate that different aspects of diversity and space affect innovation. The results from paper I demonstrate that exploration (patent output) responds differently to the composition of firms’ human resource bases than exploitation (new products & production processes) does. Moreover, the results demonstrate that exploration is dependent on diversity of human resources, whilst exploitation is more dependent on similar capabilities. Investments in innovation are important moderators of these effects. Paper II and Paper III investigates the role of foreign workers in firms and demonstrates some of the underlying mechanisms between foreign workers, international partners and innovation/export of goods and/or services to international markets. In Paper II, we find evidence that firms with highly educated foreign workers collaborate more frequently with international partners and that there is a positive relation between having a variety of international partners and the probability of product innovation and new-tomarket product innovation (as well as new-to-industry process innovation). The results from Paper III demonstrate that firms in core, intermediate, and peripheral regions benefit from international collaboration and foreign workers in order to be present on international markets. The results stresses that firms in peripheral regions are not detached from the global economy, but are able to partake in able to tap into global economies by e.g. collaborating with international partners. Paper IV studies a particular industry, namely the upstream oil and gas industry in Norway, and finds that firms in this industry benefit from regional agglomeration through increased productivity as measured by value added. This is particularly so when firms within the same subsector are co-located. Knowledge spillovers leading to increased innovation are believed to be an important underlying factor driving agglomeration related productivity growth. Conclusions The four individual papers all demonstrate different aspects of the interdependencies between firms and their contexts while also highlighting the role of diversity. The papers demonstrate how diversity amongst actors contributes to some types of innovation, whilst other types of innovation are facilitated through similarity between actors. The results from paper I demonstrates how exploration (patent output) is more dependent on diversity in human resources, than exploitation where similarity in experience and educational background seems more important. The results from paper II demonstrates how diversity amongst workers, as measured by foreign workers, may contribute to new collaboration patterns, which in turn prove essential for product and new-to-market product innovation as well as new-to-industry process innovation. The results from paper III demonstrate that firms in core, intermediate, and peripheral regions benefit from collaborating with international partners and hiring foreign workers in order to be present on international markets. The results paint a varied picture of different dimensions of innovation in relation to different measures of diversity, but furthermore in relation to space and context. This provides an important element of not only increasing our understanding of the role of diversity in both core, intermediate, and peripheral regions, but also since past contributions have had a tendency to study globalization and diversity in cities, the results demonstrate the capability of benefitting of diversity across space. The results from paper IV demonstrate that close communication and substantial interaction between suppliers and buyers that permeate the upstream oil and gas industry proves pivotal in increasing value added. This is particularly the case when firms within the same subsector are co-located, further stressing the importance of similarity between actors

Foreign workers and international partners as channels to international markets in core, intermediate and peripheral regions

This is an open access article, originally published by Taylor & Francis in REGIONAL STUDIES, REGIONAL SCIENCE, 2016.Past contributions stress that international ties in the form of foreign workers and international collaboration enable firms to be present in international markets by providing access to diverse knowledge, and professional and social networks. These mechanisms have, however, not undergone the same empirical scrutiny for firms in intermediate and peripheral regions. If firms in more peripheral regions are able to tap into the global economy using international channels, this has important implications, for example, for the localization decision of firms. The empirical analysis builds on linked employer–employee data (LEED) merged with community innovation survey (CIS) data. The results demonstrate that there is a positive association between international ties and international market presence for firms in core, intermediate and peripheral regions, demonstrating that peripheral regions are not detached from global processes. There are, however, slight different patterns observed, for example, indicating that different collaboration partners are used in order to reach international markets for firms in core, intermediate and peripheral regions

På Nebo Bjerg? : Ein studie av møtet mellom høgkompetent utanlandsk arbeidskraft og den maritime klynga på Møre

The need to attract human capital to the county of Møre & Romsdal has become increasingly prominent amongst researchers and the media. Sunnmøre, a region within Møre & Romsdal, and Norway in general, are facing a shift in the industry: from a more industry-focused to a more knowledge-focused paradigm. Møre & Romsdal is not able to cover the needs for man power and is now, more than ever, looking outward for “the smart and brainy”. Researchers such as Richard Florida have encouraged city planners to move away from strategies that focus on the development of infrastructure and the attraction of businesses, to rather focus on the attraction of the “creative class”: people who are paid to think. Due to globalization, businesses are now more “Foot – loose” than ever before, which implies that companies could move their business to where the competence is, rather than putting too much effort into recruiting and retaining the “creative class”. This research explores how highly skilled foreign workers experience the meeting with the maritime cluster in Møre and its surroundings. The research also focuses on the effects this meeting has on the foreigners’ role on innovation

Public-private partnerships in smart cities: A critical survey and research agenda

Urbanization is recognized as one of the megatrends of our society, leading to substantial efforts to create effective and smart cities. The scale of this effort is unsuitable for a single player, instead necessitating joint efforts from multiple stakeholders. The global expansion of smart cities has subsequently led to increased research efforts toward building effective smart cities. In theory and practice, collaboration is pivotal for effective urban development, most often seen through the establishment of public-private partnership (PPP). Past research has explored these partnerships in smart city projects. Although PPP is considered to be an effective means to facilitate smart city development, the concept of smart cities remains rather vague and ideological. PPP for smart cities has been substantiated in several case studies; however, a thorough review is lacking. Therefore, to synthesize the existing literature, we carried out an in-depth integrative literature review. From this basis, we executed a content analysis and four key themes emerged: localness, stakeholder complexity, tension, and trust-building. These four themes form the basis of our proposed model and describe the key elements influencing PPP formation in smart city projects. We argue that the partnerships involved in smart city projects need further refinement to allow for transparency and involvement in various contexts. This paper provides timely contributions to smart city research by synthesizing the extant literature as well as laying the foundation for a future research agenda. Critical perspectives are also offered for future practitioners.publishedVersio