The role of users and suppliers in the adoption and diffusion of consumer electronics. The case of portable digital audio players.

The diffusion of innovations is a fundamental aspect of the innovative process, to which the literature on innovation dedicated a lot of attention. This voluminous literature covers a variety of themes, such as different kinds of innovations, potential adopters, and mechanisms by which the innovation spreads among its potential users. However, some aspects of this vast literature still deserve some further investigation. The objective of the thesis is to study the adoption and diffusion of a consumer technology, the portable digital audio player (DAP) market in Europe and Japan. The methodology is quantitative and consists on the collection and analysis of two original datasets. The first dataset regards the demand-side consisting in a survey of 1562 young potential adopters from 9 countries (France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, UK, and Japan). The other source of data is a dataset of 585 DAPs marketed between 2001 and 2009, including information on product characteristics (storage space, size, etc.) and price. The analysis of the data is carried out at three levels. The first one regards the demand-side, with the aim of assessing how users’ characteristics shape the adoption decision, and providing a classification of potential adopters that goes beyond the usual classification based on timing of adoption or on the distribution of a single variable such as income. The second level concentrates on the supply-side, testing if there is a systematic relationship between product price and its objectively measurable characteristics and evaluating how technical change in the sector influences the diffusion path by matching products’ quality change with users’ preferences and patterns of adoption over time. Finally, the third level aims at providing evidence on whether conventional models of diffusion are able to provide an adequate explanation of the diffusion of DAPs, and moreover, on how the assumptions underlying these models might be combined or synthesised into a coherent framework

Knowledge from businesses to universities: an investigation on the two-way knowledge transfer in university-business partnerships

Trabajo presentado a la Triple Helix VII International Conference: "University, Industry and Government Linkages" celebrada en Madrid (España) del 20 al 22 de Octubre de 2010.Peer reviewe

Skills combinations and firm performance

Creative skills, STEM(science, technology, engineering and mathematics) skills and management skills have all been positively associated with firm performance as well as regional growth. But do firms that combine these types of skills in their workforce grow more quickly than those that do not? We compare the impact of STEM, creative and management skills on their own, and in various combinations, on turnover growth. We use a longitudinal dataset of UK firms over the period 2008–2014 with lagged turnover data to explore whether the combination of skills used by a firm impacts its future turnover growth. Using fixed-effect panel and pooled OLS models, we find that the performance benefits associated with both STEM and creative skills materialize when they are combined with each other or with management skills rather than when they are deployed on their own

The fusion effect: the economic returns to combining arts and science skills

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The Brighton Fuse 2. Freelancers in the creative digital IT economy

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The Brighton Fuse

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How are corporate ventures evaluated and selected?

This study provides a fine-grained analysis of the decision-making process and criteria underling the evaluation and selection of nascent corporate ventures. By integrating a small sample case-based analysis and the examination of a longitudinal dataset comprising 14 years of archival data, it explores the selection and funding process of early-stage entrepreneurial initiatives supported by the internal corporate venture unit of a major energy company. Its findings extend prior conceptualizations of the internal venture selection process, uncovering differences in the relevance of the criteria used to evaluate ventures at different stages

Creative Radar 2021: the impact of COVID-19 on the UK's creative industries

This report provides new evidence on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses in the creative industries. Following on from the Creative Radar survey data, which collected responses from 976 firms in January-March 2020 just before the first lockdown, we interviewed 417 companies that consented to be re-contacted to understand how they had been impacted by the pandemic in April and May 2021. Our key findings are: • Only 4 per cent of the 675 companies we were able to contact had definitely closed or appeared to be no longer trading. The companies in our sample appear to have survived the crisis by furloughing employees and reducing the number of freelancers they worked with. •The impact of the pandemic was very uneven. The Music & performing arts, Film & TV and Publishing businesses in our sample were particularly affected, in line with recent DCMS estimates. But some businesses thrived, with 18 per cent of businesses hiring more employees during the pandemic. These thriving companies were found across all creative sub-sectors. •At the firm level we see that far from becoming redundant, freelancers have become even more vital to businesses that had been making greater use of them prior to the pandemic. Freelancers were important for those businesses that introduced new products as a result of the pandemic. •At the firm level we did not see substantial regional and national differences in the impact of pandemic. The impacts of the pandemic appeared to be relatively evenly spread across the UK. •Businesses in the UK’s creative clusters saw reduced turnover outside their immediate regions (from the rest of the UK and from overseas) but local and regional business appeared to keep them operating. •The creative microclusters that are located outside of the major creative clusters, were more likely to have added new employees. In the past year they increased their sales to the rest of UK, rather than focusing only on local markets. •Companies across the UK kept investing in their businesses through the pandemic, with 66 per cent of businesses increasing investments in R&D, design, marketing, training or IT. Companies in microclusters were more likely to have increased investment in R&D. •More than 25 per cent of the companies in our sample changed or downsized office space during the pandemic. Companies in London were particularly likely to have downsized. •The companies in our sample have substantial investment needs, with 78 per cent requiring further investment but 45 per cent of those not having the resources for those to invest. In particular, companies wanting to invest in R&D and design are more likely to export but also more likely to view access to finance as a barrier to growth

To what extent do university-industry collaborations entail a two-way flow of knowledge? An empirical investigation of UK manufacturing and service companies

Trabajo presentado a la Triple Helix VII International Conference: "University, Industry and Government Linkages" celebrada en Madrid (España) del 20 al 22 de Octubre de 2010.Peer Reviewe