Benchmarking Regional Innovation: A Comparison of Bavaria, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

Regional regeneration strategies based on developing innovation capability have received much support in recent years. Evaluation of the effectiveness of such initiatives has, however, been limited largely to an assessment of the impact of such strategies on policy frameworks and attitudes. Based on innovation survey data covering nearly a decade, this paper outlines a number of external innovation benchmarks for core and peripheral regions within the EU. The benchmarks considered cover the innovation objectives, constraints resources, linkages and outputs of manufacturing firms. Despite considerable efforts in recent years to develop the innovation capability and institutional support framework for innovation in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the benchmarks still point to a substantial performance gap between the Irish and German study regions and provide little evidence of convergence over the 1991-99 period. The benchmarks also suggest other more general points emphasising, for example, a general shortening of product lifecycles and a related shift towards more radical innovation. More disappointing is in that in each of the study regions the development of environmentally friendly products is given a low and diminishing priority by manufacturing firms.

Job Creation and Destruction in Northern Ireland - 1973-1993

Job creation and destruction estimates are made for Northern Ireland manufacturing using the ARD database. International comparisons suggest job creation and destruction rates in Northern Ireland were below those elsewhere. Job turnover rates exhibit the standard properties, however, with counter-cyclical job destruction and pro-cyclical job creation. A number of other key results emerge. First, small firms are the only size band for which the net change in employment was positive. Second, job turnover in small firms is less cyclical than that in larger companies. Third, firm contraction and expansion were more important sources of job creation and destruction in Northern Ireland than in the UK as a whole.

Modelling the Effects of Public Support to Small Firms in the UK - Paradise Gained?

The evaluation of the impact of public policies to improve the performance of the small business sector has provoked a great deal of debate and research activity in recent years. The debate can be categorised in two broad ways. First, it can be seen in terms of the actual impact measures and schemes of small business support may have in terms of enhanced growth performance of SMEs. Second, the search for appropriate evaluation methodologies which reflect the range of problems associated with the accurate identification of the true effects of policy support. The much publicised "Six Steps to Heaven" paper by Storey (1998) provided a comprehensive overview of the problems associated with evaluation studies in the realm of the small business sector. Storey argued that the vast majority of assessments of the impact of policy support fall within the category of monitoring rather than true evaluation. The intention in this paper is to undertake an evaluation of Business Links in England adopting a methodology which seeks to avoid the methodological pitfalls articulated by Storey and in so doing achieve the approach. This paper describes the methodology employed in a tracker study of businesses that received advice and consultancy from the Business Link network in 1996. The purpose of the study was to assess the impact of Business Link support on productivity compared to a matched comparison group. Using data from the specially constructed Business Link Impact Indicators Database for the period 1994-2000 together with a survey of assisted firms and non-assisted firms, and adopting an econometric approach designed to make allowance for both 'assistance' and 'selection' effects, this study concludes that: · First, we find no evidence that in 1996 BL assistance was being targeted effectively at faster growing firms. · Second, we find some, albeit tentative evidence, that BL assistance in 1996 was having a positive effect on productivity growth. · Third, we identify a positive but statistically insignificant effect of BL assistance on turnover and employment growth. · Fourth, our analysis has highlighted a number of other factors which contribute to productivity, turnover and employment growth. The range of these factors - embracing market conditions, business strategy, the characteristics of the owner-manager and the firm itself - emphasise the complexity of the process of business growth and the consequent difficulties in both modelling and assisting the process.

Wireless Valley, Silicon Wadi and Digital Island - Helsinki, Tel Aviv and Dublin in the ICT Boom

In the context of the global production network (GPN) paradigm, this paper considers the combination of local and global factors which have contributed to the development of the ICT clusters in three small countries. Developments in each country reflect the combination of local advantages in human, knowledge and institutional capital and each nation?s global economic and socio-political linkages. A key focus of the paper is the role of each nation?s capital city ? or more accurately the capital city region ? in the development of the ICT cluster. The consequences for the regional distribution of ICT activity within the three countries are discussed, along with the potential technological and competitive implications of this distribution. Initial sections of the paper focus on the factors which underpinned the massive growth of the ICT sector in each country in the latter half of the 1990s. This leads to an assessment of the global market position of each industry and its prospects in any future upturn. The paper considers different aspects of the role of Tel Aviv, Dublin and Helsinki in attracting and supporting ICT development are considered. Symbolic and image factors are considered in terms of the cities? ability to attract internationally mobile human and financial capital. Institutional (e.g. higher education, thickness of financial institutions) and infrastructural factors are also considered in terms of the cities? ability to support and facilitate ICT companies. The role of entrepreneurship is also considered alongside the availability of venture capital etc.

Perceived financial barriers and the start-up decision: An econometric analysis of gender differences using GEM data

Although accessing finance is key to the foundation of any business, particular concerns have been expressed about the ability of UK women-owned firms to obtain external finance. In this paper we use an econometric approach to explore the effect of perceptions of financial barriers to start-up on the start-up decision itself. Our analysis is based on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) UK 2004 database. Standardising for a range of individual characteristics, we find that women are around 7.4 per cent more likely to perceive financial barriers to business start-up than men. As perceptions of financial barriers are linked negatively to the start-up decision, stronger perceptions of financial barriers among women are having a disproportionate effect on women’s start-up decisions. However, being female also has an additional negative effect on the start-up decision, not linked to financial barriers. Policy responses, therefore, need to take into account the demand-side with the aim of countering the more negative perceptions of start-up finance among potential women entrepreneurs. Mentoring and confidence building programmes are obvious possibilities. We also find support for the value of university and college-based work experience programmes. [PUBLISHED ABSTRACT]Finance; entrepreneurship; start-up; SME; gender; women

Assessing the Effectiveness of Innovation Grants – Evidence from the Irish Innovation Panel

Innovation grants are a ubiquitous feature of industrial support regimes across the industrial world. Evidence on their effectiveness is less widespread, however, due to a lack of consistent longitudinal or panel data on innovation outcomes and company performance. In this paper we investigate the effectiveness of R&D and innovation grants support in Ireland and Northern Ireland using panel data and a sample selection approach to the modelling of grant impacts. The study is based on the Irish Innovation Panel which provides panel data on the innovation activities of manufacturing firms in Ireland and Northern Ireland over the 1991-2002 period. The use of panel data allows us to investigate the medium to long-term effect of innovation grant support. In other words, we are able to identify whether the receipt of an innovation grant merely increases innovation activity in the short-term or has any lasting effect on either innovation capability or firms’ technological trajectory. The latter outcome is clearly desirable for any region or nation seeking to use innovation grants as a means of boosting long term competitiveness. The use of a sample selection approach allows us to identify separately the ‘selection’ and ‘assistance’ elements of the impact of any innovation grant. In other words, it allows us to control for the positive effects of any targeting of assistance on more innovative or better performing companies and isolate the ‘true’ effect of any innovation grant. To our knowledge this is the first time this approach has been used to assess the impact of innovation grant support although the technique has been used by the authors in a previous analysis of small business assistance. Our results suggest very different time profiles in terms of the benefits from product and process innovation grants suggesting alternative managerial and regional development strategies. Grant support is also found to have strong positive effects on innovation activity even allowing for a wide range of conditioning effects. Our results therefore suggest the continued value of innovation grant support as an element of regions’ industrial support regimes.

Closing the knowledge gap in Irish manufacturing - a north-south comparison

Knowledge, however defined, is perceived as firms "key" source of competitive advantage and a central determinant of productivity and wealth creation. The value of knowledge as a competitive asset is not intrinsic, but depends instead on its application, i.e. innovation or the transformation of knowledge into new technologies, products and, or services. Therefore, the extent of innovation within an economy depends crucially on the rapid diffusion of new technology and best practice, which it is argued depends in turn on building strong regional networks. So, knowledge, its distribution and diffusion - particularly through the supply chain - form the central focus of this paper. For some economies (e.g. Finland, Israel) with high levels of domestic R&D spending much of the ''new'' knowledge driving local business competitiveness is created domestically. For Ireland, both North and South, however, historically low levels of domestic R&D spending mean that inward technology transfer - primarily associated with inward investment - has been crucial to recent economic development. This suggests two main questions. First, how does the knowledge transferred to Ireland, North and South, through international inward investment compare to international best practice? And, second, to what extent does this knowledge then diffuse to other manufacturing businesses located in Ireland? A third, and related, question concerns the contrasting experiences of Ireland, North and South, particularly given the very different history of inward investment in the two areas. The analysis in the paper is based on data collected through face-to-face interviews with 94 Multi-national enterprise (MNE) plants in the South and North of Ireland. The relatively high response rates achieved and the fact that the final sample coverage resembles relatively closely that of the underlying population suggests that the sample is likely to provide results which are representative of the whole population of large MNE plants in both the South and North of Ireland. The research findings demonstrate that the potential to transfer knowledge from MNE plants to local firms through the supply chain is higher in the South of Ireland than in the North. Yet, Northern suppliers' adoption of a range of best practice techniques lags further behind their MNE plants than in the South. Therefore, larger average knowledge gaps suggest a greater potential benefit from knowledge transfers in the North of Ireland. Yet, while general contact as part of normal trading relations between MNE plants and their suppliers is more common in the North, contact in the South of Ireland is characterised by developmental interactions such as collaboration on product developments and quality assurance systems. Furthermore, southern MNE plants report having had a significantly greater impact on both the performance and the competitiveness of local suppliers than their Northern counterparts.