REALIZING NEW REGIONAL CORE COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING A CUSTOMER-ORIENTED SME-NETWORK

South West-Flanders is a region in Belgium with an almost unique concentration of firms - mainly SMEs - in what could be called the Ahousing and home furnishing@-business cluster. The extreme geographical concentration of these small and medium sized firms does not translate itself into a sustainable competitive advantage as has been illustrated for other industries in different countries. A critical analysis shows that the lack of commercial success is a direct consequence of the non-existence of networking strategies among these SMEs: Strategies are strictly defined within the firms= boundaries, fierce competition erodes profit margins and new ways of competing remain unexplored. The paper demonstrates that the establishment of innovative networking strategies such as a customer oriented SME network could regenerate the regional economy and transform the existing geographical concentration of firms into a growing and profitable SME network. The network concept is not production or technological oriented, as has been illustrated in for other regions by many scolars. The critical role of an explicit regional development policy and the local institutions in the initial phase is also analysed. The usefulness of the combining concepts such as networking strategies among SMEs, business clusters and regional development is illustrated by means of examples from other industries and countries.regional and urban economics ;

How innovation intermediaries are shaping the technology market? An analysis of their business model

In an era with abundant and widely distributed knowledge across the globe, technology markets became prominent. As technology transactions suffer from several market imperfections, a rapidly increasing number of various innovation intermediaries are facilitating these transactions. We analyse how a subset of these intermediaries create value in a two-sided market and how they can capture part of the value. A detailed analysis of the business model of 12 innovation intermediaries clarifies how these organizations improve the effectiveness of technology markets providing benefits for both sides of the market. We also look at managerial trade-offs between the use of intermediaries’ services and in-house innovation platforms.innovation intermediaries; open innovation; business model; two-sided markets

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE IN PROCESS-BASED ORGANIZATIONS

This paper investigates the role of the organization structure in process-based organizations. We argue that companies cannot be designed upon organizational processes only or that process management can be simply imposed as an additional structural dimension on top of the existing functional or product dimension. It is more promising to consider process-based companies as organizations with a multidimensional structure with process ownership as a dominant dimension. The paper focuses on a number of consequences of the implementation of process-based organization structures. First, the complementary role of different types of processes is clarified. Second, we focus on the question how processes can be translated into the design of organizational units. Two key ideas underpin a process-based organizational structure. First, organizational units are organized around core processes. Second, other processes are added to these units minimizing the necessity of cross-unit coordination. This has several implications for planning and control activities and the way how process-based business units fit together to create a performing corporation. The latter can no longer be conceived within the traditional strategy- structure paradigm because of the fundamentally different role of middle and top managers.management and organization theory ;

A longitudinal analysis of the choice between technology-based strategic alliances and acquisitions in high-tech industries : the case of the ASIC industry

Firms producing application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) have established numerous technology based strategic alliances (SAs) and were involved in merger and acquisition activities (M&As) to enhance their competitive position by improving their learning capabilities and the timely access to technological knowledge that is otherwise unavailable. There exist broad economic and managerial strands of literature about SAs and M&As, but they tell us virtually nothing about the strategic choice of firms between technology based SAs and M&As. This article intends to fill this void. It examines the circumstances in which ASIC-producers choose for SAs or M&As and it analyses how prior SAs influence this choice. Finally, implications for innovation management in high-tech industries are examined.research and development ;

Radical versus Non-Radical Inventions

This paper looks at the special characteristics of radical inventions. It tries to identify those variables that differentiate radical inventions from non-radical inventions. Since radical inventions are very important for the economy as a whole and for the individual firm performances, understanding what makes radical inventions differ from non-radical inventions is very important. For our research we made use of the EPO (European Patent Office) database on patents. We used the number of forward patent citations per patent to identify radical from non-radical inventions. For our analysis we used the backward patent citations per patent. In order to test if the two groups we are considering are truly different and to see on what factors they differ we made use of discriminant function analysis. Some of our main conclusions are that radical inventions are to a higher degree based on existing knowledge than non-radical inventions. Also the combination of emergent and mature knowledge is more important for radical inventions. A further result that follows from our analysis is that radical inventions are induced by the recombination over more knowledge domains as compared to non-radical inventions. Our research hints also on the importance of alliances and an open innovation system for the development of radical inventions.radical inventions, patents, organizational learning, alliances

Bouwen en wonen : een project voor het realiseren van nieuwe subregionale kerncompetenties in Zuid-West-Vlaanderen

De vraag naar creatieve of innovatieve projecten voor een vernieuwd economisch beleid wordt steeds groter. De voorliggende nota is vernieuwend zowel op theoretisch als op beleidsmatig vlak. Op theoretisch vlak is het vernieuwend omdat het een groep sectoren verbindt die niet binnen het begrip "cluster" kunnen gecatalogeerd worden en omdat het brandhout maakt van klassieke tegenstellingen zoals industrie/diensten, high-tech/low-tech, enz.... Op beleidsmatig vlak vraagt het ook om een nieuwe aanpak: Het is een duidelijk voorbeeld van een pro-actief beleid waarbij de financiële inbreng - de subsidies - slechts één van de vele beleidsfactoren is. Het belangrijkste is dat vanuit het streekmanagement i.s.m. de bedrijven gewerkt wordt aan een stapsgewijze uitvoering van een consistent plan rond "Bouwen en Wonen". Onder "Bouwen en Wonen" kan men het bouwen en de volledige inrichting van de leef- en werkruimte verstaan. Het thema "Bouwen en Wonen" werd gekozen omdat in Zuid West-Vlaanderen een uitzonderlijke concentratie van bedrijven rond dit thema actief zijn en omdat een streekstrategie rond dit thema een economische hefboom van betekenis kan zijn. In deze nota worden de krijtlijnen van een mogelijke streekstrategie uiteengezetregional and urban economics ;

The Flemish frozen-vegetable industry as an example of cluster analysis: Flanders Vegetable Valley.

frozen-vegetable industry; cluster analysis; high-tech valleys; research triangles; inovative entrepreneurship; knowledge tranfer; cluster formation;

Technological capability building through networking strategies within high-tech industries

Learning through networks has been considered as an important research topic for several years now. Technological learning is more and more based on a combination of internal and external learning and firms need to develop both technological and social capital for that purpose. This paper analyses the relationship between both types of capital and their impact on the technological performance of companies in high-tech industries. We claim and find empirical evidence for decreasing marginal returns on social capital. Technological capital and social capital mutually reinforce each other's effect on the rate of innovation for companies with small patent and alliance portfolios. However, when the patent portfolio and network of alliances are extensive, companies risk to over-invest since optimal levels of social capital become smaller at higher levels of technological capital and the marginal benefits of investing in technological capital decreases the higher the levels of social capital. Finally, we find empirical evidence that companies that explore novel and pioneering technologies have higher levels of innovation performance in subsequent years than companies that solely invest in incremental innovations.Strategic Alliances, Networks, Innovation