I debatten om Sveriges prestationer när det gäller innovation och entreprenörskap blandas lovord med domedagsprofetior. Det pratas bland annat om svenska paradoxer och entreprenöriella klimatförändringar, men utifrån en rad olika källor och definitioner. I denna rapport reder nio forskare, från de tre ledande innovationsforskningscentrumen CESIS, CiiR och CIRCLE, ut begreppen. De levererar en nyanserad bild av Sverige som innovations- och kunskapsnation.• Hur står sig ”det nya Sverige” i en internationell jämförelse?• Existerar den svenska paradoxen?• I vilket land får en investerad FoU-krona störst effekt?• Och är sambandet mellan nyföretagande och innovation alltid positivt?Detta är några av de frågor som får svar. Rapporten har produceratsi samarbete mellan VINNOVA och ESBRI.
Entrepreneurs respond to opportunities that come in two basic forms: innovation and arbitrage. This article presents a technique called the minimum performance inefficiency (MPI) estimation method that could be used to estimate arbitrage opportunities. The technique has several advantages over the conceptually similar data envelopment analysis (DEA) and other techniques. The authors validate the technique with a well-known data set and illustrate its use based on secondary data from the publishing industry.
Despite the widespread assumptions of the positive relationship between start-up rates and innovation, the empirical support for this conjecture in the crosscountry context is largely lacking. We draw upon recent advances in the entrepreneurship literature to propose that the relationship between start-up rates and innovation is not uniformly positive, as expected by the early scholars of entrepreneurship, but instead depends on the country's stage of development. The relationship is positive in the developed countries, but negative in countries in early development stages. On balance, there is a weak negative association between start-up rates and innovation. We test our hypotheses on a multi-source dataset that covers 35 countries over the period from 1996 to 2002. The relationships are robust to the choice of three moderators and two dependent variables, as well as a number of post-hoc tests. Our findings indicate that broad-strokes policy efforts that aim at promotion of entrepreneurship as a means to boost country innovativeness may be misguided, and instead suggest a contingency approach
Despite the impressive development of substantive theories in entrepreneurship, without the development of measurement theories, further advancement of the field is problematic. In particular, the notion of opportunities, central to entrepreneurship research, requires adequate macro-level operationalization. We demonstrate how to employ data envelopment analysis (DEA) to operationalize not only innovative opportunities, but also technological arbitrage opportunities. We provide an illustrative example based on a sample of 66 countries during the period of 1993-2002. We include estimates of innovative and arbitrage opportunities for possible use by other scholars, discuss the promise and limitations of such estimates, demonstrate how both innovative and arbitrage opportunities correlate with the rates of entrepreneurial activity, and suggest several possible directions for future research.
For a sample of all 88 counties in the State of Ohio over a 5-year period, this study documents the effect of flagship enterprises and concentrated industrial clusters on regional innovation. Consistent with the agglomeration arguments and the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship, both appear to affect regional innovation positively. Additionally, regional educational attainment positively moderates the effect of industrial clusters on innovation. At the same time, flagship enterprises primarily affect regional innovation in regions with low education levels. Results are obtained with the help of conservative econometric techniques and are robust to the choice of alternative dependent variables and estimators. The findings have major policy implications and provide insights into alternative routes to encouraging regional innovation.
To enhance innovation effectiveness, many incumbent corporations make equity investments in young technological startups. Four out of five corporate investors syndicate at least some of their investments with other incumbents. While syndication practices may be beneficial to incumbent corporations, in this study we elaborate on the notion of information exchange paradox to demonstrate that syndication may be detrimental to corporate innovation. Using a unique data set of investment decisions of 163 corporations over four years, we show that for some corporations the losses of participating in syndicate networks may outweigh the gains. In particular, we demonstrate that syndication network centrality negatively moderates the ability of a corporation to benefit from its investments. We also show that the effect is particularly strong in highly concentrated industries but is virtually non-existent in industries with low concentration. This supports a contingency view of syndication and implies that benefiting from equity investments in startups is a non-trivial task for managers of incumbent corporations.
This article examines the dark side of the entrepreneurial orientation–market orientation interplay, and introduces consumer learning to the research stream. In a sample of 206 mid-sized manufacturing firms, the study shows that entrepreneurial orientation has a positive impact on new product development performance, but the effects are reduced when firms simultaneously implement a market orientation philosophy. While having both an entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation philosophy may hinder new product development performance, the article examines how a high market orientation may help reduce consumer learning and enhance the adoption of radical new products
Purpose– This study aims to examine the impact of entrepreneurial orientation, firm market power and their interaction on opportunism in horizontal exchange networks. The aim is to investigate how entrepreneurial orientation and market power individually can lead to opportunism, but possessing both characteristics will mitigate such behavior. Design/methodology/approach– Based on an analysis of 108 firms in 25 networks using a panel-corrected standard errors approach, the study tests hypotheses regarding how entrepreneurial orientation, firm market power and their interaction impact opportunism within a focal horizontal network. Findings– The results of the analysis show that entrepreneurial orientation and firm market power are both positively related to network opportunism, but when firms possess both characteristics, opportunism toward fellow network actors is mitigated. Research limitations/implications– Research on entrepreneurial orientation has primarily examined the positive outcomes of the strategic orientation. Firm power has been studied as an antecedent of opportunism and governance mechanisms. This study examines the joint impact of the two and brings new insight to the research streams. Practical implications– Horizontal networks are conduits for resource and knowledge exchange, yet managers need to be concerned about how firms seek competitive advantage. Our framework suggests that managers should be concerned about dealing with network actors with an entrepreneurial orientation philosophy or high market power, but when firms possess both, they are deemed safer partners. Originality/value– The manuscript extends research on entrepreneurial orientation, firm power and horizontal networks. While both entrepreneurial orientation and power may impede networking relationships, this paper shows that firms that possess both may be the best relational partners.
Firms in government-supported strategic networks tend to rely on professional network board members for support and assistance. As such, two significant issues arise: should board members be compensated and under which circumstances is compensation more - or less - effective for network performance. Based on yearly panel data from 53 government-supported strategic networks of small- and medium-sized enterprises over a five-year period, this study examines the effects of compensating network board members. Advocating for a contingency approach, we combine the agency and stewardship literatures to posit that the effects of compensation are moderated by contingency factors that stimulate either an agency or stewardship relationship between the network board and the networking firms. Our findings indicate that significant funding, network firms represented on the network board, and top-down network formation stimulate board members to become agents rather than stewards. This therefore explains the higher effect of board member compensation under such conditions.
Increasing adoption of open innovation as an alternative route to research and development necessitates the development of new ways to organize innovation, as well as reassessment of existing ways. Much like traditional corporations that subscribe to the closed innovation paradigm, novel organizational arrangements targeting open innovation, such as small-firm networks, employ boards to effectively manage joint research-and-development activities. These boards are similar yet different from traditional corporate boards; as such, they may have different requirements for proper functioning. We use 5-year longitudinal data on 53 Swedish strategic small-firm networks to investigate how the boards should be organized to help improve the innovative status of network participants. We expand the set of tools available for effective organization of the boards' operations and emphasize the effects of network board continuity (rates of renewal) on network members' innovative performance. We argue that the relationship is curvilinear (U-shaped) and demonstrate that it is more pronounced in larger networks.
When small firms join networks and coordinate their R&D activities, they delegate certain governance responsibilities to the network boards. We use five-year longitudinal data on over 50 strategic small-firm networks to investigate how these boards should be organized to help improve innovative status of the network participants. Controlling for the factors identified by previous research as important determinants of board effectiveness, we explore the effect of network board continuity (rates of renewal) on innovative performance. We argue that the relationship is curvilinear (U-shaped) and demonstrate that it is more pronounced in larger networks. Overall, the study concludes that network board composition is important for network innovative performance and that ensuring proper board dynamics is a key element of composing effective boards.
This article examines the effects of network board capital (i.e., human capital and relational capital) on total, radical and incremental network innovative performance. Results from a five-year longitudinal study of network boards in 53 strategic networks suggest that a network board's diversity, education level, and interlocking directorates with other such networks affect network innovative performance. The degree of board diversity and interlocking directorates primarily influence incremental innovation, whereas education level influences radical innovation. The study finds that a network board's diversity of expertise and education level are important for improving all components of innovative performance (total, radical and incremental) in smaller networks. Managerial implications of these findings are discussed.
This paper elaborate upon how cooperate problems with partners can restrict a firm's ability to extract value from network ties when in a strategic network. In a four-year study based on 82 observations of 41 firms, we find support for that the interaction between cooperativeness among the partners that a focal firm is tied to (i.e., positive orientation toward resource contribution) together with network tie properties (i.e. strength of ties and betweenness centrality) improves firm performance. No influences were found for the interaction involving degree centrality and partner cooperativeness. We discuss implications and provide suggestions to further research.