Technology Search and Firm Bounds in Biotechnology: New Firms as Agents of Change

Schumpeterian perspectives on industrial change suggest a relationship between new firms and the regionally specific technological bases for innovation. However, the links between such firms and the knowledge bases for innovation are more implicit than explicit. The innovation process in new firms reflects both the capabilities found within the firm as well as information sourcing from without. This paper seeks to articulate the nature of change in relationships between firms in science-based industries and the technological infrastructure accessed to support innovation, as such industries mature out of the birth phase. Innovation is treated as decision making, identifying the firm as innovator and agent of change. Survey research suggests that a shift in the sourcing of information, and an associated shift in the character of information accessed, occurred with maturation in the study industry, comprised of biotechnology firms in the U.S. “Early” and “later” forming firms show somewhat different technology sourcing patterns. Interviews were conducted to help interpret these findings. Implications for industry development are suggested.     

The impact of external knowledge sourcing on innovation outcomes in rural and urban businesses in the U.S.

This paper examines the relationship between external knowledge sourcing and a diverse set of innovation outcomes in rural and urban establishments in the U.S. Existing studies in the broader knowledge management literature principally examine firms in a single industry, overwhelmingly rely on patent data to proxy for innovation, and cannot account for the innovations of businesses in rural American markets. By addressing these limitations using data from the 2014 Rural Establishment Innovation Survey of the USDA's Economic Research Service, this research provides novel insights into how externally acquired knowledge by American establishments may support innovation. Results of the analysis suggest that external knowledge sourcing may specifically promote product, process, and green innovation in U.S. firms. While collective results when external sources of information are divided by industry orientation fail to show that sources outside of a firm's industry play a dominant role in the innovation processes of American establishments in general, findings provide evidence for an outsized impact of these relationships within rural establishments specifically and suggest that external knowledge sourcing from extra‐industry organizations is most critical for promoting successful innovation in rural firms. Results additionally indicate that knowledge sourcing from non‐local organizations may be more important for supporting innovation in rural compared to urban markets.     

Creativity and Inequality: The Dual Path of China's Urban Economy?

Utilizing Chinese data for the years of 1998, 2000, 2005, and 2008, this research traces the growth of the creative economy and the enlarging income inequality in China's urban economy. While the creative sector now makes up close to 30 percent of China's urban private employment, industry‐based earnings disparity has also increased substantively. Provinces with larger creative economy also tend to have higher level of wage inequality among workers of the creative sector, the working sector, and the service sector. Several other factors, especially internal migration flow, size of manufacturing, and ownership structure in local economy, are found to be significantly linked to inequality as well.     

State Policies,Enterprise Dynamism,and Innovation System in Shanghai,China

ABSTRACT Today rapidly growing economies depend more on the creation, acquisition, distribution, and use of knowledge. As such, strategies for enhancing research and innovation capabilities have come to occupy a more important position in many developing nations, including China. Already the leading production center, and often seen as China's economic locomotive, Shanghai is striving aggressively to retain its national preeminence and has launched concerted efforts to increase local innovative output. The primary purpose of this paper is to understand how state‐led efforts have fared in promoting technology innovation. By situating the city in the national and global context, the paper shows that Shanghai has gained a substantial lead in developing an innovation environment with extensive global linkages and leading research institutions. Recent efforts in building up the research and innovation capacity of the enterprise sector have begun to show progress. Although firms are enthusiastic about its future as an innovation center, Shanghai continues to face challenges of inadequate protection of intellectual property, lack of venture capital investment, and the tightening supply of highly qualified knowledge workers.     

Life Sciences and Human Capital: Jobless Growth on Specialised and Local Labour Markets?

Policy makers and scholars often regard the life science industry in general, and bio‐technology in particular, as an engine of future economic growth. The expectation is that growth in the industry will ultimately provide a major boost to national employment numbers. However, in this paper, I find that the Swedish life science industry (encompassing pharmaceutical, bio‐technology, and medical technology firms) accounts for only a small proportion of total employment in Sweden. Given the recent discussion on jobless growth (i.e., economic growth without employment growth), it is here argued that focusing on employment is not necessarily the best policy approach to assessing the impacts of the life science industry on the overall economy. This paper maps and analyses the scope, structure, and geography of the life science industry and its workforce in Sweden using a unique set of data covering approximately 1,200 firms and 53,000 employees. The industry's workforce has education and income levels significantly higher than national averages, and is heavily concentrated in larger metropolitan areas and major university cities. Despite employing relatively few people and being more or less dependent on the existence and success of a few major pharmaceutical firms, the industry may still have a significant impact on the national economy by engendering high levels of education, income, and export revenues, particularly in specific regions.     

The comparative study of China's mega‐city regions: A perspective of competitiveness

Mega‐city regions (MCRs) have emerged as the main spatial form of China's new urbanization strategy and become the basic spatial units participating in global and regional competition. However, MCRs are not equally capable of boosting regional economic development due to their different levels of development. Therefore, this paper adopts the concept of competitiveness as both a theoretical framework and an empirical model to evaluate the development status of China's MCRs. Based on a review of the existing literature, this paper proposes a multi‐tier evaluation system to calculate the competitiveness of 13 MCRs. The chosen indicators come from the six perspectives of economic development, human resources, infrastructural accessibility, integration into the global economy, capacity for scientific and technological innovation, and sustainable development. The results show that there are great disparities and regional inequalities in competitiveness across different MCRs. The Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Beijing–Tianjin–Tangshan MCRs are the first‐tier MCRs with the highest levels of development and have significant global influence as well. Chengdu–Chongqing, Shandong Peninsula, South‐central Liaoning, and Wuhan belong to the second‐tier of MCRs that show partial advantages and have significant regional influence. The remaining regions belong to the third‐ or fourth‐tier of MCRs that have relatively weak competitiveness. The competitiveness of MCRs largely depends on the concentration of core elements in core cities.     

Shenzhen in China's Financial Center Networks

Shenzhen, China, aspires to be an international financial center; however, its financial sector occupies an anomalous position in China's networks. The sector is tightly integrated into mainland networks, and Shenzhen's local banks provide access to Hong Kong's networks. Nonetheless, the city's proximity to Hong Kong, the Asia‐Pacific center of financial networks, confers few incremental benefits compared to those received by other mainland centers. The proposed Qianhai financial district, which is to be a laboratory for opening China's capital accounts, does not differentially boost Shenzhen because other financial centers will be allowed to experiment. A network theory of financial centers provides the explanatory framework for interpreting Shenzhen in China's financial center networks. Empirical analyses focus on Shenzhen's network ties with the Mainland and with Hong Kong. Shenzhen's future rests on the capacity of its financial firms to participate in the networks of South China, as well as to operate across the Mainland.     

Government support and firm innovation performance in Chinese science and technology parks: The perspective of firm and sub-park heterogeneity

Science and technology parks (STPs) are established to promote the firm innovation performance via agglomeration economy and government support in China. On-site qualified firms obtain government R&D funding as a type of government support, and they are offered differential innovation service caused by the differential capabilities of sub-parks which scatter throughout a single city. It is debatable whether those government supports at firm and sub-park levels can promote firm innovation capabilities. This study takes Zhangjiang National Innovation Demonstration Zone, Shanghai as an example. It applies a Tobit regression model to analyse the databases of Zhangjiang Annual Sampling Survey of Firms 2015 and Zhangjiang Development Report 2015. We find out at the firm level, government R&D funding has a significant and positive influence on firms' innovation, but government R&D funding generates a crowing-out effect the innovation performance of on-site firms with more R&D investment themselves. At the sub-park level, innovation service agencies of sub-parks do not exert an important role in influencing firms' innovation, and they even have negative moderating effects on the relationship between firm R&D investment and firm innovation performance. It reflects the mismatch between innovation service of STPs and firms' needs in China.     

Performance of High-Technology Firms in a Peripheral Resource-Based Economy: Alberta,Canada

In the 1980s high technology moved into the forefront in regional development throughout North America and Europe as a leading strategy. The attraction of high technology more recently spilled over into the province of Alberta, a peripheral region in western Canada whose government is seeking to diversify its resource-based economy. This paper focused upon the performance of high technology firms measured by financial growth, R&D activity, employment created, and marketing. Data were drawn from a 100 percent survey of all identifiable high-tech firms which constituted the first academic inquiry into Alberta's high-technology development. Research hypotheses relating gross revenues and net profit to independent firms and subsidiaries, gross revenues to age of firm, and R&D activity to independent firms and subsidiaries were tested. The results indicate that Alberta's high technology sector is composed mainly of small independent firms in the early stages of growth. Widely divergent revenue and profit trends were found among all firms while 41 percent of the respondents received government assistance to fund R&D programs. A young high-technology base is reflected further in the small size of the labor force although three out of four firms created jobs between 1980 and 1984. Marketing was a key area of performance identified by respondent firms as companies attempted to diversify away from local markets. Overall, the systematic policies of support by the Alberta government were found to assist the growth of the high-tech industry. Whether or not this growth will be sufficient to substantially diversify this resource-based economy in a peripheral Canadian region remains to be seen. Further research, particularly in the area of job creation, is necessary to assess the impact of high-technology firms over a longer period.     

Location and the Innovation Performance of Commercial GIS Companies

This paper looks at the role of firm size, location, and in‐house research and development (R&D) in the innovation performance of U.S. firms in the commercial geographic information systems (GIS) industry. Data from a survey of 300 GIS firms are presented. The results suggest that innovation‐intensity varies directly with in‐house R&D spending (scaled as a proportion of company sales), but inversely with company size (total employment). Significant regional variations in the innovation performance of GIS firms are identified. It is argued that the geography of innovation is influenced by the spatial distribution of young and/or small firms, in that R&D‐productivity is found to vary inversely with company size. An important finding is that creative inputs to support innovation are almost evenly divided between internal and external sources. A surprising result is that the academic community is not viewed as a particularly important source of new ideas for innovative firms. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the survey data for future empirical work on the GIS sector.     

Implications of China's innovation policy shift: Does “indigenous” mean closed?

China's government aims to become an innovation nation and promotes the development of so-called indigenous innovation. Under this paradigm of state-encouraged innovation, however, it is unclear how domestic firms organize their innovation processes. We distinguish between two strategies in that respect: closed versus open innovation. Our findings suggest that firms with closed innovation processes collaborate in close geographic distance, rely on DUI-modes of learning, and collaborations are based on guanxi. In contrast, firms with open innovation processes collaborate over large distances and rely on STI-modes of learning that are not necessarily guanxi-based. The findings help to understand the heterogeneous nature of indigenous innovation in China.     

中国种业发展现状问题及其政策建议

中国种业发展经历计划经济和市场经济两个发展阶段,进入市场经济后,国外垄断种子企业进入中国市场,给中国种业发展带来巨大的压力。因此,从中国种业的发展背景、种业市场的概况、科研概况、种业企业概况等几个方面阐述中国种业的发展现状;指出了种业发展中存在科技创新能力不足、科技研发基础薄弱、科技成果转化困难等问题;提出了要加强种业知识产权保护、促成企业的合理转型和资源重新配置、引导公共部门管理体制改革和经费分配制度改革、加强育种人才培养等建议,供有关部门参考。     

基于SWOT-PEST分析的中国热带作物产业发展策略研究

热带作物产业是中国农业的重要组成部分,对保障国家资源安全、乡村振兴、民族团结和服务外交等方面具有重要意义。运用SWOT-PEST方法,结合中国热带作物产业发展现状,从政治、经济、社会、技术4个方面对中国热带作物产业的内部优势、劣势以及面临的外部机遇、挑战进行分析,并构建了分析矩阵,研究表明中国热带作物产业拥有政府重视程度高、自然资源丰富、区位优、较好的产业发展基础和科技力量储备等内部优势,同时也存在扶持力度相对不足、经营水平发展较为滞后、资源环境约束和生产成本的压力较大和科技进步贡献率较低等自身劣势。建议综合运用中国热带作物产业发展的增长型、扭转型、多元化和防御型4种策略,以“一带一路”倡议、乡村振兴战略和持续对外开放政策为契机,利用好国内市场需求旺盛、多元化需求不断增长、新技术应用力度加大的发展机遇,在充分挖掘和发挥内部优势的基础上,通过呼吁政府进一步加强对热带作物产业的政策支持力度、完善热带作物产业经营体系建设、推动热带作物企业“走出去”、科技创新驱动产业延链升级等方式补齐自身短板,减少或避免国际热带农产品市场对国内的冲击、供给安全的不确定性以及科技创新供给不足的威胁,全面提高中国热带作物产业的国际竞争力。     

The E‐economy and the Rise of Technocapitalism: Networks,Firms, and Transportation

ABSTRACT The e‐economy is part of a larger phenomenon, technocapitalism, that is transforming business organizations and the ways in which they transact, produce, and ship their goods. Technocapitalism is an evolution of market capitalism that is rooted in technological innovation and supported by such intangibles as creativity and knowledge. This paper considers first the main characteristics of networks that support the e‐economy and its source phenomenon, the emergence of technocapitalism. Networks are thought to be the main vehicle through which the e‐economy spreads, and they have major effects on the organization of business firms. The culture of technocapitalism, with its emphasis on continuous innovation and rapid adjustment, is largely behind the rising importance of networks. A second section then considers the deconstruction of business firms and its relation to networks, the e‐economy, and the rise of technocapitalism. A historical perspective is provided to show the contrast with previous eras. The deconstruction of business organizations involves a major transformation of the norms and ways in which firms are run and structured. Finally, the likely implications for transportation and shipping of the rise of the e‐economy, its networks, and the deconstruction of firms are discussed. The logistics, pricing, and infrastructure of shipping are likely to be substantially affected by the spread of the e‐economy, its networks, and the deconstruction of firms.     

The structure and proximity mechanism of formal innovation networks: Evidence from Shanghai high‐tech ITISAs

The discussion on innovation networks of patents or papers has attracted many economic geographers; however, the Industrial Technology Innovation Strategy Alliance (ITISA) has been ignored, although it is also an important innovation form of firms, and the formation mechanism of alliance innovation networks is unclear. This study is based on the data of Shanghai high‐tech ITISAs between 2010 and 2015, and employs the methods of social networks and negative binomial regression to analyse the actor structure, spatial structure, and proximity mechanism of innovation networks of Shanghai high‐tech ITISAs. Results highlight the following: (a) Firms comprise the largest number of actors in alliance innovation networks, and universities, research institutions, and industry associations also play some roles. (b) The local and rooted characteristics of the innovation networks of ITISAs are obvious. The spatial distribution of innovation partners is mainly in Shanghai, and a few innovation actors are located in neighbouring cities, such as Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Ningbo in the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration. (c) Proximity significantly promotes the formation of innovation networks in an ITISA and contributes to the improvement of innovation ability, and organizational proximity plays a greater role than geographical proximity or cognitive proximity.     

How does tolerance affect urban innovative capacities in China?

This study investigated how urban cultural and economic tolerance affects urban innovative capacities based on China's prefecture‐level cities. Several tolerance indices, including ratios of migrants, rental housing, gay people, and private economies were introduced and the cities’ tolerance scores were measured using factor analysis. The results show that cities with higher cultural and economical tolerant scores were agglomerated in three metropolitan areas in China's southeastern coastal region. The spatial regression model demonstrates that urban cultural and economic tolerance increases urban innovation output and promotes innovation capacities. We also introduced the crime rate as an instrumental variable and found that the effect of tolerance on innovation remains robust. Our study suggests it is important for the Chinese government to establish an open and tolerant environment to attract migrants, creative artists, and entrepreneurs to foster urban vitality and improve urban innovative capacities.     

中国高粱产业工程技术研究的定位思考

为了解决制约中国高粱产业发展的全链条工程技术问题,通过研究分析高粱产业对国民经济和社会发展的作用,并剖析高粱产业工程技术研究的现状问题,进而探讨高粱产业发展的工程技术研究对策,针对性的提出7个对策：高粱种质资源收集、保存;高粱育种种质资源创新;专用高粱新品种选育;高产优质高效栽培技术集成创新;病虫草害综合防控技术研发;完善技术推广服务体系;高粱深加工利用技术研究。旨在推动中国高粱产业的快速、持续、健康发展。     

The launch and evolution of a technology‐based economy: The case of Austin Texas

This paper uses the lens of institutional theory to explain the launch and evolution of Austin, Texas's technology‐based economy. The case underscores the importance of context, contingency, and the evolution of key local development organizations in explaining how regional economic development trajectories can change and evolve. The case history provides insights into how economic development networks form and operate to “set off” processes of industrial specialization and agglomeration and how they can promote successful adaptation to change in technology and industrial structure. The Austin story further suggests a “stage” process of regional technology‐based evolution where the development of industrial agglomerations linked to a substantial local research base is seen as a necessary precursor to increasing endogenous innovation and start‐up activity. Successfully navigating these stages is bolstered by the formation of institutions and networks that are durable, strategic, and adaptive, and which, at the right time, recognize and support entrepreneurial firm development to help sustain technology‐based growth.     

Spatial Agglomeration,Technological Innovations,and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Italian Industrial Districts

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact on firms' productivity of innovative activities and agglomeration effects among firms belonging to Marshallian industrial districts and the possible joint effect of these two forces. We study a sample of 2,821 firms active in the Italian manufacturing industry in the period 1992–1995. Our analysis uses an original data set based on three different Istituto Nazionale di Statistica statistical sources—Community Innovation Survey, Archivio Statistico delle Imprese Attive (Italian Business Register), and Sistema dei Conti delle Imprese (Italian Structural Business Statistics)—to estimate an “augmented” Cobb‐Douglas production function to account for the impact of technological innovations and district‐specific agglomeration effects on a firm's productivity growth. Our data set allows us to distinguish between product and process innovations, thus, through econometric analysis, we hope to achieve a better understanding of which of these two types of innovative activities benefits most from participation in an industrial district. Our empirical results show that belonging to an industrial district and making product innovations are key factors in the productivity growth of firms and that product innovations appear to have a greater effect on the economic performance of district rather than non‐district firms.     

Who leads regional industrial dynamics? “New industry creators” in Chinese regions

Recent evolutionary economic geography studies have argued that regional diversification emerges as a path‐dependent process, as regions often branch into industries that are related to its industrial structure. However, it is less clear who are creating new industries and under what regional conditions. This research seeks to fill this gap and identify “new industry creators” in regional industrial diversification. We differentiate two types of new industry formation—path‐breaking and path‐dependent—and examine whether some new industry creators are more path‐breaking than others, by incorporating two factors that have been largely overlooked in recent literature on technological relatedness—firm heterogeneity and regional institutions. Based on a firm‐level data set of China’s manufacturing industries, this paper shows that path‐breaking and path‐dependence coexist. Empirical results confirm that firm heterogeneity and regional institutions not only affect the firms’ capabilities in creating new industries, but also encourage/discourage firms to be adventurous and path‐breaking. This research implies that lagging regions can catch up with developed regions by coordinating regional resources and adjusting local institutional arrangements to attract more path‐breaking firms.