This paper provides a critical analysis of the World Bank's new thinking on industrial policy. After outlining the changing perspectives on industrial policy put forward by the World Bank over the last three decades, we argue that the bank's economists have taken one step forward (the approval...

Local clusters of high technology small businesses are of increasing interest to politician and academics. This papers draws on a study of 237 high tech small businesses located throughout the UK. Combining information on activity and location, firms were grouped according to their potential...

Encouraging the spinning out of high tech companies from higher education institutes (HEIS) is now a major tenet of industrial policy in the UK and other European countries. New enterprise formation is seen as a vehicle for technology transfer and the commercialisation of research by...

This paper reviews the recent development and growth of small and medium-sized high-technology firms in the Cambridge region of the United Kingdom, as an example of an innovative and R&D-focused business cluster associated with a major international university and successful local science and...

Manufacturing firms are facing a "competitive gridlock" despite implementing strategic organizational and technological changes. Building on the product-process matrix and developments in organizational learning, we develop a two-level model that focuses on balancing the decisions related to the...

There are some markets where the growth of firms are held to be subject to diminishing returns, or negative feedbacks; and there are other markets where firm growth is believed to be subject to increasing returns, or positive feedbacks. A long run tendency towards monopoly might be expected in...

Liberalisation transforms market structures through the behavioural responses of incumbent firms and entrants, large firms and small, to enhanced freedom of choice. Change in market share volatility, and change in the effective agility of small and large firms underpin changes in market...

This paper presents disaggregated projections for the UK balance of payments up to 2020. Under conservative assumptions about underlying trends it is projected that the current account deficit will increase from 2% of GDP in 2009 to almost 5% of GDP by the end of the period. Empirical evidence...

Entrepreneurs cannot develop a business single handedly. One of the most important tasks the entrepreneur faces is to recruit, allocate work to, motivate and retain employees who will help the business to grow. Based on survey data, this paper examines the HRM orientations of UK and Japanese...

Whilst the variety of search activities promotes innovation, there is a central tension between a firm's potential benefits from wide and diverse search activities and its ability to reap these potential benefits. In this paper, we argue that the potential and realised benefits from a firm'...