To introduce new products and processes, firms often acquire knowledge from other organizations. Drawing on social capital and transaction cost theory, we argue that not only is the impact of such acquisitions on the successful development of product and product innovations dependent on...

External knowledge acquisition represents a precondition for firms’ competitive advantage. However, young firms find it particularly difficult to gain access to external sources of knowledge: young firms suffer from a liability of newness by exhibiting significantly lower propensities to...

The paper is an analysis of Balassa’s ‘revealed comparative advantage’ (RCA). The papers shows that when using the RCA, it should always be adjusted in such a way, so that it becomes symmetric. The conclusion is based on a theoretical discussion of the properties of the measure, but also...

Several researchers looking at the development of international export specialisation patterns have shown that there is a general tendency for OECD countries to de-specialise. This finding is in contrast to findings made by other authors, working on technological specialisation. These authors...

This paper introduces a model of knowledge sharing of lead users located in a public and unrestricted community of users. While existing literature on knowledge sharing focuses on allocation and collaboration processes inside or among companies we extend this to the community level. We then...

The main focus of the paper is on the recent development of clusters defined as “resource areas”. The concept has been a cornerstone in the technology and industrial policies laid out from the Danish Ministry of Business and Industry, since 1993. Earlier studies (industrial complexes)...

This paper investigates the relationship between home and offshore R&D activities on the knowledge production of the investing home region. Debate is ongoing on whether R&D offshoring complements the R&D performed at home. In the light of increased offshoring of innovative activities to emerging...

The paper examines an issue related to the discussion of national specificity - whether the group of OECD countries are characterised by a high degree of stability of their export specialisation patterns at the country level or not. During a period of nearly three decades from 1965 to 1992, 20...

This paper basically adopts a ‘technology gap’ approach for explaining international export specialisation. Within this broad label there has been one tradition which has applied cumulativeness in technological change as an explanation, while another tradition has emphasised the role of...

Several types of theoretical literature on the topic of trade, growth and specialisation, including neoclassical approaches, post-Keynesian literature and some models in evolutionary economics, have shown that it is possible enjoy higher rates of economic growth, given the presence of certain...