Innovativen Unternehmen, insbesondere kleinen und mittelgroßen Betrieben (KMU) wird eine Schlüsselposition für den technischen Fortschritt und die internationale Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von Industrienationen zugewiesen. Die Fähigkeit, neues Wissen zu generieren und in marktfähige Produkte,...

Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien haben die Produktion in Unternehmen grundlegend verändert. IT-basierte Dienstleistungen stellen ein zentrales Bindeglied zwischen vielen anderen Unternehmensprozessen dar und leisten einen wichtigen Beitrag zur betrieblichen und...

Hidden Champions (HCs) are firms unknown to the wider public, but global leaders in the niche markets they serve. This paper looks at distinctive features of these firms, focusing on their dynamic capabilities. Employing a unique data base on German firms, we identify a representative sample of...

The paper provides empirical evidence for the question whether firms' ITenabled labour productivity is affected by the age structure of the workforce. We apply a production function approach with heterogenous labour to firmlevel data from German manufacturing and services industries. We find...

Modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have been proliferating through the entire business sector over recent decades. This increasing digitalization is having a substantial impact on economic activity and is continuously changing the nature of production processes and our...

The paper provides empirical evidence for the causal impact of broadband Internet on the economic performance of German firms. Performance is measured in terms of labour productivity and realised process and product innovations. The analysis refers to the early phase of DSL expansion in Germany...