We analyze the performance of firms in the German business-related services sector. A quarterly business survey provides the panel data base of our study. Firm performance is measured by the survey respondents' ordinal indication of their changes in total sales. We use a firstorder Markov chain...

The missing effect of investments of firms in information and communication technologies on productivity is studied by various recent papers (e.g. Oliner and Sichels 1994, Landauer 1995, Brynjolfsson and Hitt 1996). Several explanations are given for this missing link. Our paper deals with two...

This paper analyses the link between the high-skilled employment share and the level of investment in information technology (IT) in the service production process. The analysis is based on an unbalanced panel data set for 933 West German firms over the period 1994-1996. To account for firms...

This study focuses on the early stages of international innovation activities, i.e. the organizational processes through which promising ideas from around the globe are collected and evaluated. We ask: What characteristics make foreign knowledge interesting to domestic R&D managers? We envision...

Our study shows empirically that the choice of resource allocation strategy affects innovation performance. A policy of allocating resources to a broader range of innovation projects increases sales of new products, especially if these are truly novel, i.e. new to the market. The effect of...

This paper investigates the impact of in-house R&D and innovation management practices on innovation success in small and medium-sized firms (SMEs). While there is little doubt about the significance of technology competence for generating successful innovations, inhouse R&D activities may be a...

In the discussion on innovations for sustainable development, radical innovations are frequently called for in order that the transformation of society to a system perceived as sustainable can succeed. The reason given for this is the greater environmental efficiency of these innovations. This...