When, on 21st September 2006, 'The Economist' compared incumbent telecommunication operators with dinosaurs that could soon face extinction, most readers were ready to agree. The mixture of declining revenues and fierce competition was believed to shake the market and soon to dethrone former...

In this article we present and discuss the IT tools that Deutsche Telekom Innovation Laboratories use to support their corporate foresight activities. These tools are integrated into an approach that encompasses the discovery of change, interpretation, and triggering managerial responses. The...

In this paper we analyze the conditions under which firms decide to offshore innovation. We consider the role of internal technological capabilities and technological dynamism in the firm environment, distinguishing speed and uncertainty of technological change. Using unique data from the German...

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of previous experience and learning capabilities on survival in product and process innovation for Spanish manufacturing firms in the period 1990-2010. The authors find past and path dependence and confirm the important effect of R&D...

This paper explores the drivers of inter-firm R&D collaborations in a particular type of innovation network, the technological districts created in Italy under a specific public policy to promote innovation. The empirical analysis used an original database containing information on research...

We study what makes a research grant application successful in terms of ability, type of research, experience, and demographics of the applicants. But our main objective is to investigate whether public funding organizations support the teams that are most likely to undertake transformative or...

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 global economic crisis of 2008/2009 hit many firms hard. Faced with rapidly declining sales and highly uncertain economic prospects, firms had to cut costs and reconsider their business strategies. With respect to innovation, cost cutting often means to stop or underresource innovation...

Innovation processes within corporations increasingly tap into international technology sources, yet little is known about the relative contribution of different types of innovation channels. We investigate the effectiveness of different types of international technology sourcing activities...