This paper explores the processes of transforming a network of non-mandated exchange relations into a cohesive and innovative partnership. The question this paper attempts to answer is how to speed up innovation processes in such networks. The paper demonstrates that transformation of networks...

Company performance varies among economic sectors, countries and regions. It is influenced by a very large number of factors. This study aims at identifying and analyzing the determinants that must be considered by company's management presently in order to face competition and achieve superior...

The authors consider the theory and evidence on the propensity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to patent their innovations. Drawing on UK, European and US literature and data sources, they show that small firms are less likely to use patents as a means of protecting their investment...

This paper investigates whether firms innovate persistently or discontinuously over time using an innovation panel data set on German manufacturing and service firms for the period 1994?2002. We find that innovation behaviour is permanent at the firm?level to a very large extent. Using a dynamic...

In recent decades firms have intensified the exploration of external sources of knowledge to enhance their innovation capabilities. This paper presents an empirical analysis of the factors that affect the importance of academic knowledge for firms' innovative activities. An integrated approach...

While significant attention is given to the concept of absorptive capacity as a source of competitive advantage in firms, a major drawback exists in the way it is unidimensionally defined in micro-level analysis. The paper addresses this limitation and reconceptualizes absorptive capacity as a...

This paper examines the role of venture capital on a firm's innovation activities by using a data set of German technology-based firms founded between 1996 and 2005. Innovation is proxied by patent counts and an index of innovativeness which reflects the degree to which a young firm has...

Management scholars have sought to answer the question: is there a financial payoff for ad-dressing ecological and social issues? We move beyond this question and include a time com-ponent for corporate financial performance (CFP) and a firm’s innovativeness in order to ask: when does it pay?...

This paper employs firm-level data to analyze the relative importance of firm characteristics and agglomeration externalities in explaining variation in innovation rates across firms. More specifically, we combine micro-data and census data to estimate the probability that a firm will introduce...

The importance of data and different sources of knowledge in the development of new services and products, and further in the creation of new markets, has dramatically increased during the past few decades. This empirical study uses data from 531 Finnish firms to explore the determinants of...