Patent-based measures are frequently used as indicators in empirical research on innovation and technological change. Currently, there is little evidence as to what extent patent-based indicators relate to product market outcomes. Using a unique dataset that links outcomes from product...

Investments in a technology have to consider its current life cycle stage. The widespread approach of studying technology life cycles by measuring patent activity indices, especially patent applications, raises a practical problem: it requires the survey of all applications and applicants on a...

The technology strength expresses the technological competitiveness of a company. One might use a great diversity of technology information to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a firm: expert opinions of the R&D status, market observations, bibliometric data (e. g. information from the...

Social media open up new possibilities for firms to exploit information from various external sources. Does this information help firms to become more innovative? Combining firm-level survey data with information from firms' Facebook pages, we study the role that firms' and users' activities on...

As developing economies have weak institutional environments, and these are highly distant from SMEs' home conditions in developed economies, those firms entering into developing economies should acquire new knowledge resources for a successful entry. In this paper, we analyze the type of...

Firms can use different sources of external knowledge for developing and implementing innovations. Some knowledge is provided deliberately by the source and constitutes intended knowledge spillovers, e.g., knowledge disclosed in publications or patent files. Other sources represent unintended...

Firms' search for external knowledge is one aspect of knowledge integration in the innovation process. The literature has investigated innovation and the breadth of search in different information channels. We introduce the concept of search balance reflecting the heterogeneity of a firm's...

This study investigates how in-house R&D as well as access to national and foreign knowledge sources influences the productivity of Chinese firms. For our main analysis we use data for 1,140 patenting firms listed at mainland China stock exchanges over the time-period 2001-2010. In-house R&D...

This paper analyzes the drivers of multinational affiliates' R&D intensity, using a unique dataset based on the fourth Community Innovation Survey for Belgium. Specifically, we investigate the role of foreign affiliates' local (host country) embeddedness and of host country spillovers on foreign...