The imitation-innovation link, external knowledge search and China's innovation system

The Handling of External Knowledge in Innovation Processes: Knowledge Management and the Open Innovation Paradigm

Due to different factors, SMEs' innovation processes nowadays are increasingly dependent on external sources. In this paper we discuss the open innovation paradigm and evaluate the characteristics of knowledge transfer in such open innovation processes. We start by analysing concrete innovation processes in three partnering organisations. Based on the results of the analysis, a target concept w...

Innovation Strategies, External Knowledge and Productivity Growth

This paper studies firms’ capability to recombine internal and local knowledge. It measures the outcome in terms of total productivity growth. Using Swedish data on commuting time for face-to-face contacts across all 290 municipalities, we employ a time sensitive approach for calculating localized knowledge within a municipality and and its close neighbors. Internal knowledge is captured by reg...

The innovation link between organisation knowledge and customer knowledge

The knowledge economy is the future. Organisations need to harness their knowledge and put it to advantage if they are to survive in the new age. Innovative approaches to the market place through the products and services offered will become critical for survival. While some of the knowledge they need is held within the organisation’s systems, it also resides in employees and customers. Linking...

Innovation by Imitation?

Innovation, Imitation, and Market Structure

How do market structure and the characteristics of goods affect the incentives to create new goods (to innovate) and to copy them (to imitate).In this paper we consider an economy in which goods differ according to their production technology, which determines the market structure, and according to the fraction of R&D (think knowledge or information) that it takes to create them. After innovati...