Innovation has widely recognized as an important factor for driving competitiveness of many firms. In order to generate innovative performances, firms need to improve their capabilities in absorbing knowledge and technology from external sources, which is so called absorptive capacity. This paper will analyze what kind of sources of innovation in manufacturing sectors especially for low tech industries. Focusing on innovation activities, this paper aims to identify what kind of determinants in influencing the difference of absorptive capacity in low tech industries. The source of data is derived from Innovation Survey 2011 held by Center for Science and Technology Development Studies. The survey conducted for 1360 firms in manufacturing sector, in which most of the distribution is mainly consisted of low technology sectors. Instead of quantitative approach, the result is also supported by in depth interview from selected firms observed in 2013. This paper addresses multiple case studies as the qualitative approach, including firms in food and beverages, and jewelry art and design. According to the results, most of low tech companies searched their external sources of knowledge from their market, and customers were the main driver for their innovation output. In respond to this situation, this paper proposes an idea of open innovation for enhancing industrial competitiveness. As policy insights, the sources of competitive advantage in an open innovation setting will encourage the firm to the internal organizational processes that allow a firm to recognize, assimilate and exploit knowledge.

No abstract

Research institutions play a role in creating science and innovation. Public Research Institution (PRI) as government-funded research institutes has been recognized as a strategic actor which has responsibility for encouraging researchers in producing efficient qualified research. An Indonesian PRI conducts research activities in basic, applied and experimental research with various fields of science such as life science, earth science, engineering science, and social and humanities science. This paper aims to provide an overview of PRI's R&D performance by measuring efficiency in R&D performance using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method in 35 research units that were used as objects in a government R&D institution in Indonesia. DEA calculates input and output in the R&D unit which has 1,735 researchers and output in each field of science. The result shows that R&D performance was very different between the field of science and age group of researchers. The conclusion is that most of the efficiency created by young researchers. And the field of science that has near efficiency compared to other fields of science is engineering.

This paper attempts to explain how technological convergence has occurred in Indonesian chemical firms. Viewed from the sectoral innovation system, the enabling factors of biobased chemical products innovation are the availability of scientist and researcher at university and research collaboration in company. The ways forward to promote technological convergence in Indonesian biobased chemical firms are to enhance its internal and external R&D capacity by supporting chemical firms to interact with public R&D and university. To enable the biobased chemical sector to take the opportunities to grow through technological convergence, the Indonesian government policy should (i) provide strong support for research, development, and commercialisation of innovative biobased products, and incentives for pioneering the commercial production and (ii) facilitate the biobased chemical value chains to develop by supporting biobased chemical investment, the advocation of using biobased chemical products in society, and limiting of using petroleumbased chemical products in the market.

<p>This study analyzes the technological capability upgrading and entrepreneurship in the Indonesian fish processing industry. The analysis viewed from the Sectoral Innovation System (SIS) focuses on two aspects: the enabling factors for innovation, and the role of entrepreneur in technological capability upgrading. The study finds that Indonesian fish processing companies: (i) are less interactive with local universities or other STI (science, technology and innovation) centers, and innovation was mostly done through learning by DUI (doing, using and interacting); (ii) are characterized as low-tech industries with a high standard for food safety and product differentiation; (iii) apply adaptive innovation, modified from existing technology or knowledge, except for the leading companies who apply innovation for new products in the market; (iv) actors, technology, market trends, and networks are the main enabling factors for innovation; and (v) the role of entrepreneurs – especially in building entrepreneurial networks – were dominant in the leading companies. The entrepreneurial networks exist and work in global distribution chains that are widely adopted by companies to export their products through buyer–producer relationships. The pathways toward export markets are: global born directly, fastly learned global, and delay learned global companies. These categories have enriched the Mets category (2012). The policy implications of the findings for government should: (i) facilitate companies’ interaction with local universities or other STI centers; and (ii) encourage domestic companies to improve their competitiveness by shifting to higher added value products through various innovations and trading policy schemes.</p>