Purpose -As traditional manufacturing, previously vital to the UK economy, is increasingly outsourced to lower-cost locations, policy makers seek leadership in emerging industries by encouraging innovative start-up firms to pursue competitive opportunities. Emerging industries can either be those where a technology exists but the corresponding downstream value chain is unclear, or a new technology may subvert the existing value chain to satisfy existing customer needs. Hence, this area shows evidence of both technology-push and market-pull forces. The purpose of this paper is to focus on market-pull and technology-push orientations in manufacturing ventures, specifically examining how and why this orientation shifts during the firm's formative years. Design/methodology/approach -A multiple case study approach of 25 UK start-ups in emerging industries is used to examine this seldom explored area. The authors offer two models of dynamic business-orientation in start-ups and explain the common reasons for shifts in orientation and why these two orientations do not generally co-exist during early firm development. Findings -Separate evolution paths were found for strategic orientation in manufacturing start-ups and separate reasons for them to shift in their early development. Technology-push start-ups often changed to a market-pull orientation because of new partners, new market information or shift in management priorities. In contrast, many of the start-ups beginning with a market-pull orientation shifted to a technology-push orientation because early market experiences necessitated a focus on improving processes in order to increase productivity or meet partner specifications, or meet a demand for complementary products. Originality/value -While a significant body of work exists regarding manufacturing strategy in established firms, little work has been found that investigates how manufacturing strategy emerges in start-up companies, particularly those in emerging industries.
Science parks contribute to a country’s economic growth, promote industrial transformation, and meet the development needs of high-tech industries. They also play an essential role in enhancing technological development and competitiveness. Due to the impact of the fierce U.S.-China trade war on the global economy, many Taiwanese companies are considering moving their high-end product production lines back to their home country. This trend may promote the growth of the population in the surrounding areas of science parks and affect the limited infra-structure at the same time. This study explores how science parks could achieve sustainable development goals by formulating their development strategy. We summarized four evaluation aspects for constructing the driving factors for developing the science park through literature review and interviews with experts. Combined with the hybrid multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach, we analyzed stakeholders’ satisfaction among the four aspects of the driving factors for the development of the science parks and put forward appropriate strategy recommendations. We found that the improvement of public infrastructure (PI) can improve not only the environmental quality (EQ) but also promote the business environment (BE) and the working environment (WE). This improvement could attract domestic and foreign manufacturers, create employment opportunities, expand the park’s scale, and eventually promote industrial development. This research improves the method of collecting empirical data to establish the driving forces for developing science parks through suitable development strategies.
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