Product development, innovation networks, infrastructure and agglomeration economies

Abstract

The continuos inflow of new products is a fundamental condition for a well-functioning market economy. It has been argued that new products are the outcome of a process which is based upon the principle "novelty by combination". This characterization applies well to the type of product development analyzed in this paper, which comprises the development of new products and the renewal of old products in the Swedish engineering industry through the adoption of a specific type of innovation, namely the incorporation of information technology based components and their pertinent software, i.e. microelectronics. According to the theoretical perspective presented in the paper, a new or a renewed product may result from "random collisions" or from a cautious matching between technical opportunities and customer needs. A necessary condition for such "collisions" or matching to occur is communication and, hence, communication in innovation networks is one key factor in product development. The empirical part of the paper contains an empirical test of the role of establishment characteristics, innovation networks, infrastructure endowment and agglomeration economies for the first use of micro-electronics in product development at the plant level. The empirical results seem to confirm the importance of innovation networks as well as of infrastructure endowment and agglomeration economies for an early use of micro-electronics in product development.

Open Strategies and Innovation Performance

“…There is a research tradition that focuses on analysing the effects of firms' inbound openness using large datasets (Karlsson, 1997;Oerlemans et al, 1998;Koschatzky, 1998;Love and Roper, 1999;Vega-Jurado et al, 2009). In recent years, many studies on this topic have used CIS-type survey data.…”

Quels modes de coordination dans les réseaux d’innovation centrés ?

“…Dans le cadre de réseaux d'innovation, deux principaux types de résultats sont à répartir (Karlsson, 1997) :…”

“…(Poppo et Zenger, 2002). Les modes formels, explicites et écrits, comprennent les procé-dures normalisées, les rapports techniques, les systèmes de comptabilité analytique, de budget et de planification, et les contrats et accords de confidentialité (Karlsson, 1997). Les modes informels, implicites et verbaux, regroupent la mise en place d'équipes communes (Grandori et Soda, 1995), de séminaires, de réunions, de transferts de personnel et de mécanismes pour la prise de décision.…”

Location of New Industries: The ICT Sector 1990–2000

“…However, inspecting the overall pattern of how new industries and industries with intense product development are located across regions, it becomes evident that location probabilities vary across regions in a systematic way (Forslund, 1998;Karlsson, 1997).…”