Innovation Studies Group

Call for papers – special issue: Innovation Persistence

2011-07-17T15:31:00.001+02:00

Journal: Economics of Innovation and New Technology
Innovation persistence is emerging as a critical area of interest: a fertile field of theoretical analysis and empirical investigation. So far the literature has shed attention upon three main mechanisms that allow firms to maintain high innovation rates over time: i) the presence of a virtuous loop linking firm technological success, better economic performance and consequently larger amounts of available resources to be invested in R&D activities; ii) technological learning; iii) knowledge spillovers and externalities in the localized context of action. Recent contributions have highlighted how the correct identification of the types of non-ergodic processes through which firms innovate continuously is a nontrivial task. Moreover results can be highly sensitive to the innovation indicators adopted (patent filings, survey data, productivity data, etc.). The availability of new firm-level data sets (stemming mainly from the Community Innovation Survey) on the innovation process provides the opportunity to address a number of important open issues related to the characteristics of the dynamic processes and the factors shaping the persistence of innovative behavior at the firm level. Their assessment has important implications for the understanding of the long-term dynamics of firms, industries and economic systems and hence for innovation policies and technology and corporate strategy.

Below we list some of the research topics that deserve further analyses:

The analysis of the relationship between innovation persistence and firm economic performance.
The assessment of the relevance of different potential determinants of innovation persistence (e.g. R&D sunk costs; increasing R&D returns; internal learning processes).
The empirical assessment of the impact of organizational change on innovation persistence.
The study of the different persistence patterns of complex (i.e. process and product) innovators and simple (only process or only product) innovators.
The development of cross-country and cross-industry comparisons of innovation persistence patterns.
The roles of regions and geography in shaping firm-level innovation persistence.
The improvement of our understanding of the characteristics of “sporadic innovators”.
The role of persistent inventors, i.e. individual researchers.
The relationship between innovation persistence and structural change in economic history.
The specification of the non-ergodic processes at work, whether past or path dependent.

This special issue will be edited by Christian Le Bas (GATE, University of Lyon) and Giuseppe Scellato (DISPEA - Politecnico di Torino).

Guidelines and more information

Research in Italy, Land of "Hidden gems" - Report by Italian Trade Commision

2011-04-27T18:06:00.000+02:00

A few days ago the Italian Trade Commission launched the second edition of "Research in Italy - Land of Hidden Gems" a comprehensive report on the Italian research and innovation ecosystem with a focus on early stages companies.

The main sections of the report are Investments in Research and Development; Technology Parks and Research Infrastructures; Spin-offs and start-ups; Venture Capital industry; Banking Foundations and Associations that support investments and entrepreneurship; Government Strategies, Policies and Programs to foster innovation and Intellectual Property.

Although still far behind its European neighbors in R&D both private and public investments, Italy shows some good results in scientific publications where in the years 1999-2009 it ranks 8th in the global classification.

Considering Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT) patents, as an indicator of international collaboration on innovation, a comparison between the three year period 2001-2001 and 2006-2008 shows a dramatic increase of 40%.

44 are the Science and Technology Parks operating in Italy, while 806 are the spin-offs currently operating in Italy and more than 90% of them were born in the last 8 years.

The VC industry is also growing in Italy playing a key role for the financing of high tech companies. In the first half of 2010 over 40% of Italian PE and VC investments went on high tech companies.

The report highlights that the Italian Government is trying to face three main challenges: 1) the shortage of innovation financing; 2) talents-researchers, scientists, high-skilled human-capital-brain drain; 3) Improvement of technology transfer mechanisms. Two of the main action lines the Government has launched are the modernization and digitalization of the public administration through e-gov 2012 and the creation of public private partnerships through Industria 2015 and the creation of clusters of competences and excellences.

Innovation in the Piedmont Region

2011-04-19T11:47:00.004+02:00

Innovation at the regional level is one of the hot topic the OECD is taking into account in the recent years. A few days ago the OECD review on the Basque innovation system was launched.

In this occasion, Mario Calderini was invited by the Basque television to talk about the innovation system in Piedmont.

Mario Calderini explained how Piedmont, a region that has historically been based on manufacture industry and therefore on the costs reduction as the main driver for the competitiveness, faced the necessity to modify its industrial system because it was not going to be sustainable anymore. For these reasons Piedmont started to diversify the industrial structure putting science in the investments portfolio, to attract foreign companies and to specialize in new high growth sectors as clean tech and food.

The universities are playing a key role to attract large foreign companies, they are not coming in Piedmont attracted by a fiscal leverage but rather for the possibility to have virtuous linkages with Politecnico di Torino and its graduates. A great example is General Motors that decided to base its research center close by the Politecnico di Torino.

Here the full interview...

Looking for Innovative Ideas at ItaliaCamp

2011-04-14T16:00:00.000+02:00

More and more initiatives asking for innovative ideas are popping up these days. Here a new interesting one: Italia Camp.

This is an initiative launched by a group of students, young graduates and entrepreneurs aiming at creating a network of people with the ultimate goal to foster the participation of universities, industries and government to the generation and the realization of innovative ideas.

On May 7th ItaliaCamp will host in Milan a BarCamp - a collaborative and unstructurated conference (unconference) - where each person attending will present his/her idea for 5 minutes with 10 minutes of feedbacks. The ten best ideas will receive support to be realized!

Eight the thematic sessions: Job and Enterprises; Research and Science; Economics, Finance and Markets; Technology; Energy and Environment; Infrastructures; Culture and Society; Politics, Institutions and Public Administrations.

The application for the BarCamp in Milan is on line on Italia Camp website.

Edmund S. Phelps's speech at Camera dei Deputati on "Supporting Innovation: Why and How".

2011-02-04T15:43:00.000+01:00

Here the transcripts of Edmund S. Phelps's speech at Camera dei Deputati as reported by Working Capital. Phelps won the Nobel prize in Economic Sciences in 2006.

"My subject here is innovation, as you know. An innovation is always the extensive or significant adoption of some new practice in the society or in some community. It is never the invention of something that fails to be adopted. That is exactly how Joseph Schumpeter used the term. Another point: The same Schumpeter nearly destroyed the subject at birth by supposing that every innovation must originate out of some discovery by a scientist or navigator – by people outside the business sector; and all innovative projects are successful, because financiers have the uncanny ability to identify the projects that will succeed and reject the projects that would fail. In fact, scholars have found that the great bulk of economic change is the result of innovations, small and large, springing from inside the business economy. Medical practice is a stunning example. And, as people in business or the professions know, most new ideas are not developed and most newly developed products fail to effect an appreciable innovation in the industry.

It is paradoxical that the world is captivated by innovation when attempts to innovate have a high failure rate. Apparently we still feel that innovation is important and worthy of added support.

Innovation is apt to be important even from the perspective of an extremely conventional theory of what the economy’s structure is and how it works. Production of capital goods is the great employer, as the “Austrian” and Swedish capital theorists liked to suppose; in contrast, consumer good production makes heavy use of capital and little use of labor.

Looking at the waves of discernable innovation, such as the wave in the second half of the 1990s, we see that they achieve big advances in the way capital is used in producing consumer products. This drives down the prices of consumer goods – in other words, it raises the real prices obtainable by capital goods producers. So investment activity is stepped up. Also, wages and labor’s share are pulled up. Clearly, Washington economists are yearning for a return of that booming economic activity. For me, all of this strikes a good note. (It must be added, though, that the economy is complicated. A step-up of innovation could take an unusual and much less desirable direction: it could cheapen the production of some capital goods, which is what Intel did in the 1990s. At first, that might increase jobs making chips; but endless advances ahead might ultimately lower the price of chips so much as to contract jobs making chips.)

Innovation is vastly more important from my radically different perspective on what a good economy is about. A good economy – even the not-so-good economy of the United States these days – is all about the creation and application of new ideas: Humean businesspersons are imagining new concepts and novel departures, Hayekian entrepreneurs are attempting the developing of a new product embodying the new idea, on the hope that some consumers or managers will adopt it. Baconian technicians are experimenting with ways of producing the new product. Nelson-Phelps managers are assessing the possible value of adopting novel products coming on to the market. Bhidéan consumers willing to risk taking home the latest thing. This economy is shot through with theexercise and the expression of their creativity, their curiosity, their venturesomeness, their taste and their personality. It is obvious that in nations where there are not the economic institutions to enable and encourageinnovation, there cannot be a good economy. [...]"

Read the full article on this link: http://www.workingcapital.telecomitalia.it/2011/02/per-rifare-litalia-lintervento-integrale-di-edmund-phelps/

IS Group for University Mobile Challenge Application

2011-02-03T16:11:00.000+01:00

Innovation Studies group in collaboration with I3P, the incubator of Politecnico di Torino, participated to the Univesity Mobile Challenge Application promoted by the Berkley Mobile International Collaborative (BMIC). BMIC invited the most entrepreneurial universities from all over the world to participate to this international business ideas competition; this year the participating universities are: University of California, Berkeley; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Florida State University; Tsinghau University (Beijing); India Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; Swiss FIT; Ecole Centrale de Paris; Ecole Polytechnique; Politecnico di Torino; King Saud University and Stanford Univeristy.
This competition is addressed to student teams enrolled to any of the participating universities, that have a business idea on mobile applications. Teams are judged on the business model and the innovative utility of the mobile application as well as the effectiveness of their presentation. Finalists from each university will be invited to compete at the annual international finals held at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Yesterday, February 2nd, we announced the winner of the competition at the Politecnico di Torino, the team TrackMI with a real time mobility ecological footprint calculator APP, through GPS and/or 2D tags, that aims to reduce mobility environmental impact, enhance real time information sharing and real time mobility management. For more information on this idea, you can contact us.
These students will participate to the final phase of the international competition where they will pitch their idea in front of a panel of international investors.

Good luck to the Italian team!

Top innovation bloggers

2011-01-06T17:39:00.000+01:00

Find more in "Blogging Innovation"

I.S. NewsReview: Research and develop

2011-01-04T12:13:00.000+01:00

From The Economist:
"Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, calls on the pharmaceutical industry to do more with less—and still be innovative Business. The past 50 years have seen the pharmaceutical industry deliver a constant flow of innovation. This helped to increase life expectancy and reduce morbidity in very large population groups suffering from a wide variety of common and not-so-common diseases and illnesses. [...]"

Read the full article here:
http://www.economist.com/node/17493432?story_id=17493432

I.S. NewsReview: Invented threats

2011-01-04T11:29:00.003+01:00

From The Economist:
"ANOTHER day, another scary story about how China is taking over the world. This latest one is about how China is (gasp) becoming more focused on innovation. That’s supposed to be a problem because economic leadership derives from the ability to innovate. China cannot continue to grow at its current pace forever (and surpass America as the world's largest economy) without innovating. [...]"

Read the full article here:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/01/trade_innovation

U.S. race to green technologies

2010-11-08T16:02:00.005+01:00

Historically the United States have been lagging behind Europe for what concerns policy efforts to support green technologies; however the recent heavy commitment of Chinese government and the increased profitability of green technologies as well, are pushing the US government to be increasingly committed on energy policies in order not to lose their leadership in the world competitiveness. This effort led to the constitution of ARPA-E a federal agency aimed at supporting innovative and disruptive projects in the energy area.

Nevertheless today the main policies supporting clean technologies are defined by States, while there is a scarcity of policies at federal level. This scenario leads to a very fragmented regulatory environment that hampers clean technologies entrepreneurs to scale their business in the States driving them to move their business overseas. US entrepreneurs involved in the green tech industry see European countries as an attractive market for their business thanks to their favorable policies towards clean energy. Anyway China seems to be the most attractive market for these technologies today.

Read a related press release here [available in Italian].

Giusy Cannone is the author of the study on the recent developments of US green technologies and she is currently working for the Kauffman Foundation .

Welcome to the Blog of the Innovation Studies Group

2010-11-08T15:30:00.001+01:00

The Innovation Studies is a research group working in the area of the Economics of Science, Innovation and Technological Change at Politecnico di Torino, under the supervision of Prof Mario Calderini.

Why Studying Innovation?

Competition is today increasingly made of Innovation, both at the level of single firms or industries, and at the level of national wealth. In today’s economy, the generation of new products and services is the most important way of gaining market shares and running profitable business. This general trend is changing the way business is performed in a truly fundamental way, and creates, at the same time, new business opportunities and market discontents.

Of course the importance of innovation is not confined to business management, but, at the aggregate level, technological change constitutes the very basis of economic growth and societal improvement. As Robert Solow was first to assess, in his famous 1959 article, that eventually earned him the Noble Price for Economics, the biggest share of economic growth (87% in his estimate) cannot be explained by the growth of economic factors, and it can only be attributed to technological change.

What is Economics of Science, Innovation and Technological Change?

Economics of Science, Innovation and Technological Change is a branch of Economics that studies technological change in its various forms. It includes, studying the environments where Science and Technology are generated and diffused, with a special focus on their structure of incentives and their organization and governance structure.

Management of Innovation deals with how to best organize resources in order to generate, spread, use and extract value from innovation, while Finance of Innovation analyses the determinants and potential solutions to market failures in the provision of financial resourses, for investing in innovation and technological change.

Innovation Studies are increasingly referred as a relatively independent stream of research, gathering the contribution of several disciplines of the Social Sciences, and aimed at developing knowledge on the various facets of technological change.

More on The Emergence of Innovation Studies
More on The Significance of Innovation: an Introduction to the Economics of Science, Innovation and Technological Change