Knowledge that Transforms

This study examined how a firm's participation in open innovation communities influences its performance. My findings show that the participation-performance link is curvilinear and that this relationship is stronger for firms that also engage in social (

This paper studies the impact of RD this would be expensive in terms of the net exchequer cost.

Electricity sector liberalisation has coincided with a significant decline in R&D spending. This paper reviews the industrial organisation literature on R&D and innovation to explore the likely causes of the decline in R&D spending in the electricity sector. Meanwhile, R&D productivity and innovative outputs in utilities and equipment suppliers appear to have improved. However, a lasting decline in R&D expenditure can have a negative long-term effect on technological progress and innovation in the sector. We conclude that the decline in R&D could have been predicted from the literature. We also discuss the need to reorient the post-liberalisation technology policy.

The role of low- and medium-technology (LMT) firms and industries in modern economies is complex and frequently misunderstood. Significantly, the title of Hatzichronoglou's (1997) widely used revision of the OECD classification of sectors and products refers explicitly only to high technology. By implication, the remainder of the economy is known by what it is not (high technology) and what it does not do (spend more than five percent of revenues on research and development). Arguably, this has contributed to an unfortunate tendency to understate the importance of technological change outside such R&D-intensive fields as information and communications technology (ICT) and biotechnology (Hirsch-Kreinsen et al., 2006 H. Hirsch-Kreinsen, D. Jacobson and P.L. Robertson, ‘Low-tech’ industries: innovativeness and development perspectives—a summary of a European research project, Prometheus 24 (2006), pp. 3–21. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (7)Hirsch-Kreinsen et al., 2006). Although their products and production processes may be highly complex and capital intensive, LMT enterprises are often regarded as being somewhat old-fashioned or even passe. In comparison to high-tech industries, their markets are generally mature and may be slow-growing and subject to over-capacity and high levels of price competition. During the globalisation movement of the past few decades, some LMT activities have been prime candidates for relocation from highly industrialised to newly industrialising economies. When they manage to survive in older economies, LMT sectors acquire unfortunate tags such as ‘rust belt’.

The use of outcome control modes of research evaluation exercises is ever more frequent. They are conceived as tools to stimulate increased levels of research productivity, and to guide choices in allocating components of government research budgets for publicly funded institutions. There are several contributions in the literature that compare the different methodological approaches that policy makers could adopt for these exercises, however the comparisons are limited to only a few disciplines. This work, examining the case of the whole of the "hard sciences" of the Italian academic system, makes a comparison between results obtained from peer review type of evaluations (as adopted by the Ministry of Universities and Research) and those possible from a bibliometric approach (as developed by the authors). The aim is to understand to what extent bibliometric methodology, which is noted as relatively inexpensive, time-saving and exhaustive, can complement and integrate peer review methodology in research evaluation.