Download Free Innovation And Small Firms Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Innovation And Small Firms and write the review.

Utilizing a unique data set, Zoltan Acs and David Audretsch provide a rich empirical analysis of the increased importance of small firms in generating technological innovations and their growing contribution to the U.S. economy. They identify the contributions made by both small and large firms to the innovative process and the manner in which market structure, and the firm-size distribution in particular, responds to technological change. The authors' analysis relies on traditional theories of industrial organization and tests existing hypotheses, many of them previously untested due to data constraints. Innovation and Small Firms brings together two large data bases recently released by the U. S. Small Business Administration - one directly measuring innovative activity for large and small firms, the other providing a detailed census of economic activity for all manufacturing firms and plants across a broad spectrum of industries. Acs and Audretsch describe and evaluate the data bases in the context of the literature on innovation, market structure, and firm size. They present their findings on the presence of small firms, small-firm entry in manufacturing, small-firm growth and flexible technology, and mobility and firm size. They compare static and dynamic measures of small-firm viability and address the relationships between R&D, innovation, and productivity, and analyze the interaction between technological regimes and the role of government in innovation.
It seems to be paradoxical that, at the beginning of the 1990s, when technical change seemed to play an unprecedented role in the U.S. welfare, that small firms emerged as a driving force of the U.S. economy. It is usually assumed that technological change requires the quantities of research and resources that giant corporations amass and organize. In response to this phenomenon, this study explores two major concerns: (1) the role of small firms in innovation; and (2) the manner in which market structure, and the firm-size distribution in particular, respond to technological change. The research examines these questions through the lens of industrial organization, analyzing them in the context of the structure-conduct-performance paradigm. The study tests existing hypothesis concerning industrial organization, many of which had never been previously tested duet o data constraints, by applying the newly created SBA data. Two new important data sources are introduced: the Small Business Administration Data Base (SBDB), which provides measures of economic activity by firm size, and Small Business Innovation Data Base (SBIDB), which involves a direct measure of innovation activity by firm size. These data enable a systematic empirical analysis of innovation and firm size. The report describes these datasets, compares them with more traditional data measures, and provides qualifications about the applicability and reliability of the data. The SBIDB data is then used to identify the determinants of innovative activity, and to find out whether those determinants are different for large and small firms. The innovative activity of small firms is found to make an important contribution distinct from that of large firms. The research also shows that industry innovative activity tends to decrease as the level of concentration increases. A model is presented that leads to the hypothesis that four distinct factors are responsible for the presence of small firms in any given industry: (1) the exogenous stock of entrepreneurial talent, (2) a stochastic element of managerial and entrepreneurial talent, (3) economies of scale and capital requirements, and (4) the entrepreneurial strategy deployed by small firms. This hypothesis is tested utilizing a cross-section of manufacturing industries, including a wide spectrum of firm sizes. The analysis also examines the extent of small firms in manufacturing industries. Concludes with the development of a model explaining the inter-industry variation in the presence of small firms. A new measure, employment-weighted gross entry, or births, in order to compare how the patterns of entry vary across firm size, with the traditional measures of entry, and how they are affected by the innovative activity of large and small firms. Two results of the study are: (1) that firms are apparently not deterred from entering industries that are capital-intensive, and (2) that, while the innovative activity of small firms is found to promote the entry of firms of all sizes, the extent of both total innovative activity and R&D intensity is found to inhibit entry. Concludes with a discussion of the role of innovation and firm size in intra-industry dynamics. The study investigates the differences between the growth rates of small and large firms, and examines the validity of the assumption underlying Gibrat's Law. It also tackles the question of what determines the extent of turbulence, or firm movements into, within, and out of an industry, and whether these determinants are different for small and large firms? Overall, small firms play an important role in the process of technological change. They generate market turbulence, competition, and industry renewal. Small firms are effective competitors in international high-tech arenas that require flexibility and the ability to respond to niche markets effici.
This book provides an overview of the theory, practice and context of entrepreneurship and innovation at both the industry and firm level. It provides a foundation of ideas and understandings designed to shape the reader’s thinking and behaviour to better appreciate the role of innovation and entrepreneurship in modern economies, and to recognise their own abilities in this regard. The book is aimed at students studying advanced levels of entrepreneurship, innovation and related fields as well as practitioners (for example, managers, business owners). As entrepreneurship and innovation are largely indivisible elements and cannot be adequately understood if studied separately, the book provides the reader with an overview of these elements and how they combine to create new value in the market. This edition is updated with recent international research, including research and examples from Europe, the US, and the Asia-Pacific region.
Features of the volume: comprehensive strategic profiles representative of small-firm populations; information from business surveys and administrative data sources for a better understanding of how strategies and activities relate to firm performance; and an exploration of how small-firm strategies and activities vary across a diverse range of operating environments- from manufacturing to services to science-based environments.
This new book discusses the extent to which the Japanese economy encourages entrepreneurship and innovation. Although Japan has a strong reputation as an innovator, some people argue that this reputation is misplaced. Contrary to earlier expectations, the USA rather than Japan emerged as the leader in the biotech industries in the 1990s, and also many small firms in Japan supply only a few – or just one – other company, thereby limiting their view of the marketplace and the commercial opportunities within it. Despite the increase of international patents, international scientific citations and a positive technology trade balance, the Japanese innovation system is weak in giving birth to radical innovations. The book explores fully these issues, making comparisons with other countries where appropriate. It concludes that the Japanese innovation system has both advantages and disadvantages and contributes to a better understanding of how policy changes take place.
Presenting new theoretical and practical insights and models grounded in descriptive case studies, Innovation in Small Construction Firms promotes the benefits of innovation within and between small and medium sized (SMEs) construction firms.
The concept of open innovation (OI) has become a very popular topic during the last decade, with an increasing number of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) embracing OI practices to gain competitive advantage. With the majority of publications focusing on large firms, open innovation in SMEs has received scant attention from both scholars and practitioners. This book seeks to correct this imbalance by providing an in-depth study for both business managers and graduate-level students. Using rich, in-depth case studies from successful companies, it examines different approaches to managing OI in order to develop practical guidelines for implementation. It also highlights important differences between OI strategies in SMEs and large companies. Its findings will be of use to those studying or working in innovation management, open innovation, small business management and entrepreneurship.
What is the role of culture in the innovation dynamic of small firms within the context of their territorial environments? How do shared values, beliefs and practices underpin the knowledge production process that leads to innovation? In what way do symbolic aspects of social life shape European SMEs’ innovation processes? This volume gives an extensive insight into the complex links between culture and innovation in one of the key agents of economic life: SMEs and micro firms. The chapters employ different analytical and methodological strategies in regions of Europe to identify dimensions of culture, especially values, norms, skills and institutions, and to scrutinize which specific components of culture are relevant to firm innovation and to the more general dynamics of regional innovation. The original research presented shows how small firms learn, interact, compete and collaborate with other key agents of the innovation system. Taken as a whole, the volume points the way towards a more comprehensive framework for understanding the nature of innovation in SMEs and micro firms. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.
It once took two decades to replace one-third of the Fortune 500; now a subset of new firms are challenging and displacing this elite group at a breathtaking rate, while armies of startups come and go within just a few years. Most new jobs are, in fact, coming from small firms, reversing the trend of a century. David Audretsch takes a close look at the U.S. economy in motion, providing a detailed and systematic investigation of the dynamic process by which industries and firms enter into markets, either grow and survive, or disappear. He shapes a clear understanding of the role that small, entrepreneurial firms play in this evolutionary process and in the asymmetric size distribution of firms in the typical industry.Audretsch introduces the large longitudinal database maintained by the U.S. Small Business Administration that is used to identify the startup of new firms and track their performance over time. He then provides different snapshots of the process of industries in motion: why new-firm startup activity varies so greatly across industries; what happens to these firms after they enter the market; the extent to which entrepreneurial firms account for an industry's economic activity and why that measure varies across industries; how small firms compensate for size-related disadvantages; and who exits and why.Audretsch concludes that the structure of industries is characterized by a high degree of fluidity and turbulence, even as the patterns of evolution vary considerably from industry to industry. The dynamic process by which firms and industries evolve over time is shaped by three fundamental factors: technology, scale economies, and demand. Most important, the evidence suggests that it is the differences in the knowledge conditions and technology underlying each specific industry -- key elements in innovation -- that are responsible for the pattern particular to that industry.