Corporate Innovation Performance Research Articles

Be nice to your innovators: Employee treatment and corporate innovation performance

This paper investigates the effect that employee treatment schemes have on corporate innovation performance. We find that firms with better employee treatment schemes produce more and better patents through improving employee satisfaction and teamwork. Additional tests suggest that our main findings cannot be attributed to job security, unionization, reverse causality, and omitted variables. We also find that firms with better employee treatment schemes produce patents that enhance market valuation and facilitate better future operating performance. Collectively, our findings show that treating employees well benefits firms and shareholders, for well treated employees are encouraged to create intellectual property.

Does Employee Treatment Facilitate Corporate Innovative Success? Evidence from Patent Data

This paper investigates the effect that employee treatment schemes have on corporate innovation performance. We find that firms with better employee treatment schemes produce more and better patents through improving employee satisfaction and teamwork. Additional tests suggest that our main findings cannot be attributed to job security, unionization, reverse causality, and omitted variables. We also find that firms with better employee treatment schemes produce patents that enhance market valuation and facilitate better future operating performance. Collectively, our findings show that treating employees well benefits firms and shareholders, for well treated employees are encouraged to create intellectual property.

How do intermediaries drive corporate innovation? A moderated mediating examination

Although intermediaries frequently bridge knowledge gaps and enhance innovation searches as important sources of external knowledge, the mechanisms regarding how and when intermediaries become effective drivers of corporate innovation still remain indistinct. Using a sample of Chinese manufacturing firms, this study proposes and empirically tests a theoretical framework for understanding the effects of intermediaries on corporate innovation performance. The results of a moderated mediation analysis show that firms' ties to intermediaries can contribute to innovation by enhancing the scope of external innovation searches and reducing search costs. Absorptive capacity acts as a mediator in the relationship between intermediaries and innovation performance. Environmental munificence and complexity negatively moderate this mediation effect.

The impacts of network structures and network form on corporate innovative performance: evidence from high-tech sectors

Based on a survey from high-tech organizations in China, we empirically examine relationships among innovative network structures, network form, and organization performance. Our findings show that there are significant positive relationships among network sizes, network strength, network openness, network forms and organization performance. However, empirical results further show that network homogeneity does not reveal any significant impacts on organization performance. Our findings also identify theoretical and practical implications of innovative network research, in particular, the usefulness of innovative network structure.

The effects of industry cluster knowledge management on innovation performance

Research on industrial clusters mostly focuses on the effects of the competitive advantage they generate. This study takes a different approach, conducting empirical research on three types of Taiwanese parks (export processing zones, industrial zones, and science parks), in which economic development is particularly prominent, and which have industry cluster characteristics. The study explores the effects of special resources and relationships among cluster firms on innovation performance, and focuses on knowledge management as the mediator for investigation. A survey, regression analysis, and correlation analysis probe into the effects of the special resources and relationships among industrial clusters on corporate knowledge management and innovation performance. Knowledge management emerges as the mediator of industry clusters in terms of corporate innovation performance, thus providing support for the research hypotheses. The findings of this study are valuable for further research and strategic thinking on the sustainability of corporate operations.

Does Innovation Performance Depend on Economic Growth? The Case of a Country in Transition

This paper is an attempt to analyze a possible influence of economic growth on innovation performance. Econometric model based on principal component analysis is the research tool. Poland, as a country in transition, is here a case-study. The analysis has confirmed an interesting pattern: in 1989-2007, corporate innovation performance was changing, in principle, in the same direction as macro-economic changes but with a oneto-two-year delay. This is some proof that the innovation activity followed the cyclical development of the national economy. Innovation performance was demand-driven, i.e., pulled by demand resulting from the economy’s recovery and high economic growth. So, technological innovation appeared to be highly sensitive to the general economic situation in Poland as a transitional economy. Economic growth seems to be a kind of tagboat pulling innovation activities in the business sector.

THE EFFECT OF LEGAL ENVIRONMENT ON INNOVATION PERFORMANCE OF COLLABORATIVE EXTERNAL KNOWLEDGE STRATEGIES.

The article investigates how the legal institutions of different countries affect corporate innovation performance. It is asked whether best practices for collaborative strategies can be identified under any given body of contract law. Examples drawn from the cellular telephone industry are cited. It is said that companies are more inclined to file lawsuits in countries with adversarial, as opposed to bureaucratic, legal systems. In such a context, technological collaboration is more likely to be explicitly dependent on legal contracts.

The impact of state shares on corporate innovation strategy and performance in China

This paper examines the impact of state shares on corporate innovation strategy and performance in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Through an investigation of 541 publicly traded companies in five high-tech industries during the period between 2000 and 2005, we find that the presence of state shares have a positive effect on the corporate choice of a process innovation strategy over a product innovation one. However, this relationship is moderated by the overall ownership concentration ratio. Moreover, our findings suggest that companies with large state shares prefer to conduct innovations independently rather than collaboratively with others, and they usually achieve better innovation performance. These findings indicate that the government play a role as both an investor and a resource allocation coordinator and therefore complicate the relationship between ownership structure and corporate innovation activities.

Strategic Venturing in the Global Medical Device Industry: Corporate Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship

Corporate venture capitalists (CVC) invest in entrepreneurial startups for reasons including financial and strategic goals. In high-tech industries CVCs may use direct equity investment to stimulate innovation that is directly relevant to the investing firms' innovation efforts. At the same time, CVC is also used for strategic goals which may include blocking competitors or gaining a window on competitor's technology. In this paper, I analyze corporate venture capital (CVC) investment and innovation performance by startup companies in relation to the investing firm. I provide project level evidence that CVC investment is associated with the production of knowledge by the startup that is directly relevant to the investing firm. This paper makes significant contributions to our understanding of project level dynamics and the innovation returns to CVC with respect to the level and staging of CVC investment. I find evidence of a U-shaped relationship between total CVC investment in a project and innovation performance and of diminishing innovation returns to later rounds of CVC investment. Furthermore, in a given industry, CVCs share a common pool of potential startups in which to invest. Empirically, the likelihood of production of relevant knowledge by the startup is greater if the founder is an entrepreneurial clinician as opposed to a non-clinician background. At the same time, the likelihood of production of relevant knowledge for the investing CVC is diminished if multiple CVCs (competitive CVCs) coinvest in the same startup firm. The suppression of innovation performance is pronounced in higher rounds of investment.

The Company They Keep: Innovation Returns To Corporate Venture Capital In The Medical Device Industry, Entrepreneurial Clinicians, and Competitive Coinvestors

Corporate venture capitalists (CVC) invest in entrepreneurial startups for financial and strategic goals. CVCs may use direct equity investment to stimulate innovation that is appropriable by the investing firms. At the same time, CVC is also used for strategic goals which may include blocking competitors or gaining a window on competitor’s technology. In this paper, I analyze corporate venture capital (CVC) investment and innovation performance in the medical device industry. I provide project level evidence that CVC investment is associated with the production of knowledge by the startup that is appropriated by the investing firm. In a given industry, CVCs share a common pool of potential startups in which to invest. Empirically, the likelihood of production of relevant knowledge by the startup is greater if the founder is an entrepreneurial clinician as opposed to a non-clinician background. At the same time, the likelihood of production of relevant knowledge for the investing CVC is diminished if multiple CVCs (competitive CVCs) coinvest in the same startup firm. The suppression of innovation performance is pronounced in higher rounds of investment. This paper makes significant contributions to our understanding of project level dynamics and the innovation returns to CVC. This paper also contributes to our understanding of innovation in the medical device industry and the significance of entrepreneurial physicians (clinicians) as the founding entrepreneur.

The Structure of Corporate Ownership: Causes and Consequences

This paper argues that the structure of corporate ownership varies systematically in ways that are consistent with value maximization. Among the variables that are empirically significant in explaining the variation in ownership structure for 511 U.S. corporations are firm size, instability of profit rate, whether or not the firm is a regulated utility or financial institution, and whether or not the firm is in the mass media or sports industry. Doubt is cast on the Berle-Means thesis, as no significant relationship is found between ownership concentration and accounting profit rates for this set of firms.

Corporate Inventive Output, Profits, and Growth

Corporate Inventive Output, Profits, and Growth