Innovation Intensity Research Articles

How ESG Contribute to the High-Quality Development of State-Owned Enterprise in China: A Multi-Stage fsQCA Method

The purpose of this study is to explore what configurations of dimensions corresponding to environmental, social responsibility, governance (ESG) and firm contextual factors can lead to the high-quality development of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). A configuration analysis framework with six conditions including environmental, social responsibility, and governance (ESG), innovation intensity, capital structure, and firm size was constructed. Moreover, the multi-stage qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) approach was conducted on a sample of 692 annual observations of SOEs from 2017 to 2019. Findings suggested that three equifinal patterns can produce the high-quality development of SOEs, which are resource and capability prominent pattern, sustainability driven pattern, responsibility and growth balanced pattern, respectively. Each pattern is a conjunctural combination of different ESG and firm conditions. The number of resource and capability prominent pattern decreased in the third year, while the proportion of sustainability driven pattern increased, in which the environmental dimension played a core role rather than the social dimension. Different ESG dimensions and firm conditions have both complementary and substitutive relationships, but firm size is a common condition in all configurations. This study provided a holistic empirical explanation of how ESG leads to sustainability issues in SOEs.

Warehouse Management BOT Using Arduino

bstract: Today’s modern world where technical and scientific developments are at a complete innovative intensity, the field of robotics also has experienced an immense bound. Nowadays, in many field robotics and automation is substituted “human touch” to make things easier and better. The critical situations such as aftermath of human and natural disasters, robots can be utilized instead of humans to avoid more casualties. Robotics can also be employed for warehouse management. Human beings pick and choose things up exclusive of thinking about the stages implicated. As a robotic arm or a simple robot system to move or pick up something, someone has to instruct it to execute numerous actions in a correct order for the movement of the robot. This work aims to contribute towards the above mentioned applications using a proposed model to control a warehouse using robot.

Study on the Impact of Breakthrough and Incremental Innovation on Firm Capacity Utilization

Effectively resolving manufacturing overcapacity is an important way for China to stimulate economic vitality and achieve high-quality economic development. Although research on technological innovation to resolve overcapacity has attracted academic attention, less research has been conducted from the perspective of innovation intensity. This paper uses the panel data of 1447 A-share listed companies in China’s manufacturing industry from 2016 to 2020, based on a two-way fixed effects model. The paper divides technological innovation into two dimensions to explore the impact of breakthrough innovation and incremental innovation on enterprises’ capacity utilization. The results show that both breakthrough and incremental innovations can effectively improve the capacity utilization of enterprises; however, the breakthrough innovation has a greater degree of improvement. The moderating effect shows that a good institutional environment strengthens the positive relationship between breakthrough innovations and the capacity utilization of enterprises. The heterogeneity analysis finds that breakthrough and incremental innovations have a stronger effect on the capacity utilization of state-owned enterprises. This paper further improves the theoretical framework of the relationship between technological innovation and enterprise capacity utilization and provides a theoretical basis and motivation for the Chinese manufacturing industry to resolve overcapacity and respond to the national requirements for high-quality development.

Living innovation machines: modelling innovation in time and space variable-geometry territorial units using machine learning

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the innovative intensity (iMID effect) in the local production systems (LPSs) using dynamic territorial units that modifies their geographical boundaries and specialization over time. The paper is based on the idea that the local communities are the real unit of generation of innovation and that they are constantly changing, behaving like a ‘living innovation machine’. To explore this dynamic relationship, the paper applies the Marshallian industrial district (MID) as an approach to industrial change. Then, it focuses on the Marshallian industrial districts (MIDs) as a type of LPS and asks how the innovation effect changes in MIDs and other types of LPSs when dynamic territorial units are used. The differences in innovation intensity between the different types of LPSs are explained for Spain in the period 1991–2014 using new methods of analysis that combine causal analysis, a variable and adaptive geometry of territorial units and industrial specialization, and machine learning methods. The results show that the transformation of an LPS into another type of LPS does not automatically imply a change in innovative capacity, and the type of LPS of origin continues to be relevant in explaining current innovation processes.

Innovation Options and Profitability of Pharmaceutical Brand Manufacturers

Much research exists covering clinical development success rates, development costs of new drugs, and market launch impact on stock market valuation of companies, but little systematic work has been done to establish the impact of research input on new product launches and, in turn, their impact on profitability of drug manufacturers. This article investigates these relations using data from the world’s largest pharmaceutical brand manufacturers and their product launches in the US over a period of more than 25 years. The objective is to determine the impact of innovation intensity on innovation output intensity and of innovation output intensity on profitability. It is shown that there is a complete lack of evidence that launches of New Molecular Entities (NMEs) necessarily lead to higher profitability, suggesting that many launches of NMEs are not particularly successful from an economic point of view. Furthermore, it was found that intangible knowledge assets acquired by company mergers and acquisitions do often not live up to their valuation. This leads to the conclusion that such intangible assets seem to be overpriced on average. The more and more frequently used strategy of launching new drugs without NMEs like combination drugs or extension of indications increased short-term profitability making this a valid approach to avoid setbacks when patent protection of blockbuster drugs expires.

Product and process innovation patterns in Polish low and high technology systems

Research background: While the Sectoral Innovation System (SSI) anticipates technology-related similarities in innovation patterns in the same sectors across countries, the distance to the frontier suggests that there are important differences with respect to the level of national technological development. Most contemporary analyses of sectoral innovation systems are focused on well-developed economies. In contrast, the evidence from developing countries including new EU members are scared and lack dynamics. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this paper is to identify and compare product and process innovation patterns in Polish low and high technology systems. The main assumption is that divergence and convergence in innovation patterns of low- and medium-low technology (LMT) and high technology (HT) systems evolve over time and are strongly influenced by the characteristics of firms, their linkages with other system participants, existing demand, and institutional conditions. Methods: According to the third edition of the Oslo Manual (OECD, 2005), we employ a harmonized questionnaire and methodology to collect unique micro data on innovation. The survey concerns 5252 firms including 873 firms from HT sector. The scope of the research relates to product and process innovation at least new to the firm. Findings & value added: Our results show that although the intensity of product and process innovation is higher in HT system, both business support institutions and public financial instruments better support firms in LMT sectors. On the other hand, existing demand and market structure favor the emergence of new innovations at the firm level (imitations), but with more emphasis on LMT. The key source of innovation is suppliers, with foreign suppliers in HT and national ones in LMT. In contrast to leading economies, LMT plays a key role in long term economic growth in Poland.

Investigating the effects of innovation intensity and lenders’ monitoring on the relation between financial slack and performance

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating roles of innovation intensity and lenders’ monitoring on the relation between financial slack and performance.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts an empirical method using data from firms listed in both the Compustat S&P500 and Boardex for the period 2010 to 2019 to analyze the effects of innovation intensity and lenders’ monitoring on the relation between financial slack and performance.FindingsThe authors find that financial slack is positively related to performance, and this relation is stronger as innovation intensity increases. Furthermore, we demonstrate that lenders’ monitoring strengthens the positive relationship between financial slack and performance.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, this study focuses on the effects of financial slack, research and development (R&D) intensity and lenders’ monitoring on financial performance. Future research might extend this study by investigating the effects of these variables on non-financial performance. Second, the data and results do not provide insights into the reasons for firms to accumulate financial slack. Future research might conduct a longitudinal field study to understand why firms build financial slack. Finally, this study only uses R&D intensity and lenders’ monitoring as the moderating variables. Future studies might incorporate other contingency variables such as firms’ budgeting and budget-based compensation systems to provide useful insights into the relationship between financial slack and performance.Practical implicationsThis study provides important insights into the value of financial slack for firms that invest heavily in R&D activities. This study also provides useful insight into the benefits of lenders’ monitoring to mitigate managers’ unethical behavior.Social implicationsThis study provides useful insights for companies that invest heavily in innovation activities by showing that financial slack is beneficial for this company and lenders’ monitoring is needed to discipline managers in using the slack resources.Originality/valueThis study is the first to investigate the moderating effects of innovation intensity and lenders’ monitoring on the relation between financial slack and performance. Previous studies focus their investigations on the direct effect of financial slack and performance.

Hydrothermal biomass processing for green energy transition: insights derived from principal component analysis of international patents

As efforts to achieve Net Zero are intensifying, there is a strong need to identify the technological positioning of green process innovations that can support the green energy transition. A veritable contender to support these efforts is the hydrothermal biomass processing technology. This process innovation comprises diverse techniques that can convert biomass substrates into valuable low-carbon fuels. Coordination across all available conversion approaches is encouraged to propel the application of those that consider the environmental and sustainability impacts. We assessed the innovation intensity for different techniques under this green process innovation through applying natural language processing and deployment of principal component analysis on patent data. We positioned our techniques within four distinctive groups (intense, dormant, emerging, and exploratory). In this way, we tracked which hydrothermal technique currently dominates international applications and which ones are gaining traction in the future.

Impact of Masculine Organizational Culture on Performance: A Machine Learning Approach

Organizations have long strived for gender equality to ensure that both female and male organizational members feel equally valued. While gender research has extensively studied the impact of surface-level approaches to foster gender equality such as organizing gender-related initiatives and equal opportunities, research has largely under-explored the consequences of a deeper-level root of gender inequality: whether organizational culture exhibits masculinity. The scant literature on masculine culture has generally focused on observing numerically male-dominated occupations or specific attributes of masculinity, thereby stopping short of understanding the role of masculine culture more comprehensively in organizations regardless of their numeric gender representation. In order to address this shortcoming, we systematically examine masculine organizational culture, which we define as shared norms, values, and beliefs with over-emphasis on prototypically masculine attributes and under-emphasis on prototypically feminine attributes, in large organizations over multiple industries longitudinally, by employing employee review data from Glassdoor. We computationally develop a novel measure of masculine culture of organizations by applying word embedding techniques to the employee review data, in order to capture how closely the reviews represent masculine culture. The results show that masculine organizational culture negatively influences organizational performance, and an organization’s innovation intensity moderates this relationship. The findings highlight the importance of probing inside culture of organizations in order to foster gender equality for better performance outcomes in organizations.

Innovation after Failure

Although innovation failures are inevitable, common, and even praiseworthy, it remains unclear how an innovation failure affects a firm's innovation search. In this paper, we theorize when shareholders' monitoring is low and thus they are more likely to attribute bad luck to poor managerial skills, managers are driven to increase innovation intensity upon failure to compensate for the observed low performance. By exploiting late simultaneous patent applications as exogenous failures in the difference-in-differences framework, we find evidence consistent with our theory. We additionally document the direction, outcomes, and financial consequences of innovation search upon failure. In sum, we show that Thomas Edison's famous remark,

Do socially responsible higher education institutions contribute to sustainable regional growth and innovation?

Purpose This study aims to analyse the efficiency of public higher education institutions (HEIs) through teaching and learning (T&L), research and technology (R&T) and social responsibility (SR) activities. It also aims to assess the external factors influencing the efficiency of T&L, R&T and SR, and influence of this efficiency on sustainable regional economic growth and innovation intensity. Design/methodology/approach The empirical approach is based on a two-step data envelopment analysis to compare the efficiency of 23 Portuguese public HEIs, using a Tobit regression, to assess the influence of the factors affecting HEI efficiency which in turn affects regional sustainability and innovation. Findings The results lead to the following conclusions: HEIs with better SR efficiency are situated in large urban centres; an insular location is positively associated with HEIs’ T&L and SR efficiency; HEIs’ T&L and SR efficiency positively influence regional gross domestic product (GDP); and HEIs’ R&T efficiency positively influences R&D in regional GDP. Practical implications This study offers implications in the domain of sustainable regional growth. The study recommends that the policies of HEIs should concentrate on developing activities that meet the needs of the region. It also emphasizes the need to invest in recruitment of qualified lecturers and researchers, and creation of relevant PhD positions. The study also emphasizes the need for government actions to consider the most disadvantaged regions and create infrastructure to attract new companies and people. Originality/value This study contributes to the existing literature on the efficiency of HEIs by considering the efficiency of not only T&L and R&T but also SR. It also analyses the influencers of both HEIs’ efficiency and regional development.

The criticality of international tourism and technological innovation for carbon neutrality across regional development levels

This study investigated the role of nonlinear international tourism and technological innovation in limiting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions across China's provincial development levels. It extends the Kaya identity to introduce international tourism development as an indicator of the affluence factor, employing advanced econometric methods and a principal component analysis of data from 30 Chinese provincial divisions during 2000–2018 to calculate international tourism development and technological innovation indices. We find that international tourism development manifested homogeneous inverted U-shaped curves with CO2 emissions across aggregated panels. In highly developed East China, such development revealed that CO2 emissions reduction (promotion) impacts in eight (two) provincial divisions. Moderately developed Central China exhibited CO2 emissions promotion in half of the provincial divisions, while a reduction in the other half. In the least developed West China, international tourism development promoted CO2 emissions in eight provincial divisions. At aggregated and provincial scales, the negative influence intensity of technological innovation remained superior in highly developed provincial divisions, inferior in the moderately developed, and neutral in the least developed. Mixed causalities were revealed among international tourism development, technological innovation, and CO2 emissions at both the aggregated and provincial scales.

Does the Environmental Regulation Intensity and ESG Performance Have a Substitution Effect on the Impact of Enterprise Green Innovation: Evidence from China.

Against the background of green and sustainable development strategy, it is an effective way to carry out green innovation to cope with the increasing intensity of government environmental regulation for enterprises. Nevertheless, the regulatory role of ESG performance has been ignored. Based on panel data from Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2019, this paper mainly studies whether the environmental regulation intensity and ESG performance have a substitution effect on the impact of green innovation by constructing a double fixed effect model. The empirical results showed that first, positive ESG performance is conducive to promoting green innovation. Second, there is a U-shaped relationship between the intensity of environmental regulation and high-quality green innovation, which reflects the effect of “offset before compensation”. With the increasing intensity of environmental regulation, high-quality green innovation tends to crowd out low-quality green innovation, which further improves the practical test of the “Porter Hypothesis”. Third, the positive ESG performance showed a negative regulatory effect between environmental regulation intensity and enterprise green innovation, which means that environmental regulation intensity and ESG performance have a substitution effect, and the effect is heterogeneous in different enterprises. This paper makes a beneficial exploration on how environmental regulation intensity and ESG performance affect enterprise green innovation, and demonstrates the regulatory role of ESG performance between environmental regulation intensity and green innovation, which reveals the impact of macro environmental policies on the green innovation behavior of micro subjects, and contributes to the further improvement of ESG concept and green innovation theory.

To copatent or not to copatent: An agent-based model for firms facing this dilemma

Firm performance is an important output that managers should control. Of the several perspectives taken to analyse performance within companies, innovation performance and economic performance are especially relevant. Joint patents are an important but overlooked strategy that firms can use to improve their performance. In this paper, an agent-based model and simulator (PABIM) is developed to investigate the impact of noncopatenting and copatenting strategies on economic and innovation performance. Economic performance is evaluated by observing turnover, whereas innovation performance is evaluated using the Innovation Patent Index (IPI). IPI is based on five patent features, each of them defined using machine learning algorithms. The results show that, depending on the innovation intensity of the sector, both noncopatenting and copatenting strategies can be effective to improve both the economic and innovation performance.

Internationalization and firm performance

We argue that industry competition and industry innovation intensity exert an influence on the relation between a firm's internationalization and performance. Using a large panel sample consisting of publicly listed nonfinancial firms in 27 European countries from 1990 to 2016, we document that internationalization is negatively associated with operating performance and firm value. The negative effects of internationalization on operating performance and firm value vary depending on the degree of industry competition or industry innovation intensity. These results imply that industry conditions moderate the effects of internationalization on operating performance and firm value.

Bayesian Estimation of Supply Chain Innovation Path.

With the transformation of the supply chain from factor driven to investment driven and to innovation driven, supply chain innovation has attracted more and more attention. This paper obtains the Bayesian prior probability of innovation and studies the supply chain innovation path from the perspective of strategy and behavior. The model divides the overall innovation capability of the supply chain into specific node tasks and assets (Capability Set), and the innovation demand of the supply chain is expressed in the form of the conditional probability of market demand. Under the conditions of minimum risk, minimum cost, and rapid market response, it determines who should lead the supply chain innovation first and what type of supply chain innovation should be carried out first. Finally, taking the supply chain of the professional market in Zhejiang Province as an example, this paper verifies the theoretical model of supply chain innovation decision-making. The innovation of the supply chain of Zhejiang's specialized market is decomposed into the capability set of each enterprise node of the supply chain. This paper transforms the group innovation ability of the supply chain in the professional market into the individual innovation ability of a single enterprise node and reveals the starting point and intensity of the demand innovation of products/services in the supply chain.

Innovative intensity in the mining industry: Evidence from patent families

A key channel for innovation in the mining industry is the acquisition of technologies integrated into the equipment, services and inputs of suppliers. This article looks at several aspects of the innovation process in the mining industry on the basis of over 200,000 patented inventions filed by businesses, individuals, research centers, and educational institutions during 1970–2015. The main theme of study is the influence of mineral prices, mineral rents, and overall innovative performance on sectorial and technological innovation, timing and intensity of inventions in mining technologies. The evidence shows that long-term mineral prices and overall innovative performance are key drivers. Exposure to mineral rents may sometimes delay the adjustment of certain mining technologies to new market conditions, suggesting that countries specialized in mining may innovate more slowly. Furthermore, the evidence shows that the average inventive productivity of patent applicants is positively associated with the quality of inventions, the length of time applicants have patented (i.e., experience), and long-term mineral prices.

Does higher innovation intensity matter for abating the climate crisis in the presence of economic complexities? Evidence from a Global Panel Data

Industrial development generally entails a structural transition from resource-based and low-technology activities to medium- and high-tech industrial (MHT) activities that represent higher innovation intensity. A modern, highly complex production structure creates better opportunities for skills development and technological innovation. The present study examines the relationship between innovation intensity and climate change crises by incorporating the factor of economic complexities. For this purpose, we used panel data pertaining to 120 global economies from 1996 to 2019 and applied the CS-ARDL estimation technique to achieve empirically valid results. The outcomes of the estimations revealed that real GDP, trade openness, energy use, and economic complexities have a positive and significant relationship with climate change crises in these economies, whereas innovation intensity has a negative and significant relationship with climate change crises. However, the joint effect of the interaction between innovation intensity and real GDP with economic complexities is positive and significant in terms of climate change crises. Thus, the study concludes that higher innovation intensity has a significant role in determining climate change crises in the presence of complex economic structures.

Entrepreneurial Passion and Product Innovation Intensity in New Ventures: Mediating Effects of Exploration and Exploitation Activities

AbstractIn this paper, we examine the differential effects of entrepreneurial passion (EP) on product innovation intensity (PII) through the mediating mechanisms of exploration and exploitation activities. Using time‐lagged data from 260 new ventures from Ghana, we examine the direct relationships between the three domains of EP (i.e. inventing, developing and founding) and a new venture's PII. Further, we test the indirect relationships between the three domains of EP and PII through the mediating mechanisms of a new venture's exploration and exploitation activities. The empirical results provide a fine‐grained understanding of the relationship between EP, exploration and exploitation activities and PII. Implications for research and practice are also discussed.

Beyond individualistic behaviour: Social norms and innovation adoption in rural Mozambique

The adoption of new technologies by smallholder farmers to support economic and human development has received increased attention from scholars and development policymakers. This is particularly true for Africa, given the importance of the agricultural sector for economic growth and poverty reduction. Nevertheless, profitable innovations, such as improved seeds, fertilizers, and crop-protection chemicals, are not sufficiently adopted by farmers. This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of this limited adoption by examining the drivers and obstacles to innovation by smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a special focus on cultural and behavioural aspects. The concepts of social norms and peer approval are considered in the farmers’ decisions on innovation adoption. The focus is mainly on the social norm of being a ‘good farmer’, a distinction made amongst farming peers, based on the characteristics that are socially approved in the rural community. Adherence to the social norm of being a good farmer is considered one of the main drivers of farmers’ decisions, including innovation adoption. The study is based on a survey of 300 smallholder farmers in Mozambique. The results of our study show that the social norm of being a good farmer differs from that mostly shared in developed countries mainly connected to maximizing farming production. What emerges from our investigation is a socially accepted idea of a good farmer being one who is extremely concerned about others in her or his community. The results of various quantitative analyses on the intensity and adoption of innovations show that this prosocial idea of the good farmer does not prevent farmers from adopting innovations and has a significant impact on the adoption of the most radical innovations. The present study reveals the need to contextualize the analysis of farmers’ decisions in the cultural and social context in which they operate.