Download or read book Innovation in Low tech Firms and Industries written by Hartmut Hirsch-Kreinsen and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This very valuable book collects together excellent empirical essays on what amounts to a silent majority in advanced industrial societies: low and medium tech manufacturing industries. Such industries employ more people and make a larger contribution to aggregate value creation than their more lauded high-tech counterparts and moreover, they constitute extremely important customer industries for such higher tech producers. They may be neglected, but they are not going away indeed, this volume shows that they are growing and adapting to the new competitive challenges of globalization. Attending to the dynamics of innovation and change in this large sector is crucial for understanding processes of social and economic restructuring in Europe today. The essays in this volume are the first place to look for insight into this extremely important area of political economic life in Europe. Gary Herrigel, University of Chicago, US Innovation in Low-Tech Firms and Industries challenges the currently fashionable notion that the advent of a knowledge-based economy demands that all social resources should be diverted to high-technology industries. Hirsch-Kreinsen and Jacobson point out these constitute a small part of even the most advanced economies. Attention has been diverted from the important innovation processes which occur in low and medium technology (LMT) sectors. This volume calls on us to achieve a much better and wiser balance in our industrial policy. Terrence McDonough, National University of Ireland, Galway The authors of this book make an urgently needed provocative point: ordinary engineering and technology ( low-tech ) continue to be of greater importance, in our knowledge society , than high-tech activities, and they may be similarly demanding by the competence they require and produce. This counteracts the exaggerated hype about high-tech firms or activities. The high-tech classification itself is highly arbitrary and often superficial. The authors show in what way low-tech activities and firms are important, and how they can be cultivated to buttress the economic strength of industrial and post-industrial nations. Researchers and policymakers, please take note! Arndt Sorge, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, Germany and University of Groningen, The Netherlands It is a general understanding that the advanced economies are currently undergoing a fundamental transformation into knowledge-based societies. There is a firm belief that this is based on the development of high-tech industries. Correspondingly, in this scenario low-tech sectors appear to be less important. A critique of this widely held belief is the starting point of this book. It is often overlooked that many of the current innovation activities are linked to developments inside the realm of low-tech. Thus the general objective of the book is to contribute to a discussion concerning the relevance of low-tech industries for industrial innovativeness in the emerging knowledge economy. Providing examples of both theoretical and empirical research in this area, Innovation in Low-tech Firms and Industries will be of great interest to postgraduate students and academic researchers in innovation studies. It will also appeal to policy makers in the field of innovation policy as well as industrial economists and sociologists interested in traditional industries in advanced economies.

Download or read book Low Cost Low Tech Innovation written by Vijay Vyas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like much of SMEs research, innovation studies of small enterprises have commenced later and are less numerous. The focus of such studies remains high-technology enterprises, which continue to attract both academic and popular interest, oblivious to the innovative endeavours of people in traditional low-tech industries. This book attempts to address this imbalance through a comprehensive analysis of innovation in this largely neglected area. Based on case studies of seven small innovative food companies, this book presents an in-depth analysis of innovation in the Scottish food and drinks industry and unravels a lesser-known approach to effective low-cost product innovation, which is simple and economical, yet elegant and successful. Using careful data collection and rigorous statistical testing, the analysis and findings in this book address a wide spectrum of interests: academics in business schools, policy makers in governments and executives and entrepreneurs in food and other low-technology sectors.

Download or read book Low tech Innovation written by Oliver Som and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights the economic relevance of the so-called low-tech industries and firms. Non R&D intensive firms continue to be the economic backbone of several developed industrial countries. They form the core of National Innovation Systems and contribute significantly to growth and employment. However, due to their lack of R&D activity, they are easily overlooked in the general innovation debate. This book provides latest empirical findings on the current economic relevance and specific innovation strategies and management of non-R&D intensive firms in Germany. It discusses their future role in a knowledge driven economy as well as possible implications for innovation and technology policy. An outcome of several years of dedicated research conducted at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI), this book will prove of immense value to researchers and policy makers dealing with innovation and knowledge strategy.

Download or read book Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship in Low Tech Industries written by Hartmut Hirsch-Kreinsen and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will appeal to social scientists, economists and students of innovation and entrepreneurship studies. Policy-makers and company representatives will also find much of interest in this book, with its surprising insights into a field that has b

Download or read book Low tech Innovation in the Knowledge Economy written by Hartmut Hirsch-Kreinsen and published by Peter Lang Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together reflections and research findings on so-called lowtech industries. The accepted wisdom seems to accept that mature, industrialised nations are undergoing a fundamental transformation into the much vaunted Knowledge Society. There is a firm belief that in this situation the advancement of high-tech industries is essential for growth and development. Correspondingly, in this scenario so-called low-tech sectors appear to be less important in and for the major industrialised countries. The starting point of this volume is a fundamental critique of this widely held belief. In fact, many of the processes we witness today are based on developments outside the realm of high-tech and lowtech industries are important not only for employment and growth but also for knowledge formation in European economies.

Download or read book Policy and Innovation in Low tech written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The PILOT project comprised partners from nine European countries. The national research teams have conducted a series of case studies on non-research-intensive, so called low-tech companies in eleven countries, investigating their value chains and regional networks, and the policies that impact on these firms and on low-tech and medium-low-tech (LMT) sectors in general. A second thread of work has been quantitative analyses of the contributions of these industries to employment, growth and innovation in OECD countries. Finally, the members of the project made a number of conceptual advances. Among the most important results are the following: The project established that most growth and employment in OECD countries still emanate from LMT industries. It provided ample evidence of the existence, and in many cases the crucial importance, of nonresearch based innovation. The analysis shows that innovativeness is based on a particular enabling configuration of resources that a company possesses rather than on excellence in R & D alone. In fact, PILOT found that significant innovation might occur in the absence of any activity that could be classed as R & D under commonly-used definitions. Internal organisational practices - knowledge management and personnel policy in particular - play a vital role for innovation in and the innovativeness of LMT firms, while network relations between companies and supportive social networks on a regional level are also important as they are resources for firm capabilities. The analysis also substantiates that interrelationships of mature LMT sectors on the one hand and young high-tech sectors on the other are of major importance for the innovativeness of industry in general. In relation to policy, PILOT has provided evidence that there has been a bias in policy towards science-based innovation and high-tech industries. This is a problem because the relationship between R & D and high-tech on the one hand and economic success on the other is at best tentative. Efficient and sustainable policies to support innovativeness should therefore be non-discriminatory; that is to say, policy makers should be aware that "LMT actors" are an important segment of a country's innovation infrastructure. On a more general level, PILOT's results lend support to a new understanding of the restructuring of the economic landscape of Europe in the early years of the 21st century. Europe's future does not appear likely to result in wholesale structural replacement of "old" sectors with "new" ones, or to a sweeping substitution of "old" technologies with "new" ones, but rather to lead to a continually changing blend of technologies of various vintages. This process of change is evolving as a restructuring of sectoral and 11 technological systems, transformed more from within than from without. It is not dominated by industrial activities for which competitive advantage, capability formation and economic change are generated by front line technological knowledge. Rather, it is dominated by what are often pejoratively termed low-tech and medium-low-tech industries. And it is unambiguously characterised by the continuous combination and recombination of high and low-tech attributes.

Download or read book Industrial Innovation Networks and Economic Development written by Anant Kamath and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-27 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an innovative examination of how ‘low–technology’ industries operate. Based on extensive fieldwork in India, the book fuses economic and sociological perspectives on information sharing by means of informal interaction in a low-technology cluster in a developing country. In doing so, the book sheds new light on settings where economic relations arise as emergent properties of social relations. This book examines industrial innovation and microeconomic network behaviour among producers and clusters, perceiving knowledge diffusion to be a socially-spatial, as much as a geographically spatial, phenomenon. This is achieved by employing two methods – simulation modelling, and (quantitative, qualitative, and historical) social network analysis. The simulation model, based on its findings, motivates two empirical studies – one descriptive case and one network study – of low-tech rural and semi-urban traditional technology clusters in Kerala state in southern India. These cases demonstrate two contrasting stories of how social cohesion either supports or thwarts informal information sharing and learning. This book pushes towards an economic-sociology approach to understanding knowledge diffusion and technological learning, which perceives innovation and learning as being more social processes than the mainstream view perceives them to be. In doing so, it makes a significant contribution to the literature on defensive innovation and the role of networks in technological innovation and knowledge diffusion, as well as to policy studies of Indian small firm and traditional technology clusters.

Download or read book Low tech Innovation in a High tech Environment written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper explores the opportunities for low-tech innovations in regional high-tech contexts. The literature suggests that traditional sectors tend to be only weakly integrated in such socio-institutional environments, because the specific innovation mode of low-tech industries is not compatible with the institutional framework of high-tech. Focusing on the empirical case of the food industry situated in the Vienna metropolitan region, the paper provides evidence that the link between old industries and their high-tech contexts may be more complex than commonly thought. Drawing on 20 face-to-face interviews with local companies, knowledge providers (universities and other research organisations) and industry experts it is highlighted that strong and weak forms of integration in the regional innovation system (RIS) co-exist, depending on the specific RIS dimension under consideration. Innovative companies in the local food sector, thus, embed themselves in a selective way in their regional institutional context. They make use of the scientific competences available within the RIS whilst at the same time they tend to 3bypass4 the RIS and tap into knowledge sources located outside the region. (author's abstract).

Download or read book Risk and Innovation written by National Academy of Engineering and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1995-12-30 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smaller, technically-oriented companies often assume types of risk (and an amount of risk) that is not often tolerated by large companies. In the United States both consumers and companies depend on smaller, high-tech companies to explore the commercial application of technology in potential, emerging, and small markets. This book, through comparison of six industries in which small companies play a critical role, explores the principal economic function of small, high-tech companiesâ€"to probe, explore, and sometimes develop the frontiers of the U.S. economy in search of unrecognized or otherwise ignored opportunities for economic growth and development.

Download or read book R D in Low tech Sectors written by Lesley Potters and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 3% Action Plan of the Lisbon Agenda was adopted with the aim of making Europe more innovative through increases in both private and public R&D spending. R&D forms an important part of innovation activities, but ignores many other activities. However, the policy focus on R&D investment means little attention for firms that perform little R&D, but innovate in other ways, specifically firms from lowtech sectors. This chapter deals with firms from these sectors, their role in the economy, innovation strategies and recent trends. The term 'lowtech sectors' is widely used and often refers to a wide range of mature sectors, such as textiles and wood. These sectors form an important part of the EU economy. Lowtech sectors are important for employment, economic growth and knowledge formation in European economies. Firms (and the products produced) in these sectors are very often the key to the innovative ability of other firms and for the design, fabrication and application of various hightech products, through innovation spillovers. The importance of these sectors can be seen by their share of value added. In the EU15, the low tech sectors account for about 32% of total value added of the whole manufacturing sector, while the hightech sectors only account for about 6%. Logically, the role of R&D is much smaller. In the EU15, R&D investment in mediumlow and low tech sectors account for about 11% of all manufacturing R&D in 2002, while hightech sectors account for about 48%. Looking at the relative role of R&D and other innovation activities in lowtech sectors, we see that the acquisition of machinery, equipment and software plays a very important role. R&D and the acquisition of knowledge play a much less important role. As such, hightech sectors can be seen as suppliers of technology. Lowtech sectors are therefore not less innovative, but spend the money on readytouse technology acquisition rather than on research. Three main trends can be identified in the lowtech sectors. Firstly, innovation in lowtech sectors does not stop at R&D. Although nonR& D innovation also plays a role in high tech firms, this type of innovation is especially important for low tech firms. Secondly, R&D inputs from other sectors to contribute more and more to the innovative power of lowtech sectors. Thirdly, firms have become important generators of new technologies by developing new materials and highend products in order to respond to lowwage competition.

Download or read book Innovation without R D written by Oliver Som and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An evolutionary Approach to heterogeneity in Firms Innovation Strategies

Download or read book Navigating Innovation written by Benoit Gailly and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-17 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every firm must maintain an entrepreneurial ecosystem and a coherent innovation strategy in order to stay ahead of the competition. For managers this means being able to build a vision of what innovation looks like in the context of their organization, fostering entrepreneurial behaviour, spotting opportunities and making the right decisions. Based on years of practical experience and unique insight, this handy guide identifies fundamental challenges and is rooted in concrete examples. Accompanied by a brand new app for iPhone and Android as well as a companion website (www.NavigatingInnovation.org), this is an easy dip in, dip out guide with a focus on successful execution. Navigating Innovation is a one-stop-shop, giving you a deeper understanding of the core concepts and tools to capture the right opportunities for your business.

Download or read book Innovation Industrial Dynamics and Structural Transformation written by Uwe Cantner and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-03-08 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an account of work in the Schumpeterian and evolutionary tradition of industrial dynamics and the evolution of industries. It is shown that over time industries evolve and change their structure. In this dynamic process, change is affected and sometimes constraint by many factors, including knowledge and technologies, the capabilities and incentives of actors, new products and processes, and institutions.

Download or read book The Paradox of Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship in Low Tech Industries written by Isabel Schwinge and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the first multidimensional investigation of KIE in the context of low-tech industries and gives insights in paradox conditions and specific mechanisms, using the example of the German textile industry. Therefore, the author solves conceptual inconsistencies and develops an alternative framework referring to systemic concepts of sectoral innovation systems and KIE as well as to the concept of institutional entrepreneurs. As a result, the deviation of willful actors from a restricting institutional environment and sources of entrepreneurial opportunities can be investigated more comprehensively.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Innovation written by Jan Fagerberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-19 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides academics and students with a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the phenomenon of innovation.

Download or read book Transformation for Sustainable Business and Management Practices written by Aarti Saini and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-17 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the introduction of Industry 5.0, there has been a greater emphasis on the human-centric view in human-machine collaboration. As society has benefitted from technological advancements in all aspects of industrial sectors, there has been a rethinking of the role human beings should play in future evolutions.

Download or read book Risk and Innovation written by National Academy of Engineering and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1995-11-30 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smaller, technically-oriented companies often assume types of risk (and an amount of risk) that is not often tolerated by large companies. In the United States both consumers and companies depend on smaller, high-tech companies to explore the commercial application of technology in potential, emerging, and small markets. This book, through comparison of six industries in which small companies play a critical role, explores the principal economic function of small, high-tech companiesâ€"to probe, explore, and sometimes develop the frontiers of the U.S. economy in search of unrecognized or otherwise ignored opportunities for economic growth and development.