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| 2. |
- Bergek, Anna, 1973-
(författare)
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Ambiguities and challenges in the functions approach to TIS analysis : a critical literature review
- 2012
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper focuses on an approach often used in empirical studies of sustainable transitions: the functions of technological innovation system approach. After its introduction by Johnson and Jacobsson (2001), the functions approach has reached a quite widespread diffusion among innovation scholars, especially those interested in sustainability. However, during this diffusion process, the approach has to some extent been “re-invented” (Rogers, 1983) by its users, and many of the original definitions and assumptions are no longer applied. In order to take stock of the work so far and suggest possible avenues for further research in this field, the purpose of this paper is to identify similarities and differences in how the functions approach is applied by different (groups of) researchers. The paper first gives an overview of the functions literature and then critically reviews it. A clear lack of agreement between researchers is identified with regards to how the concepts of ‘function’ and ‘functionality’ are defined and conceptualised. Based on this analysis, the paper discusses the implications of this lack of agreement and identifies a number of critical choices that have to be made by individual researchers, but possibly also by the ‘functions’ community as a whole, in order to increase the lucidity and applicability of the functions approach to TIS analysis.
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| 3. |
- Bergek, Anna, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Are patents with multiple inventors from different countries a good indicator of international R&D collaboration? The case of ABB
- 2010
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Ingår i: Research Policy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-7333 .- 1873-7625. ; 39, s. 1321-1334
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Based on the critical case of ABB, this paper questions the relevance of using patents with multiple inventors from different countries (“cross-country patents”) as an indicator of international R&D collaboration. The study shows that less than half of ABB’s cross-country patents are the result of international R&D collaboration as described by one of the more inclusive definitions found in previous literature. Only a third of the patents are the result of joint R&D activities between different MNC subsidiaries or firms. We also discuss the implications of our study for the assignment of patents to countries based on inventor addresses.
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| 4. |
- Bergek, Anna, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Creative Accumulation: Integrating New and Established Technologies in Periods of Discontinuous Change
- 2011
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Ingår i: Knowledge Integration and Innovation. - Oxford : Oxford University Press. - 9780199693924 ; , s. 246-273
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Technology-based firms continue to compete primarily on innovation, and are continuously required to present new solutions to an exacting market. As technological complexity and specialization intensifies, firms increasingly need to integrate and co-ordinate knowledge by means of project groups, diversified organizations, inter-organizational partnerships, and strategic alliances. Innovation processes have progressively become interdisciplinary, collaborative, inter-organizational, and international, and a firm's ability to synthesize knowledge across disciplines, organizations, and geographical locations has a major influence on its viability and success.This book demonstrates how knowledge integration is crucial in facilitating innovation within modern firms. It provides original, detailed empirical studies of prerequisites, mechanisms, and outcomes of knowledge integration processes on several organizational levels, from key individuals, projects, and internal organizations, to collaboration between firms. It stresses the need to understand knowledge integration as a multi-level phenomenon, which requires a broad repertoire of organizational and technical means. It further clarifies the need for strong internal capabilities for exploiting external knowledge, reveals how costs of knowledge integration affect outcomes and strategic decisions, and discusses the managerial implications of fostering knowledge integration, providing practical guidance and support for managers of knowledge integration in
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| 5. |
- Bergek, Anna, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Entrepreneurial investors in renewable electricity production : motives and investment processes
- 2012
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Ingår i: Entrepreneurial investors in renewable electricity production.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The transformation of energy systems towards a low-carbon economy requires large investments in renewable electricity production capacity, in terms of new power plants as well as conversion from fossil fuels to renewable fuels such as biomass. In order for those investments to increase, a larger number of actors have to see renewable electricity production as an opportunity worth pursuing. Understanding the motives and decision processes involved in opportunity recognition and exploitation in this field is, thus, key to predicting and encouraging further investments.Recent studies have shown that investments in renewable electricity production are made by a diverse (in terms of knowledge and experience) set of actors (Bergek et al., 2012). Many of these have little or no previous experience of electricity production, which implies that recognizing and pursuing the opportunity of renewable electricity production implied a radical break with their existing routines for the purpose of creating new (for them) combinations of resources (cf. Schumpeter, 1934b). In this conference paper, we study these actors from an entrepreneurship perspective in order to understand why they came to recognize the same basic opportunity (to invest in renewable electricity production) in spite of their apparent lack of knowledge and previous experience, and how they were able to acquire the resources needed to exploit the opportunity.Traditionally, economic value has been seen as the main entrepreneurial motive: entrepreneurs exploit opportunities in order to generate profit (cf. Baumol, 1990; Casson, 1982; Gilad and Levine, 1986; Kirzner, 1973; Schumpeter, 1934b; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000b; Silver and Auster, 1969). Recently, the idea has been put forward that exploitation of opportunities may be driven by sustainability values or concerns, such as a wish to induce social or environmental change (e.g. Hockerts and Wüstenhagen, 2010; Schaltegger and Wagner, 2007; Zahra et al., 2009). Based on the results of 22 interviews conducted with entrepreneurs of different sizes, backgrounds and main activities, we show that economic motives were predominant. However, in spite of the fact that all entrepreneurs saw a potential economic value in the opportunity, only few of them developed the opportunity using a profit-maximization strategy. For a majority of entrepreneurs, even a small profit was acceptable or seen as a bonus. Motives such as environment and social improvements were not decisive for pursuing the opportunity. Most of the entrepreneurs were driven by personal or internal motives, i.e. fulfilling personal or internal needs, rather than by market-needs, i.e. market-driven opportunities or market-gaps.Authors have emphasized the importance of some determinants of opportunity recognition, e.g. prior knowledge (cf. Baron, 2006), networks (cf. Ucbasaran et al., 2001) and interests (cf. Ardichvili et al., 2003; Guth and Ginsberg, 1990). Our study of the entrepreneurial process shows that entrepreneurs are indeed influenced by their personal network but that other factors such as access to an initial resource, e.g. land, can also affect their recognition process. Moreover, we found that some triggers were decisive for their opportunity exploitation decisions: the decision to start a company, the recognition of a market-need, an interest in the technology, a problem or the access to a natural resource. This led us to the identification of different types of entrepreneurs: investment-driven entrepreneurs, diffusion-driven entrepreneurs, technology-driven entrepreneurs, solution-driven entrepreneurs and efficiency-driven entrepreneurs. Finally, previous literature especially emphasizes the importance of identifying resource needs, managing existing resources and acquiring new resources in order to exploit opportunities (Alvarez and Busenitz, 2001; Brush et al., 2001; Katz and Gartner, 1988; Ucbasaran et al., 2001). Entrepreneurs typically do not control all the resources they need to exploit an opportunity and they, therefore, have to acquire them from external sources (Shook et al., 2003; Ucbasaran et al., 2001). This can be a challenging process, since emerging ventures lack reputation and track record (Brush et al., 2001). In our study, in the process of opportunity development, each type of entrepreneur had access to one or several initial resources but had to acquire additional key resources. We found that the resource acquisition of those additional resources is less challenging when intermediary actors and existing personal networks are in place and when entrepreneurs control instrumental resources that can be used to obtain other resources.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Bergek, Anna, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Functionality of innovation systems as a rationale and guide in innovation policy
- 2010
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Ingår i: The Theory and Practice of Innovation Policy.. - Cheltenham : Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. - 184542848X - 9781845428488
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This comprehensive Handbook explores the interactions between the practice, policy, and theory of innovation. The goal is twofold: to increase insight into this dynamic process, searching for options to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of both policy and innovative practice, and to identify conceptual or empirical lacunae and questions that can guide future research. The Handbook is a joint project from 24 prominent scholars in the field, and although each chapter reveals the insights of its respective authors, two overarching theoretical perspectives provide unique coherence and consistency throughout. This original reference work will not only provide valuable insights for scholars and students on innovation studies, but also to policymakers and practitioners.
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| 8. |
- Bergek, Anna, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Integrating the supply and demand sides of public support to NTBFs: a typology with implications for policy makers
- 2010
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Policy makers consider the start-up and growth of new technology-based firms (NTBFs) to be one of the primary solutions to increase economic growth, as they contribute both to the development of new technologies and products and to job creation. In consequence, public support to NTBFs has been a prioritized issue. Such support has traditionally been justified by referring to market failures in terms of, e.g., underinvestment in R&D (Nelson, 1959; Pavitt, 1991) and “financial gaps” faced by early-stage ventures (Bygrave and Timmons, 1992). However, the argument of this paper is that supply of support does not match demand in terms of the support needs of different types of NTBFs. In order to remedy this shortcoming, this paper combines entrepreneurship and innovation research to develop a typology of NTBFs that is used to compare and integrate the demand and supply sides of public support to NTBFs. The first part of the paper focuses the demand side of public support to NTBFs. We first discuss general characteristics of NTBFs, with a particular focus on aspects of vulnerability and liability of newness (Stinchcombe, 1965): NTBFs are new, which implies immaturity (Penrose, 1959), lack of credibility (Birly and Norburn, 1985; Zimmerman and Zeitz, 2002) and limited resources (North et al., 2001), as well as technology-focused, which tends to imply lack of managerial skills and dependency on one main product (cf. Westhead and Storey, 1997; Mason and Harrison, 2001). We then argue that differences between NTBFs influence both the conditions for them overcoming their initial vulnerability and the types of problems they encounter in the early development phase. Thus, different types of firms will have different support needs and different potential to achieve certain types of outcomes within a specific time frame. Based on this discussion, a typology of NTBFs is developed, which takes into account the origin of the venture (academic spin-offs vs. corporate spin-offs vs. independent companies) (cf. Meyer, 2005; Wallin and Lindholm-Dahlstrand, 2006) and the degree of innovativeness of the venture’s main product (non-innovative vs. sustaining innovation vs. disruptive innovation) (cf. Rosenbloom and Christensen, 1994). The resulting nine types of NTBFs are illustrated by empirical examples and the support needs of each type are identified. The typology, thus, provides guidelines for policy makers with respect to the support needs of different types of NTBFs. The second part of the paper focuses the supply side, i.e. the two main policy areas that provide support for NTBFs: small-and-medium-sized-enterprise (SME) policy and science-technology-innovation (STI) policy. A comparative analysis between these two areas reveals interesting differences with regards to both goals and instruments used. Both aim at economic growth and to some extent social welfare, but whereas SME policy focuses on job creation (cf. Rothwell, 1984), STI policy focuses on national competitiveness through the development and diffusion of new products and processes (cf. Lundvall and Borrás, 2005), which does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with job creation. Moreover, whereas an explicitly aim of SME policy is to improve attitudes and conditions for founding new firms (Storey, 2003), STI policy focuses on technology, products and processes and shows little interest in whether innovation happens in new or established firms (cf. Lundvall and Borrás, 2005). With regards to the policy instruments used, both policy areas include financing, networking initiatives, regulation, education and training, but with quite different foci in terms of the level of aggregation of support initiatives (individual ventures vs. innovation system) as well as target types of NTBFs: The focus of SME policy is to support individual ventures, whereas STI policy aims at building or strengthening innovation systems, i.e. to remove system weaknesses (Jacobsson and Johnson, 2000; Klein Woolthuis et al., 2005) by improving the infrastructure for primarily research-based firms, often in specific technology fields. The third part of the paper compares the demand side and the supply side and identifies the main shortcomings of existing public support to NTBFs as a basis for recommendations on how to improve the support portfolio. First, there is a bias in the public support portfolio towards some types of NTBFs, most notably academic spin-offs, whereas for example corporate spin-offs and independent inventors are overlooked – irrespective of their support needs. In order to overcome this bias, policy makers need to align the supply of support to NTBFs with the support needs of the targeted firms. Second, market aspects are under-emphasised in comparison to technology and product aspects, both in individual-level support and system-level support. Thus, both the firm-level support and the system level support would benefit from measures developing marketing and sales capabilities of individual ventures or stimulating entrepreneurial experimentation and market formation on the system level. Third, there is a missing link in the support instrument portfolio: NTBFs frequently lack the information, competences and networks needed to identify and connect to relevant innovation systems, but the current support portfolio includes few measures to assist them with this. The support portfolio should therefore be complemented by mediation (Bergek and Norrman, 2008) between individual firms and relevant innovation systems, i.e. support measures helping NTBFs to access and utilise resources on the system level. To sum up, we recommend policy makers from SME and STI policy to (1) take into account that NTBFs have different support needs and to align their support to the needs of the targeted firms, (2) increase the market focus of the supplied support and (3) complement the current support portfolio with instruments directed at mediation between individual firms and relevant innovation systems. Implementing these recommendations would, however, require increased co-ordination between SME and STI policy, which is our forth and final recommendation to policy makers.
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| 9. |
- Bergek, Anna, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Is one path enough? Multiple paths and path interaction as an extension of path dependency theory
- 2014
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Ingår i: Industrial and Corporate Change. - : Oxford University Press. - 0960-6491 .- 1464-3650. ; 23:5, s. 1261-1297
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- To explain the development of multi-technology companies and industries where several alternative technologies co-exist and interact over long periods, this article suggests an extension of path dependency theory by providing a conceptualization of the path notion that incorporates the theoretical possibility of multiple paths and path interaction. The conceptualization is applied to a patent study of three leading companies in the lighting industry: General Electric, Osram/Siemens, and Philips. The study shows technology development patterns that are characterized by strong persistence, both within each path and across the whole technology field. These results demonstrate that multiple technological paths can co-exist in companies and industries, characterized by simultaneous long-term presence of several technologies. In such cases, path interaction takes place both between co-existing paths and when new, radically different paths are created. Although further studies are needed to identify the underlying self-reinforcing mechanisms, there is a clear indication that technological path dependency is not restricted to unitary progression patterns, as implied by previous conceptualizations.
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| 10. |
- Bergek, Anna, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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'Legitimation' and 'development of positive externalities' : two key processes in the formation phase of technological innovation systems
- 2011
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Ingår i: The Dynamics of Sustainable Innovation Journeys. - Abingdon : Routledge. - 9780415618663 ; , s. 55-72
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Responding to the climate change challenge requires a massive development and diffusion of carbon neutral technologies and, thus, emergence and growth of new socio-technical systems. This paper contributes to an improved understanding of the formative phase of new technological innovation systems (TIS) by outlining a framework for analysing TIS dynamics in terms of structural growth and key innovation-related prodcesses ("functions") and by discussing two of these functions at some depth: "legitimation" and "development of positive externalities". Empirical examples are provided from case studies on renewable energy technologies. We highlight the problematic role of technology assessment studies in shaping legtimacy and the importance of early market formation for the emergence of "packs of entrepreneurs" that may contribute to legitimation, and discuss how exploitation of overlaps between different TISs may create positive externalities, opening up for a powerful "bottom-up" process of system growth. Associated poilcy and management challenges are identified.
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