Innovation and Patenting within Containerized Liner Shipping

Increasingly, in many industries, companies commercialize their technology and innovations through patenting to gain an edge over competition. Within the maritime sector, while literature on innovation is expanding, issues related to the importance of intangible assets, such as patenting, for the participant firms of the industry remain unaddressed. Utilizing innovational frameworks and patent data withdrawn from European Patent Organization’s (EPO’s) database, the aim of this paper is to investigate the innovative level, in terms of patents granted, of incumbent market actors in liner shipping. Apart from patent counts, this exercise sheds light on the areas to which these patents apply, providing a classification while also investigating additional attributes which relate to patent citations, investors and applicants. Although results indicate a varying degree of utilization of the patenting system amongst liner carriers, they nonetheless affirm to some extent that knowledge creation is a valuable tool in the arsenal of some liner carriers, and that patenting is one of the various means utilized to enhance their market position and achieve a sustained competitive advantage. In addition, findings suggest that liner carriers’ innovative efforts have, based on the forward citations received, some significance, while they focus primarily the development of patented technologies which enhance the operational efficiency of their vessels. In this respect, the investigation undertaken sheds some light and provides a novel perspective on understanding the behaviour and innovative propensity of liner shipping companies.

Research on the Performance of Knowledge Co-Creation of Science and Technology Enterprises Based on IUR Network

The current research on knowledge co-creation mostly starts from the perspective of process, studying the process of knowledge co-creation, but there is very little research on the performance of knowledge co-creation. As the carrier of enterprise knowledge co-creation, the industry-university-research network (IUR network) provides a platform for enterprise knowledge co-creation. The purpose of this article is to explore the influence of the centrality of the IUR network on the performance of corporate knowledge co-creation, and the mediating role of corporate absorptive capacity. Technology companies are knowledge-intensive companies and have more knowledge co-creation behaviors. Therefore, this article selects the top 100 technology companies in China’s electronic information industry from 2015 to 2019 as the research sample, and establishes the IUR network based on their cooperative patent data. Our empirical results show that: (1) in the IUR network, the higher the network centrality, the enterprise may have better knowledge co-creation performance; (2) the centrality of the industry-university-research network has a significant role in promoting absorptive capacity of enterprises; (3) the absorptive capacity of enterprises has a complete intermediary effect between the centrality of the IUR network and the knowledge co-creation of technology-based enterprises. This research uses the IUR network to study the performance of knowledge co-creation, which further enriches the related research fields of knowledge co-creation.

The Differential Impact of Intrafirm Collaboration and Technological Network Centrality on Employees’ Likelihood of Leaving the Firm

How does an employee’s centrality in intrafirm research and development activities affect the employee’s propensity for outward mobility? Does this proclivity vary by the type of employment the employee seeks: moving to other firms versus founding a new venture? We maintain that, to answer these questions, we must distinguish between an employee’s centrality in the intrafirm collaboration network and the employee’s centrality in the intrafirm technological recombination network. We utilize the curricula vitae and patent data of corporate inventors at a leading semiconductor company between 1993 and 2012 to test our hypotheses. Contrary to prevailing views, our competing risk model indicates that corporate inventors who are central in the intrafirm collaboration and technological network and, thus, have the most opportunities are less likely to leave the current employer. However, when considering external employment opportunities, their preferences vary. Collaboration-central individuals are more likely to start a new venture than to move to another employer. Their skill in developing interpersonal relationships enables them to attract the tangible and intangible resources needed in a new firm. In contrast, inventors whose technological expertise is central to the firm’s technology recombination network are more likely to move to another employer than to start a new venture. In an established firm, they can leverage their technological know-how using the resources that a new venture would lack. Our theory highlights the trade-offs in employees’ attempts to take advantage of their internal and external value based on their position within the firm’s collaboration and technological networks.

DO OPEN INNOVATION AND DOMINANT DESIGN FOSTER DIGITAL INNOVATION?

The emergence of digital innovation in academia and practice has been established, and it is time to consider when and how it affects innovation performance. Before this background, we examine how innovation practices such as open innovation and dominant design impact innovation performance, particularly in the case of digital innovation. We develop a theoretical framework that is tested on a long panel of patent data for 788 technologies over 32 years. Open innovation has no impact on the innovative performance of technologies in general, but for digital innovation, we find a positive effect. In addition, dominant design has a stronger impact on the innovative performance for digital innovations than for other innovations. We conclude that the management of digital innovation is different from that of other innovations since both open innovation and dominant design are more important for innovative performance. Indeed, some of the benefits of openness may only apply to digital innovation.

Inventors Dynamics in Balkanic Area: Evidences by a Network Analysis

Patent data is a key source of information for innovation economists. In recent decades it has been possible to observe its significant diffusion and success mainly thanks either to archives digitization or to authorities’ greater openness with respect to patent granting procedure. Furthermore, the use of this information over time has not been limited to simple statistics on patents and their classification, but, going further, has extended to the analysis of applicants, inventors, citations, and much more. By this seminal paper, we are going to analyze starting from Data analysis related to a selection of Balkanic Countries, chosen among the most dynamic in innovation process and production of patents: Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. How it will explain into the work, this selection was not accidental: the aim was to represent the evolution of these Countries, in terms of patent internationalization, depending on their “link” with the European Union, not all Western Balkan Countries are in fact part of it. Croatia, an official EU member since 2012, was chosen as the representative state of European influence. Some interesting results were obtained with a novel approach by social network analysis techniques.

Heat Waves and Innovation in Air Conditioning in the United States

This study investigates whether extreme heat episodes (heatwaves) have contributed to the development of air conditioning technology in the United States. To this end we use weather data to identify days at which heat and relative humidity were above levels comfortable to the human body, and match these with patent data at the county level for nearly a hundred years. We find that in the two years after a county has experienced extreme heat air-conditioning patents increase. Overall, average extreme heat exposure results in an increase of 7.5% greater innovation. We find no similar increase in the frequency of non-air conditioning related patent filings, and therefore conclude that heatwaves result in innovation targeting their mitigation.

Research on Value Investment of Start-up Companies

This study investigates how investors can strengthen their value investment by applying the SWOT analysis in the Start-up company context. By conducting a constructive study with two cases, we develop a construction for qualitative and quantitative reference information with the help of the literature on Start-ups and value investment, the data on CB insights.com. This reference information for two Start-ups comprises funding data, investors, web traffic, news articles, patent data, and regulatory filings. This study also associates each information element to the internal factor assessment and external factor assessment of two Start-ups and accordingly develops metrics regarding the value investment. In addition, it demonstrates the different nature of two Start-ups for operating business to highlight the divergent value metrics. The key contributions of this study are the developed construction for qualitative and quantitative reference information and concluding that the founding team, market, product, business model, and competition are important factors for the development of Start-up company and investors' decision-making. The results of this study, and particularly the developed criterion, build avenues for further research on Start-ups and value investment.