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Interdisziplinarität und die damit verknüpften Fragen hat das Forschungsprojekt "Lernender Forschungszusammenhang" untersucht. Diese Publikation beschreibt ein Forschungskonzept, mit dem betriebliche Modernisierungsprojekte in fünf Großunternehmen interdisziplinär untersucht wurden. Die Forschungsergebnisse aus zwei dieser Unternehmen werden detailliert dargestellt. Der Leser kann entlang dokumentierter Forschungsergebnisse selbst nachvollziehen, in welcher Weise sich die Wissenschaftler aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen lernend aufeinander bezogen haben.
Vorliegender Leitfaden ist eines der Ergebnisse des Forschungsprojekts „Open Innovation in Life Sciences“ (OIL), das von Mai 2008 bis April 2011 an der Universität Potsdam durchgeführt wurde. Er nimmt für sich in Anspruch, gerade Innovationsmanager in kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen (KMU) der Pharmaindustrie bei der Einführung des Open Innovation Managements zu unterstützen. Zielsetzung des Forschungsprojekts war es, (1) die Chancen und Risiken von Open Innovation unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Anforderungen von Pharma-KMU zu analysieren und (2) daraus abgeleitet ein Konzept zur Implementierung von Open Innovation bei Pharma-KMU zu entwickeln. Der Ausgangspunkt des Projektes war die Erkenntnis, dass die Life Sciences-Branche im Allgemeinen und die Pharmaindustrie im Besonderen durch eine steigende Komplexität der Innovationsprozesse und eine zunehmende Tendenz zu Kooperationen gekennzeichnet ist. Vor diesem Hintergrund eröffnet gerade der Open Innovation-Ansatz für die Pharmabranche neue Gestaltungs- und damit Wachstumsmöglichkeiten. Open Innovation – definiert als die planvolle Öffnung der Innovationsprozesse und die strategische Einbindung des Unternehmensumfelds – wird dabei als zentraler Erfolgsfaktor für die Innovationsfähigkeit beschrieben.
Die vorliegende Studie analysiert die Ergebnisse einer bundesweiten Unternehmensbefragung zum Finanzierungsverhalten deutscher KMU. Im Fokus stehen die Verfügbarkeit konkreter Finanzierungsinstrumente für KMU und deren Akzeptanz im Mittelstand. Dies soll die derzeitigen Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des heimischen Banken- und Finanzsystems verdeutlichen. Darüber hinaus werden verschiedene Aspekte des Innovationsverhaltens der befragten Unternehmen beleuchtet. Es zeigt sich, dass die Finanzierung aus erwirtschafteten Gewinnen einen überragenden Stellenwert besitzt. Zudem werden neben dem traditionell verankerten Bankdarlehen, vor allem kurzfristige, flexible, aber teure Kontokorrent- und Lieferantenkredite für Investitionszwecke genutzt. Alternative Finanzierungsinstrumente, wie Mezzanine, Beteiligungskapital sowie auch Kapitalmarktfinanzierungen haben bisher nur eine marginale Bedeutung erlangt. Als mögliche Ursachen hierfür sind mangelnde Kenntnisse und persönliche Vorbehalte auf Unternehmensseite, aber auch die grundsätzliche Nichteignung dieser Alternativen festzustellen. So liegt das nachgefragte Finanzierungsvolumen bei KMU häufig unter den Mindestgrenzen derartiger Kapitalgeber. Staatliche Förderinstrumente, welche vor allem von größeren mittelständischen Unternehmen in Anspruch genommen werden, können dabei nur einen Teilbeitrag leisten, um die Finanzierungsrestriktionen zu reduzieren. Im Bereich der Innovationsfinanzierung zeigt sich daher vor allem bei mittelgroßen Projekten ein besonderer Finanzierungsengpass.
Offering unemployed individuals a subsidy to become self-employed is a widespread active labor market policy strategy. Previous studies have illustrated its high effectiveness to help participants escaping unemployment and improving their labor market prospects compared to other unemployed individuals. However, the examination of start-up subsidies from a business perspective has only received little attention to date. Using a new dataset based on a survey allows us to compare subsidized start-ups out of unemployment with regular business founders, with respect to not only personal characteristics but also business outcomes. The results indicate that previously unemployed entrepreneurs face disadvantages in variables correlated with entrepreneurial ability and access to capital. Nineteen months after start-up, the subsidized businesses experience higher survival, but lag behind regular business founders in terms of income, business growth and innovation. Moreover, we show that expected deadweight effects related to start-up subsidies occur on a (much) lower scale than usually assumed.
Parts without a whole?
(2015)
This explorative study gives a descriptive overview of what organizations do and experience when they say they practice design thinking. It looks at how the concept has been appropriated in organizations and also describes patterns of design thinking adoption. The authors use a mixed-method research design fed by two sources: questionnaire data and semi-structured personal expert interviews. The study proceeds in six parts: (1) design thinking¹s entry points into organizations; (2) understandings of the descriptor; (3) its fields of application and organizational localization; (4) its perceived impact; (5) reasons for its discontinuation or failure; and (6) attempts to measure its success. In conclusion the report challenges managers to be more conscious of their current design thinking practice. The authors suggest a co-evolution of the concept¹s introduction with innovation capability building and the respective changes in leadership approaches. It is argued that this might help in unfolding design thinking¹s hidden potentials as well as preventing unintended side-effects such as discontented teams or the dwindling authority of managers.
We analyze the link between R&D, innovation, and productivity in MSMEs with a special focus on micro firms with fewer than 10 employees; usually constituting the majority of firms in industrialized economies. Using the German KfW SME-panel, we examine to what extent micro firms are different from other firms in terms of innovativeness. We find that while firms engage in innovative activities with smaller probability, the smaller they are, for those firms that do make such investment, R&D intensity is larger the smaller firms are. For all MSMEs, the predicted R&D intensity is positively correlated with the probability of reporting innovation, with a larger effect size for product than for process innovations. Moreover, micro firms benefit in a comparable way from innovation processes as larger firms, as they are similarly able to increase their labor productivity. Overall, the link between R&D, innovation, and productivity in micro firms does not largely differ from their larger counterparts. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Translating innovation
(2017)
This doctoral thesis studies the process of innovation adoption in public administrations, addressing the research question of how an innovation is translated to a local context. The study empirically explores Design Thinking as a new problem-solving approach introduced by a federal government organisation in Singapore. With a focus on user-centeredness, collaboration and iteration Design Thinking seems to offer a new way to engage recipients and other stakeholders of public services as well as to re-think the policy design process from a user’s point of view. Pioneered in the private sector, early adopters of the methodology include civil services in Australia, Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States as well as Singapore. Hitherto, there is not much evidence on how and for which purposes Design Thinking is used in the public sector.
For the purpose of this study, innovation adoption is framed in an institutionalist perspective addressing how concepts are translated to local contexts. The study rejects simplistic views of the innovation adoption process, in which an idea diffuses to another setting without adaptation. The translation perspective is fruitful because it captures the multidimensionality and ‘messiness’ of innovation adoption. More specifically, the overall research question addressed in this study is: How has Design Thinking been translated to the local context of the public sector organisation under investigation? And from a theoretical point of view: What can we learn from translation theory about innovation adoption processes?
Moreover, there are only few empirical studies of organisations adopting Design Thinking and most of them focus on private organisations. We know very little about how Design Thinking is embedded in public sector organisations. This study therefore provides further empirical evidence of how Design Thinking is used in a public sector organisation, especially with regards to its application to policy work which has so far been under-researched.
An exploratory single case study approach was chosen to provide an in-depth analysis of the innovation adoption process. Based on a purposive, theory-driven sampling approach, a Singaporean Ministry was selected because it represented an organisational setting in which Design Thinking had been embedded for several years, making it a relevant case with regard to the research question. Following a qualitative research design, 28 semi-structured interviews (45-100 minutes) with employees and managers were conducted. The interview data was triangulated with observations and documents, collected during a field research research stay in Singapore.
The empirical study of innovation adoption in a single organisation focused on the intra-organisational perspective, with the aim to capture the variations of translation that occur during the adoption process. In so doing, this study opened the black box often assumed in implementation studies. Second, this research advances translation studies not only by showing variance, but also by deriving explanatory factors. The main differences in the translation of Design Thinking occurred between service delivery and policy divisions, as well as between the first adopter and the rest of the organisation. For the intra-organisational translation of Design Thinking in the Singaporean Ministry the following five factors played a role: task type, mode of adoption, type of expertise, sequence of adoption, and the adoption of similar practices.
From an active labor market policy perspective, start-up subsidies for unemployed individuals are very effective in improving long-term labor market outcomes for participants. From a business perspective, however, the assessment of these public programs is less clear since they might attract individuals with low entrepreneurial abilities and produce businesses with low survival rates and little contribution to job creation, economic growth, and innovation. In this paper, we use a rich data set to compare participants of a German start-up subsidy program for unemployed individuals to a group of regular founders who started from nonunemployment and did not receive the subsidy. The data allows us to analyze their business performance up until 40 months after business formation. We find that formerly subsidized founders lag behind not only in survival and job creation, but especially also in innovation activities. The gaps in these business outcomes are relatively constant or even widening over time. Hence, we do not see any indication of catching up in the longer run. While the gap in survival can be entirely explained by initial differences in observable start-up characteristics, the gap in business development remains and seems to be the result of restricted access to capital as well as differential business strategies and dynamics. Considering these conflicting results for the assessment of the subsidy program from an ALMP and business perspective, policy makers need to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of such a strategy to find the right policy mix.
A rich literature links knowledge inputs with innovative outputs. However, most of what is known is restricted to manufacturing. This paper analyzes whether the three aspects involving innovative activity - R&D; innovative output; and productivity - hold for knowledge intensive services. Combining the models of Crepon et al. (1998) and of Ackerberg et al. (2015), allows for causal interpretation of the relationship between innovation output and labor productivity. We find that knowledge intensive services benefit from innovation activities in the sense that these activities causally increase their labor productivity. Moreover, the firm size advantage found for manufacturing in previous studies nearly disappears for knowledge intensive services.