Papers by Marcelo Cano-Kollmann
ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography
In this paper we explore patenting activity in two peripheral economies (Portugal and Greece), to... more In this paper we explore patenting activity in two peripheral economies (Portugal and Greece), to analyze the dispersion of inventor networks. Inventor networks are key conduits through which knowledge flows. Therefore, they can be critical in the catch-up process of peripheral economies – economies that belong to the group of rich countries but have weaker innovation systems. As global value chains fragment into geographically dispersed activities, opportunities arise for peripheral economies to participate in global innovation processes. However, different types of innovation activities have distinct network properties. More codifiable innovative activities can be carried out through collaboration by internationally dispersed teams. On the other hand, activities that are more dependent on tacit knowledge are likely to require the co-location of knowledge workers. This implies that innovation that relies mostly on tacit knowledge will provide limited connectivity benefits for perip...
Review of Managerial Science, 2021
Technological change that arises outside an industry and is used within it affects entrepreneursh... more Technological change that arises outside an industry and is used within it affects entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystems, but remains understudied. In this project we assess the role of financial technology (fintech) innovation in the process of firm entry into the investment advisory sector, bearing in mind that the core of this innovation arises from technological development that is external to the industry. Our analysis of a sector of the U.S.-based financial services industry indicates that fintech innovation has contributed to a substantial increase in the rate of entrepreneurial entry into the industry. More importantly, we show that this innovation has an asymmetric effect on the firms in the industry, strengthening startups and smaller firms while increasing competitive pressure on larger incumbents. Our findings contribute to the literature by exemplifying that external technology shocks can change market structure by strengthening entrepreneurial ecosystems.
Financial Management, 2020
We investigate the role of privatization on the dynamics of innovation. We hypothesize that priva... more We investigate the role of privatization on the dynamics of innovation. We hypothesize that privatized firms will focus on a narrower set of technologies as a response to increased pressure for profitability and short-term results, and that privatization will also increase the degree to which they engage in collaborations with external inventors, both locally and abroad. Using a sample of privatized firms in 25 countries, we find strong evidence supporting these hypotheses. Importantly, we find that overall patenting activities and, in particular, overseas collaboration in technological innovation, are associated with greater firm performance, but only after privatization.
Competitiveness Review: An International Business Journal, 2020
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of knowledge creation in a ke... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of knowledge creation in a key technology field, i.e. information and communication technology (ICT), to determine whether it is driven by domestic firms and inventors, or whether the traction is provided by international connections to global innovation networks. The authors argue that the geographical pattern of international connectivity is characterized by local concentration and strong connections to foreign multinational enterprises, for which a large number of inventors in Spain work. Design/methodology/approach The analysis was done using data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office database, covering almost 40 years, ranging from 1976 to 2014. The authors used patents in the ICT sector connected to either inventors or organizations located in Spain. The authors analyzed collaboration by the location of both inventors and assignees, and the connections established across borders. Second, the autho...
California Management Review, 2017
What happens when firms in an oligopolistic industry find themselves lagging behind in a potentia... more What happens when firms in an oligopolistic industry find themselves lagging behind in a potentially dominant technology? If R&D costs are significant and catch-up is key, technology laggards must turn to each other and open up their innovation processes in order to survive. This article uses a real options framework to explain the motives of bitter rivals to engage in collaborative relationships in order to catch up with industry leaders in specific technologies. It shows that ex ante, their interests converge and this lays the foundation of “catch-up alliances”: competitors open up to catch up. However, they often bring vastly different resources to the alliance and, in the process of cooperation, what they learn may cause their interests to diverge. Furthermore, some participants may discount a technology trajectory on the basis of what they learn, and terminate efforts in that area. Therefore, the “road not taken” may be a valuable outcome of the open innovation alliance. This a...
Journal of International Management, 2018
Innovation is increasingly the outcome of global networks that connect geographically dispersed k... more Innovation is increasingly the outcome of global networks that connect geographically dispersed knowledge centers. The international business (IB) literature has developed a sophisticated understanding of the multinational enterprise (MNE) as an organization generates value by integrating knowledge across national borders. We advance this literature by making three key arguments. First we highlight the three megatrends that shape the strategy of the modern MNE: the disaggregation of the value chain into ever narrower activities, the migration of value to knowledge-intensive intangibles and the rise of huge emerging markets like China and India, whose domestic firms can grow to enormous size before venturing abroad. Second, we trace these three megatrends to falling spatial transaction costs, enabled in the main, by digitalization. Third, we draw on earlier research on the generic forms of global linkages, arguing that the IB literature has limited itself to organizational pipelines, while paying relatively little attention to personal relationships. The latter are particularly important in the genesis of both entrepreneurship and radical innovation, but are particularly sensitive to the anti-globalization policies. An environment where technology continues to reduce spatial transaction costs, while policy raises them, strengthens large MNEs at the expense of innovative international new ventures.
Managing and leveraging innovation and knowledge generation are key components of value creation ... more Managing and leveraging innovation and knowledge generation are key components of value creation by firms in a globally connected world. In this project we analyze innovative activity in the over a 35-year period (1975-2010) to understand the nature and extent of international connectedness of U.S. knowledge networks. Our analysis parses a comprehensive dataset comprising the population of USPTO patents to extract information on inventor co-location. We use this to generate a knowledge map of inventor networks for each of the top 35 Core-Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs), tracking innovative activity and connectedness across geography and over time. We find that in the 1975-90 period, inventor numbers and growth rates tracked overall population numbers, so that the large population centers (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia) accounted for the largest shares. However, in the decades between 1990 and 2010, inventor numbers rose most rapidly in West and South, so that by the end of the period the dominant innovative centers of the country were the Silicon
Multinational Business Review, 2016
Purpose In the modern knowledge-intensive economy, a nation’s competitiveness depends on the abil... more Purpose In the modern knowledge-intensive economy, a nation’s competitiveness depends on the ability of its constituent firms to innovate. Extant research in national systems of innovation highlights institutions and public policies toward innovation as key determinants that affect firms’ innovation activities. This paper aims to widen the investigation by arguing that co-inventor connectivity allows firms to access the most tacit knowledge within global innovation systems. Therefore, it is one of the key factors that underpin a nation’s ability to develop and sustain its competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach Using a data set of 406,168 patents from US Patent and Trademark Office during the period of 1975-2004, this study analyzed the Japanese system of innovation through co-inventor networks. Findings Surprisingly, the authors found that compared to other advanced countries such as Germany and Denmark, the Japanese innovation system is quite closed. Originality/value The dim...
Industrial and Corporate Change, 2016
This study explores empirically the relationship between publicly funded schemes to support innov... more This study explores empirically the relationship between publicly funded schemes to support innovation and the “openness” of firms’ innovation practices. Using survey data from more than 5000 firms in 29 European countries, we find that support policies for innovation, both monetary and non-monetary, are related to an increase in the degree of openness of individual firms, both in terms of the number of external partners with whom they collaborate and the number of open innovation activities they perform. However, the relationship between support and openness seems to be negatively moderated by the existence of previous innovative activity within the firm. Public support has more impact on less innovative firms and less influence when the firm is already innovative, which could potentially indicate the existence of crowding-out effects. Additionally, our results suggest that non-financial support is more strongly linked to openness than financial support. For policy makers facing salient budgetary constraints, this implies that institutions and government policies could potentially play a more important role than money in fostering open innovation. This article contributes to the open innovation literature by tapping into the underexplored question of the role of public policies and has crucial implications for academics and policy makers.
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2015
We examine whether political connections protect firms from losses resulting from adverse policie... more We examine whether political connections protect firms from losses resulting from adverse policies enacted by governments to whom the firms are connected. We examine this question in the context of Argentina’s partial nationalization of publicly traded firms in 2008. We find that partially nationalized firms in Argentina incurred much greater losses than firms in a control group. Among the partially nationalized firms, those with political connections were hurt relatively less than non-connected firms. However, political connections lost all of their value in firms where the government acquired a very large ownership stake. We also find that foreign ownership offered firms no protection against losses stemming from partial nationalization. Our results suggest that in unfavorable policy environment, firms may not be able to rely on political connections for protection.
Journal of International Business Studies, 2016
The innovation-driven multinational enterprise (MNE) has dominated international business (IB) re... more The innovation-driven multinational enterprise (MNE) has dominated international business (IB) research for several decades now. Beginning with the awardwinning research of Dunning, there have been calls for IB researchers to rediscover the importance of locations. Recent work has emphasized that firms and locations co-evolve with one another, as knowledge is transferred and leveraged across space. Integrating insights from IB and economic geography, we propose a research agenda for IB scholarship on spatially dispersed yet connected innovation processes. This agenda is premised on the current reality of global value chains in which mobile (MNEs, people) and immobile (locations) factors interact. The research perspective suggested recognizes that locations are host to increasingly "fine-sliced" activities, whose nature and composition are continuously changed by MNE-driven innovation processes. As today's specialized activities become tomorrow's standardized ones, the shifting distribution of global value creation depends on the pattern of international knowledge connectivity.
Industrial and Corporate Change, 2015
ABSTRACT
Competitiveness Review, 2017
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how firms achieve competitiveness by implementing... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how firms achieve competitiveness by implementing design-driven innovation. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a detailed longitudinal analysis of the design innovation underpinning the Norwegian furniture industry. Using a data set spanning 40 years (1976-2015) of design patents by both Norwegian firms and inventors, the authors map the coinventor connectivity of the design-innovation clusters of Norway, both within the country and with foreign locations. Findings Using network analysis, the authors find that most of the rise of co-inventor connectivity within Norwegian furniture industry’s design innovation is occurring within the country. More surprisingly, the leading firms and star inventors are less likely to collaborate internationally, i.e. they are characterized by greater innovative “lock-in”. Research limitations/implications The exploration of all the potential reasons for the “lock-in” in design innovation of the No...
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2014
This study explores empirically the relationship between publicly funded schemes to support innov... more This study explores empirically the relationship between publicly funded schemes to support innovation and the "openness" of firms' innovation practices. Using survey data from more than 5000 firms in 29 European countries, we find that support policies for innovation, both monetary and nonmonetary, are related to an increase in the degree of openness of individual firms, both in terms of the number of external partners with whom they collaborate and the number of open innovation activities they perform. However, the relationship between support and openness seems to be negatively moderated by the existence of previous innovative activity within the firm. Public support has more impact on less innovative firms and less influence when the firm is already innovative, which could potentially indicate the existence of crowding-out effects. Additionally, our results suggest that nonfinancial support is more strongly linked to openness than financial support. For policy makers facing salient budgetary constraints, this implies that institutions and government policies could potentially play a more important role than money in fostering open innovation. This article contributes to the open innovation literature by tapping into the underexplored question of the role of public policies and has crucial implications for academics and policy makers.
The innovation-driven multinational enterprise (MNE) has dominated international business (IB) re... more The innovation-driven multinational enterprise (MNE) has dominated international business (IB) research for several decades now. Beginning with the award-winning research of Dunning, there have been calls for IB researchers to rediscover the importance of locations. Recent work has emphasized that firms and locations co-evolve with one another, as knowledge is transferred and leveraged across space. Integrating insights from IB and economic geography, we propose a research agenda for IB scholarship on spatially dispersed yet connected innovation processes. This agenda is premised on the current reality of global value chains in which mobile (MNEs, people) and immobile (locations) factors interact. The research perspective suggested recognizes that locations are host to increasingly " fine-sliced " activities, whose nature and composition are continuously changed by MNE-driven innovation processes. As today's specialized activities become tomorrow's standardized ones, the shifting distribution of global value creation depends on the pattern of international knowledge connectivity.
Analyzing the comprehensive 35-year patent data set associated with the Detroit auto cluster we c... more Analyzing the comprehensive 35-year patent data set associated with the Detroit auto cluster we confirm that innovation in clusters can increase in spite of a long-term decline in manufacturing activity. The “stickiness” of local knowledge is sustained by: (i) increasing technological specialization at the local level and (ii) growing connectedness to global centers of excellence. The very forces that bring about the decline in manufacturing in a cluster sustain their position as a global center of innovative excellence.
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Papers by Marcelo Cano-Kollmann