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1 – 10 of over 74000Choo-Hui Park and Jin-Kyo Shin
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants of the performance of regional industrial technology development programs among the regional strategic industrial…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants of the performance of regional industrial technology development programs among the regional strategic industrial development program that the central government and Daegu metropolitan city jointly promoted between 2004 and 2012. Specifically, in this research, the authors are trying to identify the effects of R&D capabilities and technical development tasks on technological and managerial performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The dependent variables of this study are technical and economic performance. Technical performance, product and process innovation, economic performance, sales and export increases were measured using five-point Likert scales. The authors added the contribution of sales through technology development to economic performance. The independent variable is the company’s R&D capability, measured by the number of R&D staff compared to the average total number of employees from 2004 to 2012. The characteristics of the technology development tasks were measured by technical characteristics, market characteristics and collaborative research types. The technological characteristics were measured by seven factors, including technological change, technical difficulty, potential in commercialization, competition between domestic and foreign competitors, difficulty in introducing overseas technology and the technological gap. Market characteristics were largely divided into complexity, dynamics and competitiveness. The types of collaborative research were divided into whether or not there were collaborative research with the participation of large corporations. The control variables are firm size (number of employees) and firm age. Regression analysis was used to analyze the determinants of performance, and a difference analysis was conducted to determine the effect of collaborative research on performance.
Findings
The main determinants of the regional industrial technology development program performance are the characteristics of the technology development task rather than the internal R&D capability; moreover, the technical characteristics, complexity of the developed product market and participation of large corporations had significant effects on R&D capability. The R&D capacity of firms in internal R&D capacity had a significant effect only on the improvement of technology development ability. Therefore, R&D capacity, which is the main determinant of technology innovation, did not have a significant effect on the performance of short-term technology development tasks. Technological change, technological difficulty, competition between domestic and foreign competitors and the technological gap had positive effects on performance, excluding sales contributions. In addition, the complexity of the developed product market such as the diversification of demand, competitive product and sales distribution channels had positive influences on the performance of technology development programs, unlike dynamics and competitiveness. In this study, the authors cannot confirm the effect of collaborative research on the performance of the technology development programs, but they confirmed that collaborative research involving large corporations had a positive influence on performance.
Research limitations/implications
The results of the analysis of the determinants of regional industrial technology development programs suggest some implications in the future evaluation of these regional industrial technology development programs. It is necessary to review the application qualification and merit, advance review of the business plans and confirmation, an examination of the research results and performance of the applicants and a review of the technology and market situation of the project. For this, the authors suggest that the written review from the relevant technical experts be submitted to the evaluation committees. Also, when establishing regional industrial development programs, they should be evaluated thoroughly, including detailed information and contents about the technical and market characteristics of the local industry.
Originality/value
This research is one of the first to investigate the achievements of R&D support programs among regional industrial development programs in Korea. The results of this study can substantially contribute to the development and implementation of the R&D support policies of the central and local governments. Furthermore, the findings suggest guidelines for improving the performance of R&D support programs in the future. A theoretical model for enhancing the efficiency of government R&D support programs may be established, and an empirical analysis may be conducted to provide practical and academic implications for further research.
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Woo-Chul Cho, Kyung Young Lee and Sung-Byung Yang
The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of whether smartwatches will survive and gain their own niche within the consumer electronics market. Based on the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of whether smartwatches will survive and gain their own niche within the consumer electronics market. Based on the stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) framework, this study identifies and validates the impacts of both technological and fashion-related factors (interactivity, autonomy, visual aesthetics and self-expression) on product attachment towards smartwatches through user satisfaction and pleasure derived from their smartwatches.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected the survey data via online surveys from 198 respondents and tested measurement and structural models with the partial least square technique.
Findings
The authors found that both technological characteristics (interactivity and autonomy) and fashion-related characteristics (visual aesthetics and self-expression) have an impact on product attachment through pleasure.
Research limitations/implications
Several other important characteristics of traditional wrist-watches such as durability or workmanship are not considered in this study, but should be included in future studies. The three-item measure of autonomy may be insufficient for more sophisticated wearable devices in the future. In future studies, the impact of product attachment on users’ continued usage should be examined.
Practical implications
This study provides important practical implications for smartwatch makers interested in product development, as users were found to consider fashion-related characteristics to be as important as technological characteristics.
Originality/value
This study is the first study that considers both aesthetic and technological factors for IT acceptance in the context of wearable devices. Also, instead of traditional IT acceptance measures such as continued use, this study investigates users’ product attachment, which is more relevant to the case of wearable devices.
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Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in…
Abstract
Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.
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Jianan Li, Haemin Dennis Park and Jung H. Kwon
Drawing on the literature on technological acquisition and the knowledge-based view , this study examines how technological overlap between acquiring and target firms influences…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on the literature on technological acquisition and the knowledge-based view , this study examines how technological overlap between acquiring and target firms influences acquisition premiums. We further explore how the resulting synergies are contingent on the dynamic characteristics of the target firm, specifically its technology clockspeed and industry munificence. Technology clockspeed indicates the pace of technological evolution, reflecting internal dynamic resources, while industry munificence represents the abundance of external resources. These boundary conditions illustrate the dynamics of synergies, explaining their moderation effects on acquisition premiums.
Design/methodology/approach
We analyze a sample of 369 technological acquisitions by publicly traded U.S. firms between 1990 and 2011. To test our hypotheses, we used the ordinary least squares regression model with robust standard errors clustered by acquiring firms. In the robustness checks, we applied the generalized estimating equations to account for non-independent observations in our sample and verified that the results were robust to an alternative two-way clustering approach.
Findings
We suggest that a low level of technological overlap between an acquiring firm and its target firm leads the acquiring firm to offer a high acquisition premium because of the expected synergistic potential that evolves from combining two distant technological bases. We further find that this effect is contingent on the target firm's technology clockspeed and industry munificence. Specifically, the negative effect is amplified when target firms exhibit a rapid pace of technological evolution, whereas it is weakened when target firms operate in highly munificent industries characterized by robust growth and abundant resource flows.
Research limitations/implications
This study has several limitations, but it offers opportunities for future research. First, our sample is limited to domestic acquisitions between U.S. publicly traded firms, which may restrict generalizability. Cross-border acquisitions could reveal different dynamics, as technology leakage and national security concerns might make technological overlap a more sensitive factor. Additionally, private firms were not included, and their distinct strategic considerations could provide further insights. Future research could explore post-acquisition data to validate these synergies and expand the scope to include international contexts and private firms for a comprehensive analysis.
Practical implications
Our findings highlight important implications for managers in technology sector acquisitions. This study underscores the need for a thorough evaluation of target firms to avoid misjudging synergies. Low technological overlap can heighten expectations for value creation, making it crucial for executives to accurately assess potential synergies to prevent overestimation. Managers should consider both internal resources and external industry conditions when evaluating synergies. Ultimately, these insights help managers offer informed prices that reflect true strategic synergies, adopting effective valuation practices to mitigate risks of financial overpayments and poor post-merger performance.
Social implications
The social implications of our findings emphasize the broader impact of acquisition decisions on innovation and competition within the technology sector. By ensuring accurate valuation and avoiding overpayment, companies can allocate resources more efficiently, fostering sustainable growth and innovation. This diligent approach can reduce the risk of corporate failures.
Originality/value
This study makes two key theoretical contributions. First, it identifies technological overlap as a critical determinant of acquisition premiums in technological acquisitions, addressing gaps in the literature that focused on CEO characteristics and managerial attention. Second, it expands the theoretical framework by highlighting the dynamic nature of synergies, influenced by the target firm's technology clockspeed and industry munificence. By integrating both acquiring and target firm characteristics, this study provides a relational perspective on value creation, explaining why firms pay high premiums and offering a more comprehensive understanding of the strategic motivations in technological acquisitions.
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Sercan Ozcan and Ozcan Saritas
This study aims to develop the first Theory of Technological Response and Progress in Chaos (TRPC) and examine the case of technological development during the COVID-19 pandemic…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to develop the first Theory of Technological Response and Progress in Chaos (TRPC) and examine the case of technological development during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research objectives of this study were to: identify the key technologies that act as a response mechanism during the chaos event, specifically in the case of COVID-19; examine how technologies evolve, develop and diffuse in an immediate crisis and a chaotic environment; theorise various types and periods of technological response and progress during the emergence of chaos and the stages that unfold; and develop policy-oriented recommendations and establish technological foundations to address subsequent chaos events.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used the grounded theory as a methodology with a mixed-method approach that included quantitative and qualitative methods. The authors used the quantitative method to assist with the qualitative step to build the TRPC theory. Accordingly, this study integrated machine learning and text mining approaches to the qualitative data analysis following the steps of the grounded theory approach.
Findings
As a result of the TRPC theory development process, the authors identified three types of technologies (survival, essential and enhancement technologies) and five types of periods (stable, initial, survival-dominant, essential-dominant and enhancement-dominant periods) that are specific to chaos-technology interactions. The policy implications of this study demonstrate that a required technological base and know-how must be established before a chaotic event emerges.
Research limitations/implications
Concerning the limitations of this study, social media data has advantages over other data sources, such as the examination of dynamic areas and analyses of immediate responses to chaos. However, other researchers can examine publications and patent sources to augment the findings concerning scientific approaches and new inventions in relation to COVID-19 and other chaos-specific developments. The authors developed the TRPC theory by studying the COVID-19 pandemic, however, other researchers can utilise it to study other chaos-related conditions, such as chaotic events that are caused by natural disasters. Other scholars can investigate the technological response and progress pattern in other rapidly emerging chaotic events of an uncertain and complex nature to augment these findings.
Practical implications
Following the indications of the OECD (2021a) and considering the study conducted by the European Parliamentary Research Service (Kritikos, 2020), the authors identified the key technologies that are significant for chaos and COVID-19 response using machine learning and text intelligence approach. Accordingly, the authors mapped all technological developments using clustering approaches, and examined the technological progress within the immediate chaos period using social media data.
Social implications
The key policy implication of this study concerns the need for policymakers to develop policies that will help to establish the required technological base and know-how before chaos emerges. As a result, a rapid response can be implemented to mitigate the chaos and transform it into a competitive advantage. The authors also revealed that this recommendation overlaps with the model of dynamic capabilities in the literature (Teece and Pisano, 2003). Furthermore, this study recommends that nations and organisations establish a technological base that specifically includes technologies that bear 3A characteristics. These are the most crucial technologies for the survival- and essential-dominant stages. Moreover, the results of this study demonstrate that chaos accelerates technological progress through the rapid adoption and diffusion of technologies into different fields. Hence, nations and organisations should regard this rapid progress as an opportunity and establish the prior knowledge base and technologies before chaos emerges.
Originality/value
The authors have contributed to the chaos studies and the relationship between chaos and technological development by establishing the first theoretical foundation using the grounded theory approach, hereafter referred to as the TRPC theory. As part of the TRPC theory, the authors present three periods of technological response in the following sequence: survival technology, essential technology and enhancement technology. Moreover, this study illustrates the evolving technological importance and priorities as the periods of technological progress proceed under rapidly developing chaos.
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Jonathan Linton and Steven Walsh
The purpose of this paper is to consider whether the characteristics of a technology affect the type of learning mode used for acquiring abilities related to specific…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider whether the characteristics of a technology affect the type of learning mode used for acquiring abilities related to specific competencies. While technological competencies have a direct impact on firm performance for technology‐intensive start‐ups, few if any of these firms posses all the prerequisite competencies required for a given technology‐product‐market paradigm as the firm enters or remains over time in that market. Consequently, high tech entrepreneurial firms must learn, acquire and develop competencies initially and in response to the changing requirements of industry standard products.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper includes a study of all 35 high‐tech start‐ups in the semiconductor silicon industry using primary and secondary source data.
Findings
The characteristics of a technology affect which of ten different learning methods are chosen by a firm to acquire a competence. The study finds that risk, uncertainty, status, pervasiveness, observability, disruptiveness, and centrality are technological characteristics that influence the learning modes that are selected by a firm.
Originality/value
This is the first study to focus on the impact of technological characteristics on learning methods used. Practical and theoretical value in determining under what technological circumstances a learning method should be used to acquire and develop skills with a new technology.
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Sukanlaya Sawang, Cameron Newton and Kieren Jamieson
E‐learning is an organizationally risky investment given the cost and poor levels of adoption by users. In order to gain a better understanding of this problem, the aim of this…
Abstract
Purpose
E‐learning is an organizationally risky investment given the cost and poor levels of adoption by users. In order to gain a better understanding of this problem, the aim of this paper is to conduct a study into the use of e‐learning in a rail organization.
Design/methodology/approach
Using an online survey, employees of a rail‐sector organization were questioned about their use and likelihood of adoption of e‐learning. This study explores the factors that affect the way in which learners experience and perceive such systems. Using statistical analysis, 12 hypotheses are tested and explored. Relationships between learning satisfaction, intention to adopt, and the characteristics of e‐learning systems were established.
Findings
The study found that e‐learning characteristics can buffer the relationship between learner characteristics and intention to adopt further e‐learning in the future. Further, the paper found that high levels of support can compensate individuals who are low in technological efficacy to adopt e‐learning.
Research limitations/implications
The cross‐sectional design of the study and its focus on measuring intention to adopt as opposed to actual adoption are both limitations. Future research using longitudinal design and research employing a time lag design measuring actual adoption as well as intention are recommended.
Practical implications
From a practical perspective, organizations can focus on the actual content and authenticity of the learning experience delivered by the e‐learning system to significantly impact how employees will perceive and use e‐learning in the future. Low technological efficacy individuals tend not to adopt new technology. Instead of changing individuals’ personalities, organizations can implement supportive policies and practices which would lead to higher e‐learning adoption rate among low efficacy individuals.
Originality/value
The study integrates technology adoption and learning literatures in developing enablers for e‐learning in organizations. Further, this study collects data from rail employees, and therefore the findings are practical to an industry.
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Firms increasingly diversify their technological competencies to achieve different strategic objectives. This study aims to explore the impacts of technological knowledge…
Abstract
Purpose
Firms increasingly diversify their technological competencies to achieve different strategic objectives. This study aims to explore the impacts of technological knowledge characteristics on patenting choices for inventions created by subsidiaries in an uncertain and fast changing environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The data used in this study are patents granted to the world largest firms by the USPTO for inventions attributable to their subsidiaries in China between 1996 and 2005. In addition, the patent data from State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China are used for the matching in terms of filing patent applications in both USA and China for a same piece of technology. A discrete Logit model is used to examine the effects of technological distance and categories on Chinese patent application and international priority.
Findings
The findings suggest that firms have priority to seek international patent protection, instead of host country protection, for valuable subsidiary inventions in their background and marginal technological fields. In addition, a firm may seek host country legal protection simultaneously for inventions built upon knowledge from technologically distant fields.
Research limitations/implications
As we are more interested in protecting technological knowledge, the protection of other types of knowledge, such as organizational knowledge, deserves further research attentions. Moreover, future research may expand current study by including small and medium firms, as well as firms in other developing economies.
Practical implications
While the economic and legal environment in China may have evolved since studied period, the results have practical implications for firms in other developing countries that are at an early stage of catching-up or those in a host location featuring a similar uncertain and fast changing environment. In particular, the study suggests that foreign firm managers would have more strategic choices of patenting than local firms in the host country. For strategically important inventions bridging complex knowledge from different technological areas, firms could seek protection in multiple countries simultaneously, including both home country and other major markets. Furthermore, managers could choose whether or not to protect a particular category of technologies in host country depending on value of the technology to the firm and the IPR protection of host country. Finally, the approach of looking at knowledge-level characteristics, which can be easily measured through readily available intra-firm information, provides managers with a practical and useful tool to make these strategic decisions.
Originality/value
This study represents an effort to extend the understanding on how foreign MNCs could generate and appropriate valuable technologies in an uncertain and fast-changing environment. In particular, the authors focus on how MNCs could use different international patenting patterns to benefit from subsidiary inventions. Whereas previous literature mainly focuses on country-level and firm-level determinants, this study approaches the topic through the lens of knowledge-level factors. By studying how knowledge characteristics determine firm strategic behaviors, the authors offer additional justifications of the knowledge-based view of the firm. Meanwhile, the findings enrich our understanding of an important component of MNC’s global strategies in managing their technologies through selectively patenting in different locations. Firms pursue diversified technologies for different strategic objectives. As subsidiary inventions become a very important source of firm competitiveness, MNCs have to face the trade-off between higher patenting costs and the appropriability of subsidiary generated knowledge. The findings suggest that it is not necessary for MNCs to protect all subsidiary inventions in host countries.
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This paper aims to present the results of a research on technological innovation process with the feature of industries in developing countries including Iran.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present the results of a research on technological innovation process with the feature of industries in developing countries including Iran.
Design/methodology/approach
Technological innovation characteristics were re‐conceptualised in the context of developing countries and the extent to which a firm's internal factors, its networking and its environmental factors, including national innovation system, can influence its technology innovation behaviour were examined empirically.
Findings
The results address several policy implications, which, although Iran‐specific, may nevertheless be transferable to other developing countries.
Originality/value
To some extent fills the current gap in the determinants of technological innovation and the essential factors for successful industrial innovation in developing countries in general and Middle Eastern countries in particular.
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Mercedes Segarra-Ciprés and Juan Carlos Bou-Llusar
This paper aims to analyze the extent to which the influence of external knowledge search on innovation performance is contingent on both a firm’s innovation strategy and the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the extent to which the influence of external knowledge search on innovation performance is contingent on both a firm’s innovation strategy and the industry context in which it operates.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts a contingent approach that centers analysis on the influence of situational factors, either exogenous or endogenous to the organization, as determinants of the external knowledge search in promoting the firm’s innovation performance. The empirical study is based on a large sample of 18,955 firms operating in 29 industries that belong to 13 European countries.
Findings
This analysis reveals that a broad knowledge search is more effective for firms that innovate in new goods, while a deeper knowledge search is more effective for firms that innovate in new services. The results of this study also indicate that external knowledge search varies across industries, with search depth being used more in industries in which the knowledge development process is cumulative and appropriable, while the external breadth search is preferred in industries with a high level of technological opportunity.
Originality/value
The current approach implies recognizing that the knowledge search strategies may not always be effective, and that firms should align the search strategy to both internal and external factors. Analyzing the influence of these factors can help managers to better choose the type of knowledge search (e.g. intensive or extensive search) that best aligns with the firm’s innovation objectives.
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