A VALLEY OF DEATH IN THE INNOVATION SEQUENCE: AN ECONOMIC INVESTIGATION (original) (raw)

The Economics and Econometrics of Innovation

2000

This special issue arose from the 10th international ADRES conference which was held at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, June 3-5, 1996. The topic of the conference was "The Economics and Econometrics of Innovation" and over fifty papers were presented during the course of the three days. 5 This foreword briefly describes the contributions of the twenty-two articles making up this special issue, situating them within the major body of literature which has been built up around this topic during the past two decades.

Product Innovation and Survival in a High-Tech Industry

Review of Industrial Organization, 2009

We investigate the relationship between product innovation and firm survival for a sample of 121 firms in a high-tech industry. We find that location near the technological frontier is an important determinant of firm survival. Firms that are located near the frontier are also more likely to be acquired than to exit by liquidation if they cannot survive as free-standing enterprises. This suggests that product location in the technology space acts as a signal of firm quality. Greater R&D efforts increase the probability of surviving; in the event that the firm does exit, however, its R&D efforts do not significantly influence whether it exits via acquisition or exits via liquidation.

Unintended and undesirable consequences of innovation

2009

Although innovation is one of the most commonly mentioned concepts in social science unintended undesirable consequences of innovation are rarely studied. This study does a literature review of all articles in the EBSCO database, with innovation in the title and which study undesirable consequences. We found only 26 such articles; 1 per 1000, a proportion that has not changed since the 1960's. An author survey on why there is still so little research on this issue was therefore also done and is presented. The survey ranks suggested hypotheses and finds that the most important limiting factors are pro-innovation bias among researchers and vested interests of funding agencies, which cause change agents and researchers to consider mainly an innovation's intended desirable consequences. A theoretical framework for studying undesirable consequences of innovation based on diffusion theory, Robert Merton's sociology and stakeholder theory is developed and applied on the selection of articles. A combination of the two analyses suggests a separation of discourses. Unintended and undesirable consequences of innovations are discussed in other scientific discourses and with other theoretical frameworks. We argue that the current separation of discourses is potentially dangerous for society as a whole.