The purpose with this thesis was to examine the most significant factors that affect the number of patents applications submitted on a municipality level in Sweden, with the objective to find the most significant of them. Three factors was chosen and analyzed more closely. The three factors was, investments in R&D made by firms, share of human capital and investments in R&D made by universities. Theses factors was tested against the dependent variable patent applications in three hypothesis and a stepwise regression model was conducted, with the objective to find the most significant variable. The result of the study, shows that not all of the factors had a positive effect on the number of patent applications, further the study indicated that the most significant factor for a municipality in order to have a high number of patent applications, was to have a high share of human capital.

The differences between firms‘ book values and market values has drawn attention to investigate what factors are causing this phenomenon. A considerable amount of research was dedicated to investigating the association between firms‘ innovative activity, which results in the patenting of new products or services and firms market value in the context of United States. However, not many studies of similar kind are documented in the Swedish firms context. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the previous studies, and analyze whether and how patents and R&D are associated with Swedish firms‘ market values. For this study the cross-section and time-series data were collected from publicly listed Swedish companies’ financial statements and the Amadeus database. Investigation begins with an attempt to find out whether R&D and patents are associated. Finally, the hypothesis is tested whether patents are positively associated with Swedish firms’ market values. The results partially support the expectations. There was no strong statistical association found between R&D and patents, however in the final model patents were found to be positively associated with Swedish firms’ market values. A conclusion can be drawn that the patent is a powerful device providing incentives for innovation, while innovation in products and services ensures that our quality of life is increasing.

The first essay titled “Fundamental Sources of Long-run Labour Productivity Improvements in Canada” examines the importance of Research and Development activities, as well as the stock of public infrastructure, and economic openness as sources of growth in labour productivity in the Canadian economy within the last four decades. The second paper titled “R&D Spillovers, Innovation, and Entry” extends a theoretical framework to analyze the impact of R&D spillovers on entry and the resulting equilibrium market structure. It is shown that the degree of spillovers plays a fundamental role on the number of firms entering the market, their R&D activities, and social welfare. The third paper titled “The Search for New Drugs: A Theory of R&D in the Pharmaceutical Industry” uses a dynamic model of optimal patent design and in the presence of information externalities studies the evolution of technological progress in the context of a pharmaceutical industry.

The first essay titled “Fundamental Sources of Long-run Labour Productivity Improvements in Canada” examines the importance of Research and Development activities, as well as the stock of public infrastructure, and economic openness as sources of growth in labour productivity in the Canadian economy within the last four decades. The second paper titled “R&D Spillovers, Innovation, and Entry” extends a theoretical framework to analyze the impact of R&D spillovers on entry and the resulting equilibrium market structure. It is shown that the degree of spillovers plays a fundamental role on the number of firms entering the market, their R&D activities, and social welfare. The third paper titled “The Search for New Drugs: A Theory of R&D in the Pharmaceutical Industry” uses a dynamic model of optimal patent design and in the presence of information externalities studies the evolution of technological progress in the context of a pharmaceutical industry.

In the telecom manufacturing industry, the business environment is characterized by high competition and challenging tasks. To be able to thrive in this environment, companies have to work hard in order to develop innovations in the form of products, services and solutions to the marketplace. R&D departments, in collaboration with other functional departments and external agents, become the main engine for innovation development. R&D managers face the difficult challenge of effectively managing innovation projects, which are surrounded by high complexity, uncertainty and risk. To help address this issue, this thesis explores four successful innovation projects within four distinct international telecom technology suppliers, namely Nortel, Alvarion, ZTE and ST-Ericsson, to identify the factors that directly influenced the success behind each innovation. To do so, a comprehensive study of the telecom innovation system was conducted; this study enabled the researchers to devise a framework that describes the innovation process in the industry and that highlights the value of the marketing department, the importance of early customer involvement and that clearly demonstrates the self-sufficiency of today’s telecom manufacturing department. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of the human factor and the substantial value of nurturing staff and fostering different roles within the innovation team, such as that of the gatekeeper, entrepreneur, technology specialist and senior manager. R&D management literature lists over 250 different success factors; the framework included in this thesis presents only the 60 factors that are relevant to the industry. These factors are categorized in two ways: (1) As either order winners or order qualifiers and (2) as either being affected or unaffected by the innovation type. The first categorization serves to identify 25 factors that can become a source of competitive advantage if managed accordingly and 35 factors that are considered to be the status quo of the industry, and while very important are not a source of competitive advantage. The second categorization brings awareness to the R&D manager by identifying nine factors, namely: the source of the idea, access to information, the probability of commercial success, the comprehensiveness of the requirements, newness to firm, market strength, innovation receptiveness, degree of innovation and supportive environment. The research showed that these nine factors are directly affected by the innovation type (incremental, architectural or radical).

With the development of globalization, increasingly more companies began to use worldwide resources to do product or service research and development. Multinational corporations (MNC) became to more rely on their subunits that located in different countries to conduct innovations. As a result, keep a good knowledge transfer between headquarter and subunits or among peer subunits is crucial for MNC to operate R & D activities. This study explores the relationship between knowledge transfer and R & D operations through two knowledge transfer mechanisms and three categories of R & D configurations.   By applying the qualitative strategy with a focus on four case companies (three are from Sweden, one is from China), we conduct a cross case analysis and the result shows that both expatriate management policy and communication frequency are very important knowledge transfer mechanisms for MNC to keep a good knowledge transfer in global R & D operations. In terms of expatriate management policy, it is very important for MNC sending engineers from headquarter to subunits or between peer subunits in order to transfer technology knowledge and facilitate R & D operations. Moreover, send top managers from headquarter to subunits could also help transfer process knowledge and keep overall control of subunits. In terms of communication frequency, if MNC employs a concentrated development in headquarter (or R & D center), it is very important to maintain a frequent communication between headquarter and subunits so as to keep a smooth knowledge transfer between them. And if MNC applies a dispersed research and development configuration, keep a frequent communication between peer subunits is crucial. In addition, this study also found certain connections between innovation process and R & D configurations.

Taiwanese businesses assumed an important role in global supply chain after World War II. But numerous Taiwanese enterprises turn themselves into ODM-oriented ones for more profit because OEM only generates micro profit after companies from China and other developing countries have forged into this market since 1990s. The key to successful transformation lies in capability of independent design and development product. Therefore, developing and improving the capability of R&D talent is the priority to transformation into ODM-oriented company and critical for Taiwan to replay a major role in global supply chain. Therefore, based on competency, we adopted Fuzzy Delphi Method and Analytic Network Process (ANP) to design expert questionnaire and invited R&D experts in ODM-oriented companies to provide advice. The aim was to discover the necessary competencies of R&D employees and weight of each competency in order to construct a competency selection model for R&D employees in ODM-oriented companies and to serve as a reference point for more efficient selection and development of R&D workers. 1.Applying Fuzzy Delphi Method to find out critical competency indicators that is the source of constructing competency selection hierarchy. 2.Applying ANP which is characterized by analysis dependence on or feedback of each indicator to calculate the weight of each competency indicator and constuct a weighted competency selection model for R&D employees in ODM-oriented companies. 3.Confirming that dependence on or feedback of each indicator influences the weight of each indicator. 4.Proving that competency selection model for R&D employees effectively select qualified employees.

During the business cycle, how the firms' marketing expenses affect the stock returns vary with economy condition. Although prior studies have focused on how change in advertising and research and development (R&D) affect firms during recessions, those studies ignored the interaction between advertising and R&D. Besides, prior studies in the economics field find that the macroeconomics factors will affect firm performance. Therefore, this paper investigates which macroeconomics factor will affect firms spending on advertising and R&D to increase stock return of firms during recessions based on controlling the interaction between advertising and R&D. We match the sample of NYSE-, AMEX-, and NASDAQ-listed firms that are specified as ordinary common shares with monthly returns from the Center for Research in Securities Prices (CRSP) and with advertising and R&D from the yearly merged COMPUSTAT data for 1990 to 2010. In addition, we use the Markov switching model to identify economy condition. Meanwhile we use the portfolio analysis to classify the firms into four portfolios and though the macroeconomic model to discuss which factors impact the excess return. This study finds that controlling the condition of R&D-intensive, the default spread and growth in money supply will both affect high advertising firms, more than low advertising firm in recessions. Moreover, controlling the condition of advertising-intensive, the default spread and growth in money supply will both affect high R&D firms more than low R&D firms in recessions. These consequences may result from that during the recession, the default spread will increase and the same time the investors will not prefer high advertising and R&D firms (risky assets). On the other hand, when government implements expansionary monetary policy, investors will prefer high advertising and R&D firms. In summary, this study discuss how the macroeconomic factors affect the excess return of portfolio during recessions based on controlling the interaction between advertising and R&D. Firms could use these results to improve the performances and increase the stock returns by adjusting their spending on advertising and R&D during recessions.

In this dissertation, I develop frameworks and models capturing the effects of marketing capital and R and D capital on firm growth and sustained membership in the Fortune 500 cohort. Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and industrial organization theories, in the first essay, I develop hypotheses on the relationships among a firm's marketing capital, R and D capital, key firm-specific and industry-specific factors and survival as a Fortune 500 firm. I test these hypotheses using a proportional hazard model on a uniquely compiled large panel data set of manufacturing Fortune 500 firms over a 25-year period. The results show that while both marketing and R and D capitals have significant and direct positive associations with survival as a Fortune 500 firm, the moderating effects of industry growth on the relationships between marketing capital and survival as a Fortune 500 firm and between R and D capital and survival as a Fortune 500 firm is asymmetric. It is positive for marketing capital but negative for R and D capital. Thus, to retain firms‘ position on the Fortune 500 list, managers may want to consider investing more in marketing (R and D) when industry growth is high (low). In the second essay, I examine the effect of advertising capital and R and D capital, their complementarities, and their interactions with the environmental contingency factors of dynamism, munificence, and complexity on sales growth, profit growth, and market value growth. Using dynamic panel data analysis of 185 firms over an eight year period (2000-2007), I uncover a nuanced understanding of how advertising and R and D capital affect these performance measures. My results show that both R and D capital and advertising capital directly affect sales growth, but neither has a direct impact on profit growth. Furthermore, R and D capital has a direct impact on market value growth. I also find that while the interaction of advertising capital and R and D capital does not directly affect sales growth or market value growth, it has a positive direct impact on profit growth. Finally, I find that environmental contingencies matter. For instance, environmental dynamism negatively (positively) moderates the relationship between R and D (advertising) capital and sales growth.

Abstract In an ideal world, the agents would write a contingent contract specifying exactly which outcome is to be implemented in each state. However, the bounded rationality, the contracting agents may be unable to define ex ante the contingencies, and the transaction costs, the costs result from the difficulty of foreseeing contingencies, writing and enforcing contract, will lead to R&D cooperative contracts incomplete essentially. When R&D cooperative contracts are incomplete, the contracting agents face the hazard of ex post opportunistic behavior: each agent may engage in inefficient R&D investment in an attempt to ¡§hold up¡¨ other agents and to obtain a large share of the available quasi-rents. The purposes of this dissertation are to show that the mechanism design to the hold-up problem may implement in incomplete R&D cooperative contracts. In chapter II, we assume that the agents commit not to renegotiate ex post and set up a sequential mechanism. Under this sequential mechanism, the seller (university) sends massages (seller¡¦s true type) to the buyer (firm) who receives the massages and decides whether he will challenge them. The monetary transfer from the buyer to the seller and the quality of trade are the function of agents¡¦ true type. The great merit of this mechanism is that the seller and the buyer play the subgame perfect equilibrium in which both of them announce truthfully. We release the assumption that the contracting agents commit not to renegotiate ex post in chapter III. Under the current legal system, there is nothing to stop buyers or sellers to prevent renegotiation of their original contract. More importantly, the agents will rationally anticipate any renegotiation and this will change the equilibrium strategies of the mechanism itself. According to proposition 3-2, we demonstrate that the direct-revelation mechanism with Rubinsteinian bargaining game induced buyer and seller both announcing honestly but the R&D investment offered by agents were lower than the first best. To avoid the effect generated by renegotiation, some economists argued that the contract in which either buyer or seller has all the ex post bargaining power can induce efficient investment, and thus can implement the first best. This argument contrasts to Aghion and Tirole(1986), for they argued that whether the buyer or the seller should own the innovation hinged on the marginal efficiency of the buyer¡¦s investment compared with that of the seller¡¦s effort. Hence, we accept the property rights concepts proposed by Barzel(1989) and show that the agents can actually raise their payoff by using a mechanism in which performs the function analogous to the real option.