R&amp;D organizations of today must constantly seek ways to becomemore efficient in order to stay competitive. To accomplish thismany organizations turn to process management approaches suchas lean product development. But how does the use of processmanagement influence the creativity of the people in theorganization? How will they manage both the creative search andexploration of future opportunities and the efficient exploitation ofcurrent offerings simultaneously? Previous research has shown thatcompanies often fail in this quest and that exploration is at risk ofbeing neglected in favour of exploitation where the feedback andreturn on invested work are more immediate.This thesis sets out to study how the combination of exploration interms of creativity, and exploitation in terms of processmanagement, plays out at Scania, a developer and manufacturer ofheavy trucks. The research builds on data collected by means of aquestionnaire study where a large part of the R&amp;D organizationparticipated. The results reveal surprisingly positive relationshipsbetween process management and creativity. Firstly, the existenceof clear routines showed a positive relationship with several aspectsof ideation. The results, however, stress the importance of havingdynamic routines where the organization is open to changing theexisting routines when needed. Secondly, strong demands ondelivery precision was positively related to the creation of novelideas in the industrialization process. Thirdly, the use of continuousimprovement efforts was positively related to aspects of creativity.These results indicate that routinization can benefit creativity andthat mangers should encourage the mapping and continuousimprovement of routines. Furthermore, goals for innovationinfluence how much time is spent on exploratory activities.Managers with innovation aspirations should therefore make clearto the organization that innovation is an important part of theoperations. Finally, managers and employees should formulatespecific product innovation goals and demand high deliveryprecision also for deliverables of exploratory nature. / <p>QC 20121130</p>

By using dynamic panel data model, this thesi selects the samples of large and medium indstrial enterprises in 2002 to 2011, empirically analyzin the impact of government scientific and technological subsidies on R&amp;D investment of enterprises.

Historical research on initial public offerings (IPOs) presents strong evidence of underpricing. This study investigates if there is a relationship between underpricing of IPOs and pre-IPO research and development (R&amp;D) activities within a company. According to the literature, R&amp;D activities have characteristics of information asymmetry and uncertainty, which can increase underpricing. This study’s sample consists of 231 Swedish companies listed on Nasdaq Stockholm and Nasdaq First North between January 2010 and December 2020. Sweden has a strong association with innovation activities such as R&amp;D, and the country’s IPO market has snowballed in recent years, making it a suitable context for the study. To investigate the relationship between underpricing and R&amp;D activities, the study uses an OLS regression. The findings indicate that R&amp;D positively affects underpricing, which is in line with previous studies on other markets. In addition, the study finds evidence of Firm Size, Offer Size, Shares Offered, VCPE backed, and Firm Leverage related to underpricing.

Tax incentives on research and development (R&amp;D) are an important and widely used policyinstrument to elevate business enterprise expenditure on R&amp;D (BERD). In times of economicdistress, firms tend to reduce their R&amp;D investments, although it is crucial for long-termeconomic growth to keep those at a stable level. To evaluate the suitability for such policygoals, this paper investigates the relationship between the pre-existing level of R&amp;D taxincentives and BERD during times of economic crisis.Country-level data from the OECD member states is used to investigate the mentionedrelationship for three times of economic distress: the early 2000s recession, the GreatRecession, and the European sovereign debt crisis. Separate cross-sectional data sets arecreated and analysed with a linear regression approach. The results show a significant andpositive relationship only for the early 2000s recession period and thereby do not provide clearevidence of an increased BERD resilience as result of higher pre-existing tax incentives.Thereby, these findings indicate the need for different policy measures to be applied for anautomatic or short-term stabilization of BERD in times of economic distress.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第20869号 / 経博第564号 / 新制||経||283(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 照山 博司, 教授 神事 直人, 教授 柴田 章久 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DGAM

This dissertation investigates the impact that a duopoly of a multinational firm and local firm has on a closed economy as they engage in Bertrand competition involving quality and price. It answers the question: Does helping a minor firm reduce welfare? Using a different framework than the existing literature, I examine the following: 1. The welfare effect of a reduction in the R\&D cost parameter induced by ``help'' from the government to one of the firms within a closed economy. 2. The effects of government policy instruments (taxes or subsidies) on welfare considering different ownership of the firms and trade pattern - closed economy and export-oriented economy as government institutes a unilateral policy, discriminatory policy, or non-discriminatory policy. 3. How marginal cost of production of the local firm affects welfare within a closed economy when all consumers are either served or partially-served. In chapter 1, we provide a review of past literature that have studied the endogenous choice of quality by firms and describe how this dissertation is organized. In chapter 2, we examine effect on national welfare from competition in quality between a multinational firm and a local firm operating in a vertically differentiated oligopolistic industry given their strategic use of R\&D costs without any possibility of spillover effects. The model assumes that the multinational firm produces high quality product and the local firm produces low quality product. Both firms have zero marginal production cost. Assuming a closed-economy, we determine the effect of a change in the local firm's R\&D cost parameter on the endogenous variables (prices and qualities) as well as national welfare. We found that a reduction in the cost parameter of the local firm do increase national welfare. Chapter 3 extends the work of Chapter 2. It investigates the incentives to a government for instituting strategic trade policy (unilateral, discriminatory or non-discriminatory) mechanism that would induce R\&D within the duopoly of a multinational and local firms and thereby promote national welfare, under varying assumptions with respect to the ownership structure of the firms and their trade patterns. It determines which policy mechanism would be socially optimal to strategically affect the quality of the target firm (local). We find under an open-economy situation when government policy is unilateral, the optimal policy tool to pursue is a subsidy for the local firm. When the economy is partially-closed, it is optimal for the government to tax the local firm. Besides, under a discriminatory policy mechanism, it is best for government to subsidize the local firm and tax the foreign firm when both export to a third country. However, if both sell to a third country, but profit is retained in the domestic economy, it becomes optimal for the government to tax the local firm. Under a non-discriminatory policy by government when the firms operate within an open-economy, the optimal tool is a tax policy for government that affects both firms. Moreover, when the firms operate within a partially closed-economy, the optimal policy is also a tax policy on both firms. Whereas, given a non-discriminatory policy under a closed-economy framework, it is optimal for the government to subsidize the firms. As a result, these mechanisms by government do promote social welfare as well as correct any distortion that might result into making the multinational firm having a significant market power within the industry. In Chapter 4, we relax the assumption of Chapter 2 that the firms have zero production cost. The duopoly is considered to operate under the condition that one of the firms (local firm) has a production cost disadvantage. The firms are assumed to served the entire market. Hence, the firms compete within a fully covered market scenario. Considering a variable unit (constant marginal) cost of production of the local firm, we determine the effect of an increase in production cost of the local firm on national (total) welfare. We find that within a closed-economy, due to strategic substitutability of the products of both firms, an increase in the marginal cost of production by the local firm would bring about reduction in national social welfare. Chapter 5 continues our welfare analysis. It assumes the firms have asymmetric production costs. The cost of production depends on investment in R\&D to produce an output of quality, $q_i$. Now, we do not associate the output quality to a specific firm in the beginning of our analysis. Notwithstanding, we assume the firms are required to meet a minimum quality standard in the industry. Then, we seek to find the effect of the marginal cost of production of the local firm on national welfare. We find unlike previous chapters, an increase in marginal cost of production by the local firm results into increase benefits to consumers. Hence, national social welfare is improved (positive).

The importance of product design has been getting attention in the past decade from scholars and practitioners. Design plays a critical role in firms’ product development and business strategies. In recent years, scholars began to see design innovation as another vital innovation element of a new product. A new product should encompass at least two innovation elements: technology innovation and design innovation. While technology points to the function of a product, design points to the form of a product. Despite the advocacy of scholarly examination of design innovation, there are few studies of design innovation. In this dissertation, two empirical studies have been conducted to examine the outcome of design innovation and the antecedents of design activities, respectively. Study 1 examines the effect of design innovation (as well as technology and service innovation) on new product performance. Additionally, the study examines the roles of marketing innovation and process innovation in mediating the relationships between these innovation activities and new product performance. Study 2 examines how firms’ absorptive capacity, competitive responsiveness, and product development resources drive design and R&D activities. Design and R&D activities typically lead to the introduction of design and technology innovation. Regarding the findings from this dissertation, the first study shows that design, technology, and service innovation (which, argued by this study, are the three main innovation elements of a new product) all contribute to new product performance. Additionally, marketing innovation and process innovation are found to mediate the relationship between these innovation elements and performance. The second study shows that a firm’s competitor responsiveness, absorptive capacity (captured by “institutional sources” and “market sources of information”), and product development resources (captured by “cross-functional design team”, “design or information control technologies”, and “concurrent engineering”) are positively related to firms’ design and R&D activities. / Thesis / Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) / Design plays a critical role in firms’ product development and business strategies. Traditionally, technology innovation has been the focus of new product development. In recent years, scholars have begun to see design innovation as another vital innovation element of a new product. In this dissertation, two empirical studies have been conducted to examine the outcome of design innovation and the antecedents of design activities, respectively. There are two key goals of this dissertation. The first goal is to understand the outcome of design innovation and what other factors jointly contribute to the outcome. The second goal is to understand what strategies that firms adopt lead to design activities. Answers to the first question show the performance implication of design innovation and the factors that drive the performance. Meanwhile, answers to the second question shed light on the firm strategies that drive design activities, which may lead to the introduction of design innovation. Empirical studies that tackle these questions are sparse.

There is a general consensus in the literature that carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that controls CO2 emissions from fossil fuel power plants, figures to be a critical technology to reduce CO2 emissions to CO2 concentration stabilization levels prescribed in the literature. We completed three projects that advance the understanding of how technical change in carbon capture affects both near-future costs of CCS and the economy in the long term. First, we conducted a literature review of near-future capture cost estimates in order to get an idea of how expensive carbon capture will be in the near-future. The literature indicates that pre-combustion capture is the least expensive carbon capture technology because its combustion process best facilitates carbon capture. Second, we explored the limits of incremental technical change in each near-future capture technology using a performance-cost model. The results of the sensitivity analysis showed that pre-combustion capture could be the least expensive capture technology after incremental technical change has occurred. Third, we used an integrated assessment model (IAM) to investigate how rapid incremental and breakthrough technical change in carbon capture could impact the electric energy market, total CO2 abatement cost and CO2 price over time. We modeled breakthrough technical change using data from a paper in the literature that provides cost and performance estimates for a radical carbon capture technology still in the early stages of research and development (R&D) (Baker, Chon, & Keisler, 2009). CCS dominates electricity market share over time given a chemical looping breakthrough.

The dissertation consists of three chapters examining U.S. public firms' innovation and patenting activities and their relationship with patent policy and economic growth. In the first chapter, I empirically study the effect of patent publications on firm-level innovation and patenting. Previous works have studied the effect of patent monopoly rights and knowledge disclosure on innovations. The proposed chapter supplements these studies by analyzing the disincentive effect of patent publications on firm innovations through costly knowledge disclosure. Exploiting the American Inventors’ Protection Act of 1999 as a natural experiment that shortened the time it took for patents to get published, I show the negative effect of earlier patent publications on manufacturing firms' patenting and innovation activities. The benchmark analysis shows that the average decline of 10 months in patent publication lag resulted in 13 percentage points lower firm-level patent growth rate during 2001-2005. In the second chapter, I build an endogenous growth model with a patent system. By modeling patenting decisions endogenously, I also introduce patent protection and information disclosure mechanisms through patents. Traditional innovation and growth models assume that innovators patent whenever they innovate and consider patenting and innovating as the same. However, this assumption is no longer innocuous if patenting has an implicit cost to the innovator e.g., the cost of disclosing valuable information. Therefore, to analyze the impact of the patent system’s disclosure mechanism on firm innovation, one must at a minimum work with a model distinguishing between the two concepts. Using my model, I show that a higher patent disclosure policy reduces firm patenting intensity as firms strategically opt out of patenting. In the absence of patents, there is less knowledge diffusion in the economy, which leads to less industry competition and growth. The third chapter studies the effect of firms' ability to build on their previous innovation on firm growth. While innovating, firms can either develop fully novel exploratory ideas or exploit their existing ideas. Using firm patent data, I document that U.S. manufacturing firms' innovation became more exploitative and that their patent growth rate simultaneously declined after 2000. To rationalize these changes in firm innovation, I build a firm-level endogenous growth model with both initial exploratory and subsequent exploitative innovations. Estimating my model using 1990-2000 microdata, I show that a decline in the usefulness of exploratory innovations as a foundation for future exploitation can match a shift in the composition of innovation we saw over this period, resulting in a 0.8 percentage point decline in firm average growth and a 9% decline in firm market value post-2000.

The primary reason for mergers and acquisitions is to achieve synergy and establish competitive advantages. A firms’ innovation in form of intangible assets gets accumulated over time depending upon its R&D intensity. Such a strategic bundle of intangible assets that a firm possesses is an indicator of future synergies if the firm were to merge. The current study examines whether intangible intensive firms more likely to make acquisitions or are more likely to be acquired and how the market reacts to M&A deals involving intangible intensive acquirers and targets. We explore these issues with a sample of U.S. M&A deals over a period of 2001-2017. We find that intangible assets serve as one of the primary motives for the M&A and are the drivers of M&A activity in recent times. The results from the event study show that target firms’ intangible assets have a significant negative effect on target firms’ cumulative abnormal returns. Subsequently, we carry out further analyses to understand various drivers of market reaction to M&A deals. We find that, for target firms, the relation between target firms’ intangible assets and market reaction is positively influenced by the use of cash and negatively impacted when the target firm is from high-tech industry. For the acquiring firms, we find that the relation between acquirer firms’ intangible assets and market reaction is negatively impacted when the acquirer is from high-tech industry and positively impacted when a public target is acquired. It appears that market reactions to the acquisition of high intangible targets are primarily driven by investor skepticism about the prospects of the deal. Lastly, the study does not find any significant effect of (mis)valuation on M&A deals by intangible intensive firms.