Diffusion of innovations

Related publications (100)

A Digital Platform connecting Academia and Small Businesses: An opportunity for Knowledge Management Experiments

Quentin Adrien Cavillier

Digital transformation is one of the biggest phenomena of this decade. One enabler of this revolution was cloud computing. Today, software engineers can deliver software as a service (SaaS), which is accessible to users through the Internet. Slack, Shopify, and Dropbox are examples of successful SaaS. We are experiencing an emergence of numerous small web applications with easy-to-use features for specific domains such as project management, accounting, resources management, customer relationships, and so forth. Thus, SaaS has been recognised as particularly well suited for the digital journey of small enterprises. However, surveys conducted by governmental agencies reveal a low adoption rate of SaaS by small enterprises in traditional sectors such as construction, services, and dealership. Previous studies have highlighted a lack of top management support, a weak relative advantage perceived, and a lack of knowledge as the key reasons for this low level of adoption. Whilst academic research defines these critical factors, it has not found potential solutions to mitigate them. Thus, this thesis presents two exploratory studies to enhance the adoption of digital practices by small traditional enterprises (STEs). A first study explored the value of leading collaborative projects between students and STEs about the assessment of SaaS solutions. A secondary objective of this initiative was the design of a platform acting as an open innovation platform. A three-year study allowed the completion of thirty-nine projects and the testing of two different platform designs. The feedback from students demonstrated the value of a well-structured platform composed of different management models for each project phase. Furthermore, 67 per cent of the STEs involved on the platform acknowledged the value of such collaborative projects. However, the collaborations did not improve top management support, and projects tended to stagnate because of various organisational factors. A second study, using a mixed-methods research design, was performed to explore the relations amongst the organisational factors acting as enablers and barriers to the digitalisation of STEs. The objective was to improve understanding of TSEs' situation and devise a proposition to enhance top management support. An academic contribution of this study was the design and application of a conceptual framework combining organisational factors from the literature on dynamic capabilities, organisational inertia, and intellectual capital. The combination of the qualitative observations and quantitative results highlighted the importance of the sensing and leadership capabilities for STE directors. They also revealed the mediator effect of the relational capability on the development of these latter. Therefore, this thesis makes important contributions to the literature on open innovation by defining a new field for leading knowledge management experiments. It also contributes to develop a comprehensive overview of the organisational factors affecting STEs' adoption. A further major contribution is the potential value of the digital platform to innovate the services of practitioners, such as governmental agencies and consultants, that support STEs on their digital transformation journey. In conclusion, this research is valuable in opening the discussion about potential innovations that might reshape the relationship academia-business.

EPFL2019

Metropolitan Innovation Systems: Inquiry into the co-evolving relations between Industry, University and Government

Jiayun Shen

Innovation is crucial and decisive for the long-term development of a metropolitan region in the global economy. While firms certainly play a significant role in the development of specific innovation, the environment that nur-tures innovative firms and disseminates innovations in the economy involves a complex web of interactions among a range of actors, including firms, universities, and local governments. The performance of these actors, but also their interactions, have significant impacts on the overall innovation performance of the region. The great complexity of these interactions makes it challenging for many regions to strengthen the innovation per-formance of their areas. To address this challenge, the main innovation actors â ranging from firms and universi-ties to governments â have made great efforts to learn from the famous example of Silicon Valley. However, despite some self-promotion, almost all such efforts of these regions have failed. The root of this failure lies in the lack of holistic and historical view in the learning process and the lack of proper coordination among actors in the implementation process. The existing learning about the Silicon Valley model mostly focuses on the period since the 1970s when Silicon Valleyâs success has been widely acknowledged; and it provides static analysis by listing the key features of an already successful metropolitan innovation system. While such an approach cer-tainly helps with understanding, it could be misleading, since the actors often implement the lessons learned from the advanced stage that do not fit the current stage of the region. Hence, this thesis studies the 170 years of Silicon Valleyâs development to shed light on how the actors in the three institutional spheres interact and coordi-nate in the development process. Provided that the changed global environment and the different local cultures invite the additional issue of whether the learnings are applicable to the new contexts, three case studies have been conducted in this thesis â about Beijing, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou in China â over a time span of 70 years (from 1950 to 2020). These cases are then analyzed with the framework and theory grounded from the case of Silicon Valley. Synthesizing the analysis of the four selected cases, the development path of the Metropolitan Innovation System (MIS) in Beijing most closely resembles the Silicon Valley model, since both moved from a âlaissez-faireâ model to a balanced âTriple Helixâ model (where industry, university, and government have intensive interactions and play interwoven roles). The MIS in Shenzhen reveals a path that starts from the âstatistâ model, while the one in Hangzhou started with a semi-balanced Triple Helix model. The three paths converge in the sense of heading towards the balanced Triple Helix model and all three improve the interaction and coordination between the ac-tors in the three spheres in a process that ultimately creates an open and conducive environment. This includes the ability to attract high-quality talent and cognitive capital to the region. By providing thick-descriptions of the four cases and the tentative theory about the development of MIS, this the-sis contributes to the literature of innovation system, the Triple Helix model, and the New Institutional Economics, and contributes to practice by providing 20 recommendations for the actors in the three spheres.

EPFL2020

The link between innovation and finance

Cristiano Zazzara

This thesis comprises three essays on the relationship between innovation and finance. Although previous research has acknowledged the multi-faceted nature of innovation, this thesis unpacks its constituent elements, compares alternative drivers of innovation — focusing on the role of financial variables —, and explores when each of these drivers is important relative to the others. Evidence is based on survey data on Italian manufacturing firms over the years 1995-2003. The main contribution of this dissertation is to show how innovation at the firm level varies across different dimensions, documenting several robust empirical regularities, which must be accounted for. The first essay explores the determinants of various characteristics on the propensity to innovate in the Italian manufacturing sector. First, we concentrate on firms characteristics, and include in the study age of firm, size of firm, export shares of revenues and group membership. Second, we examine industry characteristics, such as type of industry in terms of technology level and market concentration. We also test the impact of characteristics of the firm's geographical area, including an indicator of financial development for the firm region. We finally extend our model including financial variables at the firm level in order to evaluate the association between profitability & risk and innovation. The second essay further examines the determinants of innovation, focusing on why firms develop product innovations rather than process innovation, or product and process innovations simultaneously. Empirical studies have highlighted the different impact of product and process innovation on various factors (such as, for example, international competitiveness, the level of employment and the types of skills used, and on the profit rate of firms). However, little is known from either a theoretical or an empirical point of view about the determinants of these different types of innovation. The third essay examines the question of whether access to credit is empirically more difficult for innovative firms than for those undertaking traditional investment projects. The idea that market financing of innovative projects is likely to encounter severe obstacles is not new. Indeed, it dates back at least to Schumpeter's defence of monopoly power since it not only guarantees that innovative firms can internalise the benefits of their innovations, but also provides funding for future innovative projects. Testing this proposition requires information on the innovative content of a given firm and on the limits to borrowing it encounters. Using the above mentioned survey data, we are able to identify credit constrained firms and use this information to make inferences on bank's lending strategies towards firms whose investment projects differ according to expected return and riskiness.

EPFL2008

L'oeuvre de Leandro V. Locsin (1928-1994), architecte à la recherche de l'identité élusive de l'architecture philippine du second après-guerre

Jean-Claude Girard

Filipino architect Leandro Valencia Locsin (Silay1928 - Makati 1994) produced an architectural work that involved 250 projects, of which at least more than half were completed and mostly in his country of origin. A graduate in architecture of San Tomas de Manila University in 1953, his career began after the Second World War, which left the capital city all but destroyed following airstrikes by the allies that served to liberate the Philippines from the Japanese occupying forces. Following his studies, Locsin is immediately solicited with requests which leads him to open his office and give up the idea of completing his graduate studies in one of the prestigious American universities, which at the time had welcomed great masters who had sought exile from Europe to the United States in the 1930s. For a member of a privileged social class, this atypical career path makes Locsin a singular figure in the architectural landscape as he will immediately focus his interest on questioning the specificity of Filipino architecture. In a 1989 interview, Locsin confirms his career-long interest in researching the boundaries between local culture and international influences. The study of the vernacular tradition in his country will orient his work towards defining certain architectural principles to allow for the emergence of a new contemporary Filipino architecture. The post-war period, involving innovations in technical resources and favorable political and economic conditions for urban development, will serve to render all the more complex a body of work that is difficult to apprehend and qualify. In a 1964 text, Locsin refers to the elusive identity of the Filipino architectural spirit which, according to him, is the result of an assimilation of various external influences, given the geographic positioning of the Philippines and its colonial past. His work never ceased to reflect this quest for identity in built representations. While Leandro V. Locsin has been called "the poet of space" for the quality of his projects characterized by a great attention given to the sense of space, abstraction, symmetry, proportion, and materiality linked to the use of concrete and traditional materials his work has never been the subject of a complete study. Few scientific contributions exist and remain partial, in that they focus on certain specificities of his production. Further, there are no studies that offer a complete review of his office archives, a necessary step towards uncovering and highlighting the unique characteristics of a multiform production. The objective of this dissertation is to provide a complete overview of the work of Leandro V. Locsin, notably through a survey of his projects, and an analysis of the condition of their production in a local and international context, in order to render explicit the specific qualities that make this work a unique example of architecture of the period and from the Philippines.

EPFL2018

Seeking methods for improving sustainability in the extractive sector

Farnaz Eslamishoar

Extractive resources are indisputably a necessary component of international sustainable development. Despite current advancements in the circular economy, world production needs for raw materials are ever increasing, and still a long way remains for it to become rather independent from mineral resources. At the same time, mining has too many negative stories in news headlines about its trade-offs for the environment and human health, which hinders sustainable growth. This thesis deals with this integral dilemma in three chapters. In Chapter 1, I have made an extensive effort to understand the socio-political aspects of the mining business, both internationally and specifically in the context of a developing country, and on the issue of the corporate social responsibility the company requires. I then continued with gathering my primary sources of data for answering my first question: What are the primary social variables contributing to mining sustainability issues? I derived theories from Economic Growth in the Political Economy and Institutional Void from Management Science, trying to place my findings in a broader context. I concluded this chapter with underlying sociopolitical factors interfering with sustainable mining practices. This has led to the shaping of the second chapter of my thesis. Chapter 2 builds on the given that throughout the model of Economic Growth, technological change can happen within a shorter timeline and that new technologies lead to more efficiency in the Process Innovation. The mining industry is no exception. Yet, my quick review at the time revealed that this industry is lagging incumbent mainstream businesses in technological adoption. I therefore made my aim here to discuss conditions for transitions towards a more technologically innovative mining business. I surveyed mining firms internationally and noted the critical criteria for responsible practices. I then made what had been to my knowledge and ability, an exhaustive grouping of innovative technologies for the different sectors of mining firms. These tools granted me the ability to perform different multivariate analyses and decide on the best method for benchmarking different technology groups based on these criteria. In the later part of my thesis (Chapter 3), having these findings in hand and all experiences and observations in place with my assumptions, I decided to take one step back to ask whether the criteria I have for measuring mining sustainability are the correct measures by looking through the question using emerging data science tools. Are the sustainability scopes commonly discussed in the mining community the most crucial sustainability problems of this sector? Having the sustainability reports of all major international mining firms in hand, I evaluated around 3500 documents containing 8 million words discussing current sustainability matters pertaining to mining firms. Through implementing appropriate algorithms of Topic Modeling, I introduced five new main scopes for mining sustainability used to examine the discourse and groupings through this framework to observe any possible differences among the conventional and the generated lists. The results of my thesis are my two conceptual frameworks, technological benchmarking assessment tools, and a data-driven sustainability domains list, as well as the innovation policy recommendations for the mining community.

EPFL2021

Assessing Technology Adoption in the European Air Traffic Management: The Cases of Virtual Centre and Flight-Centric Operations

Engin Zeki

This research focuses on emerging technologies in the European air traffic management (ATM), specifically investigating technology adoption by the main stakeholders. The European ATM consists of a highly fragmented aviation infrastructure, built and managed by actors with diverse interests. Rapid developments in information and communication technologies affect the European ATM, as also the case with other network industries. Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) and the industry, more generally, started experimenting with digital technologies, such as Virtual Centre (VC), and Flight-Centric Operations (FCO), also known as Sector-less ATM, technologies. These technologies have the possibility to disrupt or at least change the current air navigation services (ANS) provision. However, there is lack of research related to the possible adoption of these technologies in the context of the European ATM in general and the Single European Sky (SES) in particular. This PhD thesis investigates the possible adoption of two emerging technologies using two case studies: flight-centric operations and virtual centre on the European ATM. The following two questions will be answered in this thesis. The first research question is: How and to what extent will emerging technologies - in particular flight-centric operations and virtual centre be taken up and ultimately adopted by the relevant actors of the European ATM? The second research question is: What will the consequences of such adoption be on the process of implementing the Single European Sky? In order to analyze, understand and evaluate the technology adoption, this thesis takes a socio-technical approach using stakeholder theory (ST), combined with actor-network theory (ANT) methodology. Different from the traditional technology adoption research approaches, such as innovation diffusion, an interpretive stance is taken to examine how new technologies come into existence and evolve. The processes of ANT, packed into problematisation, interessement, enrolment and mobilisation are used to explain the adoption of flight-centric operations and virtual centre technologies. Coupled with investigating the factors and barriers affecting the technology adoption, the thesis presents a conceptual framework to examine technology adoption in the European ATM. The data is collected qualitatively through participant observation, interviews and document analysis. The interactions between the key actors are analyzed for further recommendation on the adoption of these new technologies.

EPFL2020

Essays on the Economics of Innovation: Incentives, Diffusion, and Disparity

Ling Zhou

As an important policy instrument for guiding innovation, the patent system involves a long-standing tension between creating economic rewards for the original innovators and stifling subsequent R&D activities. The availability of new data allows us to provide unique sights into understanding how effective patents are in providing incentives for innovation and how firms' disclosure of proprietary assets affects the dissemination of knowledge. On the other hand, innovation per se is the fruit of human intellect. The knowledge workforce is, therefore, a crucial component of a country's innovative capacity. The persistent gap in the participation in innovative activities between men and women reflects a misallocation of talented human capital and leaves opportunities for policy implementation. This dissertation ties the questions mentioned above and presents novel evidence on the incentives, diffusion, and disparity in innovative activities. The first essay (chapter 2), in collaboration with Gaétan de Rassenfosse, provides empirical evidence on the real effect of patent expiration on monopoly prices and explores how this effect varies with product market competition. We compile a novel dataset that links patents to consumer products and retail prices for these products from Amazon.com. We find that patent expiration leads to a 7--8 percent drop in product prices. This effect is heterogeneous by patent type and importance and starts one year in advance. We also find a more substantial decline in prices in product markets where competition is intense, consistent with evidence from the pharmaceutical industry. We argue that incumbent innovators lower prices preemptively in the face of generic competition. The second essay (chapter 3), in collaboration with Gaétan de Rassenfosse, studies how firms' disclosure of innovative assets affects the diffusion of inventions. We focus the empirical setting on firms' provision of constructive notice through virtual patent marking (VPM) and exploit patent-level variation in the marking dates. With data collected on marked patents from the VPM web documents of 16 firms, we find an overall effect of VPM is small. However, conditional firms' strong reliance on patents as an appropriability regime, our findings suggest that while VPM induces firms to build subsequent internal inventions on the ones that are commercially valuable, it fends off diffusion to external firms and reduces similarity between inventions. Last but not least, in the third essay (chapter 4), collaborated with Mary Kaltenberg, we explore the role of family policies in closing the innovation gender gap. By matching inventor data to web-scraped inventor age information, we exploit the staggered passage of maternity leave policies across the U.S. and evaluate its impact on the retention and productivity of female inventors. Our findings suggest that maternity leave policy supports women of reproductive ages stay longer in patenting but has little impact on their productivity.

EPFL2021

Diving into the dynamics of product evolution

Olivier Waeber

Three distinct stages describe the technological evolution of a product over time: ferment, convergence on a dominant design and an era of incremental change. Until recently, the era of incremental change has been characterized as stable and one that involves low levels of technological innovation. However, recent studies have indicated that this era of incremental change may actually be quite disruptive. This raises the question as to which processes and mechanisms in new product development during the era of incremental change trigger high levels of innovation. First, this dissertation offers a conceptual study about how collaboration practices with suppliers characterized by a relatively high intensity shift the technological evolution away from the era of incremental change towards the stage of ferment. Second, a quantitative study of the medical technology industry in Europe reveals that involving suppliers in new product development during the era of incremental change may trigger technological novelties that are incorporated into new product architectures; A new product architecture shifts the technological evolution towards the era of ferment. According to the results of the second study, it appears that only by improving products based on established architectures are firms unable to innovate new technologies. Additionally, the stage of convergence on a dominant design has mainly been examined on the basis of technological convergence. However, a possible convergence on a dominant design away from the stage of ferment also involves a cognitive variable. Third, this study observes the cognitive variable while examining the nascent smartwatch market. Within a nascent market, firms within previously distinct domains compete with one another. Firms lack a better understanding of customer preferences and develop initial products based on assumptions that are rooted within their previous industry. This qualitative study illustrates that firms from the same prior industry conceptualize their products in a similar way with regard to nascent product features. Overall, this dissertation more deeply explores the product life-cycle of technological development, provides a better understanding of the dynamics during the era of incremental change, demonstrates how the technological life-cycle of a product may shift from one stage to the other and supplies additional explanations concerning how a dominant design may emerge out of the ferment stage of technological development.

EPFL2017

Digital Governance Challenges for ICT-Enabled Innovation of Social Protection Systems in the EU

Gianluca Carlo Misuraca, Gianluigi Viscusi

ICT-Enabled Social Innovation can help making existing service more efficient and effective, but also produce new services as a result of integration among different policy silos. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can also promote conceptual innovation in the sense of changing the base (empirical and analytical) upon which policy are first designed and later evaluat- ed. Building on extensive literature review and analysis of case studies conduct- ed as part of the research on ICT-Enabled Social Innovation (IESI) conducted by the European Commission ́s Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS), this article discusses, the results of an analysis of three selected case studies, exploring the relationship between different typologies of ICT-enabled social innovation implemented and the broader social protection system in which they are embedded in, contributing to determine if a relationship is identified between the nature and type of ICT-enabled social in- novation and the modernization of social policies, considering the broader digital governance space in which they are implemented.

IOS Press2016

Digital Governance Challenges for ICT- Enabled Innovation of Social Protection Systems in the EU

Gianluca Carlo Misuraca, Gianluigi Viscusi

ICT-Enabled Social Innovation can help making existing service more efficient and effective, but also produce new services as a result of integration among different policy silos. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can also promote conceptual innovation in the sense of changing the base (empirical and analytical) upon which policy are first designed and later evaluat- ed. Building on extensive literature review and analysis of case studies conduct- ed as part of the research on ICT-Enabled Social Innovation (IESI) conducted by the European Commission ́s Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS), this article discusses, the results of an analy- sis of three selected case studies, exploring the relationship between different ty- pologies of ICT-enabled social innovation implemented and the broader social protection system in which they are embedded in, contributing to determine if a relationship is identified between the nature and type of ICT-enabled social in- novation and the modernization of social policies, considering the broader digital governance space in which they are implemented.

IOS Press2016