2020
,
Blind, Knut
,
Pohlisch, Jakob
,
Rainville, Anne
There is a significant potential to improve the benefits from public procurement through a better understanding of drivers in company success at the micro-level, an area that has received little study to date. To increase these impacts on innovation and markets, policy makers have opened procurement to innovation, including the strategic incorporation of formal standards in calls for tenders. Consequently, companies offering innovative solutions should have higher chances to be successful in public tenders. In addition, companies who engage in standardization activities at standards development organizations may have a competitive advantage in submitting tenders. Examining the case of Germany, this paper empirically investigates the effects of German manufacturing companies' innovation activities and their engagement in national standardization on the receipt of contracts within domestic procurement competitions. The results of our empirical analyses based on German companies surveyed within the framework of the Community Innovation Survey show that being successful in product innovation and being engaged in standardization are significant positive predictors of companies' success in public procurement. With implications for policy-makers and practitioners, this shows that public procurement is indeed open for solutions from companies active in innovation and standardization.
2019
,
Martin, Nicholas
,
Matt, Christian
,
Niebel, Crispin
,
Blind, Knut
While many data-driven businesses have seen rapid growth in recent years, their business development might be highly contingent upon data protection regulation. While it is often claimed that stricter regulation penalizes firms, there is only scarce empirical evidence for this. We therefore study how data protection regulation affects startup innovation, exploring this question during the ongoing introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Our results show that the effects of data protection regulation on startup innovation are complex: it simultaneously stimulates and constrains innovation. We identify six distinct firm responses to the effects of the GDPR; three that stimulate innovation, and three that constrain it. We furthermore identify two key stipulations in the GDPR that account for the most important innovation constraints. Implications and potential policy responses are discussed.