Fraunhofer-Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung ISI

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  • Publication
    The interplay between innovation, standards and regulation in a globalising economy
    ( 2024)
    Blind, Knut orcid-logo
    ;
    Münch, Florian
    To examine the different roles of regulation and standards in the age of globalisation, we hypothesize and investigate the relation of regulation and national and international standards on the one hand with innovation input (R&D expenditure) and innovation output (patents) on the other hand. The analysis is based on data of 26 high-income countries between 1998 and 2018. There are two main results. Firstly, international standards outperform both de-regulation and national standardisation as they are positively associated with R&D expenditure and patenting. On the other hand, national standards - once believed a source of competitiveness - are negatively related to patents and hence seem to localize economies and slow-down innovation. Secondly, de-regulation does not correlate positively with R&D expenditure, but with increased patenting. We argue the former suggest businesses did not - as assumed - spend freed up resources on R&D, but instead strategically used patenting to replace lost regulation-based protection with patent fences. This casts doubts on the added social value of de-regulation induced innovation.
  • Publication
    The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Standardization
    ( 2024)
    Heß, Philipp
    ;
    Blind, Knut orcid-logo
    Standards played a central role in the quality infrastructure that supported the international reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic and were a cornerstone in managing new technology in times of crisis. They fostered the resilience of value chains, enabled the global production and distribution of medical equipment, and supported the reliable operation of laboratories. To provide new and updated standards, the standardization system needed to restructure highly complex processes that relied on contributions from stakeholders who, themselves, were affected by the crisis. In this article, we generate new and unique evidence on the impact of the pandemic on standardization by using the assessments of nearly 2400 standardizing organizations from a dedicated survey in combination with an 8-year-long panel. Our results show that firms' changes to their standard-setting activities are moderate, especially as digitalization effects compensate for shrinking budgets. An increase in the usage of standards was only noticeable for areas directly implicated by the pandemic, e.g., medical equipment. Standardizing firms appear to "sit out" the crisis while sinking costs for participation equip the system with resilience. However, the pandemic creates new challenges for standard-setting organizations due to disruptive effects on work in committees, where interpersonal exchange suffered, and introduced changes potentially cause creative destruction.
  • Publication
    The impact of the EU General data protection regulation on product innovation
    ( 2024)
    Blind, Knut orcid-logo
    ;
    Niebel, Crispin
    ;
    Rammer, Christian
    In May 2018, a new regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), on data protection came in the European Union into force. It requires firms to update their data protection strategy and may complicate the use of data related to individuals, with potentially adverse effects on product innovation. This study provides evidence on the likely impacts of the GDPR on innovation. We employ a conditional difference-in-differences research design and estimate firm fixed-effects models based on data from the German innovation survey. We find that the GDPR led to a substantial shift from radical to incremental product innovation. Our finding indicates that the GDPR stimulated firms to re-organise their data management in a more profound way than they would have done in the absence of the regulation, opening up opportunities for improving existing products. The additional resources needed for complying with the GDPR limited their capacity for developing entirely new products.
  • Publication
    How Environmental Policy Stringency, Foreign Direct Investment, and Eco-Innovation Supplement the Energy Transition: New Evidence from NICs
    ( 2024)
    Azam, Anam
    Several researchers have studied the environmental policy stringency and ecological innovation regarding CO2 emissions and renewable energy consumption; however, the impact of environmental policy stringency, technological innovation, FDI, and ecological innovation on energy transition has not been studied in the case of NICs. For this purpose, panel quantile regression models are applied in the context of NICs from 2000 to 2021. Our empirical results show that the effect of foreign direct investment is positive and statistically significant on energy transition. On the other hand the variables environmental policy stringency, eco-innovation, and ICT-trade have an inverse effect on energy transition. Therefore, the findings of the study also provide policy implications that indicate NICs need to optimize their trade structure and re-innovate the latest innovation spillovers, and strict environmental policies should be introduced to facilitate energy transition in NICs.
  • Publication
    Standards and innovation: A review and introduction to the special issue
    ( 2023)
    Blind, Knut orcid-logo
    ;
    Kenney, Martin
    ;
    Leiponen, Aija
    ;
    Simcoe, Timothy
    Standards are connected to innovation in numerous ways. They often define the interfaces that products use to communicate, the features that are critical for safety, and even the metrics by which innovation is assessed. Interest in standards has grown with the widespread adoption of digital technologies, the rise in global trade, and the recognition that standards can provide urgently needed tools for measuring and promoting environmental and social sustainability. This introduction to the special issue on Standards and Innovation describes some of the key trends and issues related to standardization, then outlines themes that link the ten papers in the special issue, and concludes with some thoughts on avenues for future research.
  • Publication
    An integrated conceptual framework for analysing heterogeneous configurations of absorptive capacity in manufacturing firms with the DUI innovation mode
    ( 2023)
    Weidner, Nadia
    ;
    Som, Oliver
    ;
    Horvat, Djerdj
    Scholars of different disciplines widely agree that firms follow heterogeneous innovation patterns, meaning that different types of knowledge are relevant for their innovation activities. Given this fact, it is reasonable to assume that firms are also characterised by heterogeneous absorptive capacity patterns that fit their innovation behaviour. However, existing research, which mainly focuses on absorptive capacity in terms of formalised R&D and technology-based innovation, neglects both: other modes of knowledge absorption and the potential heterogeneity of firms' absorptive capacity in the context of different innovation patterns. The main objective of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework that enables the analysis of the heterogeneity in manufacturing firms' absorptive capacity configurations, particularly for innovation patterns based on the Doing, Using and Interacting (DUI) mode of innovation. To reach this goal, we introduce and integrate different constitutive elements on the individual and organisational level and process dimensions of absorptive capacity taken from previous literature. We illustrate and apply the proposed framework using the example of three case studies with companies from the German manufacturing industry, each of which follows a distinct DUI-based innovation pattern. Our empirical findings provide support for the heterogeneity assumption and allow the differences in the configurations of absorptive capacity to be linked to the firm's dominant innovation pattern. Thus, by showing its potential to capture the heterogeneity of absorptive capacity in an empirical analysis, our framework can serve as a comprehensive basis for a more differentiated understanding of absorptive capacity and its improved measurement.
  • Publication
    Keeping track of cleantech development using innovation clusters and member's website data: Evidence from leading energy clusters in Germany
    ( 2023)
    Singh, Mahendra
    ;
    Darold, Denilton Luiz orcid-logo
    ;
    Klobasa, Marian orcid-logo
    ;
    Zielinski, Andrea
    ;
    Frietsch, Rainer
    The main research question addressed in this work is how energy clusters can be evaluated and what general conclusions can be drawn out of their activities. Traditional innovation cluster analysis approaches chiefly rely on surveys, interviews, open publications, and patents-lack of using updated activities of innovation clusters. Therefore, preceding cluster analysis methodologies always lack of providing up-to-date information. In this sense, analyzing energy cluster activities is an obvious interest for policymakers, investors, companies, etc. Moreover, such assessment help to track the development of new technologies, participation of different actors in an innovation ecosystem, and emerging topics in the energy sector. This work presents the research outcomes on the leading energyinnovation clusters in Germany. To this end, this paper exploits the publicly available website data from the clusters and member’s web-pages to investigate their geographical distribution, key focus areas, cluster, and member activities. In the course of the project, a web-scraping tool has been developed to crawl the clusters and member’s websites and scrape their text data. The tool performs systematic and guided web-scraping for searching a keyword presence on a particular web-page. In addition to this, data from commercially available company databases are used to complement the missing information from the website data. A total of 44 energy clusters along with 4524 members are taken into account in this study. The proposed methodology has shown that unstructured web-data is a valuable source for analyzing the clusters and their member’s innovation activities. Results have also indicated that there is a strong correlation (r = 0.85) between Research and Development (R&D) expenditure and cluster count in individual federal states. The overall results have indicated that the majority of energy clusters are very specialized in certain topics, nevertheless, topics such as hydrogen, carbon, and bioenergy are getting notable attention from various stakeholders. Simultaneously, various cross-sectoral topics are also emerging due to the coupling between different sectors. Findings could help policymakers and federal innovation agencies to understand the ongoing progress in cleantech innovation activities. From the methodological point of the view, it provides an underlying ground to access the impact of cluster policies.
  • Publication
    Captive Offshoring, Innovation and Market Diffusion: Evidence from the Swedish Community Innovation Survey
    ( 2023)
    Schubert, Torben orcid-logo
    Although the effects of captive offshoring on firm innovation have increasingly become a subject of study, the literature did so far not distinguish between the effects on introducing innovation as opposed to the effects their market diffusion. This distinction is important. By integrating insights from the innovation diffusion literature, we argue that the effects of captive offshoring on home base innovation are likely to differ between the generation and the diffusion phases. Using a matched employer-employee panel dataset drawn from consecutive waves of the Swedish Community Innovation Survey (CIS) between 2009 and 2015, it is shown that captive offshoring, as measured by the share of employees at foreign locations, has an inverted u-shape effect on innovation propensity (with positive effects for the average firm). In contrast, employment offshoring does not, on average, affect the rate of diffusion as measured by the share of turnover from new products. For firms with more novel product innovations, the effects are even negative.
  • Publication
    Patenting and standardization: Similarities and differences based on firms' strategic motives and experienced barriers
    ( 2022)
    Blind, Knut orcid-logo
    ;
    Pohlisch, Jakob
    ;
    Rauber, Julius
    This paper examines the relationship between patenting and formal standardization participation. We review the existing literature on the motivations and barriers to patenting and participation in formal standardization. Based on conceptual considerations derived in the literature review, propositions regarding the relations between patenting and standardization motives and barriers are derived. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of German firms being active in patenting or standardization, with more than half doing both. In general, the motives, as well as the barriers to patenting, are closely related to those in standardization. Firms use the two complementary instruments to promote cooperation as well as strategies to meet competitive goals. Related to the barriers, both strategies suffer both from internally and externally determined resource barriers. Finally, recommendations for firms’ patenting and standardization management are derived.
  • Publication
    Innovation in Malmö after the Öresund Bridge
    ( 2022)
    Ejermo, Olof
    ;
    Hussinger, Katrin
    ;
    Kalash, Basheer
    ;
    Schubert, Torben orcid-logo
    We analyze the effect of the Öresund Bridge, a combined railway and motorway bridge between Swedish Malmö and the Danish capital Copenhagen, on inventive activity in the region of Malmö. Applying difference-in-difference estimation on individual-level data, our findings suggest that the Öresund Bridge led to a significant increase in the number of patents per individual in the Malmö region as compared to the two other major regions in Sweden, Gothenburg and Stockholm. We show that a key mechanism is the attraction of highly qualified workers to the Malmö region following the construction of the bridge.