Overview

Editors:

Maureen McKelvey and Erik Bohlin
School of Technology, Management and Economics
Chalmers University of Technology, Göteburg, Sweden

In this set of Scandinavian case studies, Professors McKelvey and Bohlin from the Chalmers University of Technology examine similarities and differences in conditions for successful innovation in biotechnology and telecommunications companies.

Case studies explore biotech spin-offs, Nokia's role in setting the GSM standard, mobile data communications and shared research facilities to transfer innovations from the public sector to private industry. Dispensing with anecdote and coincidence as determinants of success, the editors assess necessary conditions for successful innovation in new, emerging technologies, for strategic decision makers.

In Biotechnology and Telecommunications Innovation: Conditions and Processes for Emerging Technologies McKelvy and Bohlin conclude that three variables are critical to creating optimal conditions for new technologies:

• Know how uncertainty impacts on your analysis and decision making
  Why do your expert advisers have similar or different assessments? Given that innovation is a long term process, with uncertain outcomes, decision makers need clarity about whether their uncertainty is based in the technological, organizational or market domain.
• Know your firm's unique assets
  Has your firm assessed its own unique resources compared with those common global, national or regional infrastructure resources equally accessed by competitors? Individual firms must analyse their own capacities relative to overall infrastructure resources, identify weaknesses and address them.
• Know whether your emerging innovation is a technology or an industry
  Appropriate long term corporate strategy and informed government innovation policy both depend upon your clear perspective on this question:
  • If the innovation is an industry, the objective should be to stimulate new firms, start-ups and supply chains;
  • If the innovation is a technology, the policy objective should be to encourage the exploration and exploitation of different types of knowledge to underpin the industry to encourage differentiation and proliferation of products.

Each case study in this collection presents invaluable insights, experiences and lessons from successful global biotechnology and ICT new product incubation, development, management, scale up and diffusion from Scandinavia.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
Conditions for Innovation in Biotechnology & Telecommunications
Erik Bohlin and Maureen McKelvey, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden

CONTENTS
Network prominence and innovation: An empirical analysis of corporate-backed biotech spin-offs
Daniele Mascia, Mats Magnusson and Americo Cicchetti, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy and Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden

Sharing research facilities: Towards a new mode of technology transfer?
Ashveen Peerbaye and Vincent Mangematin, GAPP-ENS, Cachan and GAEL INRA-UPMF, Grenoble, France, and Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden

Coordinating the early commercialization of general purpose technologies: The case of mobile data communications
Sven Lindmark, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden

The GSM standard and Nokia as an incubating entrant
Christopher Palmberg and Olli Martikainen, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA), Helsinki and University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

What drives innovation processes in modern biotechnology and open source software?
Maureen McKelvey, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden

CONCLUSION
Conditions for Innovation in Biotechnology & Telecommunications
Erik Bohlin and Maureen McKelvey, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden