Cassiman, Bruno; Veugelers, Reinhilde; Arts, Sam
As companies increasingly turn to outside partnerships for innovation, understanding how best to make use of them becomes paramount. A paper coauthored by IESE's Bruno Cassiman examines how firms use partnerships to capture value from basic research. Which research investments reap the best results, in terms of yielding quality ideas and then developing those ideas into some innovation?
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Cassiman, Bruno; Vanormelingen, Stijn
While there is a widespread belief that innovation can increase firm market value, exactly how that value is created remains a mystery. In a new paper, IESE Prof. Bruno Cassiman and Stijn Vanormelingen reveal how process and product innovation can directly impact price/cost margins at the firm level.
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Cassiman, Bruno; Golovko, Elena; Martínez-Ros, E.
From the National Export Initiative in the United States to the European Commission’s recent study on the internationalization of SMEs, it seems that everyone agrees that small firms need to export to become big players. But only the most productive companies tend to enter foreign markets in the first place, so what determines this productivity? In their study, “Innovation, Exports and Productivity,” Bruno Cassiman et al. show that product innovation appears to be key.
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Cassiman, Bruno
With so much belt-tightening going on, pouring precious financial resources into partnerships with universities might seem an unnecessary extra. But think twice before cutting these long-term R&D investments: the money you save today could be the innovation, and consequently, the competitive edge, you lose tomorrow. The author examines the integral role university research can play in industry innovation. To enjoy the fruits of your alliance, your firm and your research partners must share complementary goals - and carefully lay the groundwork for a healthy and productive long-term relationship. The long haul is essential, he stresses, as the real value of these university links can be the unexpected results yielded over time. What's needed is a proper framework to balance the myriad issues involved, so that you can protect your firm from the competitive issues while leveraging the cooperative ones in these testing times.
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Cassiman, Bruno; Golovko, Elena
Why do some firms survive while others fail? This is a question that provides endless fodder for researchers, economists, and other analysts. Of course, if the answer were easy, then there would be far fewer failures and a lot more successes. The truth is that there are many factors that influence a firm's survival, or lack thereof. One such factor is believed to be exporting, which is assumed to have a strong effect on a firm's productivity. Not so fast. In "Innovation and the Export-Productivity Link," IESE Professor Bruno Cassiman and Professor Elena Golovko from Tilburg University show that exporting is affected by how innovative a firm is and it is innovation which actually leads to higher productivity.
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Cassiman, Bruno; Veugelers, Reinhilde; Zuniga, Pluvia
Due to mutual distrust, private companies and academia have long been at odds, which often leaves companies in the dark about emerging technological advances. Meanwhile, university researchers and scientists either end up giving away ideas and inventions or publishing them in soon forgotten scientific journals. However, in recent years, efforts have been made to close this gap because - as IESE Professor Bruno Cassiman and two colleagues find out - science definitely matters for firm innovation. Companies now channel more money into their R&D departments, and university-industry collaborations are more common. Yet, firms within specific industries still show stronger interest in scientific know-how. The paper "Science Linkages and Innovation Performance: An Analysis of CIS-3 Firms in Belgium" takes a look at how the "diversity" of industry-science linkages among a sample of Belgian manufacturing firms affects innovation at the firm level.
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Cassiman, Bruno; Veugelers, Reinhilde
How and where do companies acquire new technology? Do they make it in-house or do they buy it from an outside source? All companies - small and large - face the "make or buy" decision. However, when deciding to source externally, companies face an additional choice between two types of strategies. Some plan an "embodied" strategy, which means bringing in specialized, new personnel. Others have a "disembodied" strategy, which entails licensing agreements or R&D contracting. In the paper "Are External Technology Sourcing Strategies Substitutes or Complements? The Case of Embodied Versus Disembodied Technology Acquisition," Bruno Cassiman and Reinhilde Veugelers argue that combining the strategies to complement - and not to substitute - one another is really the best way to go.
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Mitchell, Jordan; Cassiman, Bruno
"People ask, What's the difference between a Ducati and another racing bike? It's the same difference as eating homemade pasta in a small Italian village versus eating processed pasta in an Italian chain restaurant somewhere in New York. There's no comparison." This is how the Ducati Museum curator opened his tour when Professor Bruno Cassiman and case writer Jordan Mitchell traveled to Bologna, Italy to investigate the strategic options that lay ahead for the emblematic motorcycle brand Ducati.
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Cassiman, Bruno; Colombo, Massimo
Throughout the world, companies are tying the knot. Since 1985, there have been no less than five major merger waves in worldwide Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A). Driving these unions are industry deregulation, new technologies, new financing instruments and firms' desire to refocus activity on core business areas. Yet, when industries merge, what happens to the critical areas of R&D and innovation strategy? The book "Mergers & Acquisitions: The Innovation Impact," edited by Bruno Cassiman and Massimo G. Colombo provides fresh insights into how M&A can positively (and negatively) impact innovation.
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Cassiman, Bruno; Glenisson, Patrick; Van Looy, Bart
Our knowledge-driven society demands more interplay between science and technology, and between research and industry. For example, by identifying links between authors of scientific publications and inventors of patents, more points of exchange between academic research and technological development can be revealed. In the paper "Measuring Industry-Science Links Through Inventor-Author Relations: A Profiling Method," authors Bruno Cassiman, Patrick Glenisson and Bart Van Looy introduce a new profiling method to uncover links between authors and inventors.
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