Technology and Innovation Commons^™

The Enduring Lessons Of The Breakup Of At&T: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospective, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

On April 18-19, 2008, the University of Pennsylvania Law School hosted a landmark conference on “The Enduring Lessons of the Breakup of AT&T: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospective.” This conference was the first major event for Penn’s newly established Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition, a research institute committed to promoting basic research into foundational frameworks that will shape the way policymakers think about technology-related issues in the future. The breakup of AT&T represents an ideal starting point for reexamining the major themes of telecommunications policy that have emerged over the past quarter century. The conference featured a keynote address by …

Coercing Consensus: Unintended Success Of The Octopus Electronic Payment System, Leung-Sea, Lucia Siu

Prof. SIU Leung-sea, Lucia

This paper contrasts the success and failure of two electronic payment systems in Hong Kong, Octopus and Mondex, during 1996-2002. The case illustrates the new properties of electronic currencies, and provides insights for product designers and regulators. Mondex was endowed with the full legal status of money, launched by a mammoth banking group, with Mondex cards given away for free to consumers. Yet the Mondex system went into oblivion within five years. Octopus started as a modest stored value transport ticket that required a deposit. It ended up as a city-wide multipurpose payment card used by 95% of the adult …

Maine’S Technology Sectors And Clusters: Status And Strategy, Charles Colgan, Marianne Clark, Charles Lawton, James Damicis

Industry Studies

The concept of “clusters” has been a key idea in economic development in Maine and other states for more than a decade. In 2002, the Maine Science & Technology Foundation (MSTF) released a study of the cluster characteristics of the seven technology sectors that were designated as the focus of attention for Maine’s research and development support programs.

This study is a step towards implementing the Brookings Institution’s recommendations for an aggressive effort to build and expand clusters. It updates and expands the 2002 MSTF cluster report and also builds upon the work of Porter and others to identify distinctive …

On Building Clusters Versus Leveraging Synergies In The Design Of Innovation Policy For Developing Economies, Edward J. Feser

Edward J Feser

This paper argues there are two broad ways policymakers might use industry cluster concepts to inform the design of regional innovation policy. The first, and clearly dominant approach, is to view identified technology-based clusters as targets for growth strategies, i.e., to nurture the growth of selected groups of innovative industries and research strengths in a limited set of regions as a means of increasing levels of innovation economy-wide (termed the cluster building approach). The second is to use cluster ideas to reorient development strategies so that they leverage synergies among businesses and non-market institutions, thus improving innovation rates (termed the …

Firm Size And Innovation In European Manufacturing, Mario Pianta, Andrea Vaona

Mario Pianta

The paper investigates the differences between small, medium-sized and large firms regarding their performance in the introduction of new products and processes. After a review of the relevant literature, two models are proposed and tested in search for different business strategies and innovation inputs connected to product and process innovations. The empirical analysis uses innovation survey (CIS 2) data at the industry level for 22 manufacturing sectors, broken down in three firm size classes, for eight European countries. Special attention is devoted to tackling the issues of possible endogeneity of the regressors and of unobserved sectoral heterogeneity. The results – …

Innovations, Profits And Wages, Mario Pianta, Massimiliano Tancioni

Mario Pianta

New Process And New Products In Europe And Italy, Mario Pianta, Francesco Crespi

Mario Pianta

Innovation After Lisbon: New Ideas For Innovation Policies In Europe, Mario Pianta, Andrea Vaona

Mario Pianta

Demand And Innovation In Productivity Growth, Mario Pianta, Francesco Crespi

Mario Pianta

The labour productivity impact of demand and innovation is investigated in this paper combining insights from the Kaldorian and Schumpeterian traditions. After a review of studies in such traditions, a general model is proposed for explaining productivity growth in European manufacturing and service industries in the late 1990s, followed by two distinct specifications for the industries oriented toward product innovation, and for those where process innovation dominates. The empirical analysis is based on the match of the SIEPI-CIS2 database developed at the University of Urbino and Eurostat Input–Output Tables at the industry level, for 22 manufacturing sectors and 10 services …

Diversity In Innovation And Productivity In Europe, Mario Pianta, Francesco Crespi

Mario Pianta

The diversity in innovation patterns across manufacturing and service industries and in their outcomes in terms of hourly labor productivity are investigated in this article considering six European countries. The Schumpeterian insights into the variety of innovation are developed in this work by identifying different innovation–performance relationships for industries and countries, relying either on the dominant role of product innovation, or on the diffusion of process improvements. Moreover, the “push” effect of innovation is combined with the “pull” effect of demand, by considering the impact of the dynamics of consumption and investment at the sectoral level. The results point out …