Quality assurance and labeling play an important and increasing role in firms’ marketing strategies. In almost all cases, a price incentive has been stressed as the major incentive for firms to participate in such schemes. We argue here that important non-price incentives for participation in...

This paper evaluates some of the technological and economic factors that underlie the choice between in-house R&D, R&D alliances and outsourcing. We recount the reasons for the growth in non-internal activities, and explain why these are not as prevalent for R&D as other value-adding activities,...

This paper examines the relevance of both an efficiency-based network strategy and a learning-based network strategy in the context of inter-firm partnering. The effect of these different forms of network behaviour on company performance is analysed for companies in the international computer...

The paper examines the dynamics of the amateur camera market – a mature industry - in the period 1955-1974. The case study raises a number of important issues for innovation management in mature industries characterised by heterogeneous preferences and heterogeneous product designs. First, it...

This case study questions how Flanders Language Valley developed as a cluster of localized technological change. Through licensing the attracted small, mostly foreign firms use the research lab of L&H Speech Products as a common source of codified knowledge and with their fast entrepreneurial...

This paper models the formation of R&D networks in an oligopolistic industry. In particular, it focuses on the coevolutionary process involving firms’ technological capabilities, market structure and the network of interfirm technological agreements.The main result of the paper is that the R&D...

This case study provides insight into how a particular transformation of the innovation process affects individual companies and the regional Mechatronics system as a whole in the Eindhoven-Venlo region (The Netherlands). The transformation involves out-sourcing engineering activities by Océ,...

The paper examines the nature of the changes occurring in industrial organisation in the 1990s and the experience of developing countries (LDCs) in adopting the emerging form of organisation or 'mass customisation'. These changes include a drive towards product heterogeneity and innovation, and...

The paper examines profuse literature indicating the potential advantages of recent microelectronics-based industrial automation for developing countries in the light of present trends for the diffusion of industrial automation and their impact on industrial organisation in the mechanical...

Creating more sustainable products is a major topic throughout the consumer goods industry. To succeed, it is necessary to follow a holistic, “cradle-to-grave” approach which involves stakeholders throughout the entire value chain while focusing on consumer goods. Focusing only on one...