Description du projet :
Innovative firms are increasignly considred as the main source for spillovers benefits reflected in productivity of the domestic firms. Appart from foreign direct investement (FDI) and export activities, the innovative activities of firms may also be a valuable source of knowledge for domestic firms, allowing them to start sharing knowledge with the dispersed and culturally distant countries. Innovative firms can find it challenging at times to share knowledge due to the large geographic and cultural distances that separate them (Ambos and Ambos, 2009). The contacts of domestic firms with innovation-oriented firms provide better access to knowledge and enable host countries to integrate more advantageously into global innovation networks (Cantwell and Piscitello, 2000 ; Carlsson, 2006 ; Santangelo, 2005) - raising the innovation performance in domestic firms through knowledge spillovers. Knowledge spillovers occur through a variety of mechanisms and thus the assessment of these effects calls upon a detailed analysis according to the mechanisms by which they take place. Firstly, there are demonstration effects, domestic firms learn through imitation of technologies and skills from innovative firms, technologies can inspire and stimulate domestic inventors to develop new product and/or processes. Secondly, there are competition effects following the entry and/or presence of innovative firms, which increases competition and forces domestic firms to work harder or absorb new technologies. Thirdly, there are labour mobility effects when domestic inventors who were previously trained by and/or worked in an innovative firms may leave the firm to join an existing domestic firm or open a new one. Fourthly, there are backward and forward linkages as a result from technological know-how transfer from innovative firms customers (suppliers) to innovative firms suppliers (customers). In addition, knowledge spillovers might not be observed at the aggregate level (for all firms/products/destinations//industries/regions), but only in the subset of firms which share some common cultural characteristics and/or are located not far from innovative firms. Finally, domestic firms need a certain level of technological capacity to be able to benefit from the indirect effects associated with the innovative activities of firms. Along these lines, Cohen and Levinthal, (1990) define “absorptive capacity” as the ability to acquire, assimilate and exploit knowledge developed elsewhere. Domestic firms with a greater absorptive capacity are open to new knowledge and better able to use them for innovation (Caragliu and Nijkamp, 2008 ; Xia, 2013 ; Zahra and George, 2002). In this context, the core hypothesis we test in this project is that innovation oriented firms act as knowledge sharing catalysts raising the innovation performance of domestic firms. This hypothesis has been studied by a number of scholars (Cheung and Lin, 2004 ; Fu et al., 2018 ; Howell et al., 2020 ; Montobbio and Sterzi, 2013 ; and so on ), nonetheless, the empirical results have been mixed for both developed and developing countries and knowledge spillovers on host and home economies are not well understood. So, investigations are needed to study in details the role of firms’ innovative activities in improving the innovation performance of domestic firms through knowledge spillovers. In particular, we test whether innovative activities of firms located in Switzerland may benefit the Swiss economy when the specific knowledge that is experienced on foreign markets may be shared with domestic firms, raising their innovation performance. Switzerland is particularly an interesting case study since its economic development relies on innovation. First, Switzerland has been ranked as the world’s most innovative country for the 10th year in a row (Dutta et al., 2020). Second, Switzerland is regarded to have achieved competitive technological levels in many industries such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and watches and then possesses sufficient level of absorptive capacity to efficiently exploit knowledge spillover benefits. Third, Swiss government, especially at regional level, is more and more active in encouraging innovative activities. Fourth, Switzerland is a multicultural society , cultural heterogeneity lead to the exploration of innovation paths and original competencies (West, 2002). Fifth, to date, there has been no investigation of the potentially beneficial knowledge spillover effects of firms’ innovative activities on domestic firms in Switzerland. The aim of this project is to focus on the role of firms’ innovative activities in enhancing the knowledge sharing processes in Switzerland. It examines the resultant effect of firms’ innovative activities in terms of knowledge spillovers on the innovation performance of Swiss firms. We believe that learning is highly localized and that spillovers are regionally bounded (Ascani at al.,2020 ; Jaffe et al., 1993 ; maggioni et al., 2007). We test for spillovers at the national and regional levels and argue that the assessment of spillovers calls upon a detailed analysis of these effects according to the following factors (the mechanisms by which knowledge spillovers are transmitted – viz. the demonstration effects, the increase of competition, the labour mobility and the vertical linkages; the absorptive capacity of domestic firms; the geographical proximity and the cultural diversity). Such modeling strategy is likely to describe more correctly the process of spilling-over and then identify whith accuracy the nature and the size of the resultant effects. To sum up, this project will investigate in details the knowledge spillovers according to their key determinants cited above, in order to exaclty identify the potential benefit for domestic firms.
Research team within HES-SO:
Ben Hamida Lamia
Durée du projet:
01.04.2022 - 30.09.2022
Montant global du projet: 28'000 CHF
Statut: Completed
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