Developing Commercialisation of Innovation in High Technology Industries – Regional Perspective
Dr. Jarkko Pellikka, Skenar Oy,
[email protected] Professor Pasi Malinen, BID @ University of Turku,
[email protected] Abstract
Both researchers and policy-makers have made increasing efforts to identify ways to foster and support entrepreneurship and small technology businesses in modern, dynamic business environments in order to promote economic growth. A process that is recognized as playing a key in this context, particularly in rapidly moving, high technology sectors, is commercialisation. However, a number of important aspects of commercialisation have not yet been subjected to through empirical analysis, including: the nature of the commercialisation process in small technology firms; the firm-related activities involved in the commercialisation process; and ways in which the commercialisation process can be efficiently supported and developed by the regional support organizations. Using twelve cross-cases in high technology industry, the study shows that both internal activities and external support services need to be considered in any attempt to improve the commercialisation process in small technology firms, which seem to differ from large companies in several pertinent respects, for example in terms of the internal resources devoted to commercialisation. The small technology firms’ capabilities to identify, acquire and effectively use particularly knowledge-based resources during the commercialisation process plays a highly critical role. It is also necessary to focus on the right activities at the right time during the commercialisation process, and the results imply that some major challenges encountered during the commercialisation are often due to misalignment of activities and resources provided. Keywords: Small firms; High technology; Commercialisation process; Innovation; Development
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1 Introduction
Globalisation, technological developments and rapidly changing customer requirements have increased the significance of small technology firms due to their ability to create and exploit innovation (Allocca & Kessler 2006). According to Schumpeter’s (1934) milestone study, entrepreneurs play a crucial role in the creation and exploitation of innovations, and technological innovation in particular is recognised as a prime requirement for stimulating productive capacity and ensuring global business success (Kozmetzky et al. 2004). Consequently, both researchers and policy-makers have made increasing efforts to identify ways to foster and support entrepreneurship and small technology businesses in modern, dynamic business environments in order to promote economic growth (Audretsch 2004). A process that is recognized as playing a key in this context, particularly in rapidly moving, high-technology sectors, is commercialisation (Fetterhoff & Voelkel 2006). Previous studies have shown that realising the potential benefits of innovation requires an effective commercialisation process (e.g. Andrew & Sirkin 2003), whereby potential products are generated from ideas and transformed into market-competent products. Further, developing effective commercialisation processes is a complex, challenging task for small technology firms in the modern business environment, in which customer requirements are rapidly changing and the life-cycles of new products are shortening. This is especially significant in high technology branches since technologies are changing so rapidly that small technology firms specialising in the production of high-technology products must match or exceed the pace of change in order to maintain competitiveness (Kozmetzky et al. 2004). Partly for these reasons, small technology firms are increasingly using external competencies and knowledge, accessed via innovation2
related networking, in order to accelerate commercialisation, and to reduce associated risks and costs (Chesbrough 2003; Slowinski et al. 2009). Further, as shown by empirical data presented by Feldman (1994), regional contributions to product innovation are related to the underlying inter-organisational relationships, technological infrastructure and availability of relevant knowledge inputs, all of which are mutually reinforcing determinants of a region’s competitive advantage. These factors are especially important for small firms, which may be more deeply embedded in regional innovation systems than large corporations, and thus more dependent on the regional innovation infrastructure and social networks (Galbraith et al. 2008). It has been also argued that the local service infrastructure should provide a nurturing environment for high technology firms to support and accelerate the innovation activities of small technology firms and, thus, enhance regional economic growth (e.g. Pellikka, 2009). In addition, it has been recommended that priority should be given to policies designed to promote technology development and technology-based business by (for instance) establishing science parks and business incubators (Abetti & Rancourt 2006). Accordingly, major objectives of economic policies have been to provide suitable infrastructure and enhance the availability of appropriate innovation support services for small technology firms. However, it has been argued that studies should be more focused on identifying effective instruments and their integration within a wider support system and the optimal deployment of public policy to promote innovation (Hewitt-Dundas & Roper, 2010). Thus, there is a need to examine the requirements of small technology firms associated with the commercialisation process and to identify potential alternatives to help these firms to overcome the challenges associated with the process. Given the above considerations, the main objectives of this study are to: 3
To describe utilization and importance the external innovation support activities during the commercialisation process in the Finnish high technology sectors
To identify possible mechanisms for managers and policy-makers to enhance commercialisation processes in small technology firms through external support activities.
Section 2 reviews previous literature regarding the commercialisation process and the possible alternatives to develop and support this process in high technology sectors. Section 3 introduces the research methodology and data. In Section 4, the results of analysis are presented. Finally, this paper provides concluding notes as well as the policy implications.
2 Commercialisation process in high technology industry and regional development During the last two decades there has been abundant research on entrepreneurship, largely focusing on its relationship to firm-related growth (e.g. Moreno & Casillas 2007), and there is a growing awareness that entrepreneurs and innovations are the main drivers of economic growth and regional development (e.g. Audretsch 2004). Hence, small technology-based firms are widely recognised as being promoters of economic growth (see, for instance, Allocca & Kessner 2006). The positive effects of these firms are generally related to their capability to generate and commercialise innovations and technologies (Allocca & Kessner 2006). Thus, one of the key underlying aims of policy intervention is to help small technology-based firms to overcome sizerelated barriers that may limit these actions particularly in high-technology sectors (Smallbone et. al. 2000; Kaufmann & Tödtling 2002). Clearly, small firms have much less scope than large
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companies for buying and selling businesses, but they may have substantial advantages for maintaining flexibility and nimbly developing new products. In regional and innovation studies commercialisation is generally understood as the final stage in the linear innovation process beginning with research (e.g. in universities, which in basic innovation-focused linear models are regarded solely as producers of knowledge (Malecki 1997), then proceeds to development, and ultimately to commercialisation (Cooper 1993). However, in recent years, commercialisation of the knowledge generated in institutions such as universities has been viewed as an increasingly important stimulant of the development capabilities and economic performance of regions (Nicolaou & Birley 2003; Cassingena & Harper 2005), which fosters the ability of firms or other parties to bring ideas to the market as new products or services. Regional studies have also been exploring the role of commercialisation in regional innovation systems in order to identify potential paths to transform knowledge into competitive products, e.g. through the formation of new businesses and/or licensing (Di Gregorio & Shane 2003). The institutional arrangements established to support commercialisation have been an essential consideration in regional development studies, as can clearly be seen from the definitions used in them. The definitions used in regional studies are also heavily based on theoretical concepts and terms. However, these studies mainly ignore the phenomena that occur within firms, and linear models have been criticised for providing poor descriptions of firm-level activities (e.g. Nightingale 1998). Based on previous studies (e.g. Pellikka 2009; Zahra and Nielsen 2002; Kozmetzky et al. 2004), in this study, commercialisation is defined as the process, which starts with a techno-market insight and ends with the sustenance of a marketed product, whereby a firm creates economic value by converting knowledge, discoveries, and inventions into new or significantly improved products and services that satisfy customers’ needs. 5
2.2 Supporting commercialisation process in a regional context Innovation policies have been focused on promoting factors, described above, that are believed to accelerate the exploitation of innovations and promote growth (e.g. Lorentzen 2008). It is recognised that both national and regional innovation policies are needed to promote innovationbased economic development (van Looy et al. 2003). Previous studies have underlined that innovation often appears to be a territorial phenomenon, indicating that the process of innovation is partly based on location-specific formal and tacit knowledge, norms and other informal institutions (van Looy et al. 2003). Several studies have listed various elements that appear to be required, from a regional perspective, to promote the effective development of small technology firms and commercialisation of technological innovations (see van de Ven 1995; Abetti & Rancourt 2006). For convenience, these elements can be divided into three categories: 1) institutional arrangements, 2) resource endowments and 3) proprietary functions. Several of these elements are targeted to support the capacity of firms and other economic actors to operate and create linkages within a region, for example between the universities and firms, by broadening knowledge transfer and exploitation in order to increase their capacity to stimulate and commercialise innovations (van Geenhuizen 2007). This infrastructure may also include elements that constitute a supportive environment, particularly for small technology firms, such as science and technology parks, government and regional agencies, business incubators, technology transfer and licensing offices and various kinds of technology development and dissemination initiatives (e.g. McAdam & McAdam 2008). A major objective of these supportive elements is to foster and accelerate exploitation and 6
commercialisation processes within firms, and links between firms and the environment (e.g. universities and other research institutions), in recognition of the common tendency of innovations to arise from some form of interaction between firms and other actors (e.g. between suppliers and customers) that have complementary knowledge regarding, for instance, product development (e.g. von Hippel & von Krogh 2006). Based on these objectives, for example, various science parks and business incubators are providing business support services, including entrepreneurial training and business development advice as well as support services associated with general business functions such as accounting, legal matters and financial assistance that can complement small firms’ limited resources (Abetti & Rancourt 2006). In addition, various authors (e.g. Howells 2000) have noted that collaboration can provide substantial timesavings for high-technology firms, especially when appropriate external resources are available within their region. Since knowledge has been recognised to play a key role in innovation various previous studies have also examined the acquisition of knowledgebased resources, e.g. via university-industry collaboration (Chesbrough 2003). Knowledge-based resources can be acquired in various ways in this context (see e.g. van Looy et al. 2003; Cassingena Harper & Georghiou 2005), including: 1) commercialisation of knowledge through licensing and/or the formation of new firms, 2) provision of suitable conditions for educating students in entrepreneurship and/or establishment of educational training programs for local companies, 3) recruitment and training of people related to specific innovations and 4) sharing knowledge via research collaboration or collaborative ventures with other firms in the industry, e.g. at conferences or through informal networks. Technological information that may create the basis for innovation can also be acquired from various sources, such as in-house R&D and public or university-related research (Collinson & Gregson 2003). 7
3 Research data and methods The case study methodology was selected because it enabled to study the present phenomenon in a context where causality is unclear (Yin, 1989) between commercialisation and a small technology firm. In order to increase reliability, triangulated research strategy was selected. The research data were collected from 12 small healthcare technology firms, which are located in the Kuopio region in Eastern Finland. The selection of the case firms was executed via purposive sampling (Miles and Huberman, 1994) in order to choose the different kind of firms in terms of performance (see Appendix). In addition, this study used the key informants approach to collect data from those case firms that already have commercialised at least one innovation. All of the commercialised innovations are strongly based on the case firms’ own R&D-related invention and have linkages with the local university’s (University of Kuopio) scientific research. The chief executive officers (CEOs) from each case firm were selected due to they were assumed to provide the best overall knowledge and insight into firm-specific commercialisation in the regional context. In the firms, the CEOs were also expected to see the implications of specific findings during the research. Encompassing diversified entity properly the data has been obtained from different healthcare technology firms (see Appendix) using the multiple-case approach (see Yin, 1994). An intervention technique (i.e. probes) was used in order to improve the interviewees’ responses (Easterby-Smith et al., 1991, 80). The theme-based open questions were asked to approach the commercialisation process from different and versatile perspectives. In this aspect, the previous studies in terms of innovation and regional development among small technology firms offered background information for the questions posed during the interviews. All the questions were first reviewed by three other 8
academics and were pre-tested by conducting in-depth pilot-interviews with two small technology firm managers. Participants were asked to comment the questions that needed developing. Based on the feedback, the final list of questions was organized. The analysis was conducted using the basic principles of abductive reasoning and theory-bonded data analysis. Previous studies (e.g. Pellikka, 2009; Pellikka and Lauronen, 2007; Andrew and Sirkin, 2003) provide some indicative results of the commercialisation of innovation among technology firms. In this study, an abductive reasoning is understood as a process of reasoning to the best explanations of the activities and phases that the small technology firms realised during the commercialisation of innovation. The data analysis was executed via three-pronged analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1994) using both quantitative and qualitative data in order to construct a coherent and informative entity of the commercialisation. Finally, the analysis included three main phases: 1) reducing coded interview data, 2) clustering of data, and 3) abstracting of data.
4 Results The results of this study support the common views of the commercialisation process as an interactive and multidimensional, rather than linear, process and that there are multiple important sources of knowledge, such as customers, business partners and distributors (see also van Looy et al. 2003; Audretsch 2004). For example important inputs (including product-related, managerial and internationalisation-related expertise) for the commercialisation process were provided by the innovation support services and universities or other research institutions. Table 2 shows the regional use of the external knowledge in the commercialisation process of innovation and the importance of the external knowledge. (–) = service not used, (*) = low 9
importance, services used one to five times during the phase, (**) = medium importance, services used six to ten times during the phase and (***) = high importance, services used ten to 12 (or more) times during the phase.
Idea development
Business concept design
Market launch
Business
Maintaining
development
Market research institutions
**
-
**
-
*
Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment
*
-
*
-
-
Consultancies
*
**
*
*
-
**
*
-
-
**
(Public financing organisation)
*
-
*
*
-
Venture capitalist
*
**
-
*
*
Universities
***
*
*
-
**
Patent offices
**
*
-
-
-
Law offices
-
*
*
*
-
(Public support organisation for internationalization)
**
**
*
*
*
Local Technology Centre
**
**
*
-
-
Finnish funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes)
Finnvera
Finpro
Table 2. Utilised external knowledge in commercialisation process (modified from Pellikka 2009)
The result shows that most proportion of the external knowledge has been used for idea generation and business concept design. By contrast external knowledge and support for market 10
launch, business development and maintaining activities are relatively less utilised. In accordance with previous findings (Cassingena Harper & Georghiou 2005) the results indicate that small technology firms are already using various kinds of external resources and innovation support services during the commercialisation process. However, the type of innovation support services used, and the extent to which they are used, varies in different phases of the commercialisation process. External knowledge that is mostly related to technology development is the most used form of the external innovation support. Universities, Finnish funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes) and local technology centre are the main providers of these services. This is understandable because it has be seen that interaction e.g. with universities and technology centers may regionally stimulate innovativeness of small technology firms (van Geenhuizen, 2007). In addition, compared to the earlier studies (e.g. Kaufmann & Tödtling, 2002), the active use of internationalisation-related services was emphasized among small technology firms even at the beginning of the commercialization process. This discovery is also supported by the earlier studies (see Pellikka & Lauronen, 2007). Finpro and other organisations that support the internationalisation of the small technology firms seemed to have a crucial role in several phases of the commercialisation process. It is also important to note the integration between the innovation support service categories. For example in several cases finance-related services have been enabled to use e.g. internationalisation-related services such as market research. Another issue that is important to notice is the changing role of service providers during the commercialisation process. Some of the service providers (e.g. Tekes and technology centre) offer knowledge and services for several purposes aimed to develop commercialisation process. In addition, some service providers can affect the commercialisation process by offering
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a focused service in a specific phase of the process, which still might have a very important influence for the small technology firm. The results of the study show that as part of the regional innovation system, the commercialisation environment of a region plays a key role in commercialisation processes among small technology firms (see also Rosenbloom 2007). The commercialisation environment in the region (defined here as the region’s infrastructure related to commercialisation including the business infrastructure, institutional arrangements, resources and knowledge-intensive services) can play an important role in fostering commercialisation in small technology firms. Notably, the sources of knowledge, such as the private and public organisations in the region, form a technological infrastructure which can promote, for example, transfer of crucial knowledge for the commercialisation process (Lorentzen 2008; Oakey 2007). From this perspective, external knowledge is an important input in the commercialisation process. This also means that, at least in the small firm context, the regional collaboration associated with commercialisation processes seems to be even more important than suggested in previous studies.
5 Conclusion and policy implications The small technology firms examined in this study have assembled various kinds of knowledge and expertise, provided by diverse sources such as public or university-related research units and science parks (also Chiesa & Toletti 2004). However, it is important to note that while previous authors have stated that external knowledge is mostly used for product-based research and development, this study shows that small technology firms seek external knowledge primarily 12
for business development purposes. Thus, small technology firms’ needs for external knowledge to assist their commercialisation processes may have been underestimated, even though it has been previously recognised that knowledge and information have become primary wealthcreating assets of a firm that are crucial for competitiveness (e.g. Britton 2004). The results indicate that two types of external knowledge (scientific and business) play important roles in the commercialisation process in small technology firms. Initially, in early stages of the process, scientific knowledge transferred from sources such as universities is important for creating the foundations for new technological products and helping to develop their the potential value. Thus, universities and other research organisations play a key role in the idea generation phase, as shown by several examined cases in which the technological aspects of a product are rooted in scientific research. However, the importance of this knowledge subsequently declines until major changes need to be made to improve the product, for example in the sustaining phase. In contrast,
practical
knowledge
(Scott
2006)
regarding
business
development
and
internationalisation is needed mostly between the starting and concluding phases of the commercialisation process. In addition, when minor modifications and improvements to the product need to be made, small technology firms tend to rely heavily on sources of knowledge such as private and public knowledge-intensive business services in order to achieve their commercial goals. The findings indicate several ways in which regional policies can stimulate economic development through the small business sector. They support previous findings (Lorentzen 2008; Cassingena Harper & Georhiou 2005) that universities can play a key role in the creation and exploitation of innovation among small technology firms, e.g. via knowledge creation and knowledge transfer. In addition, during the commercialisation process, small technology firms 13
may benefit from concentrated economic activity in a region through the availability of local support organisation and innovation support services (Bergek & Norrman 2008). However, it is still important to note that especially in the high technology sectors, highly specific knowledge requirements can not be fully satisfied e.g. by the local support and development organizations, which may force high technology firms to seek collaborators also globally (Moodysson and Jonsson 2007). Small technology firms need these services during commercialisation since concentration of the services provides greater access for firms requiring external services and knowledge relevant to commercialisation. Ready availability of knowledge and skills through collaboration and a knowledge network has been considered an effective and efficient route for successful innovation in high technology sectors (Acs 2002). However, it should be noted that small technology firms’ requirements from the network are not static during the commercialisation process. Instead, the results of this study show that the importance of the network partners changes in different stages of the process. This is a new perspective that should be considered in attempts to develop innovation support services and provide a more appropriate environment to nurture the commercialisation processes of small technology firms. The support mechanism including innovation support services (ISS) and the knowledge transfer established to further develop the commercialisation process require modifications to make them more suitable for small technology firms. For example, they need to be tuned to meet the needs of each business, and further adjusted at each stage of its commercialisation process. Small technology firms should also have access to an integrated array of ISS provided by external partners from other regions (e.g. from other technology centres). This would expand the range of services offered, e.g. by the local technology centre, and make the service portfolio more versatile (also van Geenhuizen 2007). thus from the innovation system perspective, the specific 14
requirements of the small technology firms may require that all three innovation system levels (regional, national and international) should somehow create effective linkages in order to productively interact (Fromhold-Eisebith 2007). This study shows that innovation support services for small technology firms should be adjusted by regional developers and local policy-makers to enhance support for the commercialisation process. In addition, it seems that case firms are required to collaborate with several support organizations at the same time that makes the existing support mechanism and in general, the regional innovation system partly comminuted (see also Tödtling & Trippl, 2005). Therefore it would be beneficial to develop innovation support services and a commercialisation process model based on the identified needs of small technology firms. In addition, innovation support service providers should focus more on the content of the services they provide and orientate the delivery of their services more towards meeting the real challenges that the small technology firms confront during commercialisation. For example, the study indicates that the funding and innovation support services provided by the government are sometimes too bureaucratic and inflexible (see also Abetti & Rancourt, 2006) in order to rapidly react to changing requirements during the commercialisation process. In particular, more attention should be paid to developing the innovation support services provided by these and other organisations. Therefore this paper also suggest that a more strategic and co-ordinated approach to providing innovation support services is needed, if the aim is to strengthen the commercialisation process in small technology firms in the region. It would be desirable to create a new support service that encourages small technology firms to access a wide range of innovation support services for commercialisation processes through an intermediate service.
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