Building on the notion of general and specific human capital proposed by Becker (1962), the paper highlights the importance of employee training practices undertaken in firms as an important tool for human resource and knowledge management and focuses on the role of works councils as a specific...

Innovation processes in emerging fields of technology frequently utilize scientific knowledge and technical skills from several research areas. Likewise, technological development frequently involves a diverse set of organizations including for example private firms, universities, corporate...

This paper analyzes whether firms conducting internal R&D and acquiring external high-tech equipment experience a complementarity effect. For German CIS data we conduct a complete set of indirect and direct complementarity tests refining the analysis by looking at various types of innovations...

This article discusses the visions about nuclear breeder reactors, plans set out in the aftermath of World War II. This seemed like the ideal solution for future energy, and even small countries, as Sweden, launched breeder reactor programs. The breeder reactor never reached industrial...

This paper has two goals. First, it analyzes the extent to which the innovativeness of spin-offs, either born from a research facility or from another company, is influenced by locational conditions. Second, it provides evidence on how important local cooperation links are in comparison to...

Innovative start-ups are an important driver of economic growth. This article presents empirical evidence on the effects of R&D on new product development, inter-firm alliances and employment growth during the early life course of firms. We use a dataset that contains a sample of new firms that...

This paper discusses the role of so-called national champions within the context of the EU's ambitious goal to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economic region in the world by 2010. We find football to be a useful analogy in our discussion of national champions. There are...

In this paper, the formation of intermediary organizations of knowledge transfer in Sweden during the Cold War will be described and analysed. Here, intermediary organizations of knowledge transfer are defined as organizations aiming to transfer knowledge between knowledge producers and...

This paper describes the establishment and development of the Swedish computer industry from World War II to the early 1970s, and illuminates the mutually beneficial relationship between public (state) interests and private interests, the latter understood as private enterprises. In this lengthy...