The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of knowledge management on the innovation success of firms in Germany. Using a matching procedure on data from the German Innovation Survey of 2003 ("Mannheim Innovation Panel"), we pair firms applying knowledge management with twin firms with...

In the context of increasingly globalized markets, ever more complex supply chains and international manufacturing networks, corporate decision-making processes involve more and more actors, variables and criteria. This is a challenge for corporate head quarters. Many have argued that the role...

This paper examines the knowledge bases of the world's largest pharmaceuticals groups by sales. It puts forward the concepts of knowledge breadth and depth as the relevant dimensions along which knowledge bases can be mapped. Breadth is studied by analysing the evolution of specialisation by...

Whilst knowledge is a growing feature of corporate competitiveness and growth, it will make firms increasingly dependent on outside resources (including public and foreign resources), and will be increasingly disruptive to their internal organisation. This is because knowledge is increasingly...

This empirical paper analyses the importance of information and communications technologies (ICT) in the technological diversification trend among the world's large industrial firms. The objective of the research is twofold. First, to emphasise the emerging differences among technologies when...

This paper builds upon on-going research into the organisational implications of 'modularity'. Advocates of modularity argue that the Invisible Hand of markets is reaching activities previously controlled through the Visible Hand of hierarchies. This paper argues that there are cognitive limits...

This paper deals with innovative activities of firms, the resulting market success as well as the interdependencies between both. In a first theoretical part, different cases of those interdependencies are investigated by the way of a simple model based on replicator dynamics. It is shown that...

We analyze the characteristics of new businesses in the German ICT industry, distinguishing them based on their choice between two IPR regimes: open source software (OSS) or closed source software (CSS). The share of new firms with an OSS-based business model has increased considerably over the...

For a decade, economists have been fascinated by the phenomenon of open source software (OSS). OSS is marked by free access to the software and its source code. It is developed in a public, collaborative manner by thousands of non-paid volunteers as well as profit seeking firms. Today, OSS is...