This paper was prepared to present at the Farmer First Revisited: 20 Years On conference at IDS, University of Sussex, UK, December 2007. Its focus is the challenge of strengthening agricultural innovation systems. The paper prefaces this discussion by reflecting on an apparent paradox. While...

Conventionally, standards are considered as a governance tool in the production system in a one-directional and hierarchical relationship between foreign trans-national corporations (TNCs) or global buyers on one hand and subsidiaries and producers on the other. They were considered as...

The traditional indicators on innovation rely on the linear assumption that research leads to development, centring on the measurement of inputs and outputs. Based on the traditional innovation indicators, recent studies focused on the industrial innovation process at Latin America state that...

This paper looks at the role of firms in the transformation of fossil fuel based energy systems towards cleaner and greener energy systems. Firms are playing an important role in determining the speed and direction of technical change towards such energy systems. But systemic constraints and...

This paper takes a look at the research on Emerging country multinational enterprises (EMNEs) over the last 25 years, and argues that growth in EMNE activity over the last 10 years continues to be dominated by Asian Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs), and to a lesser extent by Brazil, Russia,...

This paper takes a closer look at the role of location advantages in the spatial distribution of MNE R&D activity. In doing so, we have returned to first principles by revisiting our understanding of L and O advantages and their interaction. We revisit the meaning of L advantages, and offer a...

We analyze the nanotechnology patent applications filed in China from 1998 to 2008 and find that the extraordinary nanotechnology development in China has been primarily promoted by the public sector but not driven by industry and market force. This finding implies that developing countries such...

We propose that the rate of creation and failure of new firm start-ups can be modelled as a search and matching process, as in labor market matching models. Deriving a novel Entrepreneurship-Beveridge curve, we show that a successful start-up depends on the efficiency with which entrepreneurial...

After joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), China witnessed a major inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Many famous automobile firms of developed countries were attracted to invest in China to cooperate with domestic firms. This paper uses firm-level data of the Chinese automobile...

Environmental innovation is an essential part of a knowledge based economy, as environmental innovation makes economies more efficient by encouraging and facilitating the use of fewer material or energy inputs per unit of output. In this respect, environmental innovation replaces material inputs...