There already exists broad literature investigating small and innovative firms in many respects. However, there have been few attempts to assess this group of firms ́propensity to patent or its patenting activities. This paper intends to fill that gap. By applying a new approach to account for...

Technological change and gains in efficiency of renewable power generation technologies are to a large extent driven by governmental support. Various policies that can broadly be categorized as technology push, demand pull or systemic constitute a policy mix for renewable energies. Our goal is...

From a macro perspective, inventor networks are characterized by rather stable structures. However, the high levels of fluidity of inventors and their ties found in reality contradicts this macro pattern. In order to explain these contradicting patterns, we zoom in on the intermediate group...

The emergence and evolution of a technology is intimately related to it's knowledge base. A knowledge base shows certain dynamics and evolves over time. Knowledge accumulation, especially the in-flow of knowledge from sources external to an industry, is crucial for the technology's knowledge...

A key issue of dfferent streams of economic literature is to determine the impact of certain dimensions of proximity on the cooperative behavior of actors and, thus, on interactive learning processes. This paper is a quantitative study on the impact of technological and geographical proximity on...

The positive effect of public research on industrial innovations is beyond controversy: public research institutions produce knowledge that is subsequently transferred into product and process innovations by private businesses. Besides this rather passive role in commercializing inventions,...