Competition forces firms to find new ways to advance in the market and be innovative in order to differentiate themselves from rivals. Design activities may be one of several key factors contributing to new product development. The success story of Apple's iPod has shown that the right design...

Many studies investigate the relationship between R&D expenditures as an input and patents as an intermediate product or output of a knowledge production function. We suggest that the productivity of research in patent production functions has been underestimated in the literature, as scholars...