There is a common, largely anecdotally-based belief that registered intellectual property is a less efficient form of protection for SME inventors compared with inventors from large firms. This paper discusses the reasons why SMEs may be disadvantaged in their use of intellectual property as...

This paper will examine the development of sustainable SME methods for tracking tacit (informal) knowledge transfer as a series of networks of larger complex system. Understanding sustainable systems begins with valuing tacit knowledge networks and their ability to produce connections on...

This study explores the characteristics and determinants of innovation of exceptionally innovative small and medium sized UK enterprises. The focus is placed on 'serial' innovators, defined as independent companies with a persistent unusually high frequency of innovations over time. The aim of...

This paper analyses the determinants of technological diversification for small innovative companies. Using patent data from the PATSTAT database for the period between 1990 and 2006, we explore technological diversification through a panel data set comprising 811 UK based serial innovators...

We examine the labor market for the highly trained in nanotechnology and the response of universities toward providing training. We draw comparisons with the labor market and university response in bioinformatics. The demand analysis is based on position announcements in Science in 2002 compared...

This paper aims to explore the role of R&D activity as a factor of growth of foreign owned SMEs in selected Central Eastern European countries (Croatia, former East Germany, Poland and Romania). The paper is based on the micro-level approach, i.e. it focuses on the characteristics of foreign...

Economies of scale theories suggest that large firms should undertake, over time, an increasing proportion of research and development (R&D) and by extension patents. However, there has been no increase as predicted, and in some countries small and medium enterprises have actually increased...

Sophisticated technologies are finding applications in an ever-growing number of products, from medical devices to children's toys. As high-technology applications proliferate, their use and development is no longer associated only with large companies, universities, and national laboratories....

Innovation is critical in the knowledge-based economy. It is generally accepted that governments have an important role to play in promoting innovative activity and R&D. Both the federal and provincial governments in Canada provide tax subsidies, and other forms of support, for R&D. Changes to...

I ask whether government-industry commercial R&D grants increase private R&D. Regressing some measure of innovation on the subsidy can establish a correlation between grants and R&D, but it cannot determine whether grants increase firm R&D or whether firms that do more R&D received more grants....