Effects of Enterprise Innovation Culture Openness in ISSEK’s Measurements

Canva.com

Participants of the international workshop ‘Corporate Innovation Climate’ discussed the latest research results in the field of open innovation on May 26, 2021. The workshop was organised by the HSE Institute of Statistical Studies of Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK) jointly with the University of Twente (the Netherlands) in the framework of the Human Capital Multidisciplinary Research Centre (HCMRC).

The Human Capital Multidisciplinary Research Centre is one of Russia’s world-class national research centres conducting research and development in the country’s priority areas in scientific and technological development. The proposal for the Centre was among the winners selected in a competition held by Russia’s National Science Project. (The list of winning proposals were confirmed by the order No. 2744-r of the Government of the Russian Federation on October 24, 2020.) It was the first time a proposed research centre in the social sciences and humanities received approval. Rather than areas such as physics or mathematics, the Centre will focus on human research and issues of social development.

The workshop’s moderator Prof. Dirk Meissner, Head of Laboratory for Economics of Innovation ISSEK HSE (LEI) in the opening remarks emphasized the importance of innovation process openness for the development of theories of innovation processes and management practices in the field of science, technology and innovation.

Dr Vitaly Roud, Deputy Head of Laboratory for Economics of Innovation ISSEK HSE, outlined an agenda for this issue studying under the HCMRC project ‘Man in the Era of Open Innovation’. On the basis of econometric research data, the speaker showed that the internal openness of the innovation process is a crucial factor for the effectiveness of companies’ innovation strategies.

LEI’s team plans to highlight and operationalize the concept of innovation culture in the context of the era of innovation openness and comprehensively analyze approaches that contribute to the openness of the innovation process.

Dr Yury Dranev, Head of Quantitative Modelling Department ISSEK HSE, in his keynote speech, presented the analysis of mergers and acquisitions, which is one of the tools of innovative development.
Having studied information on 1,637 transactions of different types (horizontal, vertical and conglomerate) the researcher examined the relationship between the efficiency of mergers and acquisitions and technological characteristics of buying companies. Horizontal transactions (mergers of companies in the same industry) demonstrated relatively low efficiency. The technological efficiency of transactions was lower in cases where the buying companies carried out intensive research and development. The researcher associated the obtained results with the effect of crowding out and/or replacing acquired knowledge. This is due to the limited opportunities of purchasing companies to adapt technologies, gradual decrease in return from the received technologies with the growth of the accumulated knowledge base, as well as the desire to increase market share in the case of acquiring competitors, rather than expanding their own knowledge base.

The workshop’s discussants Dr Rainer Harms (the University of Twente, The Netherlands) and Dr Armando Papa (Università Telematica Universitas Mercatorum, Italy) emphasized the high level of the work done and proposed a number of important directions for further development of the presented research agenda.