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The question on how to finance innovation activities of countries has taken a center stage in economic policy discussions in countries and among regional bodies. Such discussions require a policy direction to present alternative ways of financing innovation activities at lower cost in the face of dwindling resource available to countries and regional bodies for innovation activities. One important way of dealing with this challenge is to invest the limited resources in countries and sectors with the potential of higher knowledge spillover to benefit other countries and sectors. In this study therefore, we investigate to determine the knowledge spillover hotspot countries in Europe and how they affect neighbouring country's innovation performance. For the purposes of policy to improve innovation performance in Europe, the knowledge spillover hotspot countries will guide European regional bodies to concentrate innovation investments in countries with the potential of high knowledge spillovers for the benefit of other countries. The study specifically investigated R&D spillover and explicit knowledge spillover hotspots in the manufacturing sectors of Europe and their effects. Data for the study is unstructured and sourced from the World bank with the longest spans being 2005 to 2020 and shortest being 2013 to 2017. In all, nine countries were sampled based on data availability for the study. These countries include Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Belgium, France, Spain and Czech Republic. The study employed panel data analysis. Based on the Hausman test, fixed effect model was chosen as against random effect model. The results of the study show that after controlling for institutional and economic factors and ensuring robustness against heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation R&D spillover hotspots in Europe include Germany and Slovakia whereas explicit knowledge spillover hotspots are Poland, Slovenia, Lithuania and France. The results of the study have shown that the relationship between knowledge spillover from the hotspot countries and surrounding country's innovation varies. For some of the hotspots, the relationship is linear whilst in others the relationship is nonlinear. The study also confirm that explicit knowledge is more susceptible to Knowledge spillover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the elements of Knowledge Production Function (KPF), R&D remains one of the highly studied factors. In an era of interdependence and collaborations, no firm or enterprise can survive the prevailing highly competitive business environment by not networking with firms of similar interest, values, and goals. The unanswered question in prior literature on firm co-operation is what kind of firm co-operation best works? In finding an answer to fill this gap in literature, we examined the impact of R&D co-operation, innovation co-operation (excluding R&D) and co-operation based on other business activities on radical and incremental innovations. We further examined the moderating role of organizational culture on the effect of firm co-operation on innovation. Our study is based on open innovation theory and the KPF. Adopting the 2018 cross-sectional CIS data from the Eurostat database for the four Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia), the OLS regression and Average Marginal Effects models were used for the analysis. We confirmed that when firms co-operate on R&D, there is a positive and significant effect on radical innovation but negative significant effect on incremental innovation. Firm co-operation on innovation activities excluding R&D has positive and significant effect on both radical and incremental innovations. Other business co-operations had positive and significant effect on incremental innovation but not on radical innovation. We further confirmed a positive significant moderating role on the effect of R&D co-operation on radical innovation. We proposed theoretical and practical implications of our study to firm managers, government, and policy formulators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms mainly depend on innovation to remain competitive in business. New knowledge is a major resource for firms on the path of achieving innovation performance. This paper seeks to examine how intra-firm and inter-firm activities promote knowledge sharing toward innovation performance. We used the variables channels of information to represent inter-firm activities and workplace organization methods to represent intra-firm knowledge-sharing activities. The proxies for innovation performance were product innovation and business process innovation. Cross-sectional country-level data from CIS 2018 for 17 countries within the EU region was used for our study. The OLS regression method was used for the analysis. While existing studies concentrate on inter-firm knowledge transfer and single country-level studies, our study focuses on a blend of intra-firm and intra-firm cross-country studies. We also emphasized the value of knowledge sharing and cognition in the knowledge transfer process toward achieving firm innovation performance. Our model was built on the knowledge-based view (KBV) and social network theory (SNT). We found that cross-functional workgroups, conferences, trade fairs and exhibitions have a positive significant impact on both product and business process innovation. Published patent had a significant impact on product innovation but was not statistically significant for business process innovation. In conclusion, we found that intra-firm knowledge-sharing activities impact more on innovation performance of firms more than inter-firm knowledge-sharing activities of firms in the EU. Our study is limited to using cross-sectional data and the number of countries within the EU involved in the study. We believe longitudinal data and the involvement of more EU countries in future studies will yield robust findings for more reliable inferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prominence of the knowledge economy technological innovation and economic development globally cannot be questioned. However, not all firms especially from Central and Eastern European to tap into the benefits coupled with new knowledge for improvement in firm innovation performance. Mostly, this is due to environmental factors confronting the firms. This study focused on the impact of External Knowledge (EK), R&D expenditure and ICT usage on firm innovation performance with the moderation role of informal competition. We used Resource Dependency Theory and Contingency theory as the theoretical background. A cross sectional data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) 2019 on 3105 firms from CEE regions namely Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland was analysed using logistic regression. These countries were selected because firms face elevated level of informal competition in the business environment. The study confirmed the hypotheses that, internal R&D, external knowledge and website availability and usage have positive and significant direct effect on technological innovation. Our study contributes to the literature of R&D and firm performance by highlighting the moderating effect of business environment (informal competition). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open innovation paradigm has become the anchor of the network economy in recent times. Due to the adoption of network systems as key developmental tools to create and share knowledge in an open system, a synergistic and network ecosystem has forced many firms to cooperate. Many such proponents of the collaborative ecosystem include the industrial district, innovative milieu and the proximity concepts that preceded Chesbrough's open innovation concept. The underlying assumptions of these concepts lie in the fact that innovation is an interactive process, which is realized through a concerted effort of actors to create and share knowledge in a collaborative manner where the actors involved would reap the benefit and transcend the knowledge for the betterment of society. The open secret of SMEs is their inherent struggle to gauge and manage their collaborative sources of information auxiliary to their in-house innovation activities. However, looking at how knowledge is important, SMEs' collaborative efforts must increase their institutional and organizational cooperation with other stakeholders within the industrial ecosystem. This will permit knowledge transfer between industrial players enabled by the interplay of institutional norms and mutual representation; likewise, SMEs are ensured syndicated transfer of tacit knowledge and access to diverse resources within their collaborative ecosystem. With this in mind, the paper using data from the CIS 2014 analyzed the effect of organizational and institutional proximity arrangement of SMEs in some selected CEE countries employing Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model for the empirical analysis. The results indicate that external and internal organizational and institutional proximity affect SMEs open innovation, although the findings show that the indirect effect of proximity on SMEs innovation performance through firms' open innovation is stronger for only organizational proximity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

: The recent boom in the economies of some Central and Eastern European countries is attributable to success in the utilization of innovation. Innovation affects all spheres of human life in the globalized economy. Some Central and Eastern European countries are globally competitive; attracting more foreign direct investment and support from the European Union structural funds for innovation. The economic advancement in some of these countries is attributable to the pursuit of innovation policies geared towards the modification of the then planned economy into an open and knowledge-based one. Small and Medium-size enterprises have played a significant role in this regard. The innovation performance of these small and medium size firms has been dependent on mostly their internal innovative activities and through collaborative networks of the various economic actors in their business environment. Many researches and literature have found striking differences in the innovation performance of Western and Eastern European countries in the European Union. However, over the years, the Eastern European countries are catching up. The knowledge-based open economy has contributed significantly to improve innovation performance of some Central and Eastern European countries. Therefore, the sources of information and knowledge for the current innovation performance of the selected Central and Eastern European countries has triggered interest of researches. This paper examines the various sources of knowledge and information and the extent to which these different sources contribute to innovation performance of SMEs in some selected Central and Eastern European Countries. The influence of different knowledge and information sources and their relationships with SMEs innovation performance in the selected Central and Eastern European countries are empirically assessed using structural equation model. The data for the empirical analysis was sourced from the anonymized European Union Community Innovation Survey 2010-2012 on SMEs engaged in manufacturing activities. The results show that internal sources of information and knowledge from internal innovative activities influence highly the innovation performance of SMEs in these CEE countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge generation, in contemporary times, has dictated the economic strength and national and regional competitive advantage. The advent of the open innovation model has driven firms to collaborate and engage in external interactions to incite their innovation spark to become even more competitive globally and nationally. There have been a wealth of success in creating intellectual capital in the European Union. In line with that, subsequent funding have been provided for small and medium sized firms (SMEs) with the view of assisting them to individually or cooperatively generate intellectual capital. However, even as human resources, cooperation and other environmental factors have been acclaimed to influence regional intellectual capital capacity, we question whether these factors offer an interactively significant influence on themselves in creating intellectual capital. This will enable identification of catalytic indicators to expertly position regional activities that generate regional competitive advantage. Using the Structural equation modelling (SEM) and data from European Innovation Survey (2018), research aims to test the interactive influence of the selected indicators of intellectual capital and their significance in generation intellectual capital represented by patents, trademarks and design applications. The results revealed that whilst research system attractiveness and firm-to-firm or academia linkages were very significant in generating intellectual capital, human capital were not significant in generating intellectual capital contrary to mass of literature. Attractiveness of research systems were strongly significant in affecting the human resource structure and innovation friendliness of member states and generation of intellectual capital. Private, public and venture capital were found to have been strongly influenced by labour structure and friendliness of a geography whilst it also strongly affected the cooperation tendencies of firms and academia. Policies that aligned regional strengths to these findings were further recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge management has been touted to help firms achieve high innovative performance hence it has become an entrenched managerial activity due to the changing perspective of what makes a firm more competitive over its competitors. Due to improvement in technology and increased contact due to globalization, access to and possession of discrete information by firms help to sustain firm absorptive capacity. It may also serve as enabler for distinctive firm positioning which provides benefit to the firm. The pool of knowledge within the firm when is inimitable helps the firm to engage in much innovative activities because the firm will possess both tacit and codified knowledge which other competitors do not have. Some scholars have found that it is more beneficial for firms to seek external knowledge if they aim at introducing new products into the market because the firm cannot produce all the knowledge it needs. This paper seeks to ascertain whether seeking solely external knowledge is determinant for firm's new product introduction in some selected countries in the transition knowledge economies. In the light of the foregoing aim, a logistics regression model has been used employing data from the Harmonized European Union Community Innovative Survey 2012-2014 for the empirical analysis. Our results show that in as much as firm's acquisition of external knowledge aids in introducing new product into the market, firm's internal research activities and professional knowledge management as well provide the firm with the opportunity to introduce new product. In contrast, the empirical results found cases where sourcing for external knowledge had no significant effect on firm's introduction of new product and services. For the management of knowledge in the firm, we argue that since not all the firm's knowledge could be purchased due to the long-term cost associated with it, it is imperative for management to help stimulate employee knowledge sharing atmosphere through collaborative working environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative ties between various regional actors (including knowledge-intensive enterprises, universities, R&D organizations, and other entities) help create competitive advantage within globalized markets. Competitive advantage based on knowledge-intensive elements is often developed within innovation networks, strategic alliances, research centers, and consortia. Network-based operation among knowledge-intensive organizations helps to accelerate the pace of global technological change and helps diffuse complex knowledge and techniques at the international level. The interconnected actors cooperate and create an environment that promotes knowledge generation and transfer. Reciprocal willingness to share knowledge, trust, and even risk are important elements of a knowledge-intensive network's environment. This makes it possible to generate innovation - both faster and cheaper. The knowledge obtained, applied in the form of innovation, strengthens enterprise performance and increases an economy's competitiveness. Institutional support for research and development is carried out by various organizations in the Czech Republic. The Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TACR) is the most important of these. It provides state support for applied research and experimental development. Its programs intentionally target cooperating stakeholders from the business and knowledge sectors. TACR supports projects that can reasonably expect to achieve various types of knowledge-intensive and commercializable results. Here, we constructed a knowledge network based on micro data from TACR concerning funding provided in the Pardubice region during the years 2011-2015. We focused on two primary industries in this region - the chemical and transportation industries. Using DEA analysis, we examined the effectiveness of TACR financial support, using project cost and the number of projects as inputs with patents and utility models being the multiple outputs. We show that cooperative ties in the chemical industry are more effective than in the transportation industry, which has important policy implications for state support of knowledge networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]