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The Management of Technological Innovation
Research Policy 31 (2002) 653–655
Book reviews The Management of Technological Innovation Mark Dodgson (Ed.), OUP, Oxford, 2000, 220 pp. + references and index, £45.00, ISBN 019-877536-9 Books on ‘managing’ technological innovation (MTI) have to steer a difficult course between two dangers. One danger is capitulating to the pressure from MBA students and managers alike to put things in simple ‘recipe’ format, which gives them a quick guide to best practice, but little understanding of the deeper forces which often undermine attempts to use that best practice. The other danger is to start from the platform of the considerable professional research literature produced by scholars of innovation, but not to ‘translate’ that into an accessible and practice-informing discussion for managers. One of the most commendable features of this excellent book is that it manages that dilemma better than almost any other similar book I can think of. Perhaps this is because very few books on innovation have been written by authors whose roots are firmly in the community of scholars doing academic research on innovation, but who are also actively engaged in teaching the subject to MBA classes. Furthermore, as Dodgson points out in his preface, the classes he teaches come from a diverse set of backgrounds which makes them unwilling to accept a model of innovation management which is based only on the US based, R&D intensive, global multi-business firm. This is reflected in a use of much more diverse examples to illustrate key ideas. The origin of the book’s material in both research and teaching has another consequence for the way it treats the subject. The flavour of the book is very ‘cross-functional’, to use the appropriate MTI term. As well as the chapters that one would expect on such
things as the management of R&D and on technology strategy, there is also an excellent chapter on Management of Operations and Production which makes it clear that the ‘innovative firm’ is innovative across all functions and not just in terms of new product development. Furthermore, there is also a separate chapter on the Commercialisation Process which has a level of detail on IPR and licensing not often found in books of this type. A major strength of the book is the way the opening chapters set the scene. All the familiar arguments about the role of innovation in competition and economic growth are presented, but in a very accessible way. However, the author does not limit the scene setting to these timeless truths. They are presented in a way which sets them in the context of the major changes taking place in the nature and role of innovation in the modern economy. This entails grappling directly with such issues as globalised and networked innovation processes, the ‘knowledge economy’, new approaches to management of enterprises, and the geographical and cultural variations in management models. All of this is done in a deft way in which the professional researcher can read between the lines and see that a lot of key literature has been carefully digested and summarised. But at the same time the speed-reading MBA student is being given a very concise and authoritative diagnosis of the current state of knowledge, but without the discussion being extended to the full length normal in academic monographs. Consequently this book, which is written throughout in a very clear and accessible style, has something for everyone. Specialist researchers will find their own particular fields sharply reviewed and boiled down to the real essentials. Yet they will also find other topics treated, about which they may have little knowledge, and they will learn a lot.
0048-7333/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
654
Book reviews
Managers and wider business and policy readerships will not find a better treatment of what innovation is, why it is important, and how firms do it. I will certainly use this book and I recommend others to do so. Rod Coombs UMIST, Manchester School of Management P.O. Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK Tel.: +44-161-200-3455; fax: +44-161-200-3622 E-mail addresses: [email protected] [email protected] (R. Coombs) PII: S0048-7333(01)00126-3
The Economics of Knowledge Production: Funding and Structure of University Research Dr. Aldo Geuna presents a composite view on a topic which has become a fashionable subject of study since the publication, namely, The Economics of Knowledge Production. As P. David writes in his preface, Aldo Geuna does it with “a fresh and illuminating approach”. In fact, the book develops the analysis of the evolution of universities in EU countries in the early 1990s. More specifically, the aim of the book is to investigate the “unintended consequences of the changes in the rationale of universities”. To reach his aim, Geuna provides both an analytical framework and more significantly a set of empirical analyses which strengthen the view that during the past decade the opportunities and constraints facing European universities changed drastically. It is certainly a quite common statement, the book supports it with an empirical study, both renewed and convincing. The book also enlightens us on the unforeseen changes in the university behaviour and production due to the progressive introduction of new funding opportunities and of procedural changes, both at the national and European level. This debate is of critical importance, both for the management of university and the design of science policy, in a so-called “knowledge-driven” economy, where knowledge production, distribution and diffusion are considered as the main source and explanation of economic growth and wealth. The book is structured in four parts, composed— except for the last one—of two chapters each. Part I sets the frames in which the analysis will be conducted: an analytical and a historical one.
In Chapter 2, an economic approach to the university research behaviour is introduced, focusing on an incentive/constraint oriented approach. In particular the chapter insists on the links between the behaviours and the evolution of the rationale for resource allocation to university, a point which is relevant to the subsequent empirical investigations. It proposes the main hypothesis to be tested in the following parts. Chapter 3 takes a more historical perspective: it presents an evolutionary account of European universities. Despite some national or local idiosyncrasies, there are common features which are brought into light. It suggests “that one of the possible outcomes of the ongoing changes is the polarisation of the university system with, at one extreme, a small group of dynamic research-oriented universities and, at the other extreme, a large group of mainly teaching oriented institutions” (pp. 168). Part II focuses on the relationship between the funding mechanisms and the evolution of the university organisations and production. Chapter 4, using data sets both on research funding and on publication output at the national level 1981–1995, and on the total population of universities for 11 EU countries in 1992, Aldo Geuna provides interestingly a robust support for the polarisation hypothesis: two clearly distinct clusters of institutions have been identified: a smaller group of research-oriented universities (mostly founded before WWII), and a larger one, composed of small sized institutions, involved in either technological research or teaching. The results show also that the changes of funding mechanisms in the 1980s and 1990s have already induced a high level of concentration of university research. Chapter 5 conducts a similar questioning on the UK case. An econometric model is presented to analyse the impact of the changes in the research funding structure on the scientific publication rate. Interestingly, one of the main results is: “on the one hand, the leading research-intensive UK universities are the most important recipients of industrial support and . . . on the other hand, they are among the less dependent on industrial funding” (p. 169). Both chapters confirm the polarisation of university research resulting from the competitive approach to university behaviour and funding.
Book reviews The Management of Technological Innovation Mark Dodgson (Ed.), OUP, Oxford, 2000, 220 pp. + references and index, £45.00, ISBN 019-877536-9 Books on ‘managing’ technological innovation (MTI) have to steer a difficult course between two dangers. One danger is capitulating to the pressure from MBA students and managers alike to put things in simple ‘recipe’ format, which gives them a quick guide to best practice, but little understanding of the deeper forces which often undermine attempts to use that best practice. The other danger is to start from the platform of the considerable professional research literature produced by scholars of innovation, but not to ‘translate’ that into an accessible and practice-informing discussion for managers. One of the most commendable features of this excellent book is that it manages that dilemma better than almost any other similar book I can think of. Perhaps this is because very few books on innovation have been written by authors whose roots are firmly in the community of scholars doing academic research on innovation, but who are also actively engaged in teaching the subject to MBA classes. Furthermore, as Dodgson points out in his preface, the classes he teaches come from a diverse set of backgrounds which makes them unwilling to accept a model of innovation management which is based only on the US based, R&D intensive, global multi-business firm. This is reflected in a use of much more diverse examples to illustrate key ideas. The origin of the book’s material in both research and teaching has another consequence for the way it treats the subject. The flavour of the book is very ‘cross-functional’, to use the appropriate MTI term. As well as the chapters that one would expect on such
things as the management of R&D and on technology strategy, there is also an excellent chapter on Management of Operations and Production which makes it clear that the ‘innovative firm’ is innovative across all functions and not just in terms of new product development. Furthermore, there is also a separate chapter on the Commercialisation Process which has a level of detail on IPR and licensing not often found in books of this type. A major strength of the book is the way the opening chapters set the scene. All the familiar arguments about the role of innovation in competition and economic growth are presented, but in a very accessible way. However, the author does not limit the scene setting to these timeless truths. They are presented in a way which sets them in the context of the major changes taking place in the nature and role of innovation in the modern economy. This entails grappling directly with such issues as globalised and networked innovation processes, the ‘knowledge economy’, new approaches to management of enterprises, and the geographical and cultural variations in management models. All of this is done in a deft way in which the professional researcher can read between the lines and see that a lot of key literature has been carefully digested and summarised. But at the same time the speed-reading MBA student is being given a very concise and authoritative diagnosis of the current state of knowledge, but without the discussion being extended to the full length normal in academic monographs. Consequently this book, which is written throughout in a very clear and accessible style, has something for everyone. Specialist researchers will find their own particular fields sharply reviewed and boiled down to the real essentials. Yet they will also find other topics treated, about which they may have little knowledge, and they will learn a lot.
0048-7333/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
654
Book reviews
Managers and wider business and policy readerships will not find a better treatment of what innovation is, why it is important, and how firms do it. I will certainly use this book and I recommend others to do so. Rod Coombs UMIST, Manchester School of Management P.O. Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK Tel.: +44-161-200-3455; fax: +44-161-200-3622 E-mail addresses: [email protected] [email protected] (R. Coombs) PII: S0048-7333(01)00126-3
The Economics of Knowledge Production: Funding and Structure of University Research Dr. Aldo Geuna presents a composite view on a topic which has become a fashionable subject of study since the publication, namely, The Economics of Knowledge Production. As P. David writes in his preface, Aldo Geuna does it with “a fresh and illuminating approach”. In fact, the book develops the analysis of the evolution of universities in EU countries in the early 1990s. More specifically, the aim of the book is to investigate the “unintended consequences of the changes in the rationale of universities”. To reach his aim, Geuna provides both an analytical framework and more significantly a set of empirical analyses which strengthen the view that during the past decade the opportunities and constraints facing European universities changed drastically. It is certainly a quite common statement, the book supports it with an empirical study, both renewed and convincing. The book also enlightens us on the unforeseen changes in the university behaviour and production due to the progressive introduction of new funding opportunities and of procedural changes, both at the national and European level. This debate is of critical importance, both for the management of university and the design of science policy, in a so-called “knowledge-driven” economy, where knowledge production, distribution and diffusion are considered as the main source and explanation of economic growth and wealth. The book is structured in four parts, composed— except for the last one—of two chapters each. Part I sets the frames in which the analysis will be conducted: an analytical and a historical one.
In Chapter 2, an economic approach to the university research behaviour is introduced, focusing on an incentive/constraint oriented approach. In particular the chapter insists on the links between the behaviours and the evolution of the rationale for resource allocation to university, a point which is relevant to the subsequent empirical investigations. It proposes the main hypothesis to be tested in the following parts. Chapter 3 takes a more historical perspective: it presents an evolutionary account of European universities. Despite some national or local idiosyncrasies, there are common features which are brought into light. It suggests “that one of the possible outcomes of the ongoing changes is the polarisation of the university system with, at one extreme, a small group of dynamic research-oriented universities and, at the other extreme, a large group of mainly teaching oriented institutions” (pp. 168). Part II focuses on the relationship between the funding mechanisms and the evolution of the university organisations and production. Chapter 4, using data sets both on research funding and on publication output at the national level 1981–1995, and on the total population of universities for 11 EU countries in 1992, Aldo Geuna provides interestingly a robust support for the polarisation hypothesis: two clearly distinct clusters of institutions have been identified: a smaller group of research-oriented universities (mostly founded before WWII), and a larger one, composed of small sized institutions, involved in either technological research or teaching. The results show also that the changes of funding mechanisms in the 1980s and 1990s have already induced a high level of concentration of university research. Chapter 5 conducts a similar questioning on the UK case. An econometric model is presented to analyse the impact of the changes in the research funding structure on the scientific publication rate. Interestingly, one of the main results is: “on the one hand, the leading research-intensive UK universities are the most important recipients of industrial support and . . . on the other hand, they are among the less dependent on industrial funding” (p. 169). Both chapters confirm the polarisation of university research resulting from the competitive approach to university behaviour and funding.