Contenu du sommaire : Innovation Processes and Institutions

In the context of green growth and sustainability, there is a substantial and growing literature that considers means to promote further innovation with respect to energy. This paper considers the possible effects on energy efficiency from an earlier period of policy reform aimed at promotion of innovation, namely the wave of strengthening of patent rights that took place during the 1990s. This period covered the entry into effect of the World Trade Organisation's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, expanded adherence to various accords of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, and a variety of regional agreements and, in many countries, domestic reforms. For a broad sample of countries, this paper assesses empirically the relationship between change in the protection of patent rights between 1990 and 2005 and indicators for energy efficiency and related innovation. Controlling for other factors, it considers the question as to whether the strengthening of patent rights was associated with technological progress that may have influenced the energy intensity of economies around the world. The results present a mixed picture and, therefore, suggest the presence of a relatively complex relationship between the strengthening of patent protection and energy efficiency, one which may be influenced by such factors as changes in relative prices, heterogeneity related to resource requirements by different industries, and consumption patterns related to adoption of new technologies.JEL Codes: D23, G19, O4, N7

The Essential Facilities Doctrine, albeit an American case-law creation, is also implemented in the European Union. While, since Trinko (2004), the US Supreme Court seems to challenge its implementation, European antitrust authorities tend to extend this doctrine to intangible assets. Focusing on European case-law, we observe several differences between American and European competition policies. This article highlights these dissimilarities - which are going much further than the sole implementation of the EFD - and underlines both the principles and the limits of the European approach. As a final purpose, this work tries to point up some of these differences' origins. In this way, we argue that, if the US and the EU antitrust authorities are consistent with their respective conceptions of competition, these policies are not neutral on the innovation incentives.JEL Codes: K21, L13, L86

The present research aims to examine how the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects for landfills can generate service innovation that contribute to the improvement of the urban solid waste management in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, considering two landfills CDM projects. There are two methodological procedures. First, there is an adaptation of the social carbon methodology (SCM), constructing indicators to assess the social and environmental outcomes of these projects. Second, the analysis is based on an innovation multi-agent approach. Partial results collaborate to define sustainability indicators for the understanding of the peculiarities of the service offered in the researched context, as in regard to opportunities to build new ways to solve particular problems through new institutional and organizational arrangements, involving municipal governments, utilities companies, communities surrounding of the landfills, recyclable material collectors, organized civil society as well as in regard to the establishment of parameters to guide the objectives of the public sector innovation.JEL Codes: Q56, Q57, R11, R53

Current environmental impacts are leaching the sector of chemistry to modify his methods of production. A special attention has been given to the main role of the green innovations in the paradigm of green chemistry. They are led by public policies that call for a sustainable transition. But what are their peculiarities? This paper aims to show that the various definitions that appear in the economic literature are restricted to integrate the technosphere and the biosphere. First, we show the difficulty to distinguish generic innovations from environmental innovations from different perspectives. Secondly, we confirm these confusions in studying their applications to the green chemistry sector. We conclude that green innovations need a reconceptualisation. Indeed, technological expectations face irreversible physical processes and rebound effects because of the quest of eco-efficiency.JEL Codes: Q01, Q55, Q57, O14, O32, O33

The technology transfer process between a public laboratory and a company has been the subject of many publications and has been widely discussed in economic theory. This paper highlights several newly identified asymmetries occurring between the different agents taking part in the process, dealing specifically with the aerospace R&D sector in France. These specificities concern the characteristics, capabilities and competencies (the ‘capacities') of French SMEs and public research laboratories. The theoretical corpus of the article draws partly upon the analyses of ‘dynamic and interactive capabilities' (and competencies), and for the rest upon various asymmetries identified and conceptualized from empirical sources, being based on the recent experience of one of the most dynamic Technology Transfer Offices in France: the case of ONERA (the National Office for Aerospace Studies and Research) and its dyadic relations with the SMEs. In such a cooperative, interactive innovation process, we will argue that certain collaborative tools or practices emerge, aimed at reducing information asymmetries or acting as compensation mechanisms for other types of asymmetries between the partners at a microeconomic level; especially in France where there is a gap between the public R&D laboratories and the SMEs in terms of Technology Readiness Levels. Some of these compensation mechanisms, particularly those related to the knowledge economy, could be adapted and reshaped for agents engaged in R&D and innovation in various other sectors, perhaps inducing positive amplification effects on innovation behavior, and thereby through an endogenous ‘multiplier effect' on economic growth at the macroeconomic level within the “national innovation system”.JEL Codes: L25, O14, D82, O32

Connectivity in the information age, the attendant move to co-creating experiences with consumers, transaction cost economics associated with search costs in the wake of information overload, all suggest that brand value requires not only informing and dialogue, but also enabling discussion between consumers and with consumer communities. This research studies the Web 2.0 tools to find out how they can be used to build up brand equity through informing, dialoguing and enabling discussion. This research investigates ten cases in the field of online lending. We find that different websites are using many interaction tools for informing, dialogue and enabling discussion, including website presentations, blogs, buzz creation, co-branding, social networking and sharing media. We find different mix of these brand equity creation strategies on different websites. This descriptive article will be of interest to all social websites as well as all microfinance institutions, banks and financial service institutions who would like to use web 2.0 to foster new co-creation of value with their customers. The article is especially useful to understand community formation for building up brand value which could be useful for directing microfinance towards the financially excluded. This is the first paper to study brand equity creation strategies using web 2.0 tools. It is also the first paper to study brand valuation creation in online lending in particular.JEL Codes: D23, G21, M31, O14, O33

The development of high growth New Technology-Based Firms (NTBFs) in Silicon Valley, Israel, Bangalore and UK is attributed to Venture Capital. Evidence of Nigeria focused or based Venture Capital investment in new technology based firms (NTBFs) is surveyed. This study attempted defining what NTBFs is with Nigeria in context; utilizing established classification such as OECD in assessing the kinds of technology-based firms (TBFs) around. Despite the importance of NTBFs, government incentives and VC investments to grow them have been minimal in Nigeria. Using open (unstructured) questions interviews of members of the Venture Capital Association of Nigeria (VCAN) and some executives in technology-based firms, their assessment of the Nigerian business environment shows a need for policy changes to encourage an upsurge of VC investment in NTBFs. This paper relied on secondary source material.JEL Codes: G24, G28, O38, O16, O43, O55

The aim of this article, is to analyze the effects of factors external and internal to the firms on innovation in Tunisia, and how these effects vary according some specificities of the firms, such as the opening of capital to foreign companies. The analysis is based on a sample of 543 manufacturing firms, taken from the Tunisian Survey of Technological Innovation conducted in 2005 by the Tunisian Ministry of Scientific Research, Technology and Skills Development. The results indicate that the firm's technological competences, derived from in-house R&D and innovation efforts and cooperation are the main determinants of innovation performance of Tunisian firms. They also suggest that firms with high export intensity and significant foreign capital participation are found to be less innovating than partially exporting firms with low foreign capital share. The preliminary conclusion of our study is a set of recommendations to policy makers aiming at targeting new strategy vis-à-vis FDI considering their technological content and their impact on in house R&D, innovation and training system.JEL Codes: C25, O14, O31

The development of international trade has enabled industrialised countries to obtain supplies of high-quality, high-tech products very cheaply from developing countries. But the ever-falling prices of these imported goods have eroded the interest of industrialised countries in producing them themselves. This has led to a phenomenon of deindustrialisation, resulting from the loss of export markets, production offshoring and increased investment abroad by transnational companies. Drawing on an empirical analysis and case studies of four countries, this article shows that deindustrialisation is not inevitable. The right mix between government economic policy and the strategies of companies and entrepreneurs has enabled industry in some countries to do better than just resisting globalisation. This mix of public policy and business strategy has to aim to keep domestic companies' margins in line with their international partners and competitors, accentuate and sustain research and innovation efforts in the long term and emphasise mid-range and high-end production. The economies of the industrialised countries that are already committed to this approach are currently those doing best in the current crisis.JEL Codes: O14, O3, F02