It once took two decades to replace one-third of the Fortune 500; now a subset of new firms are challenging and displacing this elite group at a breathtaking rate, while armies of startups come and go within just a few years. Most new jobs are, in fact, coming from small firms, reversing the trend of a century. David Audretsch takes a close look at the U.S. economy in motion, providing a detailed and systematic investigation of the dynamic process by which industries and firms enter into markets, either grow and survive, or disappear. He shapes a clear understanding of the role that small, entrepreneurial firms play in this evolutionary process and in the asymmetric size distribution of firms in the typical industry.Audretsch introduces the large longitudinal database maintained by the U.S. Small Business Administration that is used to identify the startup of new firms and track their performance over time. He then provides different snapshots of the process of industries in motion: why new-firm startup activity varies so greatly across industries; what happens to these firms after they enter the market; the extent to which entrepreneurial firms account for an industry's economic activity and why that measure varies across industries; how small firms compensate for size-related disadvantages; and who exits and why.Audretsch concludes that the structure of industries is characterized by a high degree of fluidity and turbulence, even as the patterns of evolution vary considerably from industry to industry. The dynamic process by which firms and industries evolve over time is shaped by three fundamental factors: technology, scale economies, and demand. Most important, the evidence suggests that it is the differences in the knowledge conditions and technology underlying each specific industry -- key elements in innovation -- that are responsible for the pattern particular to that industry.

Interactions between firms and universities are key building blocks of innovation systems. This book focuses on those interactions in developing countries, presenting studies based on fresh empirical material prepared by research teams in 12 countries

This book analyses and critically evaluates the development of two key components of China’s economy: the network of productive enterprises, and the national innovation system, from the inception of market-oriented reforms to the present day. The approach is a partly novel one, albeit inspired to classical political economy, rooted in the structure and evolution of social relations of production and exchange and of the institutional setting in these two crucial domains. The main findings are twofold: First, the role of planning and public ownership, far from withering, has being upheld and qualitatively enhanced, especially throughout the most recent stages of industrial reforms. Second, enterprises are increasingly participating - along with universities and research centers - in a concerted and historically unparalleled effort to dramatically upgrade China’s capacity to engage in indigenous innovation. As a result, China’s National Innovation System has been growing and strengthening at a pace much faster than that of the national economy as a whole. The book also presents a speculative and provisional perspective on the validity, and meaning, of the claim that the country’s socioeconomic system is indeed a form of socialism with Chinese characteristics. It will be on interest to students and scholars researching China, politics, and development economics.

First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book charts the effects of new communication technologies and the Internet on the creation of music in the early 21st century. It examines how the music industry will be altered by the Internet, music online services and MP3-technology. This is done through an integrated model based on an international history of the industry since the phonograph’s invention in 1877, and thus, the history of the music industry is described in full detail for the first time.

The construction industry is currently experiencing accelerating developments concerning societal demands along with project complexity, internationalization and digitalization. In an attempt to grasp the consequences of these demands on productivity and innovation, this edited book addresses how innovation is likely to take place with a more long-term perspective on the construction sector. While existing literature focuses on organizational discontinuity and fragmentation as the main reasons for the apparent lack of innovation in the industry, this book highlights the connectivity of construction actors, resources and activities as fundamental for understanding how innovation takes place.Through 15 empirically grounded chapters, the book shows how innovation is part of construction processes on various levels, including project, firm and industry, and that these innovation processes are characterized by organizational and technological connectivity over time. Written by European business management scholars, the chapters cover empirical cases and examples from both a multi-organizational and a multi-international perspective in terms of covering the viewpoints of different industry actors and the contexts of several different European countries including: Sweden, Norway, the UK, Italy, France, Hungary and Poland. By illustrating how connectivity is part of innovation processes in the creation of single-product innovations, of various innovations within and across projects, as well as a fundamental aspect of the processes in which innovations cross nations, the book provides a new angle on how to understand construction innovation and where the industry might (or needs to) be heading next. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in construction management, project management, engineering management, innovation studies, business and management studies.

Provocative and reflective, this volume on the notion of knowledge and innovation in the business industry provides readers with a holistic approach to the subject of ‘knowledge’. Structuring their arguments around four case studies of innovation within four entirely different contexts, Håkansson and Waluszewski invite the business-minded reader to consider the costs of adopting new knowledge and innovation within a business setting. This book: questions the long-held assumption that new knowledge and innovation are universally advantageous follows the tremor of an innovation as new knowledge reverberates through, or is dampened by the larger economic community - including cultural structures, the industrial standards and the foundational assumptions that rule a particular economic domain focuses in particular on the interfaces where the innovative agent connects to its customers, suppliers and competitors. An ideal reference source for postgraduate students taking advanced courses in science and technology studies, innovation management, industrial marketing and purchasing, technological development and innovation systems.