Cogwheels

Visualizations

2011-10-04T17:38:00.000+05:30

Geographic data almost always makes more sense when it's visualized. But good examples are hard to find (probably because they're hard to make...). Flowing Data pointed me to a particularly cool interactive map that shows the world's current and planned submarine cables. The blog collects data visualization of just about everything from serious to simply fun. But my favorite one has to be this:

MTS India's redsparks campaign to hire a brand new innovation team

2011-03-12T17:45:00.001+05:30

MTS India is hiring a brand new innovation team, 6-10 people. Looking for unique individuals who are passionate about spearheading innovation projects across the whole company. Junior and senior roles MTS India is a mobile voice and data service provider. redsparks is a campaign to find the creative enablers, lateral thinkers and outliers for an Innovation Team. It's the chance of a lifetime!

India announces a national innovation fund for early stage capital

2011-03-11T10:46:00.003+05:30

News alert The National Innovation Council has recently addressed 2 major issues in the Indian innovation ecosystem Within the next 2-3 months a national innovation fund will be set up to provide early stage seed capital for ventures in areas such as health and education. The fund will reportedly have Rs. 1'000 crore (or around $220 mio) to invest. The Union Budget for 2011-2012 will cover the

China: Green cities don't have to come at the expense of economic growth

2011-01-25T22:09:00.001+05:30

"How green are China's cities?" McKinsey Quarterly, January 2011. In connection with the World Economic Forum's themes, McKinsey has published the results of a new study on the sustainability of China's cities. Unsurprisingly, they found huge differences between individual cities. What may come as a surprise though, is that there was no causal link between sustainability and economic growth.

Science and the city

2009-10-07T15:29:00.009+05:30

Johnson, Steven. Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World, Riverhead Books, 2006. The map in the title of this book shows houses and wells in mid-19th-century London. In 1854 Soho experienced the most violent outbreak of cholera in the city's history. The map, compiled by the physician John Snow, shows the number of dead

Hypios

2009-08-27T18:56:00.003+05:30

A while back I was excited to discover Innocentive, an online platform to match scientists around the world with people who needed a problem solved. One of the greatest things about it was the high proportion of solutions that were submitted (and accepted) from Brazil, Russia and other emerging economies. They have since developed to become more of an open innovation platform. Whereas their

The size of cities

2009-05-25T16:16:00.005+05:30

2 recent NYT columns about the size of cities caught my eye. Edward Glaeser explains why India's (and emerging economies') cities grow so large. And Steven Strogatz explains the power law that describes the exponential distribution of city sizes within a country - and relates it to similar distributions observed within living organisms. Here's a particularly interesting insight from Strogatz's

Survey on Indian and Chinese immigrants/returnees

2009-03-09T13:53:00.005+05:30

Wadhwa, V., Saxenian, A., Freeman, R. B., & Gereffi, G. (2009). America's Loss is the World's Gain: America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part 4. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1348616. This just landed in my inbox... I've been wondering for a long time where to find numbers on Indians returning to India from the US. There is still no comprehensive data, but Wadhwa et al. have been

In print

2007-10-29T23:56:00.002+05:30

... at least in the UK. The US edition will follow in a month or two. Gurneeta Vasudeva and I contributed chapter 5: "R&D internationalization: building organizational capabilities to balance exploration and exploitation" to A New Generation in International Strategic Management edited by Stephen Tallman. Here's the publisher's page. Available at Amazon UK and on pre-order at Amazon USA. From

Dissertation abstract

2007-10-12T05:42:00.001+05:30

Now that the dissertation draft is complete, I feel it's time to put my abstract online for those people who want a bit more than my "elevator spiel" about what I actually wrote. Find it here thanks to Google Docs.

Innovation has a long way to go in Bangalore

2007-09-17T03:37:00.001+05:30

As the headlines proclaim Bangalore to be the next Silicon Valley, more critical voices are often drowned out. This one will hopefully fare better. NASSCOM and BCG recently published a report on the innovation ecosystem for the Indian IT system. The following graphic from the report basically sums up their conclusions: India has a long, long way to go. In addition, the authors found that the

Bibliography

2007-05-26T05:56:00.000+05:30

I haven't yet figured out a simple way to publish Endnote files online. Until then, here's a link to my reference library in Google's text format.The first page has links to generally useful websites. The rest are references to books, articles, working papers, etc. The references aren't grouped, but they generally deal with- regional economics/clustering- economics and management of innovation, R

R&D Outsourcing and the Economics of Innovation

2007-05-13T01:54:00.001+05:30

The Institute for the Future (ITFT) has set up a project called Delta Scan, speculating on the future of science and technology for the years 2005-2055. It includes a plausible argument on increased R&D outsourcing and offshoring. And a good, concise collection of references. A shift in R&D processes from “ivory tower” models to global networks of contractors and alliances could have a

New technologies at work

2007-03-10T18:55:00.001+05:30

Christina Garsten and Helena Wulff (eds), New Technologies at Work: People, Screens and Social Virtuality, Berg Publishers, 2003 See the full review at the RCCS website. Excerpts: New Technologies at Work: People, Screens and Social Virtuality, edited by Christina Garsten and Helena Wulff, is a set of ethnographies, and as such it is no surprise that the authors aim to bring people, place, and

Argonauts, ethnic scientific communities

2007-01-26T14:39:00.001+05:30

AnnaLee Saxenian, The New Argonauts, Harvard University Press, 2006 William Kerr, Ethnic Scientific Communities and International Technology Diffusion, HBS Working Paper 06-022, 2006 Ajay Agrawal, Devesh Kapur, John McHale, Defying Distance: Examining the Influence of the Diaspora on Scientific Knowledge Flows, Working Paper 2004 Entrepreneurial networks carry regional advantage across distance

From Bangalored to Bangalore envy

2007-01-12T15:55:00.000+05:30

Gleefully reported by the press today: "Bangalore envy" is one of 10 new now-words being flogged by Ira Matathia and Marian Salzman. It means: the movement of much of the world's smart money to where many of the world's smart people are.

National Innovation System timelines: India, China, USA

2006-11-27T20:26:00.001+05:30

Found on Yoshiki Mikami's virtual class website. This is Mikami's overview of the evolution of the Indian national innovation system from the 18th century to the present. The data on more recent decades isn't quite comprehensive, but it's useful to get a timeline. Mikami's site also has timelines for China and the USA.

SME data

2006-09-30T20:18:00.001+05:30

Another roundup: global SME data sources (with a focus on Asia). General SME statistics Google: "Google Directory- Sciences > Social Sciences > Economics > Indicators and Statistics > Official statistics > Asia." (Links to national statistical databases.) Inforum: "Econdata." ILO: “Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM) Programme.” Inomics: "EconDirectory." OECD: "SMEs and entrepreneurship."

Global R&D data

2006-09-25T13:59:00.001+05:30

Here's a roundup of useful sources for data on global research and development (with a focus on corporate R&D). Some sources were featured in earlier posts. General indicators UNESCO statistics cover national data on number of researchers, technicians etc., proportion of women researchers, gross R&D expenditure, education level - among others. World Development Indicators from the World Bank

Taiwan-India, China-India linkages

2006-09-07T20:10:00.001+05:30

Anyone following AnnaLee Saxenian's work is aware of the close connections between the semiconductor industries in Silicon Valley, Taiwan, and - more recently - Shanghai. I have been wondering for a while whether India had the potential to become the next node in this evolving network. While the semiconductor industry is still quite small in India, there have been some interesting developments.

BCG on R&D in India and China

2006-09-02T12:52:00.001+05:30

Boston Consulting Group, Innovation 2006 Over the past year and a half, BCG has published various surveys, reports and “opportunities for action” on research and development in India, China and other rapidly emerging economies. The most interesting data are in the Innovation Survey 2006. The largest target market for increased R&D spending remains the USA. And Western Europe still comes in

Great new resource

2006-04-30T23:01:00.001+05:30

The World Bank has a new initiative for Science, Technology and Innovation. The website describes their projects, lists relevant data and publications, and has an excellent collection of links to related organizations.

Communications bibliographies

2006-02-27T10:38:00.000+05:30

Chasing some links, I came across Rajiv Shah's extremely comprehensive bibliography of computer-mediated communications. He also has links to other bibliographies (on internet economics, internet culture, cmc and more) here.

40 meters or 4'000 kilometers apart - how much does it matter?

2006-02-27T10:14:00.001+05:30

Thomas J. Allen, Architecture and communication among product development engineers, Engineering Management Society, 2000. Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE One of the articles on collaboration, distance and technology that is most often recommended to me is Thomas Allen's 'Architecture and communication among product engineers'. It is most famous for its finding that people separated by more than

The role of Bangalore's returnees

2006-02-09T06:03:00.001+05:30

Migration of highly skilled Indian: Case studies of IT and health professionals, STI Working Paper 2004/6, Binod Khadria Currently, there is a sense that foreign investment into R&D in India is closely linked to Indians who were educated and/or worked abroad and are returning home (returnees). Key positions are often filled with returnees or expatriates, and many team leaders and individual

China breaks into top 10 patent filers

2006-02-08T05:17:00.001+05:30

One of the few areas where developing countries do tend to have reliable R&D statistics is patent numbers. And these have made news recently. Here's SciDev.Net's report: China is, for the first time, among the top ten countries filing international patents with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). WIPO announced on 3 February that China last year filed 2,452 patents with its

R&D in China and India: Great image, few reliable numbers

2006-02-07T04:56:00.001+05:30

I’ve been working on a round-up of Indian and Chinese R&D statistics. The first thing that caught my attention was that (foreign) R&D in China seemed to be getting much more scholarly attention than Indian R&D. A quick Google search provides some backup for this hunch. Searching Google Scholar for returns 21’600 hits. A search for returns 32’200 hits. Of course,

Ethnography of international software development

2005-12-01T04:27:00.001+05:30

Net-working for a living: Irish developers in the global workplace, Sean O’Riain. In “Global Ethnography” edited by Michael Burawoy et al., 2000 Given the popularity of software development as a research topic, it is surprising that ethnographic studies are rare in this field. Whereas software design is discovering ethnography as a tool for better understanding user requirements, the developers

New sidebar link: NISTEP

2005-11-14T06:11:00.000+05:30

NISTEP is the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy in Japan. While much of the research focuses on Japan, there is interesting work on science and technology indicators and trends in general.

SciDev.Net dossiers

2005-10-24T06:16:00.000+05:30

Poking around SciDev.Net, I came across two interesting dossiers, one on brain drain/brain circulation, the other on R&D in developing countries.

Global talent conference

2005-09-16T04:15:00.000+05:30

The Levin Institute with the Council on Foreign Relations’ Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies recently hosted a conference titled: The Evolving Global Talent Pool: Issues, Challenges, and Strategic Implications. For two days, scholars, business people, and policymakers discussed topics ranging from the impact of globalization on corporate talent to the policies and politics

Outsourcing on PBS

2005-09-14T08:55:00.000+05:30

PBS ran a documentary on outsourcing today. The site also has links to extra material.

Top 1000 universities on the web

2005-07-22T19:48:00.000+05:30

(via ST Consultant)Measures of globalization of R&D are hard to come by. Webometrics is a measure of the WWW-relevance of universities and research institutes around the globe. The ranking is based on a combined indicator that takes into consideration the volume of the published material on the web, and the visibility and impact of these webpages measured by the sitations (site citations) or

Foreign direct investment in R&D

2005-06-26T03:29:00.001+05:30

Foreign direct investment in industrial research in the pharmaceutical and electronics industries - results from a survey of multinational firms, Walter Kuemmerle, Research Policy 28, 1999. One way of investigating the globalization of R&D is to analyze streams of foreign direct investment (FDI). Where and why firms do invest in R&D abroad? Kuemmerle's 1999 paper in Research Policy addresses

Saxenian on Bangalore, 5 years ago

2005-06-13T08:16:00.001+05:30

Back to India: Indian software engineers are returning with enthusiasm and etrepreneurial know-how, Saxenian, WSJ January 24, 2000 The Bangalore boom: From brain drain to brain circulation? Saxenian. In Bridging the digital divide: Lessons from India, Kenniston and Kumar (eds.), 2000, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. Bangalore: The Silicon Valley of Asia? Saxenian, Conference

New book

2005-03-26T23:55:00.001+05:30

Networks - Critical Studies in Economic Institutions, edited by Gernot Grabher and Walter W. Powell, 2005 The book contains a collection of previously published articles about network organization in the economy. The table of contents is the perfect reading list for anyone getting into the subject. From the flyer: Volume I introduces networks as a distinctive governance structure. The

U.S. high-tech headed for trouble?

2005-02-28T06:48:00.001+05:30

The knowledge economy: Is the United States losing its competitive edge? Benchmarks of our innovation future, The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation, Feb 16, 2005 (via John Daly's blog) The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation has published a bleak picture of America's future in science and engineering. While the United States still seems to be ahead by most measures, the

Economic Freedom Index 2005

2005-01-08T01:46:00.000+05:30

The Heritage Foundation's annual index of economic freedom for 2005 is out. Hong Kong, Singapore and Luxembourg top the list. The United States is no longer in the top 10, tying with Switzerland for 12th place.

Shell Economist Prize winners announced

2004-11-29T02:59:00.000+05:30

Import workers or export jobs? The winning essays are available here. The first prize went to Claudia O'Keefe who provides a touching first-person account and a much needed "shut up and think" in the dogmatic discussion around outsourcing. Hopefully the prize money will afford her the comfort and opportunity to write more.

Copycat or creative genius?

2004-11-26T01:44:00.001+05:30

In this Newyorker piece Malcolm Gladwell looks at the line that separates copyright infringement and borrowing from someone else's work as part of a creative process. He wrote it after a playwright used some quotes from one of his Newyorker articles in a play. Old words in the service of a new idea aren’t the problem. What inhibits creativity is new words in the service of an old idea. And

IT Conversations

2004-11-24T06:15:00.000+05:30

I recently discovered a useful source on social and economic effects of IT: IT Conversations. It's a collection of audio pieces (conferences, presentations, discussions) about IT in our world. Recent topics have included Richard Florida's take on creativity and view-points on the role of blogging in the U.S. presidential elections.

Global sourcing challenges

2004-11-19T11:49:00.001+05:30

New rules for global component sourcing: the quality imperative in electronics, Economist Intelligence Unit, 2004, London, New York, Hong Kong. Global sourcing is becoming more complex, moving from a tactical task to a strategic one for large electronics manufacturers. It provides flexibility and cost advantages, but as it gets more complex, other factors come into play as well. As the level of

Horizontal innovation networks: open source software and surfing

2004-11-18T04:38:00.001+05:30

Eric von Hippel, Horizontal innovation networks - by and for users, 2002, MIT Sloan Working Paper Von Hippel's horizontal innovation networks are in many ways modern day versions of collective invention. He examines various networks of users engaged in the production, distribution and consumption (use) of innovations. Even as the intellectual property rights discussion is heating up, the

Collective invention

2004-11-17T09:26:00.001+05:30

Collective invention, R. C. Allen, 1983, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization All too often R&D and innovation are used interchangeably. Obviously, innovation doesn't always happen in a lab, under a dedicated budget or even with the explicit intention of increasing profits. Allen describes an alternative way of organizing innovation: collective invention. Allen focuses on the iron

Krugman's spatial economics

2004-11-15T12:24:00.001+05:30

Development, Geography, and Economic Theory, Paul Krugman, 1995 More from Krugman. He gives a particularly good summary of various economic theories of agglomeration. Germanic geometry 1. Weberian location theory: Alfred Weber and his followers ... analyzed the location decision of a firm serving one or more markets and relying on one or more sources of supply, with the total number of such

The case for and against economic modelling

2004-11-15T05:48:00.000+05:30

Development, Geography, and Economic Theory, Paul Krugman, 1995 I have always had a problem with economics' obsession with mathematical modelling. Part of the blame probably lies with my first macro teacher who began the semester by proclaiming that the world could be described in 3 equations, and that performing calculus on these equations would eventually explain "everything". (I'll take "42"

Inventing a better future

2004-07-19T03:42:00.001+05:30

The InterAcademy Council has released a strategy paper for "Building Worldwide Capacities in Science and Technology" Recommendations focus on five major areas for action: - Science, technology, and society: To achieve societal goals, governments must develop national S&T strategies; the S&T community should provide knowledge and advice for addressing critical issues; and the public must

Competition or cooperation?

2004-07-19T03:18:00.001+05:30

Much has been made of the importance of alliances in the biotech industry. Large pharmaceutical firms are particularly good at testing and marketing drugs, but are facing pipeline shortages, while smaller start-ups are better at research and innovation. Alliances can help each benefit from the other. Research alliances between firms and with universities are also important drivers of innovation -

Virtual meetings

2004-07-13T21:45:00.001+05:30

The Economist reports on a Wainhouse survey of remote conferencing. Nobody was surprised at the growth in audio, video and web-based conferencing after the terrorist attacks of 2001. Such technologies allow “virtual meetings” ranging from a simple three-way conference call to a fancy multimedia presentation beamed to hundreds over the internet. A sluggish economy, last year's SARS scare and

Creative destruction revisited

2004-07-13T03:07:00.001+05:30

Among innovation economists Joseph Schumpeter is revered for his concept of 'creative destruction.' Still, he might not have been getting enough credit. A while back, The Economist published a piece on innovation by monopolists. Traditionally, monopoly (or market dominance) is considered to discourage firms from innovating or doing anything else that might be in consumers' interests.

Venture hedge funds?

2004-07-13T01:58:00.001+05:30

Here's an interesting idea from Bill Hilliard and Charles Baden-Fuller for venture capital funds to increase their performance: invest in start-ups and buy put options on their competitors' stock shortly before the start-up publicizes market-entry, an IPO etc. Or in plain English: invest in company X, then use your inside information on company X to place bets on its competitors' stock prices. If

Human competitive advantage

2004-07-07T05:17:00.001+05:30

HBS Working Knowledge interviewed Frank Levy and Richard Murnane, authors of The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market. The authors argue that the pervasiveness of computers is drastically changing the mix of available jobs in the United States and elsewhere. If the industrial revolution shifted jobs from highly skilled (e.g. weaving) to less skilled (see Modern

Decision markets

2004-06-26T06:03:00.000+05:30

I've made some posts on James Surowiecki's financial column in the New Yorker before. Now, I found a short piece of his (related to his new book 'The Wisdom of Crowds') in Wired. He describes the uncanny knack of large crowds getting things right more often than experts. Markets, in particular, seem to be good at forecasting where experts fail. According to the Publishers Weekly review, the book

HBS discussion on gurus

2004-06-18T04:24:00.000+05:30

I have long been fascinated by management fads - not the fads themselves as much as the way otherwise intelligent people gobble them up as superior wisdom. Not that management gurus are quacks, but their gift lies more in recognizing successful ideas and explaining them convincingly than in revolutionizing the way business is done at a fundamental level. Often the fads are expressions of a

Useful

2004-06-18T04:14:00.001+05:30

HBS Working Knowledge has posted the link to the WTO's International Trade Statistics 2003 (pdf, 232 pages).

Visualizing information

2004-06-11T01:26:00.001+05:30

When I first started this blog, I posted a link to textarc, a project that visually maps texts. In a similar vein, Marcos Weskamp maps out aspects of the internet: Google news, packet transmission (see the recorded session), electronic conversations, etc. The balance between art, fun and information is probably different for each viewer. In my opinion it's well worth seeing, if only for the

Import workers or export jobs?

2004-06-03T00:15:00.000+05:30

The Shell Economist essay competition this year asks: Import workers or export jobs? Should developing nations be allowed to 'poach' skilled professional labour from countries who have helped pay for this expertise? Or is the influx of immigrants, whether skilled or unskilled, a positive force, bringing either expertise or ambition and hard work to the host nation? Submissions are due August

Global R & D

2004-05-31T20:47:00.001+05:30

Harnessing innovation: R&D in a global growth economy, Economist Intelligence Unit, 2004 The Economist Intelligence Unit has published a new white paper: Harnessing Innovation. It is based on an online survey and in-depth interviews with companies such as Agilent, IBM, AMD Siemens, BMW and Nokia. From the results: Market- and customer-driven innovation has moved from buzz-word to reality,

Not quite eBay

2004-05-04T06:07:00.000+05:30

Save on brokers, consultants etc. List your company to be sold on Merger Network... An interesting site showcased by HBR Working Knowledge, though I'd be interested to know how many serious offers are made.

Copenhagen Consensus

2004-04-26T10:26:00.000+05:30

The Economist is carrying some very interesting articles on global challenges and policies (some only online). Turns out that these are part of its engagement in the Copenhagen Consensus. The premise of the project is that the world is willing to spend money on solving global problems but needs help in prioritizing issues and projects in terms of costs and benefits. For each of 10 global

The locus of globalization

2004-04-20T09:17:00.001+05:30

Global networks - Linked cities (Introduction), Saskia Sassen, 2002 Saskia Sassen has been following global capital markets for years. In the introduction of this edited volume, she uses capital markets to explain the strange relationship between economic globalization and geography. While Sassen focuses on global cities (New York, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and more recently Sao Paolo, Mexico

Forgotten questions about the internet, space and text

2004-04-15T02:04:00.001+05:30

Interface Culture, Steven Johnson, 1997 Steven Johnson sets out to bridge the cultural differences between art and technology. His premise is that the computer interface is an art form, with similar functions today as the novel had in the 19th century: mediating between society and new technology, creating a sense of coherence in a time of upheaval. Johnson addresses many questions that were

Life on the Screen

2004-04-10T09:41:00.001+05:30

Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Sherry Turkle, 1995 Again, something I wrote a while back... Sherry Turkle's book about internet, postmodern philosophy and psychology remains interesting even though many of her examples sound rather dated today (1995 being something like the Triassic Period of the internet). See also some great reviews at Amazon, and Marshall Soules'

Notes on 'Preface to Plato'

2004-04-09T09:33:00.000+05:30

Preface to Plato, Eric A. Havelock, 1982 On the transition from orality to literacy in ancient Greece, ca. 5th century BC. More on this subject here. Another review here. Some thoughts on 'secondary orality' and digital-oral culture today here, here, and here. A review of Walter Ong's related work. Summary (from the publisher) Plato's frontal attack on poetry has always constituted a problem

Do women lack ambition?

2004-04-09T03:27:00.000+05:30

No, this isn't an excuse for infrequent blogging.... HBR is carrying an interesting study on gender differences by Anna Fels, author of Necessary Dreams. For women - far more than for men - the decision to pursue an interest is reconsidered repeatedly and often abandoned. To realize their dreams, women need to understand why they are willing to walk away from them. A lot of aspects presented

Imagined communities

2004-04-02T04:31:00.001+05:30

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson, 1991 I wrote this about Benedict Anderson's book a while back and thought it would work well on the blog, too. Benedict Anderson points out that the ideologies of Marxism and Liberalism failed to unite their followers at critical moments because they failed to address issues of death and immortality.

Internet and quality of work/life

2004-03-30T00:45:00.001+05:30

HBS is featuring Patricia Wallace's new book 'The Internet In the Workplace: How New Technology is Transforming Work.' While having Internet access at work arguably has created efficiencies for businesses and organizations, the author explores complications that the Web brings for employees and employers. For example, how have round-the-clock e-mail and wireless devices affected employees’

A look back at the Human Genome Project

2004-03-22T06:01:00.001+05:30

Breaking the Code, PBS, Bruce Roe and Francis Collins talk to Ray Suarez, 1999 This interview provides a glimpse of the Human Genome Project, as it was happening. It captures some of the excitement... The determination of a DNA Sequence of a whole human chromosome is a tour de force. It provides the first view of a complete chromosome from a completely new vantage point. It's like seeing

Factors of cluster success

2004-03-22T02:11:00.001+05:30

'Old Economy' Inputs for 'New Economy' Outcomes: Cluster Formation in the New Silicon Valleys, Timothy Bresnahan, Alfonso Gambardella, Annalee Saxenian, 2001 While looking for links between old and new hi-tech clusters, I came across this paper. It ties in with a series of studies conducted a while back in Ireland, India, Israel, Taiwan etc. The authors argue that the factors that start a

Get on the bandwagon

2004-03-18T04:09:00.000+05:30

For a while now, stories have been popping up, not just about outsourcing jobs to India, but also about a fledgling migration from the United States to India. At first it seemed that this was a phenomenon of Indians (or people of Indian origin) heading back home as the business climate improved. Now others are jumping on the bandwagon as well - to work in a booming economy, or to study it.

Diseconomies of scale

2004-03-16T03:42:00.001+05:30

Another interesting piece by James Surowiecki, 'the pipeline problem' explains the new industry structure in life sciences. Large pharmaceutical firms may have branding and sales power, but encounter diseconomies of scale when it comes to R&D or innovation in general. As a consequence, their 'pipelines' have been drying up, and they have become to rely on smaller, more flexible and more

The cost of losing R&D

2004-03-15T01:37:00.001+05:30

The Economist carried a comparison of US and European pharmaceuticals industries (based on a Bain study) a while back. In their analysis, they debunk the idea that Europe is benefiting from a free ride. Government pricing regimes may be keeping drug prices low, leaving American patients and insurers to pick up the tab of ever more expensive drug development. However, they are losing out overall -

How I learned to stop worrying and love the bubble

2004-03-12T09:29:00.000+05:30

James Surowiecki has his own take on the United States' innovative power. In his column in the New Yorker he writes about the next investment bubble and why it is good for the US. Positive externalities again (of much heralded American risk-seeking behavior). Though the losers of the dotcom bust may not quite see it that way... In the early sixties, investors stumbled on a neat trick: if a

Externalities and the problem with the outsourcing debate

2004-03-12T06:18:00.001+05:30

As Hal Varian points out in his NYT column today, the problem with the outsourcing debate is that it doesn't treat costs and benefits in the same way. The political problem with trade is simply this: when the dollars flow offshore, it is easy to identify those who are hurt. But when the dollars flow back, it is much more difficult to discern the beneficiaries. The debates about trade are not

Knowledge seekers

2004-03-12T05:37:00.001+05:30

Knowledge Seeking and Location Choice of Foreign Direct Investment in the United States, Wilbur Chung and Juan Alcacer, 2002 In the latest Knowledge@Wharton newsletter, Wilbur Chung and Juan Alcacer present the hypothesis that foreign direct investment (FDI) is not purely cost or market driven. Companies acquire firms, engage in joint-ventures and set up green fields ventures for access to

What is innovation?

2004-03-11T11:05:00.001+05:30

What is innovation? Approaches to distinguishing new products and processes from existing products and processes, Bruce S. Tether, 2003 In this paper, Bruce Tether from CRIC discusses various definitions of innovation and some tools for identifying innovations in research. Tether argues that innovation is sometimes defined as an achievement, sometimes as the results or consequences of that

Stroke of luck or genius?

2004-03-11T09:44:00.000+05:30

I have often heard the saying, 'when luck knocks on the door, you have to get up and answer.' Apparently, Louis Pasteur put it far more elegantly: 'Chance favours the prepared mind.' (discovered in 'What is innovation?')

Human interface design

2004-03-10T09:50:00.000+05:30

The Center for Advanced Media (CAM) at Pace University researches: * Novel and economical collaborative immersive reality systems. * Computer-supported community building through shared virtual environments. * Applications of artistic methods to autostereographic display. * Digital signal processing analysis tools for financial modeling and visualization. * Evolutionary

ICTs versus face-to-face interaction for problem solving

2004-03-10T08:59:00.001+05:30

Sources of ideas for innovation in engineering design, Ammon Salter, David Gann, 2003 This paper, published in Research Policy, vol. 32, no. 8, discusses where engineers find new ideas to solve design problems. Not surprisingly, the paper suggests that personal, face-to-face interactions remain essential for designers working in project/based environments. The findings reveal that although

Biotech/bioinformatics India overview

2004-03-08T10:40:00.001+05:30

www.biospectrumindia.com I just finished scanning a year's worth of BioSpectrum issues. Here's a quick overview (with a severe bias towards bioinformatics). For facts and figures, the magazine's BioData is a good resource. India isn't among the big players yet in terms of biotech, though it does seem to be positioning itself for a leading role in bioinformatics thanks to its strong IT sector.

What is bioinformatics?

2004-03-08T08:42:00.000+05:30

Workshop report: Impact of emerging technologies on the biological sciences, National Science Foundation, 1995 Essentially, bioinformatics involves the management of enormous databases of biological (especially microbiological) information. In addition, 3-D visualization is becoming increasingly important. Narayan Kulkarni of BioSpectrum names 3 subdisciplines: - the development of new

Business ecosystems - perfect metaphor for the biotech industry

2004-03-07T20:55:00.001+05:30

Strategy as Ecology, Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien, 2004 Another article from the March edition of HBR. Iansiti and Levien compare networks of suppliers, distributors, outsourcing firms, makers of related products or services, technology providers, etc. to ecosystems in nature. Certainly not a new concept for anyone who has read up on networks recently, but they carry the analogy further to

Search

2004-03-07T00:19:00.000+05:30

Courtesy of Micah Alpern, I now have a search engine on the blog! Unfortunately, I think it only links to the blog homepage, although the link to Google's cached snapshot should be a bit more useful. Also, it only works if Google has actually crawled the link in question. Since those occasions are few and far between, I'm not sure how useful it will turn out to be... Cool, nevertheless.

When at first offshoring doesn't succeed

2004-03-06T23:36:00.000+05:30

Tough Shift - Lesson in India: not every job translates overseas, Scott Thurm, 2004 In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, writes about one ValiCert's travails as it tried to offshore programming work, first by hiring Infosys and later by opening its own subsidiary in Bangalore. In a nutshell, offshoring didn't work because - ValiCert kept changing the definition or goals of offshored projects.

On the European biotech sector

2004-03-06T22:46:00.000+05:30

Why does the European biotech sector underperform? Mark Greener, 2004 In its December / January 2004 issue, Eurobusiness (now discontinued) carried a story on the worries of the European biotech sector. While biotech in Europe shows impressive growth and success, it is definitely underperforming compared to the US industry. The main reason for this, according to Greener is a lack of venture

Bringing innovations to market in networked industries

2004-03-06T06:59:00.000+05:30

The New Rules for Bringing Innovations to Market, Bhaskar Chakravorti, 2004 Bhaskar Chakravorti, author of 'The Slow Pace of Fast Change,' discusses the pitfalls of innovation in networked industries in this HBR article. (See also this earlier post.) Chakravorti bases his argument on game theory and network economics. When a market is in equilibrium (i.e. Nash equilibrium) every player in a

The Bioeconomy and what it means for regional economies

2004-03-04T05:41:00.001+05:30

Prospects for a Bioeconomy: The Biomedical Industry and Economic Development, Cinda Herndon-King and Richard S. Seline, 2000 Without many too many facts to fall back on, I have proposed that hi-tech industry industries are moving away from a pure cluster model towards a 'network of competing and cooperating clusters.' This report backs me up as far as the biomedical industry is concerned.

Biotech resource

2004-03-03T02:47:00.000+05:30

I found a newish industry magazine that covers biotech in India: Biospectrum. They provide a great industry overview, lots of stats and profiles - and best of all, all their back issues are online. Thanks Reuben, for linking to my blog and motivating me to start posting again!

Cities as drivers of innovation and economic growth

2003-10-25T04:20:00.000+05:30

The economy of cities, Jane Jacobs, 1969 Jane Jacobs sees cities as fundamentally different from other economic regions - not as larger and more complicated villages. In her book, she describes an anthropological view of the earliest cities as centers of trade between non-agricultural tribes that develop sophisticated agricultural techniques as they grow. This conflicts with the view

Business process outsourcing moves up the value-chain

2003-10-07T11:08:00.000+05:30

Special Section: BPO, a global market for services, Knowledge at Wharton, 25 September 2003 Knowledge at Wharton has a special section on business process outsourcing. One of the most interesting articles in the section is about BPO moving up the value-chain. Cutting costs is not the only reason why outsourcing such tasks makes sense for its clients; it’s also about higher quality of work,

R&D in Brazil

2003-10-07T03:36:00.001+05:30

This week, the Knowledge Economy team of the Development Gateway is focusing on Brazil as a potential tech and innovation powerhouse. Brazil has over the past years been receiving increasing public and private investments aimed at boosting and expanding innovative activities in the country. Brazil is the largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America, and Brazilian

Biz-history lesson

2003-10-04T02:59:00.000+05:30

The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea, John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge, 2003 HBS Working Knowledge just alerted me to this new book by 2 Economist editors. “The most important organization in the world is the company: the basis of the prosperity of the West and the best hope for the future of the rest of the world.” And so John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, editors at

How technology aids innovation

2003-09-27T08:12:00.000+05:30

Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation, Stefan Thomke, 2003. Some time ago HBS Working Knowledge carried an interview with Stefan Thomke about his book, 'Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation.' Thomke emphasizes that experimentation is vital to innovation and survival in today's business world. Computer

Trust, alliances, and innovation in supply chain management

2003-09-27T07:06:00.001+05:30

HBS Working Knowledge: Operations: The Missing Link in Supply Chains: People Research on (global) supply chain management has proven to be a great resource for my work, even though I concentrate on innovation rather than production. There are many similar issues in the two fields: the importance of alliances, the necessity to create trust between different organizations etc. This panel

Production networks vs. innovation networks

2003-09-25T11:26:00.000+05:30

Knowledge flows and industrial clusters: An analytical review of literature, Rakesh Basant, 2002 Looking for an overview of the literature on industrial clusters as they relate to knowledge transfer and innovation, I came across this very helpful review by Rakesh Basant. Besides providing a great overview, Rakesh pointed me in the direction of Dieter Ernst's work - an analysis of global

Network metaphor

2003-09-24T10:54:00.000+05:30

Metaphors we live by, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, 2003 [1980] Reading 'Metaphors we live by' reminded me of some of the difficulties of working with network models of the economy. A network is a theoretical structure composed of nodes and links between them. Often individual people, groups or organizations are defined as nodes and the relations between them are the links. But it is possible -

Biotech knowledge and market exchange

2003-09-21T08:37:00.001+05:30

Inter-institutional spillover effects in the commercialization of bioscience, Lynne Zucker, Michael Darby and Jeff Armstrong, ISSR Working Paper, vol. 6, no. 3, 1994. In this study, Zucker, Darby and Armstrong lay out a proposition that partly contradicts a study on knowledge networks by Liebeskind et al. Both studies try to answer the question of how scientific knowledge flows into biotech

Brain Drain from Europe

2003-09-20T09:22:00.000+05:30

Europe and the challenge of the brain drain, IPTS Report, vol. 29, Sami Mahroum, 1998 The brain drain is often treated as a problem of developing countries. This article looks at the migration of highly skilled scientist from Europe to the United States. There is a case that developing countries may gain a net profit from the brain drain thanks to income from remittances. More recently, brain

Biotech knowledge sourcing

2003-09-19T10:10:00.000+05:30

Social networks, learning, and flexibility: sourcing scientific knowledge in new biotechnology firms, ISSR Working Paper, vol. 6, no. 4, Julia Liebeskind, Amalya Oliver, Lynne Zucker, Marilynn Brewer, 1994. Published in Organization Science, Jul/Aug 1996, vol. 7, no.4, p. 428-443. Lynne Zucker was recommended to me as someone who has extensively studied cooperation and innovation in the

Life and the internet

2003-09-17T10:18:00.000+05:30

The death of distance: how the communications revolution is changing our lives, Frances Cairncross, 2001 In 'The death of distance,' Frances Cairncross of The Economist set out to analyze as many facets as possible of the internet in our lives. Her book was initially published in 1999, though she thoroughly revised it for the 2001 edition. Two (or worse, four) years are an eternity in internet