Loading...
85 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 10 of 85
- Problemática da avaliação do potencial de inovação das economias periféricas no contexto da economia do conhecimento. Uma aplicação às empresas portuguesasPublication . Fernandes, Silvia Brito; Noronha, Teresa deAs empresas Portuguesas são na sua maioria pequenas ou médias, não têm departamento de I&D e carecem de recursos humanos qualificados para desenvolvê-la internamente. Os objectivos de negócio estão frequentemente ligados às necessidades dos seus gestores que geralmente consideram a inovação muito cara e arriscada. O nível de confiança entre actores económicos é muito inferior ao da maioria dos países da OCDE, o que explica muitas das condicionantes institucionais, culturais e financeiras que limitam a capacidade empreendedora. Isto ajuda a compreender os baixos níveis de transferência tecnológica e de patentes registadas. Alguns estudos mostram que os esforços em I&D nem sempre estão directamente relacionados com a performance económica,especialmente nas regiões menos desenvolvidas.
- The spatial-institutional architecture of firms’ innovative behaviourPublication . Vaz, Eric; Noronha, Teresa de; Nijkamp, PeterIn recent decades there have been an enormous number of studies about innovation systems, partly inspired by a great interest among policy makers in search for a solid scientific foundation and professional support to identify appropriate development strategies. Despite different perspectives, most studies highlight knowledge creation and innovation as the major drivers of change and growth. This consensus disappears, however, as soon as the complexity of innovation and knowledge are taken into consideration. Innovation goes far beyond new product or process development on account of its interactive nature, while knowledge often surpasses the firms’ internal mechanisms, because, frequently, it is a spatially endogenous characteristic.
- Institutional capacity to dynamically innovate. An application to the Portuguese casePublication . Vicente Galindo, Purificación; Noronha, Teresa de; Nijkamp, PeterThe present paper addresses the dynamics of innovation, by extending the analysis beyond a static-economic perspective. It offers a dynamic-institutional mapping of relational capacities to dynamically innovate. Its main goal is to contribute to the above-mentioned research theme by presenting a new methodology able to pinpoint different trends in the relational capacities of institutions when they are innovative. Thereby, major characteristics in the networks of innovation are identified. This investigation uses an extended set of private institutions and public organizations located in Portugal, evaluated by their WebPage contents. To this data set a new combination ofmultivariate statistical methods is applied to detect group performances, to compare them, and to identify gradients of capacity to dynamically innovate. The results demonstrate that this method can provide extremely useful and tailor-made information for policy evaluation at regional or national levels.
- Innovation for Sustainability and NetworkingPublication . Kijkamp, Peter; Pinto, Hugo; Xavier, António; Noronha, Teresa de; Faustino, Chanda; Vaz, Eric; Madureira, Lívia; Gamito, Teresa Maria; Ferreira, Dora; Oliveira, Ivo; Portela, José; Monteiro, Pedro Valadas; Neto, Paulo; Maldonado, Mauricio; Hobeica, Adib; Gomes, Jorge F. S.; Bernardo, Sofia; Noronha, Teresa de; Gomes, Jorge F.S.Throughout human history, innovation has been the main factor in adapting humanity to its settings. On the basis of earlier practice, human creativity allows the finding of new, permanent ways to do things. their applications encourage new spaces, new necessities and new lifestyles. Innovation has been an element of human capacities from its earlier stages, but it has been recognized only recently as a clear device of social and economic change.
- The asymmetric use of incentives in Portugal: the example of PRIMEPublication . Vicente Galindo, Purificación; Noronha, Teresa de; Neto, PauloEntre 2000 e 2006 o programa PRIME foi usado como um instrumento político público comum. Apesar de ter sido promovido a nível nacional, serviu também como difusor dos fundos europeus entre o tecido empresarial. O objectivo deste artigo é monitorizar a aplicação deste instrumento de forma a avaliar estrategicamente o sistema das políticas de apoio às empresas, focando a análise com base numa escala regional de forma a identificar alguns eventuais impedimentos para o sucesso das empresas. Metodologicamente observámos a execução financeira de 14910 projectos com informação recolhida do portal oficial do programa PRIME em Portugal. Devido a limitações relacionadas com a informação obtida neste portal, o nosso estudo lida com um número reduzido de variáveis, sendo as seguintes: localização do projecto, ano, actividade industrial, programa financiador, NUT, distrito, investimento e incentivo. No entanto foi possível a aplicação do HOMALS, Cluster e Correspondentes Análises, permitindo conclusões sobre o nível de eficácia do PRIME, incluindo localização e nível de sectores.
- An essay on the appropriate indicators to measure innovation in the Portuguese firms. An approach for the less advanced regions facing knowledge economiesPublication . Fernandes, Silvia Brito; Noronha, Teresa deThe Portuguese firms are mostly small or medium sized and do not have an R&D department and lack qualified personnel to develop it inside the enterprise. The business goals are often linked to what the owners desire for their firms and they usually consider innovation a very expensive and risky activity. The level of trust between economic actors is lower than most of the OECD countries which is responsible for many institutional, cultural and financial constraints that limit the entrepreneurial capacity to diversify. This helps to understand the small levels of international transfer of technologies and required patents to world Offices. Some studies show that the R&D efforts are not always directly related with economic performance, specially in less advanced regions. This work tries to investigate new indicators for the modes of learning in innovative firms of less advanced regions like Portugal and proposes a methodology to address a different approach from those that have been used for more advanced regions. The aspects related with behaviour, absorption of local sources of innovation and collaboration are some of the factors to have in mind when evaluating innovation in this new approach. The overall implication of the results is that no one existing index dominates in explaining how firms attempt to innovate. Instead, we require a richer conceptual perspective that combines diverse issues. Firms face strong obstacles that limit their abilities and propensity to innovate. At the same time, though, firms face strong competitive pressures to undertake innovating actions. Entrepreneurs need to develop new theories and methods concerning the intersection between these pressures.
- A localização e a dinâmica de inovação nas Pequenas ePublication . Fernandes, Silvia Brito; Noronha, Teresa de; Nicolas, F.A globalização tem estimulado novas relações espaciais e temporais que ganham uma dimensão crescente com o contributo das tecnologias de informação e comunicação. Estas transformações globais, por sua vez, repercutem-se nos sistemas locais de produção requerendo destes maiores níveis de competitividade. É fundamental aqui o papel das pequenas e médias empresas pela sua flexibilidade e integração no meio local. Trata-se de um factor decisivo na propensão para instituir sistemas regionais de inovação que, utilizando as complementaridades locais, contribuem para o desenvolvimento das regiões.
- Spatial analyses for policy evaluation of the rural world: Portuguese agriculture in the last decadePublication . Vaz, Eric; Noronha, Teresa de; Nijkamp, PeterThis paper aims to contribute to the understanding of structural land use changes that are occurring in rural environments, by using novel methodologies related to Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The land use change analysis developed in this study is associated with a pre-selected set of policy issues, that is, it offers a retrospective view of the application of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the Portuguese situation. The evaluation of the respective impacts from a spatial perspective raises questions such as: 1) What are the trade-offs of rural activity in different sectors and regions? 2) How do such trade-offs cope with urban proximity?, and 3) Which activities or strategies are best able to balance the needs of rural and urban communities. Methodologically, our work identifies the land use change for the period 1990 – 2000 by comparing the databases CORINE Land Cover 90 and CORINE Land Cover 2000. Further, in order to detect those sectors that, at national or regional level, have taken more advantage of the CAP support, we present a new model, which also takes into account as a major assumption the proximity of rural areas to the nearest towns. The scope of this paper is twofold: addressing a specific problem concerning the effectiveness of the CAP, it develops an extensive empirical and methodological framework able to serve as a model-policy lesson for the rural/agricultural European future.
- Regional, national and international networks: the suitability of different competitive strategies for different geographic profilesPublication . Cesário, M.; Noronha, Teresa deThe continuous capacity of firms to learn is seen by many scholars as the critical solution in order to avoid firms from becoming locked into obsolete technological and competitive trajectories. This is a very common tendency, particularly in peripheral areas and/or labour-intensive industries. Networks are often seen as the channel to overcome the risk that firms may become rigid. By accessing other markets, assets and technologies, firms free themselves from their own limitations while following the technological trajectories of their competitors. In this paper, we approach the issue with respect to the relation between the competitive strategies of small firms and their networking profile. We report the results of the application of a common questionnaire to a sample of 165 SMEs from labour-intensive sectors belonging to the following southern European areas: North (Portugal), Valencia (Spain), Macedonia (Greece) and South Italy (Italy). Using multivariate statistical analysis, the firms were grouped according to the use of regional, national and international geographic scales for supply, distribution and sales networks. For each one of them, competitive strategies related with market, investments, technology and training were analysed. Our results allow us to observe that competitive strategies vary across the three groups, indicating that there is a relation between the capacity to improve the geographic scale of networking and the capacity to strategically react to market changing conditions. While the related literature confirms the advantages of networking for the competitiveness of firms, we conclude that not all firms have the ability to develop international or even national contacts. Firms with restricted backward and forward linkages are also the ones with lower technological, training and innovative performances. Another important and related insight regards the requirements of going global: the network scaling-up is related more with quality production, than with scale economies. The exploitation of marketing networks depends heavily on the openness towards new opportunities which, in turn, depends on the knowledge stock of firms (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990) and on the empowerment of employees to pursue it (Lechner & Dowling, 2003). The resource-base of firms is both an input for and an output of networking activity, and that can be either a vicious or a virtuous cycle.
- Analysis of regional innovation performance in Portugal – results from an external logistic biplot methodPublication . Vicente Galindo, Purificación; Noronha, Teresa de; Nijkamp, Peter; Vaz, EricPortuguese strategic choices regarding innovation and R&D policy have, over the past two decades, produced various positive achievements, in which the regions of Lisbon and Algarve have taken the lead, and are the only ones in the country to converge towards the European average growth rate. Regarding the other Portuguese regions – despite significant national growth rates in the 1990s as well as a successful attempt to cope with the EMU –, these are lagging behind the EU average with respect to gross production, investment or employment generation. Meanwhile, one of the greatest public policy efforts was to diffuse much of the European funds across the entrepreneurial sector. After a long pathway, it is now timely to evaluate the firms‟ contribution to national and regional growth, their obstacles and impacts. For the purpose of this paper, innovation is used here as a major contributor to the policy evaluation process referred to above. Our investigation aims to explain the present performance of Portuguese firms located throughout the country and to explore those innovation determinants that have a region-specific connotation. To provide a thorough investigation, our analysis defines, on a regional basis, a set of firms‟ behavioural patterns regarding innovation. In our modelling, we employ a new methodology, viz. the External Logistic Biplot method, which is applied to an extensive sample of innovative institutions in Portugal. Variables such as „Promoting knowledge‟, „Management skills‟, „Promoting R&D‟, „Knowledge transfer‟, „Promoting partnership & cooperation‟, and „Orientation of public measures‟ have been identified as crucial determinants in earlier studies and are now used to describe regional institutional profiles. Such profiles exhibit a great variety in the way they combine these determinants to promote regional innovation. The creation of a gradient of capacity to dynamically innovate associated with each firm makes it possible to analyse the innovation gradient of each region in Portugal. Our paper presents and systematically investigates these findings and then reaches some policy conclusions.