Bernd Ebersberger

University of Hohenheim · Institute of Marketing and Management

Entrepreneurship is a powerful force for change and innovation; you can be a part of it. This open access book is your key to unlocking your potential as an entrepreneur and impacting the world through your actions. Written by experienced startup guides and backed by rigorous academic research, this book takes you through the essential steps along...

Entrepreneurship is a concept that many people need to understand before they engage in it. We argue for an understanding of entrepreneurship that extends the conceptual application of starting a business and outline that it is all about discovering opportunities and solving problems. The chapter guides you in finding the meaning of entrepreneurshi...

As a prospective founder, there is no getting around the question of the business model of your venture. There are various components to consider which, in their interaction, realize the inherent value of your product. In this chapter, you will learn how to shape the individual building blocks of the business model by using various tools and insigh...

In this chapter, you will learn how to utilize this book to build essential skills for entrepreneurship. We will explain why mastering these skills is beneficial for any entrepreneurial journey and how they can enhance professional work in various contexts. We will outline the structure of each chapter and explain how adhering to the guidance provi...

In this chapter, you will learn what a pitch is and what it contains, focusing on preparing a compelling pitch. We guide you to practice pitching and prepare for the stage, emphasizing the importance of audience diversity and the dynamics of pitching to different audiences. We will detail the components of a pitch and explain the relationship betwe...

Prototyping is a handy technique for visualizing abstract thoughts, ideas, and visions of your entrepreneurial endeavor. In this chapter, you will learn how to easily create a (first) prototype to express the core message of your innovation to customers while strengthening your persuasive power with stakeholders. When creating prototypes, it is imp...

In this chapter, you will learn why validation is crucial throughout your start-up’s lifecycle, how to generate validated learning to inform entrepreneurial decision-making, and how to use validation to explore problems. We emphasize the importance of validating assumptions to avoid misjudging product ideas. By integrating the lean start-up framewo...

In this chapter, you will learn why networks are crucial for entrepreneurs, facilitating the exchange of knowledge, information, and resources, which are vital for success. We argue that trust and collaboration are vital functions, providing security and enhancing reputation. Entrepreneurs can learn how effective information transfer within network...

In this chapter, you will learn what growth hacking is, when you should start with growth hacking, and how to implement a growth hacking process in your start-up. We define growth hacking as a creative, resourceful approach that uses innovative strategies to expand your customer base and increase sales. Differentiating between the early experimenta...

In this chapter, you will learn how to take the first steps of your venture. We argue that problems create opportunities for entrepreneurs, reflect on why nascent entrepreneurs may favor problems over start-up ideas and show why they should be cautious to avoid falling in love with their first idea. Introducing the corridor principle, we advise ent...

In this chapter, you will learn why adopting a positive mindset toward failure is essential, how to cope with inevitable setbacks in your start-up journey, and how to make the best out of a failed start-up. We outline that failure is common on the way to success and argue that failure can lead to valuable lessons and new opportunities—if dealt with...

The properties of emerging, digital, general-purpose technologies make it hard to observe their adoption by firms and identify the salient determinants of adoption. However, these aspects are critical since the patterns related to early-stage diffusion establish path-dependencies which have implications for the distribution of the technological opp...

The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to constitute a general-purpose technology with diverse algorithmic specifications makes it challenging to assess its overall impact on existing socio-economic regimes. Leveraging the multi-level perspective, we seek to depict the trajectory of micro-, meso-, and macro-level forces and their interaction...

Concerns about sustainability challenges are growing. Companies are under pressure to rethink existing innovation paradigms. In this context, research interest in the resource-constrained innovation concept, frugal innovation, has increased. In this paper, we examine the impact of frugal innovation on the economic, social, and ecological sustainabi...

The prevailing environmental and social challenges worldwide require comprehensive and sustainability-oriented changes in central areas of society - endeavors that call for more sustainability-oriented innovations. Sustainability can be understood as a megatrend within our society comprising sustainability-oriented macro trends such as Agricultural...

In studies of firm's innovation performance, regression analysis can involve a significant level of model uncertainty because the ‘true’ model, and therefore the appropriate set of explanatory variables are unknown. Drawing on innovation survey data for France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, we assess the robustness of the literature on inbound o...

As a microcosm for future challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic exhibits increasingly transboundary dynamics, causing interconnected problems across multiple societal systems. To examine the role of innovations as a social mechanism to reconcile these arising challenges, we view the unfolding of the pandemic through the lens of a content analysis of 70...

Firms increasingly internationalize their R&D teams in order to exploit a broader range of inventor backgrounds and to benefit from local competencies. We analyze the effects of internationality in R&D teams, measured on a complete patent data sample by European firms. We measure team member internationality and include the level of technological c...

International knowledge interactions constitute channels of knowledge transfer that finally promote technological catch-up. Accounting for the differences in knowledge dimensions and knowledge interactions, catching-up firms are provided with different types of learning opportunities. In the context of catch-up of emerging economy firms, the empiri...

Empirical knowledge on the relationship between innovation and firm performance in the hospitality industry is important for theoretical progress and for decision making. Martin-Rios and Ciobanu’s (2019) recent contribution identifies eight different innovation strategies being significantly associated with firm performance including the ambitious...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a changing environment posing many challenges that call for innovative solutions, leading to a changing innovation landscape. We explore particular organizational actors' innovation response time by analyzing data from a commercial innovation database. Arguing that innovation response time mostly depends on how orga...

In recent years, many scholars praised the seemingly endless possibilities of using machine learning (ML) techniques in and for agent-based simulation models (ABM). To get a more comprehensive understanding of these possibilities, we conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) and classify the literature on the application of ML in and for ABM acc...

Keywords Agent-based Modelling · Multi-Agent System · Machine Learning · Reinforcement Learning · Output Analysis · Systematic Literature Review · Research Methods In recent years, many scholars praised the seemingly endless possibilities of using machine learning (ML) techniques in and for agent-based simulation models (ABM). To get a more compreh...

The most recent reemergence of artificial intelligence (AI) features two novelties: An unprecedented magnitude of surging interest and a parallelism of efforts by science and businesses to contribute to the development of this technology. This has caused management literature on AI to grow considerably in scope and raises the question as to how the...

Innovation has been regarded as the crucial driving force for competitiveness. Recently, new approaches to innovation have transformed the innovation activities of firms. Open innovation, for instance, has emphasized the role of external partners in increasing innovation performance and competitiveness. In this analysis we link the implementation o...

In the resent years two trends have influenced our daily life: mobile devices and cloud based services. Complex enterprise systems have been moved to the cloud. The integration of mobile devices and cloud based enterprise applications offers new possibilities in terms of innovative products or processes or it increases the mobility and flexibility...

Download: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/k6HbwMQr9pBSdP7yxzTy/full#.VY-KHosw-70 Knowledge intensive business services firms can play a key role in modern economies by linking localized collaboration networks to global knowledge flows, and by actively serving in support of knowledge diffusion across institutional and sectoral divides. The extent...

We investigate the effects of production offshoring on the innovation activities of manufacturing firms in the home country. The analysis is based on a dataset of more than 3,000 manufacturing firms from seven European countries. We find that offshoring firms on average employ a higher share of R&D and design personnel, introduce new products more...

This paper investigates how the strength and intrinsic characteristics of firms’ knowledge bases and processing routines have evolved with the past inflow of employees. The empirical analysis is based on linked public register and innovation survey data for Norway. It finds that recruitment from universities, research institutes and higher educatio...

It is commonly argued that we are witnessing a shift from global production networks, driven by the search for markets and lower cost production sites, to global innovation networks (GINs), driven by the search for knowledge. This paper explores how sources of behavioural differentiation derived from the literature on industrial knowledge bases and...

This paper investigates how resources available in urban agglomerations influence the organizational form, innovation activity and collaborative linkages of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) firms. Compared with their counterparts elsewhere, KIBS located in Norwegian large city labour market regions are more likely to be independent of m...

There is a growing research interest in the relationship between the composition of regional knowledge bases and the extra-regional collaborative ties maintained by actors during their development work. To investigate this relationship, we use patent data to characterize European NUTS 3 regions by their (i) comparative technological specializations...

The results presented in this report were from a study commissioned by the European Commission (EC). Surveys were sent out to all registered European HEIs in 33 countries in 2011. In total, 6,280 responses were received from European academics and HEI management (HEI managers and HEI professionals working with industry) whilst from Austria, 169 res...

In this article, we investigate how a company’s coopetition (collaboration with competitors), cooperation and competition strategies influence its usage of formal and informal intellectual property (IP) appropriation mechanisms. In addition to firm characteristics and sector variables as predictors for appropriation methods in previous studies, we...

In the current global economic landscape, it is virtually impossible for any single firm to stay abreast of all relevant technological advances. Thus integration in global innovation networks is becoming more and more important for competitiveness and growth. However, the fact that international collaboration is organizationally demanding raises im...

This paper develops an indicator framework for examining open innovation practices and their impact on performance. The analysis, which is based on Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data for Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Norway, yields a number of interesting results. First, we find that open innovation practices have a strong impact on innovation...

In this article, we investigate how a company’s coopetition (collaboration with competitors), cooperation and competition strategies influence its usage of formal and informal intellectual property (IP) appropriation mechanisms. In addition to firm characteristics and sector variables as predictors for appropriation methods used in previous studies...

Regions are the places where innovation takes place, where competences are located in R&D departments of firms and research institutes and where collective learning via spillovers occurs. For this reasons, regions are in the centre of modern innovation research. Although widely spread in the literature, the notion regional innovation system allows...

We investigate the effects of production offshoring on the innovation activities of manufacturing firms in the home country. The analysis is based on a dataset of more than 3,000 manufacturing firms from seven European countries. We find that offshoring firms on average employ a higher share of R&D and design personnel, introduce new products more...

Innovation collaboration is subjected to partner search and selection constraints. These constraints are reinforced by geographical distance, and mediated by privileged information accessed through pre-existing formal and informal ties to foreign business contexts. Multinational corporations may therefore influence the collaborative linkages mainta...

Growth theories generally acknowledge that innovation and knowledge generating activities play a crucial role in determining the growth dynamics and their trajectories in national and regional economies (Solow 1956; Temple 1999; Romer 1990). Innovation—the development of new processes, products, and organizational structures, which are both technol...

Over the last decades firms have broken away from purely internally oriented innovation activities to more interactive and open innovation processes (Chesbrough 2003; Christensen et al. 2005), because they recognize that the development and the production of their products have to rely on a wide range of external ideas, component technologies, and...

Universities have always been changing. Ever since the inception of the first universities at the end of the twelfth century universities have responded to changing societal, economic, and political contexts. Cumulatively this process of change created a university system at the turn of the twenty first century, that is completely different from th...

The paper condenses recent empirical findings about the characteristics of those firms that utilize and appreciate knowledge spillovers from higher education organizations. We discuss these findings, sketch out how these empirical findings relate to the third mission of universities and how this can present opportunities for universities of applied...

This article explores the role of multinational enterprise groups in linking geographically bounded innovation collaboration networks to external sources of information. To investigate if the information content of the corporate network of affiliates increases with internationalization, we distinguish first between uninational and multinational net...

The paper condenses recent empirical findings about the characteristics of those firms that utilize and appreciate knowledge spillovers from higher education organizations. We discuss these findings, sketch out how these empirical findings relate to the third mission of universities and how this can present opportunities for universities of applied...

This paper investigates the relationship between capital region location and the firm level decision to engage in innovation collaboration. Controlling for the impact of differences in the distribution of sectors, firm sizes, and other background variables, we find capital region location to be associated with a slightly lower propensity to engage...

This paper investigates the relationship between new product introduction, and three constructs (search, collaboration and external R&D) developed to capture the different means by which firms link internal R&D to external inputs. By including interaction effects and applying detailed marginal effects analysis, it sheds new light on a research ques...

This article explores the determinants of academic entrepreneurship. In particular, it investigates the effects of gender and supplementary management education on academics' willingness to start up a company. The analysis is based on a survey of academics. Controlling for academic achievement, field of science and perceived hampering factors, we f...

As modern industrial products become increasingly complex, their development and production must draw on a wide range of external ideas, component technologies and complementary capabilities. In this landscape it is virtually impossible for any single firm to keep abreast of all relevant technological advances. This means that ‘what firms do’ invol...

This paper explores the impact of R&D subsidies on the concentration of R&D in an economy. First, governments are often criticized of subsidizing predominantly larger firms and thus contribute to persistence of leadership in markets and higher barriers to entry, and, hence, reduced competition eventually. Second, theoretical literature, such as end...

This paper focuses on the effect public subsidies for innovation have on the exit of firms. Utilizing Finnish firm level data I employ a kernel matching approach to eliminate the selection bias of public funding and estimate the counterfactual. As a robustness check a treatment model is estimated. Public funding for innovation exhibits a significan...

This paper explores firm growth rate distribution in a Gibrat's Law context. It is novel in two respects. First, rather than limiting the analysis to a focus on the conditional mean, we investigate the entire shape of the distribution. Second, we show that differences in the firm growth rate process between large and small firms are highly circumst...

The aim of this article is to suggest a framework for examining the way national policy mixes are responding to the challenges and opportunities of globally distributed knowledge networks, cross-sectoral technology flows and consequently open innovation processes occurring on an international scale. We argue that the purpose of public research and...

This paper explores the impact of R&D subsidies on the concentration of R&D in an economy. First, governments are often criticized of subsidizing predominantly larger firms and thus contribute to persistence of leadership in markets and higher barriers to entry, and, hence, reduced competition eventually. Second, theoretical literature, such as end...

Applying quantile regression to 760 Finnish firms, we show that the relationship between R&D and firm performance is less straight forward than so far assumed. OLS regression analysis fails to capture the effect of R&D expenditure at different locations on the performance distribution. We reveal that R&D matters, especially on the medium quantiles,...

This paper calculates indices of central bank autonomy (CBA) for 163 central banks as of end-2003, and comparable indices for a subgroup of 68 central banks as of the end of the 1980s. The results confirm strong improvements in both economic and political CBA over the past couple of decades, although more progress is needed to boost political auton...

Is there a chance that public or private research and development institutions can improve the efficiency of the R&D process? This book gives a positive answer by designing an integrated concept of the science technology cycle and the innovation system of each technology. The position of a new technology in the sciencetechnology cycle is identified...

It is widely accepted that innovation may allow some industrial firms to reap great economic gains. Yet little is known about how the shape of the distribution of firm-level innovative returns differs across industries. The paper explores the general properties and sectoral differences in the distribution of share of innovative sales of manufacturi...

Over the past decades, there has been a dramatic increase in the foreign-ownership of firms in the four Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. This increase has generated interest in the welfare effect of foreign take-over of national assets. In this paper we ask: how would a firm’s behaviour and performance have been if a foreign ow...

This paper is based on the idea that existing evaluations of individual RTDI policy interventions can be utilized to understand policies beyond the respective cases covered by the evaluations. We discuss a methodological approach for a comprehensive secondary analysis of evaluations. With this approach, existing evaluations can be used to learn not...

This paper calculates indices of central bank autonomy (CBA) for 163 central banks as of end-2003, and comparable indices for a subgroup of 68 central banks as of the end of the 1980s. The results confirm strong improvements in both economic and political CBA over the past couple of decades, although more progress is needed to boost political auton...

Numerous studies have explored intrinsic factors that influence the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Extrinsic determinants of patients' choice of therapy have seldom been explored. This study analyzes the effects of extrinsic determinants on the first-time use of CAM. Furthermore, it analyzes how extrinsic determinants influenc...

ZusammenfassungHintergrund: Die Frage nach den intrinsischen Beweggründen,die zur Nutzung komplementärmedizinischer Therapieverfahrenführen, wurde bereits in zahlreichen Studienuntersucht. Extrinsische Determinanten dieser Wahl bliebenbislang weitgehend unberücksichtigt. Fragestellung: DieStudie analysiert, welche extrinsischen Determinanten dieers...

This study focuses on the impact of innovation policies and R&D collaboration in Germany and Finland. We consider collaboration and subsidies as heterogeneous treatments, and perform an econometric matching to analyze R&D and patent activity at the firm level. In general, we find that collaboration has positive effects. In Germany, subsidies for in...