Elizabeth W Garnsey

University of Cambridge | Cam ·  Institute for Manufacturing

Acquisition of local firms attracts external investment capital to the area and often results in post-acquisition spin-out by former employees. However merger and acquisition in a regional cluster reduces the number of young firms eligible for independent growth and it takes another business generation for any spin out firms to grow to the size of...

This paper investigates the Cambridge inkjet printing (IJP) cluster through the analysis of patents as a proxy indicator of core competences. The level of technological sophistication of IJP companies can be determined through patent statistics (Duysters and Hagedoorn, 2000). According to Patel and Pavitt (1991) and Cantwell and Hodson (1991) paten...

This article presents the emergence and evolution of an organization as a response to the demands faced by the newly created firm, shaped by a process of problem solving in response to change emerging both from the environment and from the firm itself. Successful firms are those that successfully adapt as demands evolve, in this case, specifically...

Interview with Elizabeth Garnsey on environmental issues: From Newton to Complexity, Interconnections 2 2008 pp 20-29

Abstract Because new entrants very often spin out from established firms, their learning and capabilities are inextricably linked to their organizational and technological heritage. While this heritage may provide an initial advantage, it can also generate inertia and resistance to change, unless the new company is able to unlearn inappropriate pra...

Business models of many types have received attention in recent management research but less work has focused on models suited to the commercialization of scientific research in areas such as biotech, green tech and advanced materials. University spin-outs (USOs) are often required to demonstrate the potential value and viability of generic new tec...

An Introduction to special issue of Technovation on opportunity recognition and creation is presented. This special issue aims to extend the domain of research on the recognition and creation of opportunities for innovation into new areas of inquiry. It includes papers on the co-creation of opportunities and the development of coordinated business...

In this chapter, we present the emergence and evolution of an organization as a response to the demands faced by the newly created firm, shaped by the problem-solving required to deal with change emerging both from the environment and from the firm itself. Successful firms are those that adapt as demands evolve, addressed here with respect to their...

This paper shows that randomness can be an artefact of the methods used to examine firm performance. It questions the recent equating of entrepreneurship with gambling based on the assumption of random firm performance. It shows that complexity science provides a useful alternative perspective on randomness in relation to firm performance.

In view of the importance of Disruptive Innovations (DIs) in both emerging and advanced economies, a better understanding of how to cultivate opportunities for DIs is called for. We provide case study exemplars that illustrate how entrepreneurs have deliberately undertaken DIs for customers of low-end and new markets. Our findings show how the entr...

This papershowsthatrandomnesscanbeanartefactofthemethodsusedtoexamine firm performance.Itquestionstherecentequatingofentrepreneurshipwithgambling basedontheassumptionofrandomfirmperformance.Itshowsthatcomplexityscience provides ausefulalternativeperspectiveonrandomnessinrelationtofirmperformance.

This paper examines the relationship between biomedical policies and entrepreneurial R&D strategies. Public health programs have been unable to provide effective and affordable treatment of infectious diseases for the poor. While governments have become more open to private sector contributions to policy objectives, it is rare to find new ventures...

Breakthrough innovations are important to the firm. They enable firms to challenge the existing technological order and shape new paths, allowing them to engage in corporate reinvention, growth and new business development. They represent rare, valuable and inimitable sources of competitive advantage for firms. Yet most established firms have too m...

The question of how industries emerge and develop over time is one that has drawn attention from academics across a range of disciplines, leading to a dominant narrative around the concept of the product life cycle. In this chapter we take a grounded approach to the subject, exploring cases of industrial development in a number of product-based ind...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a framework for helping inventors and start‐ups identify and acquire the technical, market, financial, and human resources they need if they are to create and grow new ventures that can realise market opportunities. Design/methodology/approach – The method for this paper is a case study of a non‐pr...

Healthcare innovations for bottom-of-pyramid populations face considerable risks and few economic incentives. Can entrepreneurial innovators provide new solutions for global health? This chapter examines how a technology enterprise built a collaborative network and supportive ecosystem making it possible to steer an innovation for TB patients throu...

This paper explores the distinction between ontological and epistemological perspectives on randomness with reference to theories of the growth of firms. Random outcomes can be attributed to irreducible chance and indeterminacy or classed as random because their causes are too complex to unravel. A recent example of random growth theorising, Gamble...

Because new entrants very often spin off from established firms, their learning and capabilities are closely linked to their organizational and technological heritage. While this may provide an initial advantage, parental influence can generate inertia and resistance to change, unless the new company is able to unlearn inappropriate practices and c...

University spin‐out (USO) companies play an increasingly important role in generating value from radical, generic technologies, but this translation requires significant resources from other players to reach the market. Seven case studies illuminate how relationships with each type of partner can be leveraged to help the firm create value. We find...

Science-based businesses have become the main drivers of commercialization for radical technological advances, but face high technology uncertainty over long time frames, the need for significant complementary assets and require substantial financing. Advanced materials ventures are a sparsely studied type of science-based business, though sufficie...

Rapid growth is sought after but may overstretch a firm’s resources. Can alliances supply compensating support for rapidly growing firms? Longitudinal data on firms in a technology cluster are used to investigate rapid growth in relation to alliances and other factors known to be associated with firm growth. Rapid firm growth appears beneficial in...

Healthcare innovations for bottom-of-pyramid populations face considerable risks and few economic incentives. Despite these, can entrepreneurial innovators have an impact on global health? Case study evidence shows how building a collaborative network and supportive ecosystem enabled a technology enterprise to steer an innovation for TB patients th...

Because new entrants very often spin off from established firms, their learning and capabilities are closely linked to their organizational and technological heritage. While this may provide an initial advantage, parental influence can generate inertia and resistance to change, unless the new company is able to unlearn inappropriate practices and c...

This paper investigates the unaddressed potential of social ventures to implement social and technological innovations. The innovative activities of social ventures serving populations at the base of the pyramid (BOP) provide relevant evidence. Resource based theory and the concept of business ecosystems provided constructs operationalized through...

View from: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6304096/ Matching a new technology to an appropriate market is a major challenge for new technology-based firms (NTBF). Such firms are often advised to target niche-markets where the firms and their technologies can establish themselves relatively free of incumbent competition. However, technologies a...

Science-based businesses have become the main drivers of commercialization for radical technological advances, but face high technology uncertainty over long time frames, and the need for both significant complementary assets and substantial financing. Advanced materials ventures are a sparsely studied type of science-based business, though suffici...

Introduction In the years following the introduction of official standard time in the nineteenth century, efforts to promote daylight saving time were resisted in Britain and elsewhere in the world. Daylight saving time (DST) was finally introduced under wartime conditions in the twentieth century to save fuel. But only recently has the urgency of...

This study quantifies the incidence and influence of rapid growth among firms in a high technology milieu. We draw on evidence from a longitudinal database of technology firms in Cambridge UK. Resource configurations and the entrepreneurial matching of resources to opportunities are addressed, using Penrosian growth theory. We examine how certain k...

Whether entrepreneurial firms discover or create opportunities is a classic debate, here explored in the context of disruptive innovations. In this paper we reframe the question to focus not on the nature of entrepreneurial opportunity but on how and for whom entrepreneurs undertake disruptive innovations. As to whether entrepreneurs detect or crea...

Recent contributions to understanding the role of enterprise in environmental innovation have inferred that market failures are an unexpected source of entrepreneurial opportunities for ventures with environmental innovations. This inquiry used iterations between theory and evidence to explore this issue. The concept of market failure is explained,...

Our research shows that advancing the clock in the UK to align better with activity patterns would result in savings in electricity consumption and associated carbon emissions. We found no evidence that increased costs are to be expected from advancing the clock. On the contrary, daylight savings over the winter months by advancing the clock by an...

Innovative financing for global health may stimulate new waves of entrepreneurial activity. Global policies have created new sources of financing to accelerate knowledge generation for healthcare in resource-poor settings. This article outlines the emerging research concerned with the entrepreneurial response to opportunities and incentives at the...

This paper compares the genesis and growth of two well-known European high-technology centres, Cambridge in the UK and Grenoble in France. This paper attempts to explain why, despite strong differences in terms of initial conditions, Cambridge and Grenoble present similarities, sometimes striking, related to the creation of their respective science...

How do advanced materials ventures overcome the daunting commercialization challenges of the sector: high technology and market uncertainty over long time frames, and the need for significant complementary assets and substantial financing? Does uncertainty enhance or obstruct value creation? To address these questions, this paper draws on research...

High-growth firms appear to be key drivers of new industries and technologies. Here we investigate the contribution of these and other types of firm to a technology cluster, in the context of ‘creative destruction’ shaping the evolution of the cluster. Evidence on the reallocation of scarce resources through processes of creative destruction is sca...

Can environmental legislation spur innovative response? This case describes the development of the automotive catalytic converter (ACC) at Johnson Matthey (JM), a precious metals company that entered the automotive industry as a component provider. The market was unfamiliar to JM and highly competitive, but in the 1970s the US Environmental Protect...

Established firms tend to pursue incremental innovation by modifying and refining their existing products and processes rather than developing radical innovations. In the face of resistance to change and incumbent inertia, which prevent the generation of novelty, established firms have turned towards corporate entrepreneurship as a means of exploit...

Advanced material technologies have received considerable attention from the media as potential engines of economic growth in an increasingly knowledge based economy. However, the extensive contributions of novel materials are not yet fully appreciated. Advanced materials have potential to enable other technologies and hence make a substantial and...

This paper focuses on the Ink Jet Printing (IJP) industry in the vicinity of Cambridge, UK, and explores the emergence and maturation of a knowledge-based cluster of activity. The discussion is organised in terms of the origins and progeny of the firms in the cluster and their business environment. The lineage of firms is examined with reference to...

Following the financial crisis of 2008, the UK government has set out new economic priorities which include jobs and returns from investment in science and technology-based activity. In this paper we show that the Cambridge area already provides a microcosm for such a future economy, one that it reveals both strengths and weaknesses. Using longitud...

Investors have been showing interest in prospects for new environmental technologies launched by innovative enterprises. We analyse the experience of young environmental technology firms going public on London’s alternative stock market, AiM. While firms that launched in the boom attracted needed funds, shareholder expectations and the controls use...

This paper explores trends shown by technology based companies in the Cambridge area over the cycles of the past two decades. Influences from the macro-economy include the impact of the information revolution on the area, the recession of the early 1990s and the technology crash of 2000. The expansion of the cluster of Cambridge tech firms over tim...

This paper analyses mechanisms of cluster decline and renewal, illustrated with empirical evidence on the Cambridge high-tech cluster. While expansion of the cluster has been sustained over time, recently forces of decline have been stronger than those of renewal. Decline in employment was most marked in the local telecommunications and biotech sec...

This paper examines new firms creating innovative networks to support their development in emerging industries. Resource-based and evolutionary theories are combined to explain the genesis of a new business ecosystem. Two case studies of biopharm ventures developing drugs against cancer showed how participants altered their selection environment as...

Can the concept of speciation explain evidence on how technologies branch and advance? Can evidence on innovation through spin-off usefully inform the concept of speciation? These questions are addressed through a case study of detailed processes enabling the shift of technology to new domains of application. An innovative IT firm developed its own...

This paper analyses the association between dynamic capabilities and new firm growth, controlling for measures of firm resources, characteristics of the entrepreneur, and aspects of the environment. The central research question is: How strong is the relationship between dynamic capabilities and the growth of new firms? The paper opens with a revie...

Incubator organizations are said to exert a long term influence on their spin-outs. However, there is a great diversity in the types of spin-outs (Druilhe and Garnsey, 2004) and in types of incubators (Clarysse, Wright et al., 2005). This diversity is likely to affect the influence of the incubator on the performance of the spin-out. To contrast th...

Incubator organizations are said to exert a long term influence on their spin-outs. However, there is a great diversity in the types of spin-outs (Druilhe and Garnsey, 2004) and in types of incubators (Clarysse, Wright et al., 2005). This diversity is likely to affect the influence of the incubator on the performance of the spin-out. To contrast th...

This version has been abridged (Oct 2009) since the pilot report in 2007 on work-in-progress entitled "Daylight Saving in GB; Is there evidence in favour of clock time on GMT?" As in the preliminary version, an overview of issues is presented and inferences drawn from daily accident, activity and electricity demand profiles that show there is a cas...

This paper reviews the literature on knowledge as a source of entrepreneurial opportunities, with evidence at both the regional and organizational levels. In addition the causal mechanisms of new firm growth are explored, discussing longitudinal case study research on problem-solving and competence creation in such firms.

New entrants very often spin out from established firms and because they set on a course at founding, their learning and capabilities become inextricably linked to their organizational and technological heritage. But while this heritage may provide an initial advantage, it can also generate inertia and resistance to change, unless the new company i...

This paper explores ways in which new ventures not only adapt to but can transform their own business environment. It proposes a new way to combine evolutionary and Penrosian resource-based theories. A parallel is drawn between the proactive response to resource shortfalls and under-use in the Penrosian firm and the way entrepreneurial participants...

This paper investigates opportunities and obstacles facing new environmental ventures. It does so first through a review of prior work on the growth of new ventures, then through an examination of new empirical research from the UK. Evidence from a database of 73 micro-SMEs allows a comparison between different environmental sectors and identifies...

In 1995, the future of home computing was in the balance. The dominant technology, the PC, was threatened by the entry of a potentially disruptive technology, the Network Computer (NC). Yet in 2005 almost 200 million PCs were sold globally and the pioneering NC was not to be seen. In this paper we take a co-evolutionary view of the development and...

Advanced materials have been hailed as the third wave of revolutionary innovation after IT and biotech, but have been poorly studied in the management literature to date. Similarities and differences in commercialisation incentives and challenges have not been adequately addressed. What role do start-up ventures play in the advanced materials secto...

Entrepreneurial innovators have been agents of transformation throughout history, but they have not had the scope to perform this role in the environmental domain. We propose an explanatory model that depicts the processes that give rise to innovation by new entrant firms. We apply this model to evidence from a study of problems faced by 73 environ...

Developing new products and processes is increasingly a focal point of competition and often requires the development and successful implementation of novel process technologies. The process development and production of a new biological entity are significantly more complex than those for small molecule drugs. Conventional new product development...

This paper explores and explains the emergence and growth of new firms in the knowledge economy. The resource-based view, capabilities approach, and evolutionary economics are used as a foundation for a developmental approach. The development of the firm is conceptualized in terms of processes that include opportunity recognition, resource mobiliza...

Generic, radical technology is of interest because of its potential for value creation across a broad range of industries and applications. Advanced materials ventures are attracted by this opportunity yet face distinctive challenges in commercializing such technology. We explore an anomaly in common assumptions about the commercialization of gener...

Can the concept of speciation explain evidence on how technologies branch and advance? Can evidence on innovation through spin-off usefully inform the concept of speciation? These questions are addressed through a case study of detailed processes enabling the shift of technology to new domains of application. An innovative IT firm developed its own...

This paper provides an approach to new firm growth that views this as an unfolding developmental process. This approach is based on a Penrosean (1995) model of the firm. We find that new firm growth is non‐linear and prone to interruptions and setbacks to an extent overlooked in the literature. From the model of development used, five propositions...

Current thinking about evolutionary dynamics increasingly relies on co-evolution, and co-evolution increasingly implies complex dynamics of one sort or another. This volume brings together a capable and well-balanced group of thinkers on these topics who explore these deeply related concepts with up-to-date and advanced tools and concepts. For anyo...

Entrepreneurial innovators have been agents of transformation throughout history, but they have not had the scope to perform this role in the environmental domain. We propose an explanatory model that depicts the processes that give rise to innovation by new entrant firms. We apply this model to evidence from a study of problems faced by 73 environ...

The creation of novelty and its subsequent retention or elimination by evolutionary mechanisms is a central theme in complexity studies. By examining the evolution of three information and communication technologies, this paper explores linkages between variety generation, selection and propagation. Tensions are identified between the benefits of v...

This paper aims to identify how entrepreneurial responses to 'barriers' can give rise to opportunities for new firms. The poor predictive record of studies analysing success attributes and favourable initial factors as determinants of new firm growth reflects the diversity of entrepreneurial responses to problems of growth, as illustrated by three...

Garnsey E. and Heffernan P. (2005) High-technology clustering through spin-out and attraction: the Cambridge case, Regional Studies 39 , 1127-1144. Co-determinants that have shaped developments in high-tech centres elsewhere are absent in Cambridge, UK, which thus provides a unique case demonstrating how technology enterprise around a science centr...