Keld Laursen

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Copenhagen Business School

We investigate the effect of research and development (R&D) offshoring from highincome regions to prominent emerging economies. Specifically, we examine whether there is a complementary relationship between a region’s home and foreign investments in R&D that affects home’s regional knowledge production. Using a theoretical framework based on econom...

The notion that firms can improve their innovativeness by tapping users and customers for knowledge has become prominent in innovation studies. Similar arguments have been made in the marketing literature. We argue that neither literatures take sufficient account of firm organization. Specifically, firms that attempt to leverage user and customer k...

To innovate, firms often need to draw from, and collaborate with, a large number of actors from outside their organization. At the same time, firms need also to be focused on capturing the returns from their innovative ideas. This gives rise to a paradox of openness—the creation of innovations often requires openness, but the commercialization of i...

To introduce new products, firms often use knowledge from other organizations. Drawing on social capital theory and the relational view of the firm, we argue that geographically localized social capital affects a firm's ability to innovate through various external channels. Combining data on social capital at the regional level, with a large-scale...

The paper reviews contributions found in theoretical and empirical studies of innovation search processes at the firm-level. The advantages for local and non-local search are discussed and potential triggers for local and non-local search are specified. It is argued that the initial focus in the literature on local search was, in part, a consequenc...

We synthesize and provide a critical overview of the set of quantitative papers on open innovation which have had an influence on analyses of open innovation in a corporate strategy context. We categorize the literature into (a) firms’ external search and knowledge sourcing activities, (b) absorptive capacity, and (c) appropriability. We discuss th...

We adopt an organizational learning approach to examine how firms’ recruitment of high-skilled migrants contributes to subsequent firm-level innovation performance. We argue that due to migrants’ often different experience from that of native high-skilled workers, their perspectives on problem-solving and access to non-overlapping knowledge network...

We combine the absorptive capacity and social network theory approaches to predict how intrafirm “whole” network characteristics affect the firm’s rate of absorption of external knowledge to produce inventions. We start from the widely accepted view that distant, externally‐developed knowledge is difficult to absorb into the focal firm’s own knowle...

Technology licensing agreements potentially can create future appropriability problems. Drawing on the appropriability literature,we argue that the inclusion of a grantback clause in technology licensing agreements is an attempt to balance the gains from and protection of the focal firms' technologies.We hypothesize that the closer the licensed tec...

Recent developments in the pattern of international knowledge sourcing have highlighted a new international division of labor in knowledge production which now is affecting emerging as well as advanced countries. The source of this division of labor has been identified as residing in the changing economic endowments of these countries. We extend th...

Searching for the most rewarding sources of innovative ideas remains a key challenge in management of technological innovation. Yet, little is known about which combinations of internal and external knowledge sources are triggers for innovation. Extending theories about searching for innovation, we examine the effectiveness of different combination...

This paper provides an overview of the main perspectives and themes emerging in research on open innovation (OI). The paper is the result of a collaborative process among several OI scholars – having a common basis in the recurrent Professional Development Workshop on ‘Researching Open Innovation’ at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management....

Despite mounting evidence on the potential benefits of inbound open innovation, little is known about how firms purposefully manage inflows of knowledge. We investigate the use of two knowledge governance procedures—project management and knowledge matching—in collaborative inbound open innovation. Our findings suggest that, in addition to “knowled...

Research Summary A learning‐by‐hiring approach is used to scrutinize scientists’ mobility in relation to the recruiting firms’ subsequent innovation output. Our starting point is that among firm hires, individuals with university research experience — hired from universities or firms — can be particularly valuable. However, conflicting institutiona...

External knowledge acquisition represents a precondition for firms’ competitive advantage. However, young firms find it particularly difficult to gain access to external sources of knowledge: young firms suffer from a liability of newness by exhibiting significantly lower propensities to invest in external R&D than their older counterparts. We expl...

This paper provides an analysis of Balassa’s ‘revealed comparative advantage’ (RCA). It shows that when using RCA, it should be adjusted such that it becomes symmetric around its neutral value. The proposed adjusted index is called ‘revealed symmetric comparative advantage’ (RSCA). The theoretical discussion focuses on the properties of RSCA and em...

The notion that ambidextrous learning—involving both exploration and exploitation—will improve firm performance, has become prominent in academia and practice. While arguing that innovation capabilities are central to the ambidexterity hypothesis, we investigate how the two dimensions of ambidextrous learning (combined and balanced) affect firms’ i...

Drawing on the behavioral theory of the firm, we examine what drives the implementation of a broad open innovation model entailing inbound and outbound elements. We find two main categories of reasons—resource constraints on innovation, and growth aspirations—representing respectively reactive and proactive approaches, which have different origins....

This article surveys, organizes, and critically discusses the literature on the role of human resource practices for explaining innovation outcomes. We specifically put an emphasis on what is often called ‘new’ or ‘modern’ HRM practices—practices that imply high levels of delegation of decisions, extensive lateral and vertical communication channel...

This paper investigates the matching of firms on the market for technology. The paper forwards two dimensions along which license formation occurs: technology and product-market. Both sides of the market search for a partner representing potential for high technology synergies to maximize licensing benefits and obviate issues related to technology...

Licensing is one of the most commonly observed inter-firm contractual agreements. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm and contract economics, we argue that the inclusion of a grant-back clause in licensing agreements emerges as a consequence of licensor and licensee firms’ requirements to balance the needs to protect their technological...

Scientific knowledge is an important ingredient in the innovation process. Drawing on the knowledge-based view of the firm and the literature on the relationship between science and technology, this paper scrutinizes the importance of university scientists’ mobility for firms’ innovative activities. Combining patent data and matched employer-employ...

Drawing on social capital theory and the international business literature, we argue that domestic geography, in terms of localized potential social capital, facilitates individual firms’ awareness of business opportunities, including knowledge related to involvement in the foreign markets for goods and technology, thereby enhancing firms’ involvem...

We investigate the effect of research and development (R&D) offshoring from high income regions to prominent emerging economies. Specifically, we examine whether there is a complementary relationship between a region’s home and foreign investments in R&D that affects home’s regional knowledge production. Using a theoretical framework based on econo...

This article critically reviews and synthesizes the contributions found in theoretical and empirical studies of firm-level innovation search processes. It explores the advantages and disadvantages of local and non-local search, discusses organizational responses, and identifies potential exogenous triggers for different kinds of search. It argues t...

We survey, organize, and discuss the literature on the role of organizational practices for explaining innovation outcomes. We discuss how individual practices influence innovation, and how the clustering of specific practices matters for innovation outcomes. Relatedly, we discuss various possible mediators of the HRM/innovation link, such as knowl...

The aim of this article is to provide an introduction to the special issue. We briefly consider the organizational and managerial challenges that small and medium‐sized enterprises encounter in networked innovation, thereby building a background to the articles included in the special issue. We then present the main findings of these articles and h...

While drawing on theories of distributed innovation and search, we conjecture that because a lot of important knowledge can only be obtained through the use of a product, the use of customer knowledge is beneficial for firms' innovative performance. However, the use of customer knowledge also has an important downside as customers may often be cons...

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The market for technology plays a crucial role in firms’ technology strategy as a way to undertake search in the available technological space. Drawing on innovation search theory and the literatures on licensing and absorptive capacity (AC) we address the issue of the factors that affect how technologically distant from the existing technological...

Drawing on social capital theory and international business literature, we argue that firms’ home region social capital increases the degree of firms’ internationalization for both goods and knowledge. Beyond a certain level of social capital, however, firms become over-embedded in their home region social relationships so that the degree of intern...

This paper investigates the relationship between home and offshore R&D activities on the knowledge production of the investing home region. Debate is ongoing on whether R&D offshoring complements the R&D performed at home. In the light of increased offshoring of innovative activities to emerging countries, we explicitly focus on Brazil, Russia, Ind...

This paper introduces a model of knowledge sharing in an online community of practice that suggests that knowledge contributions will be made by those who possess the relevant knowledge. For them, matching a ready-made solution to a problem is low cost. We hypothesize that lead users - due to their characteristics - are likely to possess more relev...

Using a sample of 1,873 Danish firms in manufacturing and services, this paper addresses the issue of the determinants of firm-level export behavior. The findings give support the idea that Danish service firms' export activities are of economic importance in that they are exporters to a high degree. Moreover, the provided regression results are co...

The factors that lead firms to collaborate with universities remain a central concern for policy and research. Although the existing literature has investigated the determinants of university-industry interaction, we still know little about how the geographical distance between a firm and the universities in its local area may affect firm-universit...

While conventional farming systems face serious problems of sustainability, organic agriculture is seen as a more environmentally friendly system as it favours renewable resources, recycles nutrients, uses the environment’s own systems for controlling pests and diseases, sustains ecosystems, protects soils, and reduces pollution. At the same time o...

This paper introduces a model of knowledge sharing of lead users located in a public and unrestricted community of users. While existing literature on knowledge sharing focuses on allocation and collaboration processes inside or among companies we extend this to the community level. We then focus on how key agents — lead users — facilitate knowledg...

To introduce new products and processes, firms often acquire knowledge from other organizations. Drawing on social capital and transaction cost theory, we argue that not only is the impact of such acquisitions on the successful development of product and product innovations dependent on strategic and economic variables, it may also be contingent on...

A central part of the innovation process concerns the way firms go about organizing search for new ideas that have commercial potential. New models of innovation have suggested that many innovative firms have changed the way they search for new ideas, adopting open search strategies that involve the use of a wide range of external actors and source...

It has been recently noted that the trade-off between risk and incentives that agency theory predicts turns out to be rather weak. We examine predictions from agency theory on the basis of data from a data set encompassing close to 1000 Danish firms. We find that the relation between performance pay and environmental uncertainty is indeed weak. We...

This paper brings together data from 17 OECD countries on scientific publications, patents and production, to explore the relationship between scientific and economic specialisation for 17 manufacturing industries. Since Marx, there has been a fundamental debate in economics about the link between science and the economic system. Marx argued that t...

The paper investigates the relationship between human capital characteristics and firm performance in engineering consulting. Because general experience, firm-specific human capital and diversity carry specific costs and benefits we hypothesize curvilinear (taking inverted U-shapes) relations to firm performance. We find little effect of general ex...

The strategies firms use to protect their intellectual property and knowledge can strongly influence their ability to capture the benefits of their innovative efforts. In attempting to appropriate their innovations, firms can chose from a range of mechanisms, including patents, trade secrets and lead times. Yet, little is known about how the use of...

This paper brings together data from 17 OECD countries on scientific publications, patents and production, to explore the relationship between scientific and economic specialisation for 17 manufacturing industries. Since Marx, there has been a fundamental debate in economics about the link between science and the economic system. Marx argued that t...

This paper examines the factors that influence why firms draw from universities in their innovative activities. The link between the universities and industrial innovation, and the role of different search strategies in influencing the propensity of firms to use universities is explored. The results suggest that firms who adopt “open” search strate...

In this paper, we take our theoretical point of departure in recent work in organisational economics on systems of human resource management (HRM) practices. We develop the argument that just as complementarities between new HRM practices influence financial performance positively, there are theoretical reasons for expecting them also to influence...

Recent theoretical and empirical analysis in the field of economic organization has focused almost exclusively on identifying organizational practices and complementarities between such practices, without regard for the type of activity in question. However, organizational theory suggests that more knowledge-intensive production activities often in...

The aim of the paper is to investigate the relative importance of international vis-ý-vis national technological linkages for international competitiveness for 19 industrial sectors. We estimate a dynamic model with an autoregressive structure in the dependent variable. In the paper competitiveness is captured both by cost competitiveness and by te...

This paper investigates the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) related knowledge flows for international competitiveness. Using bibliometric data we analyse the relationship between the strength of 12 OECD countries in four ICT related scientific fields and the ability of those countries to maintain and acquire export market...

This paper argues that complementary human resource practices play an important role in the development of a knowledge-based theory of firm differences. We find that firm types and knowledge strategies impact combinations of human resource practices employed in support of current activity systems and innovation. While recent evidence suggests that...

Several researchers looking at the development of international export specialisation patterns have shown that there is a weak tendency for OECD countries to exhibit decreased levels of specialisation. This finding is in contrast to findings made by other authors, who found increasing technological specialisation. The first aim of this paper is to...

The Importance of Technology-Based Intersectoral Linkages for Market Share Dynamics. — The paper introduces technology-based intersectoral linkages (or technological spillovers) in an empirical model of international market share dynamics. The Pavitt taxonomy is applied as a yardstick for interpreting the empirical results. Overall, the results app...

Several researchers looking at the development of international export specialisation patterns have shown that there is a weak tendency for OECD countries to exhibit decreased levels of specialisation. This finding is in contrast to findings made by other authors, who found increasing technological specialisation. The first aim of this paper is to...

The concept of “resource areas” has been a cornerstone of Danish technology and industry policies since the early 1990s. Cluster studies are central to this approach. While earlier cluster studies were concerned with transactions between firms, frequently in an input-output framework, the more recent studies are based on a demand perspective. The p...

This paper introduces inter-sectoral technology-based linkages (or technological spillovers) in a empirical model of international market share dynamics. The Pavitt taxonomy is applied as a yardstick for interpreting the empirical results. In accordance with the criteria behind the taxonomy, we find upstream linkages to be more important for the de...

Although there are several theories of growth of the firm, the literature is limited in two interrelated respects. First, empirical evidence does not match well theoretical predictions. Second, the firm growth literature does not address the structure of knowledge both in firms and sectors as well as knowledge flows between them. Based on existing...

The question concerning the extent to which the growth performance of an economy is determined by its external relations is a controversial one. There are several approaches which stress the interaction between international factors and domestic growth performance. In the Keynesian tradition, Kaldor and Thirlwall have argued that exports and trade...

This paper examines whether the OECD countries are characterised by a high degree of stability of their export specialisation patterns at the country level or not. Furthermore, we test whether the countries have become more or less specialised. In this context we distinguish between specialisation (or de-specialisation) in trade patterns on the one...

Several types of theoretical literature on the topic of trade, growth and specialisation, including neoclassical approaches, post-Keynesian literature and some models in evolutionary economics, have shown that it is possible enjoy higher rates of economic growth, given the presence of certain sectors in the economy, being it high-tech or fast-growi...

Several researchers looking at the development of international export specialisation patterns have shown that there is a general tendency for OECD countries to de-specialise. This finding is in contrast to findings made by other authors, working on technological specialisation. These authors found increasing technological specialisation. The first...

The paper examines an issue related to the discussion of national specificity: whether the group of OECD countries are characterized by a high degree of stability of their export specialization patterns at the country level or not. During a period of nearly three decades from 1965 to 1992, 20 OECD countries are examined. In addition we test whether...

The main focus of the paper is on the recent development of clusters defined as "resource areas". The concept has been a cornerstone in the technology and industrial policies laid out from the Danish Ministry of Business and Industry, since 1993. Earlier studies (industrial complexes) identified clusters using transactions, often in an input-output...

This paper basically adopts a 'technology gap' approach for explaining international export specialisation. Within this broad label there has been one tradition which has applied cumulativeness in technological change as an explanation, while another tradition has emphasised the role of inter-sectoral linkages (the so-called home market effect) in...

The importance of advanced users in home markets as an inducement to technological innovation is now well recognised, thereby providing an explanation for important parts of international export specialisation. At the theoretical level upstream-downstream interaction has been made the generic micro-foundation of theories of national systems of inno...

The paper examines statistically whether the degree to which countries are specialised in and/or increasingly move into sectors with above average levels of technological opportunity has any impact on growth in aggregate market shares of exports. A novelty of the paper is that it applies structural decomposition (SD) analysis not only on trade stat...

Technology inward licensing plays a crucial role in firm's technology strategy as a way to undertake trajectories of search in the available technological space. The links between licensing and the patterns of firms' technological diversification are still underdeveloped in the economics and management literature. The aim of our study is to explore...

Despite substantial research effort, little is known about how the geographical distance between a firm and the universities in its local area may affect likelihood of collaboration. We argue that such arrangements are the outcomes of joint decisions made by firms and universities. Separating universities by the quality of their research, we infer...

In order to innovate, firms need to search for knowledge from a wide range of external knowledge sources. Absorbing and harnessing knowledge from external sources requires purposeful effort, investment and skill. Managerial decisions about how best to use these external sources can play a pivotal role in shaping firm performance. Using panel Finnis...

Differences in competences are widely believed to be an important source of enduring competitive advantage. However empirical studies investigating the sources of firm differences in terms of both human resource types, levels and degrees of heterogeneity remain sparse to date. Because firm competence rest on human resources and their relation, this...

Even though offshore outsourcing has received increased attention both in research and practice, few studies investigate the performance of such activity after the firm has made the choice to relocate parts of its activities to an external operator located outside the firms' own country borders. Using a large-scale survey of Danish firms, we explor...

Abstract Differences in competences ,are widely believed to be ,an important ,source of enduring competitive advantage. However ,empirical studies investigating the sources of firm differences in terms of both human resource types, levels and degrees of heterogeneity remain,sparse to date. Because firm competence,rest onhuman resources and their re...

Although organisational structure has sometimes been mentioned in evolutionary economics as well as in the innovation literature as a possible determinant of innovation performance, very little systematic theoretical and empirical work exist on this issue. In this paper, we take our theoretical point of departure in recent work in organisational ec...