Poh Kam Wong

• BSc, MSc, PhD (MIT)
• Emeritus Professor at National University of Singapore

This paper examines the impact of university-industry R&D collaboration as measured by university-industry copublications (UICs) on university technology commercialization output for leading US and Canadian universities, after controlling for the quantity and quality of their research and for their commercialization resources. Results showed that U...

In this paper, we compared the availability of different types of financing sources to address the issue of capital availability to entrepreneurial propensity and we scrutinise the influence of business costs by utilising a new composite index using data from the World Bank’s Doing Business Database. The availability of three types of financing sou...

Studies on the impact of technological innovation on growth have been largely mute on the role of␣new firm formation. Using cross-sectional data on the 37 countries participating in GEM 2002, this paper uses an augmented Cobb–Douglas production to explore firm formation and technological innovation as separate determinants of growth. One area of in...

There has been a pronounced increase in research and development (R&D) expenditure in Singapore since the late 1990s, with government spending accounting for a sizeable share. This increase has been spurred by increasing public policy emphasis on research and innovation as engines of economic growth. Building upon earlier work ( Ho et al. , 2009 ;...

First conceptualised in Singapore’s first National Technology Plan in 1991, the idea of creating a new integrated R&D and innovation hub in Singapore languished until it was incorporated into a broader Technopreneurship 21 (T21) strategy announced in 1998, and was officially launched in late 2001. In the 20 years since, the innovation district has...

Building on Cyert and March’s (1963) behavioral theory of the firm, we investigate how firms adjust their exploratory and exploitative innovation activities in response to performance feedback, and how this adjustment is moderated by the firms’ financial slack. We find that firms invest in a different mix of innovation activities when they receive...

Innovation contributes to corporate competitiveness, economic performance, and environmental sustainability. In the Internet era, innovation intelligence is transferred across borders and languages at an unprecedented rate, yet the ability to benefit from it seems to become more divergent among different corporations and countries. How much an orga...

Research summary We examine the dilemma of ethnic investors in using ethnic network ties to invest by extending the ‘ethnic enclave’ concept to incorporate two dimensions: social network and social status. Our analysis of the first round of venture capital funding in Silicon Valley from 1976 to 2004 shows a higher likelihood of Asian venture capita...

This paper outlines a scheme that uses manpower from public research institutes to assist the technology upgrading of Small-and-Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The Growing Enterprises through Technology Upgrading (GET-Up) initiative has been successfully implemented in Singapore since 2003. The key program in the initiative is a manpower secondmen...

This is an introduction of four case studies, conducted at different universities in Asia and Europe, on university-industry research cooperation and related interactions.

The Triple Helix model highlights the third mission' of universities to engage in IP (intellectual property) creation and technology transfer activities further downstream. This paper uses publications data and US patent data to examine the role played by leading research-intensive universities in the national innovation systems of the emerging eco...

Prior research on firm behavior in emerging economies like China has highlighted the extensive building and use of political ties by business managers. However, there are mixed findings regarding the value of political ties on firm performance. In this study, we propose a task-contingency approach to explain when the investment in political ties wi...

This paper outlines a scheme that uses public research institutes to assist the technology upgrading of small and medium enterprises. Instead of traditional technology transfer, this scheme utilizes skills and human resource transfer, supplemented by a practical technology road mapping program, provision of technical advisors when needed and also j...

Despite increasing attention to the issue of technology-sourcing, few studies examine how technology-sourcing portfolio influences new venture performance. Drawing upon the resource-based view and contingency theory, this study examines the effect of technology-sourcing mode diversity on new venture performance as well as investigates how product e...

This paper investigates empirically the link between entrepreneurship education programs and students’ entrepreneurial behavior, with a particular focus on the distinction between experiential and classroom-based education. We introduce a more refined measure of entrepreneurial engagement that combines entrepreneurship intention and actual steps ta...

As a catalyst for endogenous technological change, inward technology licensing (ITL) can improve a firm’s innovation performance. This paper investigates the effect of learning by licensing and choice of licensed-in technologies on innovation performance. We extend the ITL strategy to the latecomer context, addressing two critical factors: (1) numb...

In the extant literature, the effect of entrepreneurship on income distribution is ambiguous and entrepreneurial propensity in the form of new firm entry has not been addressed empirically. We develop a framework combining the Kirznerian and Schumpeterian views of entrepreneurship to illustrate the opposing income-distributive effects of new firm e...

This paper outlines a scheme that uses public research institutes to assist the technology upgrading of small and medium enterprises. The Growing Enterprises through Technology Upgrading (GET-Up) initiative, which comprises a slate of 4 different programs, has been successfully implemented in Singapore since 2003. We propose that GET-Up represents...

Thesis. 1979. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

The growing competitiveness of Asian economies in science and technology has received increasing attention of science and technology policy researchers. The empirical findings of many studies that unveiled the progress of science and technology in selected Asian economies provide an account of the virtuous cycle of S&T production for these economie...

This paper examines software patents trends in Asia using patents granted to Asian inventors by the USPTO from 1980 to 2011. The various definitions of software adopted in prior literature are summarized and two classification-based definitions are used in the analysis. We found that globally, software patenting has grown faster than other types of...

A large body of research has thoroughly discussed and examined agglomeration advantages for innovation of geographically concentrated firms. However, there is an increasing awareness that this intellectual tradition tends to overemphasize the role of geographic proximity in the transfer of knowledge between firms and to under-theorize the contribut...

As a catalyst for endogenous technological change, inward technology licensing can improve firm's innovation performance. This paper investigates the effect of learning by licensing and strategic choice of technology licensed in on subsequent innovation performance. We extend the inward technology licensing strategy to the latecomer context, addres...

The Singapore government was among the first in the world to articulate a vision of developing a broadband National Information Infrastructure (NII) as a means to boost national competitiveness and improve socio-economic well-being. This paper analyzes the background and motivations leading to the articulation of this NII vision, the subsequent str...

Chronicles the paths taken by two universities—the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the University of Malaya (UM)—that branched out from the same roots. The Singapore case shows how strategic thinking directed toward national development and economic growth can become a driver for academic excellence, enabling a university from a newly in...

Immigrant Asian entrepreneurs have played a prominent role in the entrepreneurial dynamism of Silicon Valley over the last three decades. This paper traces the trend in new venture formation in Silicon Valley by ethnic Asian entrepreneurs over the years up to 2004, and examines the changing pattern of venture capital (VC) that funded them. We found...

The entrepreneurship literature suggests that network ties are useful in mitigating the problem of information asymmetry faced by entrepreneurs when acquiring resources at the early stage of venture creation. We introduce prior knowledge of resource owners as an inverse measure of information asymmetry and investigate the contingent effect of prior...

As highlighted by Wong (2006) and Wong and Singh (2011), Singapore has achieved remarkable economic growth in the past via a strategy of leveraging foreign direct investment. However, with growing competition from China and India in recent years, Singapore is rapidly moving toward a knowledge-based strategy for future growth, with increasing public...

This timely book examines the rising phenomenon of academic entrepreneurship and technology commercialization among leading universities in Asia, by presenting in-depth analysis of thirteen leading universities from nine Asian economies, including Tokyo University in Japan, Tsinghua in China, IIT Bombay in India, and the National University of Sing...

In this study, we focus on firms’ performance feedback with regard to explorative and exploitative innovation. Building on Cyert and March’s (1963) behavioral theory of the firm, performance feedback is a mechanism that can help companies to adjust their strategies, and deal with problematic or slack searches. We extended this argument in the conte...

Integrating data from three independent data sources––USPTO patenting data, Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) and the Times Higher Education Supplement’s World University Ranking (WUR), we examine the possible link between patenting output and the quantity and quality of scientific publications among 281...

This study investigates when indirect ties, in which a referrer appears between an entrepreneur and a resource owner, can enhance the likelihood of resource acquisitions for starting a new venture. The authors argue that when either resource owners or referrers possess a greater level of prior knowledge about a venture’s technology or product, info...

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This paper examines the dynamics of formation of two innovation-driven industrial clusters in Singapore: the biomedical sciences (BMS) cluster; and the offshore marine engineering cluster. The first represents an emerging technology cluster in the early stage of formation; the second represents a more mature cluster that has evolved from an earlier...

This chapter seeks to complement the various sector-specific chapters in this project by examining the possible role of public policy on intellectual property (IP) in enhancing the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s (HKSAR) innovation system. While there are various interpretations of the scope of IP policy in the literature (see e.g., Idris...

The existing literature on knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) predominantly focuses on their role as innovation agents in innovation systems, with limited attention to innovation of KIBS firms in its own right. Using a sample of 181 KIBS firms in Singapore, this paper examines the key determinants of innovation behavior of KIBS firms. We...

In 2005 the Faculty of Engineering at the National University of Singapore relaunched a master's of science program in the management of technology (MSc/MOT) after it was moved from the School of Business where, as the first of its kind in Asia, it was started in 1992. The opportunity to relaunch the program in the faculty of engineering provided a...

The Benchmarking Survey of Establishments in Batam, Bintan and Karimun Special Economic Zone (BBK SEZ) is part of a collaboration project between the Faculty of Economics, University of Indonesia (FEUI) and the Asia Competitiveness Institute, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (ACI). The objective is to study the...

An individual's intent to pursue an entrepreneurial career can result from the work environment and from personal factors. Drawing on the entrepreneurial intentions and the person–environment (P–E) fit literatures, and applying a multilevel perspective, we examine why individuals intend to leave their jobs to start business ventures. Findings, usin...

This study shows that the joint effects of the entrepreneur’s personality and an unpredictable environment, as well as the interaction effects of a low uncertainty avoidance culture, predict opportunity exploitation. Our study’s findings are consistent with the emerging opportunity-exploiter nexus framework of Shane and Venkataraman, which posits t...

While existing studies have provided many insightful discussions on the antecedents to innovative collaborations and the benefits of collaborative behavior, few studies have focused on the mediating role of innovative collaborations in enhancing the firm’s technological innovative performance. In this paper, we investigate the mediating role of the...

ASEAN has been considered as one of the most successful regional groupings worldwide since its inception to the mid 1990s. However, economic realities have dramatically changed in the past 10 years with the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 and the emergence of China and India as economic powerhouse in Asia since the mid-1990s. In this pa...

This study examines how institutional environmental factors, including cultural norm, state regulatory system and venture capital market, influence the high-tech entrepreneur's choice for using network vs. market methods when approaching prospective investors at the early stage of their new venture creation. We collected comparative data through on...

Most of the entrepreneurship literature has addressed the benefits and necessity of using social network ties as opposed to market methods in early venture finance, but it has largely understated the potential limitations and costs of doing so. Specifically, very sparse research has examined the factors that influence entrepreneurs' choice between...

Prior studies have found that knowledge gained from work experience is a way to gather insights for business opportunity recognition. However, little is known about the specific types of knowledge that lead to business founding. Utilizing concepts from knowledge spillovers and from the opportunity recognition literatures, this paper argues that an...

Prior studies have found that knowledge gained from work experience is a way to gather insights for business opportunity recognition. However, little is known about the specific types of knowledge that lead to business founding. Utilizing concepts from knowledge spillovers and from the opportunity recognition literatures, this paper argues that thr...

Nanotechnology patenting has grown rapidly in recent years as an increasing number of countries are getting into the global nanotechnology race. Using a refined methodology to identify and classify nanotechnology patents, this paper analyses the changing pattern of internationalization of nanotechnology patenting activities from 1976–2004. We show...

In common with other Newly Industrialized Economies in Asia, Singapore is moving toward a knowledge-based strategy for growth. Increasing prominence has been given to the role of Singapore’s universities in stimulating economic growth through industrially relevant research, technology commercialization, high-tech spin-offs, attracting foreign talen...

Since the late 1990s, the Singapore government had embarked on a significant push to develop the city-state into a major life-science R&D and industrial cluster in Asia. Although a major focus of this new thrust involves attracting leading life science companies overseas to establish operations in Singapore and developing new public life science re...

Current years have witnessed the ongoing interest in entrepreneurship, which is essentially understood as the emergence and growth of new businesses (Rosa et al., 1996). A wide range of factors have contributed to the revival of interest in entrepreneurship in USA, Europe and many other countries. In recent years, many industrialized countries have...

Since Wetzel (1982, 1983) identified the business angel as a primary source of risk capital, there has been increased interest in the role of informal investors in the formation of new business ventures in the developed OECD countries. However, there remains little known about informal investors in developing or newly industrialized economies such...

In the late 1990s the Singapore government embarked on a set of far-reaching strategies intended to develop the city-state into one of the major life science R&D and industrial clusters in Asia. Besides efforts to attract leading overseas life science companies to establish operations in Singapore, the government has developed new life science publ...

This study proposes a multi-dimension, multi-contingent “fit” perspective for examining different practices adapted by entrepreneurial firms in acquiring human resources. We posit that while environmental constraints are important considerations for adapting recruitment practices through networks, strategic needs and interpersonal dynamics are the...

Prior studies have found that job dissatisfaction and self-efficacy are significant factors influencing individuals’ entrepreneurial propensity. Existing literature on entrepreneurship often regards job dissatisfaction as an entrepreneurial push factor and self-efficacy as an entrepreneurial pull factor. The argument is that individuals who are dis...

While prior research has examined the influence of entrepreneurs’ ability and personality on entrepreneurial behavior separately, our study’s contribution is to confirm their joint effects, as well as their interaction effects with the dynamism of the environment on entrepreneurs’ opportunity exploitation behavior. Our study’s findings are consiste...

The interactive process perspective of innovation suggests that the innovation performance of individual R&D scientist or engineers (RSEs) is influenced by a nexus of interaction between individual attributes and organizational characteristics. While numerous empirical studies have investigated the effects of various sets of individual and organiza...

Despite a variety of technology sourcing modes that have been identified in the current literature, the existing studies tend to either focus their analysis on either a single mode of sourcing or on the choice of external and internal sources. This study goes beyond the existing literature by identifying the types of various technology sourcing mod...

The existing literature has identified a number of antecedent factors that positively influence the propensity of individuals to become entrepreneurs. Key among these are self-efficacy, prior personal contacts with entrepreneurs and perception of opportunity. At the same time, fear of failure has been popularly identified by policy makers as a majo...

This study examines the role of perceptions of the firm's reward system as a moderating factor in attitude's impact on patenting intensity. Applied in an R&D context, attitude is defined as attitude towards R&D work and attitude towards the impediments to R&D work. We hypothesise that if there is a positive relationship between attitudes and patent...

This paper provides empirical estimates for the impact of R&D on economic growth in Singapore. The Cobb–Douglas based analysis found that R&D investment had a significant impact on total factor productivity performance in the last 20 years and established a long-term equilibrium relationship between R&D investments and TFP. However, compared to OEC...

This inductive study offers an examination of 23 cases in which informants from firms engaged in large-scale global projects reported unforeseen costs after failing to comprehend cognitive-cultural, normative, and/or regulative institutions in an unfamiliar host societal context. The study builds on the conceptual framework of institutional theory....

This paper examines the changing pattern of technological specialization of the four small, newly industrializing economies (NIEs) from East Asia as they move up the economic development ladder. In addition, the paper also investigates whether there is convergence or divergence between these NIEs and two reference groups of advanced economies -- ei...

While the existing entrepreneurship literature has identified various antecedents that influence the propensity of individuals becoming entrepreneurs, the extant empirical literature is mostly based on evidence drawn from OECD countries. There has been relatively little empirical literature on the antecedents for entrepreneurial propensity in Singa...

By tracing the flows of patent citation of prior patents and scientific journal articles, we investigate the sources of knowledge for innovation output in Singapore, a small, highly open economy that has traditionally been significantly dependent on foreign multinational corporations (MNCs). We found that the local production of new knowledge by in...

The city-state of Singapore has achieved rapid economic development in the past by its positioning as an efficient business hub in Asia. To remain competitive in the global knowledge economy, however, Singapore needs to move beyond efficiency by developing a strong"innovative"edge as well. This paper examines the challenges that Singapore faces in...

The existing literature identifies a number of antecedent factors that positively influence the propensity of individuals to become entrepreneurs. Key among these are self-efficacy, prior knowledge of other entrepreneurs and perception of opportunities. At the same time, policy makers commonly identify fear of failure as a major deterrent factor fo...

Organizations around the world have increasingly realized the importance of leveraging information technology and the Internet to streamline government services and provide better customer services to its customers. This paper describes the implementation of electronic filing (e-filing) of income taxes by the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (...

This paper assesses the extent to which human capital (education, work experience, and training) and social capital (level of interconnectedness, relationship, and shared expectations with others) impact on research and development outcomes. Controlling for gender and type of industry, logistic regression analyses indicate that an individual's educ...

The study examines how team diversity affects external evaluation of the teams' business ideas. Using an information perspective, we argue that task-related diversity of member characteristics enhance team effectiveness. Nontask diversity hurt team effectiveness by steering teams away from their tasks. Some support was found. Task-related diversity...

The existing literature identifies a number of antecedent factors that positively influence the propensity of individuals to become entrepreneurs. Key among these are self-efficacy, prior knowledge of other entrepreneurs and perception of opportunities. At the same time, policy makers commonly identify fear of failure as a major deterrent factor fo...

The strategic behaviour and performance of Asian high-tech firms are discussed. The East Asian Newly Industrialized Economies (NIE) can develop distinctive global competitive advantages by pursuing a competitive strategy that focuses on developing their low-cost manufacturing process capabilities. The extent of external collaborations, the choice o...

While most services innovation studies are concentrated on the OECD or EU countries, research on services innovation in the non-OECD context is still rare. This study investigates innovation behaviour of a certain group of services - knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), compared with the manufacturing sector in Singapore. The main findings...

Current years have witnessed the ongoing interest in entrepreneurship, which is essentially understood as the emergence and growth of new businesses (Rosa et al., 1996). A wide range of factors have contributed to the revival of interest in entrepreneurship in USA, Europe and many other countries. In recent years, many industrialized countries have...

In the last twenty years, venture capital has emerged as a key area of interest for both academic researchers and financial professionals. This rising interest is well aligned with the development of the venture capital industry both in the US and globally. Historically, the origin of the venture capital industry can be traced back to the early 190...

This paper uses USPTO patent data to analyze knowledge flows within and across the three firms that successively led the wireless communication industry over the past three decades (Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia). We show that as a follower attempts to catch up with the leader, it relies heavily on the leader for knowledge. Only when the follower ge...

The Singapore Government has identified biotechnology as one of the four pillars of the economy for the twenty first century. For the last forty years, Singapore has pursued a very successful economic growth strategy of attracting investment from leading multinationals through a combination of financial incentives, world-class irfrastructure, a hig...

The Singapore Government has identified biotechnology as one of the four pillars of the economy for the twenty-first century. For the last forty years, Singapore has pursued a very successful economic growth strategy of attracting investment from leading multinationals through a combination of financial incentives, world-class infrastructure, a hig...

While exploration and exploitation represent two fundamentally different approaches to organizational learning, recent literature has increasingly indicated the need for firms to achieve a balance between the two. This balanced view is embedded in the concept of ambidextrous organizations. However, there is little direct evidence of the positive ef...

and the two anonymous reviewers for comments on the earlier drafts of the paper. We are also grateful to Deborah Ancona, D. Diane Burton, Jean Jacques Degroof and Scott Shane for our earliest discussions on team issues in entrepreneurship. Funding support from the National University of Singapore is gratefully acknowledged.

Does an individual's positive attitude towards entrepreneurship education promote the growth of new ventures? It appears that it does. The empirical results presented in this paper support a prima facie claim that a relationship exists between attitude towards entrepreneurial education and business start-up. The aim of this paper is to investigate...