Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Production Technologies in Low-Technology Industries

Karagouni, Glykeria; Καραγκούνη, Γλυκερία

dc.contributor.author	Karagouni, Glykeria	en
dc.contributor.author	Καραγκούνη, Γλυκερία	el
dc.date.accessioned	2016-04-26T07:58:47Z
dc.date.available	2016-04-26T07:58:47Z
dc.date.issued	2016-04-26
dc.identifier.uri	https://dspace.lib.ntua.gr/xmlui/handle/123456789/42442
dc.identifier.uri	http://dx.doi.org/10.26240/heal.ntua.1941
dc.rights	Αναφορά Δημιουργού-Μη Εμπορική Χρήση-Όχι Παράγωγα Έργα 3.0 Ελλάδα	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/gr/	*
dc.subject	Knowlege-Intensive Entrepreneurship, Innovation, low-technology industries, dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities, production technologies	en
dc.subject	Επιχειρηματικότητα Εντάσεως Γνώσης, Καινοτομία, Βιομηχανίες Χαμηλής Τεχνολογίας, Δυναμικές Επιχειρηματικές Ικανότητες, Τεχνολογίες Παραγωγής	el
dc.title	Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Production Technologies in Low-Technology Industries	en
dc.contributor.department	Εργαστήριο Βιομηχανικής κι Ενεργιακής Οικονομίας	el
heal.type	doctoralThesis
heal.classification	Social Sciences, Entrepreneurship	en
heal.language	en
heal.access	free
heal.recordProvider	ntua	el
heal.publicationDate	2016-04-26
heal.abstract	Knowledge intensive entrepreneurship, innovation and production technologies in low-tech sectors Glykeria Karagouni Extended Abstract The starting point of this thesis is the emerging key socio-economic phenomenon of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship (KIE). KIE has been recently described as a special type of high potential entrepreneurship strongly connected to innovation and economic growth enhancing the competitiveness of firms and countries. It has been related to the establishment of new ventures or the expansion of existing ones based on the dynamic creation and application of new knowledge. On the other hand, low-technology industries constitute an important part of the global economy, operating within moderately but still ever-changing and highly ambiguous and turbulent markets. Until very recently, the common belief was that entrepreneurship based on knowledge was difficult to be found in traditional sectors due to the very basic features of these industries such as low or non-existent R&D intensity and strong path dependencies. The thesis purports to contribute to the comprehensive understanding of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship as a mechanism for the transfer of multifaceted knowledge into innovative economic entrepreneurial activities, in low-tech sectors. More precisely, the object of the research is the low-tech but knowledge-intensive venture while the phenomenon under study is the corresponding survival and growth of this particular type of either very young firms or, in the context of existing organizations, in the form of corporate venturing within mature and highly saturated business ecosystems. The research question of the dissertation is how and why certain low-tech but knowledge-intensive (LT-KI) ventures survive early death and prosper within traditional business ecosystems. The research started with a broad interest in LT-KIE mechanisms and processes and honed down the resources and capabilities that emerged as important. It yielded over 500 pages of transcripts and over 2000 pages of secondary data and notes. The individual research objectives, eventually framed in order to build an integrated and comprehensive picture of the subject under question, are the following: a) how do LT-KI entrepreneurs/teams create innovative KI business concepts?; b) how do they locate, access and use knowledge in order to produce innovation?; c) how do they accumulate the bundle of resources, knowledge, skills and other inputs to transform the idea into production lines and products?; and d) how do just established LT-KI ventures overcome resource base weaknesses, create strong initial competitive advantages and evolve? The research method used is theory-building multiple-case study. Cases should regard Greek newly founded and corporate low-tech ventures created within the 1998-2007 decade while knowledge intensiveness, innovativeness, significant uncertainty and exceptional activity (such as market leadership) were the main selection criteria. Thirty information-rich cases (thirteen start-ups and seventeen cases of corporate venturing) of three traditional industries and namely the wood and furniture, the textiles and clothing and the food and beverages sectors were carefully selected, explicitly observed and analyzed. Data were collected through 42 semi-structured interviews with key informants in the venture organizations throughout the investigation period. In addition, public documents (press releases, annual reports, web pages, industry reports) and internal documentation (business plans, minutes of meetings) were used to support and complement the main data. In most cases, their historical background before and after the venture creation (e.g. new innovations, new spin offs, mergers and acquisitions etc.) has been studied in detail to provide a better understanding of the phenomenon explored. In the same vein, the evolution of the ventures after the day of the interview has been taken into consideration, in order to assess the performance of the selected cases. The occurrence of the severe Greek long-lasting crisis provided a further (unexpected) significant criterion for that purpose. The cross-case theory-building analysis indicated the need of developing further new theory on the LT-KIE phenomenon, and allowed for the addition of new theoretical and empirical insights on the issue; the conceptual framework delineated proposes that KIE in low-tech sectors can be related to a comprehensive set of specific dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities (DECs), and more precisely, a) emerging theory on the nature, the dimensions and specific conceptualizations of the DECs; and b) suggestions of a potential ecology between DECs, dynamic capabilities, technological capabilities and long-term survival and growth. The suggested framework reflects views at the broad nexus of the entrepreneurship, production management and strategic management literature, focusing on the area of low-tech and knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship and using a capability approach lens. The suggested measurable and patterned DECs are simple, idiosyncratic and iterative and they appear to be related with the new ventures’ survival, affecting initial core choices, growth, innovativeness and initial competitive advantage. DECs are actually defined as the dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities to engage in non-routine activities, improvisation and a flexible and seemingly contradictory to common belief (paradox) way of collecting and establishing knowledge assets and asset combinations in order to realize transcendent business ideas and address complex entrepreneurial environment through new LT-KI ventures. They have been treated as higher-order capabilities that influence the location, selection and the ways of selection of resources and skills and use a priori knowledge in order to capture existing knowledge from various domains, denoting changes in business ecosystems and creating initial competitive advantages. Entrepreneurs and managers are the key agents of DEC development; however, DECs are soon embedded in organizational routines, becoming precursors of DC dimensions, and remain in this form till the very next venturing of the organization. A significant role of DECs is to activate the ‘entrepreneurial’ and cognitive component of the dynamic capabilities and provide their flexible shaping and use. According to our findings, DECs do not appear to be static. As experiences occur, the new information is used to modify, add to, or change previously existing patterns and processes and thus reform capabilities and behaviors such as ways of knowledge seeking, technological competences and production methods, and business model formation. This behavior gave us the faith to believe that DECs can be deliberately cultivated, developed and influenced by the core decision-makers of the LT-KI entrepreneurial act. Across all thirty case studies, findings pointed to a rich fabric of processes and competencies, which formed the three DECs with a number of dimensions each and namely: a) bricolage capability enables entrepreneurs both explore and exploit new opportunities that might otherwise be too expensive to investigate by more traditional means. Its dimensions derive from the relevant bricolage theory and are repertoire building and concentric cycle networking with their sub-dimensions; b) improvisation capability allows LT-KI entrepreneurs create and execute new plans “on the fly”, using resources available at the moment when opportunities or unexpected pieces of knowledge and information emerge. Core dimensions are developed on the basis of the relevant improvisation theory and they are information flowing and the provocative organization competencies with their sub-dimensions; c) Transcendental Capability is a totally novel concept, a purely dynamic entrepreneurial capability of strategic nature, that implies the development of transcendental conditions and transcendental synthesis. This DEC is based mainly on the Kantian “Critique of Pure Reason” and several thoughts and views of entrepreneurship and knowledge-creation theorists. It explains ‘how’ innovative knowledge-intensive concepts are built suggesting that they are results of a priori knowledge generation processes. It regards mainly the process of intangible assets’ creation, such as novel knowledge and know-how which according to Teece (2011) constitute the new, hard to “build” and difficult to manage “natural resources”. Transcendental capabilities (TCs) are the key drivers of shaping unorthodox ideas, curving the directions towards novelty and knowledge seeking and orchestrating the other two DECs to realize these ideas. Entrepreneurs form by anticipation genuine concepts based on cognitive capabilities derived from TCs; these determine the origins, the extent, and the objective validity of knowledge, facilitating a path carving within the KI “beginner’s” chaos. The empirical analysis indicated that such an enactment of mechanisms needed to allow unexplored knowledge paths and produce innovative business ideas constitutes the specific difference between LT-KIE and plain LT entrepreneurship. The fruits of TCs seem to be able to permit a newcomer be accepted in an already established and seemingly saturated market environment, entice customers, deliver value to them and persuade them to pay for value. The data analysis also suggests that DECs seem to support and enhance the value-creating development of production technologies and consequently, the development of the new LT-KI ventures’ technological capabilities; these, in turn, focus on efforts to “make effective use of technological knowledge in production, investment and innovation” (Westphal, et al., 1985, p. 171). Appropriate production technologies assist the integration of competitive advantages supporting the new firm’s survival, growth and innovative performance. The analysis actually seems to challenge the established opinion of common entrepreneurial processes in low-tech sectors according to which low-tech firms follow well-trodden paths, complying with market and manufacturing status quo; i.e. they act as “technology borrowers” using existing technologies to satisfy and penetrate existing markets, seeking advantages in low prices, productivity increase, and better delivery terms. Another important issue of the thesis regarded the verification of the existence of dynamic capabilities (DCs) in the LT-KI new firms: market and technological sensing, new product development, networking and collaboration capabilities appear to be the most significant DCs entailing processes to acquire knowledge and understand technology developments in a variety of industrial sectors and relevant scientific fields for all three sectors examined. Findings indicated that DECs have a role to play in the creation and development of DCs impacting thus in an indirect way a new LT-KI firm’s innovativeness and growth. The potential links among DECs and DCs do not seem to be sector-specific indicating generalizability in the way DECs get embedded or become antecedents of certain DC micro-foundations. However, DCs in established organizations may hinder the performance of DECs in cases of LT-KI corporate venturing and more specifically, the more the path dependency, the less the DECs’ effectiveness. The thesis’ contribution is both theoretical and empirical. According to our best of knowledge, it is among the very first research efforts to unearth several unique insights on the KIE phenomenon, shifting focus and advancing knowledge on the rather neglected area of low-tech industries. Research on firm-level success and failure at the stage of LT-KI venturing remains scarce; while there is some talk on competitive advantage and capabilities, this discussion remains caged mainly within the borders of the LT- innovation theory. Perhaps the major contribution of the study regards DECs’ conceptualization and operationalization, as it provides a multidimensional measure of DECs, indicating that they are more than just vague and fuzzy abstractions guided only by human talent and intuition; in fact, it appears that the DEC construct and its underlying dimensions are a set of idiosyncratic in their details but identifiable, measurable and, therefore, managerially amenable options that can be used to address the changing low-tech environment during the gestation, start-up and early development stages. It can be also considered a significant theoretical and empirical contribution to the Dynamic capabilities theory since it throws some light on the origins of DCs and the debate on their existence at the outset of new firms, confirming, in parallel, their applicability in low-tech industries or otherwise areas of moderate environmental dynamism. Up to date, a very small stream of empirical research has been slowly emerging, trying to capture the DCs impact in low and medium-tech sectors. The described DEC-DC evolution in the LT-KI venture context may help also to explain heterogeneity of new LT-KI ventures’ survival and development. Last but not least, there is a surprising shortage of studies that investigate how low-tech ventures build up their operational environment, although it is widely accepted that the commitment to physical creation is a significant transition point in venture creation, in general. Similarly, there are only a handful of studies that probe the role of production technologies within a low-tech but knowledge-intensive context mainly at a sectoral basis. The present thesis is among the first to suggest that DECs can act as a catalyst and endue new ventures with technological capabilities, explaining the foundations of the technological capabilities of such firms. The thesis offers some valuable insights and food for thought for researchers, theorists and postgraduate students in entrepreneurship, strategic management and several other fields. Besides the theoretical value, entrepreneurs, company representatives and policy-makers may find some interest in the proposed insights in the low-tech field that has been so far neglected. Almost with the dawn of the new millennium and the evident globalization of the international economy, the market environment of the low-tech sectors has become highly volatile and instable. The findings of this dissertation are applicable in a wider context regarding the low-tech, traditional industries; examination of their applicability to high and medium-tech industries is strongly suggested. The DEC-approach together with the proposed interactions among DECs – DCs and production technologies is in its infancy but it does have the potential to be further empirically and theoretically researched. Emerging and evolving theories develop slowly, over long periods of time. As Williamson (1999) observes, ‘big ideas often take a long time to take on definition’. NOTE: This research was spurred by the beginning of the AEGIS FP7 multi-partner research project (January 2009 - September 2012) at the National Technical University of Athens which focused on KIE.	en
heal.advisorName	Καλογήρου, Ιωάννης	el
heal.committeeMemberName	Καλογήρου, Ιωάννης	el
heal.committeeMemberName	Διακουλάκη, Δανάη	el
heal.committeeMemberName	Ιωαννίδης, Σταύρος	el
heal.committeeMemberName	Τσακανίκας, Άγγελος	el
heal.committeeMemberName	Κωνσταντέλου, Αναστασία	el
heal.committeeMemberName	Chebbi, Hela	el
heal.committeeMemberName	Kaufmann, Hans Ruediger	el
heal.academicPublisher	Σχολή Χημικών Μηχανικών	el
heal.academicPublisherID	ntua
heal.numberOfPages	1395
heal.fullTextAvailability	true