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In Times of Economic Crisis: Innovation With, or Without, R&D Activities? An Analysis of Spanish Companies

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Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Crisis

Abstract

Analysis of non-R&D innovators—firms that successfully innovate without conducting R&D activities in-house—is an emerging topic in the innovation literature. Surprisingly, little is known about how they differ from R&D innovators. This paper’s goal is to understand those differences and their persistence in times of economic crisis. From analysing 2011 CIS data, results suggest that for non-R&D innovators: (a) the innovation process has been persistent across different time periods, and that, therefore, firms have innovated whatever the environmental economic conditions; (b) the acquisition of equipment, machinery, and software has been the form most used for acquiring knowledge; (c) in times of economic crisis, the non-R&D strategy is strengthened by a high commitment to acquiring ready-to-use knowledge, rather than relying on uncertain R&D activities; that is, in times of crisis, non-R&D innovators invest more intensively in non-R&D activities than do R&D innovators. Non-R&D innovation represents 50 % of innovation in Europe. At times of economic crisis, it is a more suitable, innovation strategy.

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Acknowledgement

We are gratefully thankful to ECO: 2010-17.318 INNOCLUSTERS, sponsored by MINECO (Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Organización de Empresas, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, Valencia, 46008, Spain

    Francisca Sempere-Ripoll & Jose-Luis Hervás-Oliver

Authors
  1. Francisca Sempere-Ripoll
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  2. Jose-Luis Hervás-Oliver
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Francisca Sempere-Ripoll .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Aalen University School of Management & Business Sciences, Aalen, Germany

    Klaus Rüdiger

  2. Department of Business Administration, Technical University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Marta Peris Ortiz

  3. Facultad de Ciencias Juridicas y Sociale, Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid, Spain

    Alicia Blanco González

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Sempere-Ripoll, F., Hervás-Oliver, JL. (2014). In Times of Economic Crisis: Innovation With, or Without, R&D Activities? An Analysis of Spanish Companies. In: Rüdiger, K., Peris Ortiz, M., Blanco González, A. (eds) Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Crisis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02384-7_17

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