Puzzle 1

Horizontal
1. Type of interaction in the triple helix model
2. Agent in the context of triple helix
5. Matter may arise if the word systems are not clearly distinguished


Vertical
1. The way to transform the accumulated knowledge into an interactive process that impact regional technological development
3. The impact of absorptive capacity and network position

Explanation of the question
1. Type of interaction in the triple helix model
· There are 3 kind of interaction in the triple helix model.
· The first one is spiral, where three agents in triple helix involve in interaction together. Example, Private firm, government and university act together in solving an issue regarding on global warming, how to reduce the carbon in the environment.
· The second one is bilateral interaction, where it only involve 2 parties in the NIS, example interaction between university and firm, firm is interesting in involving in a research, they approach university due to university have the facilities, knowledge and technology, firm send their expert to the university and conducting a joint research.
· The third one is lateral interaction, where although it involves 2 parties, however, transfer of knowledge or technology is just one way. Not like the bilateral where both parties continuous interact with each other

2. Agents in the context of triple helix
· There are 3 types of agents in triple helix.
· Government – concentrate on policy, funding, infrastructure
· University - Provide human capital, education and research
· Private firm/ Industry – Working with university in R&D in order to create new innovation product

3. Matter may arise if the word systems are not clearly distinguished.
· Miss-understanding, miss-interpretation, miss communication and confusion will occur.
· It happen due to the interaction between the actors in triple helix, example, miss interpretation between government (policy maker) and firm, unclearly justify policy on incentive in R&D causing doubt for industry in involving in R&D.

4. The way to transform the accumulated knowledge into and interactive process that impact regional technological development
· There are 2 way to transform the accumulater knowledge into interactive process.

· The first is through network. They are few kind of network, interaction between government and industry, government and university and industry and university. This collaboration could be divided into the national level, regional level as well as international level.
· The second way is to create a network space, where the three agents in Triple helix model will act together and provide support to each other.

5. The impact of absorptive capacity and network position
· There are few impacts of absorptive capacity and network position,
· The first one is innovation, where it provides medium or channel to gather all the information available in the entire unit, share it. Beside that the ability to understand the technology and information will be higher that will increase research and development activities.
· The second impact is business performances, where best practices from each department could be utilize and serve as a references in solving problem that lead to Cost efficiency and reduction of operating cost, besides that they could leverage on their business processes and model.
· The third impact is creation of a learning organization, since increase of the absorptive capacity and a medium to link all the department, it create a cultural where people in the organization will learn to improve on everything.

Article 3!

Finally i had manage to finish to review all 3 article, (^.^). Anyway, please share your thought and view, let us expand our knowledge!

Wenpin Tsal (2001). An organization consists of multiunit, where it means organization is geographically dispersed. From geographic groupings from area, to region and divisions, each of the unit consist of own set of management. They are responsible in carry out activities and reporting back to their headquarters. Each unit will have encounter different set of problem and trying to solve by themselves, therefore knowledge on knowhow will be developed. Besides that, each unit has their own experience workers; this cross functional communication could maximize the use of human capital. The entire knowledge could be share among the entire unit to leverage on performance as well as creating new knowledge. However, what should organization do in order to create the network?

Author had suggested a central network should be created, the effective of the network are based on 2 indicators, network position and absorptive capacity.

In the inter-unit network, a central position should be created in order to capture external/internal information, with the feedback from customer and workers; product could be improved to meet the demand of the market. This central position serves as a medium or channel to gather all the information available in the entire unit, share it, and use it to generate idea. Besides that, best practices from each department could be utilize and serve as a references in solving problem that lead to Cost efficiency and reduction of operating cost. As concluded, promoting innovation and performance of the firm could be increase. Therefore, first hypothesis had been developed, the first part of this hypothesis stated that the centrality of an organizational unit’s network position is positively related to its innovation and the second part is related to business performance.

Absorptive capacity is an ability of an organization to value, assimilate and creating new knowledge. With this capacity, the ability to understand the technology and information will be higher that will increase research and development activities. It stimulates innovation and increase the commercialization of new products. Therefore, second hypothesis had been developed by the author in order to test the relationship between absorptive capacity with innovation and performance. And lastly, the third hypothesis that created to test the relationship between network position and absorptive capacity to influence innovation and performance of the firm.

Two multinational companies had been chosen to be studied. There are, Taiplex Corporation where it is a petrochemical industry with 24 business units and Resident enterprise that producing food with 36 business units available. Variables that had been used are:

	Variable	Proxy by
Dependent variable	Innovation	Innovation achieved rate, number of new products introduced in a unit.
	Business performance	Profitability achieved rate
Independent variable	Absorptive capacity	R&D intensity
	Network position	Questionnaire question. Which units provide your unit with new knowledge or expertise when your unit is seeking technical advice inside your organization?
Control variable	Unit size	Log of the unit sales and the number of employees in each unit size
	Competition	Two questions in questionnaire, Competition is intense in our local environment and our unit has strong competitors in the market place. (7 level likert scale).
	Prior performance
	Prior innovation
	performance
	Innovation

Result:

	Accept/Reject (P value)	Positive/negative relationship between independent and dependent
Hypothesis 1a	Accept (99% confidence interval)	Positive
Hypothesis 1b	Rejected	-
Hypothesis 2a	Accept (99% confidence interval)	Positive
Hypothesis 2b	Accept (95% confidence interval)	Positive
Hypothesis 3a	Accept (99% confidence interval)	Positive
Hypothesis 3b	Accept (95% confidence interval)	Positive

From the result generated, it is clearly show that network position and absorptive capacity are directly related to the business performance and innovation. Higher the absorptive capacity and network position will lead to increase of innovation activities and business performance.

Reference:

Wenpin Tsai. (2001). Knowledge Transfer in Intraorganizational Networks: Effective Network Position and Absorptive Capacity on Business Unit Innovation and Performance. Academy of Management Journal 44(5): 996-1004.

The second Article!

Casas, Rosalba, Rebecca de Gortari and Ma. Josefa Santos (2000).This article is discussing on how Mexico build an environment or space in order for innovation in taking place in the country. Again, triple Helix, where government, private sector and universities have their own role in developing a knowledge space in the Mexico. Government responsible in providing funds, technological facilities and public research centers (PRCs) in the regions, universities will be providing scientific and technological knowledge to the environment; hence private sector will be able to utilize all those facilities and knowledge in research activities. Two kind of system had been developed by Mexico’s government in building of knowledge spaces. It had been summarizing in below table.

	Government
	SEP-CONACYT (Ministry of Public Education- National Science and Technology Council)	CINVESTAV (centre for research and advance studies)
Establish	1970	1963
Role	Divided into three categories, science centers, technological centers and social science centers.	Concentrating in providing training to researchers to meet the demand of the market as well as improving standard of living of the country.
Gov. Allocation	18.8% percent federal expenditure on S&T	7 % percent of federal expenditure on S&T

One of the most successful region that had been created as a knowledge space is Bajio, 2 of the states in this region, Queretaro and Guanajuato where R&D activities are highly concentrated. Authors stressed that PRC is the most important in creating knowledge space; Lots of example had been given, however, all those example are referring to the main point on the role of PRC in creating regional knowledge space.

1. Public research center collaborate with universities, universities provided courses to train human capital that are needed by research centers and to meet the demand of job market. With clustering of all PRC in one region, they collaborate among themselves and share the expertise or technology in solving problem and create new product. They also practice sub contract where they could use laboratories or tools that they don’t acquired. Hence, Combination and accumulation of knowledge increase innovation capabilities.

2. Practicing transfer of technology from foreign firms to local firms. Financial institution providing fund to acquire new technologies.

3. Private firms approach PRC in order for solving technological and organizational problems. Interaction between PRC and firms create a continuous learning process for both parties to support the knowledge network.

4. Most of the research activities in Mexico are conducted within Public University and PRCs.

5. In order to build an effective triple helix interaction model, the lateral networks between PRC and PRC, PRC with international counterparts, PRC with local or foreign firms, and trilateral networks between all the players is important. They have to support each other, collaborating research together, involve in transferring technology and sufficient human capital in building the knowledge space.

Casas, Rosalba, Rebecca de Gortari and Ma. Josefa Santos (2000) “The Building of Knowledge Spaces in Mexico: a regional approach to networking.” Research Policy 29 225-241.

The first Article!

Hi everyone! welcome to my blog. :)

After reading the first article, i still have some doubt on the message that author trying to deliver. However, enclosed here with my understanding on this article.

Heraud(2000), By focusing in Europe as a whole, author is suggesting the policy that should be consider and taken to strengthen the regional technological development. Due to lack behind of technological economics by comparing with North America and Far East, as well as fall in the labor productivity in the region, Research and Technological Development (RTD) had been established. However, challenges of the region is to developed a policy where whole Europe will be able to develop together where territory equity will be achieve in the same time, therefore the gap between nation will be reduced.

Since there are a lot of player that involve in the Regional innovation system (private sector, bank, government and institution), policies created should be considered on how it will related to each other and what is the role of each player should do. Besides providing incentives to a firm to enhance innovation, clustering all the industry together is a better solution, by providing proper support such as public investment in infrastructure of S&T; we could enhance the knowledge creating process, sharing and diffusion among firm to create an innovation culture which leads to competitive advantage.

In designing the most suitable policy, understanding on the process of innovation is required. Vision of innovation had been divided into two categories, linear sequence between input and output and non linear sequence. Linear sequence is based on interaction among all the players in the NIS, such as firms, public institution and research center while non linear based stressed that all the a learning economy should be established to enable knowledge creation where those knowledge will be used in leverage every stages of the business activity.

One of the interesting point in the second section of the article, is about the Knowledge production function that formalized by Z. Griliches (1979), as we know Cobb Douglas production function only include land and capital, I found an article by Shapira, P., Youtie, J., Yogeesvaran, K. and Jaafar, Z. (2005), discussing on knowledge as an input and outputs of innovation, below is the summarize of the Knowledge production function.

1. Knowledge inputs

a. Knowledge stocks (enables)

· Human capabilities, K leadership, technology/infrastructure, K environment

b. Knowledge processes (flow or actions)

· K generation, info gathering, K sharing and K utilization

2. Outputs

a. Innovation

· New/improved product, new/improved process and organization.

b. Economic performance

· Improved productivity, enhanced profits

c. External factors

· Business climate, demand conditions, market and industry structure.

The second section also discussing on the use of Information communication and technologies in eliminating barriers of distance between nations. With the reduction of cost for communications, knowledge/information sharing, transferring and diffusion encourage knowledge creation process between boundaries.

Section three of the journal stressed that public institution playing an important role in supporting innovation. By taking example of French, where their government heavily invested on scientific, educational, technological infrastructure and incentive as a foundation for innovation to take place among the firms. Institutions of Technology Infrastructure (ITI) which are some sort of research organization are available in these countries. It will collaborate with the local firm in order to develop innovation products. However, newly entrance firm might not adapt to the fast pace of technological change. In order to survive in the knowledge economy, KIBS will serve as a consultancy where they will provide technological knowledge, managerial skill (such as how to obtain knowledge workers), ICT and how to protect their innovation through Intellectual property rights.

The last section of the journal discussed on the characteristic of firm’s competence for innovation. Author claimed that statistical testing is un-useable in order to revaluate innovative potential of the regions, Therefore, author suggested that qualitative information where is provided by INSEE and the ministry of industry to be used for revaluation. The result of the revaluation could be summarized and categorized into few categorize, it is noticeable that the characteristic of the firm’s competence for innovation are maximum of competence in R&D management, focus more on organizational dimension and rely strongly on the market information for their innovation. Different sector will have different level of competence to innovate and different scientific density required due to technological and tacit knowledge required. Three type of scientific density also had been explained by the author, high scientific density means huge amount of knowledge workers concentrated in one sector to enable diffusion and creating of new knowledge in R&D activities. Medium scientific density, where firm will be more rely on identify, capture and use the knowledge or idea generated by individual in leverage on their product or process. While Low level of scientific density will use of the market information, feedback by customer and what customer wants in order to value added their products.

Besides scientific density that correlated with innovations, Knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) also playing an important role in encouraging innovation. This is because they might able to supply tacit knowledge which is highly conceptualized in order for scientific activities to be carried out. Therefore, most of the firms now are paying serious attention in acquiring knowledge workers and knowledge management where tacit knowledge of the workers could be store and shared among workers.

As a conclusion, each country has their own different environment, external resources and adaptation capabilities. Some country might outperform compare to other country, therefore, to develop a regional policy that have the aim to achieve regional equity seems quite impossible, imagine that if ASEAN would like to create a regional policy where together we build up an innovative network to compete with developed countries. However, due to different background of the educational level and infrastructure provided in the countries, Could we achieve both objective of regional equity and convergence?

So what is your understanding and doubt on this article? lets share and learn together!

Reference:

Heraud, Jean-Alain (2000), Is there a regional dimension of innovation-oreiented knwoeldge networking? Fifth regional science and technology research symposium.

Shapira, P., Youtie, J., Yogeesvaran, K. and Jaafar, Z. (2005), Knowledge economy measurement: methods, results and insights from the Malaysian knoweldge content study. Paper prepared for the Truple Helis 5 conference on New indicatios for the knoweldge economy.