Agent-based modeling is a powerful simulation modeling technique that has seen a number of applications in the last few years, including applications to real-world business problems. After the basic principles of agent-based simulation are briefly introduced, its four areas of application are discussed by using real-world applications: flow simulation, organizational simulation, market simulation, and diffusion simulation. For each category, one or several business applications are described and analyzed.

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Agent-based modeling: Methods and techniques for simulating human systems

This handbook looks to provide academics and students with a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the phenomenon of innovation. Innovation spans a number of fields within the social sciences and humanities: Management, Economics, Geography, Sociology, Politics, Psychology, and History. Consequently, the rapidly increasing body of literature on innovation is characterized by a multitude of perspectives based on, or cutting across, existing disciplines and specializations. Scholars of innovation can come from such diverse starting points that much of this literature can be missed, and so constructive dialogues missed. The editors of The Oxford Handbook of Innovation have carefully selected and designed twenty-one contributions from leading academic experts within their particular field, each focusing on a specific aspect of innovation. These have been organized into four main sections, the first of which looks at the creation of innovations, with particular focus on firms and networks. Section Two provides an account of the wider systematic setting influencing innovation and the role of institutions and organizations in this context. Section Three explores some of the diversity in the working of innovation over time and across different sectors of the economy, and Section Four focuses on the consequences of innovation with respect to economic growth, international competitiveness, and employment. An introductory overview, concluding remarks, and guide to further reading for each chapter, make this handbook a key introduction and vital reference work for researchers, academics, and advanced students of innovation. Contributors to this volume - Jan Fagerberg, University of Oslo William Lazonick, INSEAD Walter W. Powell, Stanford University Keith Pavitt, SPRU Alice Lam, Brunel University Keith Smith, INTECH Charles Edquist, Linkoping David Mowery, University of California, Berkeley Mary O'Sullivan, INSEAD Ove Granstrand, Chalmers Bjorn Asheim, University of Lund Rajneesh Narula, Copenhagen Business School Antonello Zanfei, Urbino Kristine Bruland, University of Oslo Franco Malerba, University of Bocconi Nick Von Tunzelmann, SPRU Ian Miles, University of Manchester Bronwyn Hall, University of California, Berkeley Bart Verspagen , ECIS Francisco Louca, ISEG Manuel M. Godinho, ISEG Richard R. Nelson, Mario Pianta, Urbino Bengt-Ake Lundvall, Aalborg

The Oxford Handbook of Innovation

Winning Through Innovation: A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Change and Renewal Tushman, Michael L. and O'Reilly, Charles A., 256 pp., Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. Reviewed by Subodh P. Kulkarni, Assistant Professor in School of Business at Howard University, Washington, D.C. Professors Tushman and O'Reilly are well known for their research on innovation and organizational culture. In this book, the authors address a fundamental and interesting issue underlying organizational change and innovation: that of how firms can achieve a balance between stability and change. Businesses are not likely to prosper or survive in the long run without this balance. One of the book's key premises is that short-term success may constrain a firm's ability to change. Short term successes often occur in larger, older, more structured organizations, the source of structural and cultural inertia, which yields success in stable environments and failure when environments change. Therefore, a company's culture holds the key to success (or failure) in the long run. To create and sustain a competitive edge in the long run, companies must learn how to manage incremental and revolutionary change. The key, according to the authors, is to develop an "ambidextrous organization." Tushman and O'Reilly define ambidextrous organizations as those having internally consistent structures and an internal operating culture that provides for excelling today, while also planning for the future. The ambidextrous organizations are, thus, engaged in a balancing act between the management of incremental and revolutionary technologies. Further, these organizations have very different cultures within a company (or even a business unit, for that matter). Vision is vital to ambidextrous organizations, often displaying one vision that hosts multiple cultures in the unit. Of course, a firm can have multiple cultures under one roof by spinning off different business units and managing them independently. This is unacceptable to the authors. It is important to manage them as a whole, or as a system. The thing that holds the system components together is the overarching vision for the technology firm. That is why the book emphasizes strategic intent or competitive vision; because without a common, overarching purpose and set of values, the ambidextrous company just does not hold together. So it is not only different cultures, but different structures, systems, rewards, and competencies that need to be managed together. Drawing on their extensive research, consulting practice, as well as the experiences of managers from several "ambidextrous companies," the authors develop a model that can be used by executives to understand the dynamics of change necessary for long-term success. Toward this end, the book provides several tools for identifying and diagnosing the causes of performance gaps and for developing action plans to attain, and maintain, industry leadership. The book is divided into nine chapters. Chapter 1 is introductory, and it outlines the concepts underlying the authors' model. Chapter 2 highlights the significance of the concepts introduced earlier in the context of global change and innovation. Chapters 3 through 6 focus on the building of capabilities, competencies, and cultures that can generate a sustainable competitive advantage. Chapter 4 develops a model that highlights the congruence among an organization's strategies and four distinct factors: critical tasks, culture, structure, and people. A lack of congruence often results in performance gaps. Chapter 5 outlines how organizational culture-the selecting, socializing, and rewarding of workers consistent with the company's goals-promotes this congruence. It also illustrates how to assesses an organization's culture. Chapters 7 and 8 stand out in particular because in these chapters the authors introduce techniques for building an ambidextrous organization. …

Winning through Innovation: A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Change and Renewal

It is standard in the literature on training to use wages as a sufficient statistic for productivity. This paper examines the effects of work-related training on direct measures of productivity. Using a new panel of British industries 1983–96 and a variety of estimation techniques we find that work-related training is associated with significantly higher productivity. A 1% point increase in training is associated with an increase in value added per hour of about 0.6% and an increase in hourly wages of about 0.3%. We also show evidence using individual-level data sets that is suggestive of training externalities.

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The impact of training on productivity and wages: Evidence from British panel data

The use of computer simulation for building theoretical models in social science is introduced. It is proposed that agent-based models have potential as a “third way” of carrying out social science, in addition to argumentation and formalisation. With computer simulations, in contrast to other methods, it is possible to formalise complex theories about processes, carry out experiments and observe the occurrence of emergence. Some suggestions are offered about techniques for building agent-based models and for debugging them. A scheme for structuring a simulation program into agents, the environment and other parts for modifying and observing the agents is described. The article concludes with some references to modelling tools helpful for building computer simulations.

https://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/HowToUseBuildABMSS.GilbertTerna1999.pdf

How to build and use agent-based models in social science

https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/18394.pdf

Firms' human capital, R&D and performance: a study on French and Swedish firms

The present paper offers a novel study of the effects of intangible assets on wages and productivity. Training, R&D, and physical capital are all taken into account, and their joint effects are examined. We use panels of firms in order to control for unobserved fixed effects and the potential endogeneity of training and R&D, and have been able to obtain data for two different countries, France and Sweden. The estimation of productivity and wage equations allows us to show how the benefits of investment in physical capital, training, and R&D are shared between the firm and the workers. Although the workers obtain significant benefits, the study shows that the firm obtains the largest return on the investments it makes. This is true not only for physical capital, but also for R&D and training.

Who benefits from training and R&D: The firm or the workers? A study on panels of French and Swedish firms

The fateful triangle: Complementarities in performance between product, process and organizational innovation in France and the UK

The present paper offers a novel study of the effects of intangible assets on wages and productivity. Training, R&D and physical capital are all taken into account, and their joint effects are examined. We use panels of firms in order to control for unobserved fixed effects and the potential endogeneity of training and R&D, using data for France and Sweden. The estimation of productivity and wage equations allows us to show how the benefits of investment in physical capital, training and R&D are shared between the firm and the workers. We found that firms indeed obtain the largest part of the returns to their investments, but their share is relatively lower for intangible assets (R&D and training) than for physical capital.

Who Benefits from Training and R&D, the Firm or the Workers?

We analyze the co-evolution of the performances of firms and of the economy in an evolutionary micro-to-macro model of the Swedish economy. The model emphasizes the interactions between human capital (or competences) and technological change at the firm level and their effects on aggregate growth, taking into account the micro-macro feedbacks. The model features learning-by-doing, incremental and radical innovations, user-producer learning at the firm level, and a change in the techno-economic paradigm. We find that there is an optimal sequence for the firm to allocate their resources: (1) build a general human capital stock before the change in the techno-economic paradigm, (2) spend on R&D, and (3) invest in specific human capital. Innovators fare better than imitators on average, not only because they innovate, but also because they build a competence base, which supports the learning from other firms.

Gérard Ballot

Papers

Firms' human capital, R&D and performance: a study on French and Swedish firms

Who benefits from training and R&D: The firm or the workers? A study on panels of French and Swedish firms

The fateful triangle: Complementarities in performance between product, process and organizational innovation in France and the UK

Who Benefits from Training and R&D, the Firm or the Workers?

The dynamics of firms in a micro-to-macro model: The role of training, learning and innovation*