We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of five alternative innovation indicators: R&D, patent applications, total innovation expenditure and shares in sales taken by imitative and by innovative products as they were measured in the 1992 Community Innovation Survey (CIS) in the Netherlands. We conclude that the two most commonly used indicators (R&D and patent applications) have more (and more severe) weaknesses than is often assumed. Moreover, our factor analysis suggests that there is little correlation between the various indicators. This underlines the empirical relevance of various sources of bias of innovation indicators as discussed in this paper.

The non-trivial choice between innovation indicators

Five employee management rhetorics have swept U.S. managerial discourse over the last century: welfare work, scientific management, human relations and personnel management, systems rationalism, an...

The Emergence And Prevalence Of Employee Management Rhetorics: The Effects Of Long Waves, Labor Unions, And Turnover, 1875 To 1992

Technological revolution and productivity decline: Computer introduction in the financial industry

Long waves and ‘evolutionary chaos’ in a simple Schumpeterian model of embodied technical change

Considerable progress has been made in understanding the underlying mechanisms driving the long-wave behaviour of the world socioeconomic development. A controversial mechanism discussed is the close relationship between K-waves and the outbreak of majors wars. Social scientists and politicians are well acquainted with the fact that chance events have been responsible for the outbreak of wars and their course and outcome. Two main trends are now acknowledged: the increasing recognition of the existence of some cyclical patterns of warfare involving the core of the world system, and a shift toward newly evolving patterns involving non-state actors and asymmetric warfare. We may tentatively agree that wars are not merely the result of blind social and political forces. In Part I, the reader will find a mix of contributions dealing with new visions or revisions of the concept of long waves considered from very different perspectives related to their unfolding. Those contributions discussing objectively the issue of K-waves and their relation with military conflicts, following old and/or new conceptualizations of the phenomenon, were selected to form the book's Part II. Finally, those contributions with strong emphasis on the analysis of future scenarios, related or not related with warfare and/or world security compose the body of the Part III.

Kondratieff waves, warfare and world security

Long waves in world industrial production, energy consumption, innovations, inventions, and patents and their identification by spectral analysis☆

Basic, Improvement and Pseudo-Innovations and their Impact on Efficiency

Innovation, efficiency cycle, and strategy implications

Exactly one hundred years ago Edison launched modern electrical lighting. He began studying the problem in 1877, and within a year and a half had made more than 1,200 experiments. Concurrently, recognizing that the series wiring systems then used for arc lights would not be satisfactory for incandescent lamps, Edison directed much more effort toward development of dynamos and other necessary equipment for multiple circuits. 

On October 21st, 1879, Edison lighted a lamp containing a carbonized thread for the filament. The lamp burned steadily for two days. Later he learned that filaments of carbonized visiting card paper (Bristol board) would give several hundred hours life. Soon carbonized bamboo was found acceptable and was used as the filament material. Extruded cellulose filaments were introduced by Swan in 1883. The first complete incandescent lighting system was publicly demonstrated at Edison's laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, on December 21st, 1879. 

Edison was not only a great inventor, he was also a real innovator and entrepreneur. He determined the price of the lamp at a level of 40 cents despite the fact that the cost of one lamp at the beginning was 1.25 dollars. After three year's production he reduced the cost to 37 cents and more than compensated for all losses by an enormous turnover. 

The case of the lighting industry is very informative for innovation and industrial policy. The lighting industry first became the mother of electrical engineering, but later it was a highly specialized industry of less importance. On the other hand it still satisfies a quite important need. What might the future of the lighting industry be?

H.-D. Haustein

Papers

Long waves in world industrial production, energy consumption, innovations, inventions, and patents and their identification by spectral analysis☆

Basic, Improvement and Pseudo-Innovations and their Impact on Efficiency

Innovation, efficiency cycle, and strategy implications

Lighting Industry: A Classical Case of Innovation

Innovation and efficiency : strategies for a turbulent world