Innovation and Business Partnering in Japan, Europe and the United States

Edited by Ruth Taplin

Routledge, (2006)
ISBN 0-415-40287-5

Review by Christopher Williams

Innovation and Business Partnering in Japan, Europe and the United States (Taplin, 2007) is an edited volume that shows how innovation and economic growth are becoming less determined by silos of research funded and managed by governments or large corporations, and more influenced by multiple actors of different types, interlinking to create "breeding ground[s] for cross-fertilisation and [the] generation of new business opportunities" (Taplin, Chapter 2: p. 20). Some of this interlinking, or partnering, can be seen in the form of localised clusters generating new knowledge that ultimately adds to the prosperity of geographic localities in which the clusters are situated. However, it is also seen in international networks of linked actors that are not necessarily a part of a recognised cluster. In the latter case, globalised innovation involves "proactively building an external network of innovation partners" (Davies, Chapter 3: p. 43) facilitated by business intermediaries that provide both capital and integration.

The book makes many interesting and insightful points, of which, for reasons of space, I focus on three. Firstly, company growth and economic success is directly attributed to environments where partnering is actively encouraged. Evidence from the US shows how SME growth is linked to "vibrant government / business / academic partnership[s]" (Young, Chapter 5: p. 71). Likewise in Japan, partnering has been central to the restructuring of industries and companies since the 1990s, although here, division-to-division partnering has played a key role (Kiso, Chapter 6). Secondly, institutions at territory and country level explicitly facilitate and stimulate business cultures in which profitable partnerships form and develop. Countries themselves deliberately develop technology strategies and competitive positions that, for example in the case of Poland, act as "mechanisms for collaboration, coupled with a culture of market sensitivity" (Nowak and Arogyaswamy, Chapter 4: p. 67). Meanwhile, universities are often central points in local innovative clusters. Thirdly, in addition to this partnering (or clustering) by design, there is also an evolutionary aspect because of the advancement of simultaneous globalising and localising forces emanating from the quest by nation states and multinational corporations to exploit new knowledge. Ultimately though, the enactment and manifestation of these forces can be seen in terms of dynamic knowledge creation at a local level:

"Urban and regional collectives are a popular approach to demonstrating such a capability, both to bring existing talent together as well as to attract competent individuals and organizations from outside the area…social capital, deemed critical to the successful operation of clusters, is conditioned upon cultures at various levels" (Arogyaswamy and Nowak, Chapter 8: p. 146).

These points have implications for entrepreneurship in the 21st Century. Firstly, encouraging partnering requires an emphasis on openness and a willingness to build business relationships amongst actors who historically did not engage in business. The embedment in global networks by universities, by divisions of companies that hitherto only acted internally, and by small firms that only used to operate locally, mean openness and motivation have become key ingredients for entrepreneurship in the new world order. Secondly, because countries develop technology strategies and competitive positions, the nation state will still continue to play a crucial role in determining the hubs of innovation within globalised innovation networks. Nation states are able to directly influence the adoption and diffusion of technologies that support distributed innovation (Trumbull, 2004). Thus the comparative pulling power of countries may determine the speed with which hubs develop, and may prevent some hubs forming in the first place. The advanced state of cluster development and partnering capability in the US, Europe and Japan, will act as an entry barrier to other zones of the world attempting to compete on the basis of partnership facilitation. Thirdly, partnering ventures generate what Nishizawa calls a "'creative class' of highly talented people" (Chapter 7: p. 111); research universities are central to this generation process (which also includes mobility enabling via a job transfer network). Taplin's book emphasises the importance to regional development of business partnering involving SMEs, and shows how economic regeneration in the current world economy requires various forms of Human Entrepreneurial Capital that co-evolve in both local (clustered) and global (dispersed) contexts through business partnering. Thus networked entrepreneurship should be central to the agenda of local and central policy makers as it provides a basis - arguably the most credible basis - for identifying, evaluating and exploiting global opportunities that will support wealth creation for localities. The creative class experiments and learns in both local and global contexts during networked entrepreneurship, and acts as a conduit for knowledge transfer between a multitude of team members all centred on entrepreneurial initiative as a focal point. Importantly, entrepreneurial universities (Etzkowitz et al., 2000) are central players in the propagation of initiatives, and have become increasingly influential in how the focal point of an initiative can form and develop over time. Thus the antecedents, developmental trajectories and consequences of this creative class of human beings, must be important to practitioners, planners and academics.

A considerably lengthier and more in-depth version of this article originally appeared in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics Vol 18 No 2 (2007).

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For a different review of this book see: Review