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Evolutionary Economics Celebrates Innovation and Creativity-Based Economy
-- Hokky Situngkir
The paper deals with the evolutionary concepts that have enabled us to see economics as a growing and living organism having
the characteristics of robustness, self-organization, adaptation, and evolution. This has been recognized globally that information
and knowledge acquisition is increasingly playing a major role in imparting a sense of direction and purpose to any economy.
The discussions are presented by demonstrating some qualitative properties and theoretical explorations on long range historical
economic growth and development, followed by some highlights on innovation, creativity and elaborations regarding fitness
landscapes incorporating memetics, as works related to social and cultural aspects of social system, while talking about economic system
in general. The discussions depict some important notions on market and product diversifications that have fuelled the
economic growth in general.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Drivers and Effects
of Internationalizing Innovation by SMEs
-- Christian Rammer and Anja Schmiele
This paper investigates the drivers and effects of the internationalization of innovation activities
in Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), based on a large data set of German firms, covering the period 2002-2007. The
paper looks at different stages of the innovation process (R&D, design, production and sales of new products, and implementation of
new processes) and explores the role of internal resources, home market competition and innovation-related location advantages for
an SME's decision to engage in innovation activities abroad. By linking international innovation activities to firm growth in the
home market, the authors attempt at identifying likely internationalization effects at the firm level.
The results show that experience in both export and knowledge protection is highly important for international innovation
activities of SMEs. Fierce home market competition turns out to be an obstacle, rather than a driver. High innovation costs stimulate
the internationalization of non-R&D innovation activities, and shortage of qualified labor expels the production of new products.
R&D activities abroad and the export of new products spur firm growth in the home market, while there are no negative effects on
home market growth from shifting the production of new products abroad.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Knowledge Management in Pharmaceutical
Marketing: Theoretical Models
-- M Sadika Sultana and L Manivannan
Knowledge is the most valuable asset of a pharmaceutical company. It is also seen through the ages that only those who make
a systematic effort can acquire knowledge. Today, Knowledge management is a growing field of study. Several principles of
management apply to knowledge management as well. One can go back to the time of the Hawthorne experiments to prove this point. It
differs from other business processes, where only information handling is given much importance. On the other hand, knowledge
management, particularly in the area of pharamaceuticals, requires expertise in several related fields. The context is quite complex and the
task, enormous. Those firms which rely on knowledge management in the form of information sharing are sure to achieve
competitive advantage. The area of knowledge management in the pharmaceutical industry raises more questions than one can give answers
to. Is it about knowledge selling? Is it about knowledge storage or inventorying? Is it about a central facility? Should it be
decentralized and the important fragments preserved? Is it to be electronic or on paper? This paper is a preliminary step in the ongoing study
on the same subject. The paper also presents three simple theoritical models for information sharing, building a knowledge pool and
for knowledge audit. There is scope for future improvements in the area. It is not uncommon for pharmaceutical firms to get
bogged down by the amount of information they generate at each stage of their operations. This paper attempts a review of handling
and sharing of knowledge or electronic data that is available to pharmaceutical firms and the need for introducing Knowledge Audit
(KA) in these firms. Methods to achieve the same have also been suggested.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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