Working Paper No. 368: The State of the Entrepreneurial State: Empirical Evidence of Mission-Led Innovation Projects around the Globe

PublikationWorking paper
Christian Sandström, Johan P. Larsson, Karl Wennberg

Sammanfattning

This paper reviews theoretical rationales for mission-oriented innovation policy and provides an empirical overview of extant 28 papers and 49 cases on the topic. We synthetize varieties of mission formulations, actors involved, and characteristics of missions described as more or less failed or successful. 59 percent of the studied missions are still ongoing, 33 percent are considered successful and 8 percent as failures. 67 percent of the studied missions have taken place in Europe, 24 percent in North America and 8 percent in Asia. The majority of innovation projects referred to as missions do not fulfill the criteria defined by the OECD. Results suggest that missions related to technological or agricultural innovations are more often successful than broader types of missions aimed at social or ecological challenges. Challenges regarding the governance and evaluation of missions remain unresolved in the literature. We find no case that contains a cost-benefit analysis or takes opportunity cost into account.

Batbaatar, M., Larsson, J. P., Sandström, C., & Wennberg, K. (2023). The State of the Entrepreneurial State: Empirical Evidence of Mission-Led Innovation Projects around the Globe. Working Paper No. 368.


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Dynamics of founding team diversity and venture outcomes: A simulation approach
Artikel (med peer review)Publikation
Sundriyal, V. K., Lévesque, M., Wennberg, K., & Norgren, A.
Publiceringsår

2024

Publicerat i

Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

Sammanfattning

Research summary

Entrepreneurship research overlooks the dynamics of changing diversity in founding teams. Our simulations calibrated from existing studies suggest that founding teams that change diversity exhibit greater discounted performance for their ventures due to being less diverse and thus their ventures surviving longer, compared to teams that maintain their diversity. Moreover, discounted performance is higher for teams changing diversity due to other teams’ performance than due to their own poor performance. Simulating without membership changes the interdependence between team diversity, venture performance, and team disruption, we find that while team diversity is overall performance-enhancing, this association differs across contexts and its impact varies as ventures mature. Founding team diversity should thus be seen as a continuum where moderate diversity can best serve teams in turbulent environments.

Managerial summary

We simulated the behavior of founding teams over time to show that compared to teams that do not change their diversity, those who do experience greater discounted performance for their business ventures. This improvement stems from the increased longevity, and thus greater accumulated performance, for teams that switch since they are more rather than less homogeneous. Our investigation also indicates that ventures led by teams that change diversity because they aspire to outperform other teams, tend to exhibit greater discounted performance than those that change diversity to outperform themselves. When we investigate the interconnectedness of teams’ diversity, ventures’ performance, and disruption, albeit without allowing for any changes in team diversity, we find that while diversity usually helps, teams moderately diversified tend to perform best in turbulent times.

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Artikel (utan peer review)Publikation
Sandström, C., & Eskilson, E.
Publiceringsår

2024

Publicerat i

Journal of Evolutionary Economics

Sammanfattning

The Hydrogen Illusion (2022) is a self-published book by Samuel Furfari, a retired chemical engineer who worked for 36 years in energy policy at the European Commission. Hydrogen has been brought to the forefront of environmental policy in recent years as the EU and other Western economies are allocating billions of euros and dollars towards hydrogen production. Furfari argues that this is a mistake, and that hydrogen has little potential as an energy form, primarily as it requires so much energy in order to be produced. While at times technical and difficult to follow, The Hydrogen Illusion is a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about how Western economies can combine economic and environmental development.

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Artikel (med peer review)Publikation
Raja, S. I., & Larsson, J. P.
Publiceringsår

2024

Publicerat i

Urban Studies

Sammanfattning

The issue of what constitutes effective regional growth policy has remained elusive, particularly for ‘broad-spectrum’ policy aimed at a large part of a country. We undertake one of the first quantitative studies looking at the City Deals in England, analysing effects on productivity. We employ a difference-in-differences model, an event study, and a synthetic control method to evaluate effects on productivity. The results are mixed and usually not statistically different from zero. While the difference-in-differences framework indicates some positive effects, possibly driven by places that were the most productive before the intervention, the event study and synthetic control methods point to, at best, small effects that diminish over time. Our findings, therefore, question the efficacy of such deals in terms of narrowing the UK’s longstanding regional inequalities, while opening up several avenues for further research to understand what worked and what did not within a ‘broad-spectrum’ local growth strategy.

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