Alumni

Dr. Michal Kazimierczak

Thesis:
Regional Innovation And Entrepreneurship Patents, Trade Marks, Entry And Entrants

Year: 2019

Promotor(s):
Rene Belderbos & Micheline Goedhuys

Abstract:

There is a growing awareness that local knowledge pools are important for entrepreneurship. In the economic literature, knowledge pools are linked with emergence and discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities and their conversion into prosperous businesses. However, the results of empirical research investigating the relationship between knowledge pools and entrepreneurship have been mixed. Our dissertation sheds new light on this relationship by analysing the role of strategic behaviour of incumbents shielding their knowledge from competitors, cognitive relatedness between knowledge pools and new businesses activity, type and industry of entry. In the dissertation, we investigate entry rates in 230 manufacturing industries in 982 regions (NUTS3) of the European Union. To shed light on the growth prospects of new firms, we analyse growth rates between 2003 and 2009 of over 20000 manufacturing firms created in those regions in 2000. We operationalise incumbents’ strategies with their trade mark stocks. We also propose novel controls of relatedness of knowledge and innovative entry. Our results indicate that knowledge pools are related to entry and growth of new manufacturing firms. However, the strength of this relationship is much higher for entry of innovating firms and firms in high-tech industries than entry in general. We also found that appropriation strategies of incumbents weaken the positive externalities from their knowledge. As a result, in general, knowledge pools in related industries may be more critical for entry and growth than knowledge pools in the focal industry. In high-tech contexts, however, the focal industry knowledge pools are more salient for entry than related knowledge pools.



Selected publications by Michal Kazimierczak


Theses
Kazimierczak, Michal, 2019, Regional Innovation And Entrepreneurship Patents, Trade Marks, Entry And Entrants, PhD dissertation Maastricht University / United Nations University

UNU-MERIT