Advancing Concepts and Models for Measuring Innovation Proceedings of a Workshop (2017) / Chapter Skim
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6 Regional Innovation Models and Data Needs
6 Regional Innovation Models and Data Needs
Pages 73-88
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From page 73... ...
Yet data collection is focused on aggregate, often national levels of geography. This workshop session was intended to provide guidance for addressing this disconnect and to highlight important work developing regional data infrastructures.
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From page 74... ...
SOURCE: Workshop presentation by Catherine Fazio, May 20, 2016; figure from Hathaway and Litan (2014, figure 3) , based on Business Dynamics Statistics data.
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From page 75... ...
The quality measures attempt to estimate underlying growth potential of startups, drawing on characteristics observable at or near the time of founding, and deriving conditions that yield consistent population-level statistics. They include the Entrepreneurial Quality Index, designed to indicate the average growth potential of any given group of new firms; the Regional Entrepreneurship Cohort Potential Index, the number of startups within a region that relates to expected growth outcomes; and the Regional Entrepreneurship Accel
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From page 76... ...
The third insight highlighted by Fazio is that meaningful growth outcomes can be observed with a lag, creating the potential to map observed growth with characteristics. Rather than assuming a relationship, the relative importance of different factors can be investigated by developing a predictive model of growth or entrepreneurial quality based on startup characteristics.
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From page 77... ...
She suggested priority areas including: developing quarterly metrics of entrepreneurial quality as a regularly produced statistic for the United States; connecting entrepreneurial quality with alternative measures of performance via the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) microdata; and extending the evidence base for innovation and entrepreneurship program evaluation.
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From page 78... ...
discussed microlevel foundations for measuring innovation and entrepreneurship using novel data created by financing programs on founders, startups, and early hiring characteristics. She shared insights about the changing face of regional innovation -- who is involved, what types of businesses enter, where they are entering, and how they get launched -- derived from research on seed accelerators.
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From page 79... ...
These things are hard to capture in terms of totals and averages. Winston Smith addressed how incentives and institutional structures associated with different kinds of financing affect the growth trajectory of new ventures.
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From page 80... ...
In terms of next steps, Winston Smith suggested that researchers would benefit from being able to generalize her team's method to a broader group of accelerators since there is not a single model for all types of founders and startups. Increasing data coverage would allow researchers to scale up the analysis and compare findings based on established sources such as census data or the Kauffman Firm Survey.1 A set of best practices for this kind of research should also be developed, she said.
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From page 81... ...
, their ability to secure follow-on financing from venture capitalists and federal small business innovation research [SBIR] grants, their broader business activity (proxied by information gathered from news articles and elsewhere)
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From page 82... ...
They compiled press releases and news articles capturing information about presentations, technical conferences, sales, contracts, and product development announcements. Administrative data are extremely useful for measuring outcomes and for designing program evaluation studies.
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Feldman noted the literature on regional economies is dominated by two theoretically distinct concepts: the industrial cluster and the regional innovation system. Industrial clusters are defined as "a concentration of inter-dependent firms within the same or adjacent industrial sectors in a small geographic area," while innovation systems are "interacting knowledge generation and exploitation subsystems linked to global, national and other regional systems" (Asheim and Coenen, 2005, p.
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From page 84... ...
The team triangulates data sources to establish Firm Founder Year Established Education Sector & Technology Work History Address Anchors Annual Firm Events Other Firms Founded Funding Received Private Liquidity Events Government M&A IPO Incubation Services Closure University Affiliation Annual Job Count CED NC Biotech Program Institutional Supports Participation FIGURE 6-3 Research Triangle Park database of firms: Information ("firm forensics") from more than 20 sources.
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From page 85... ...
Feldman pointed out that, early on, Research Triangle Park was not very interested in small entrepreneurial firms because they are unreliable tenants. Now, however, the Park is full of technology-intensive industries that include biotech firms spawned from corporations, many of which are traced back to two prominent pharmaceutical firms in the region, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)
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From page 86... ...
This is the case because the data usually include people's entire career histories. INNOVATION DATA AND ANALYSIS TO INFORM REGIONAL POLICY Thomas Guevara (Economic Development Administration [EDA]
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From page 87... ...
And, he added, if agency -- whether in the context of exchanging knowledge, discrete objects, or technology -- matters, then complexity must be built into the measurement framework. This is the reason, in Guevara's assessment, why the research reported on at the workshop by Feldman, Fazio, Ziedonis, and Winston Smith is essential, because it involves data that provide insights into how people work together.
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From page 88... ...
The result is, hopefully, better policy, using health care as a great example of an ecosystem operating in a complex, adaptive system. Regarding the third question, Guevara asked whether the data being created by government agencies and in the private sector can provide the foundation for understanding innovation and its role alongside other factors in contributing to economic growth and improved well-being.
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