Business Strategies In Innovative And Non Innovative Firms In Canada

This study investigates differences in the policies being pursued by innovative and non-innovative firms. It focuses on a broad group of strategies in marketing, finance, production, management and human resources and asks whether there are key areas in which the strategies being followed by innovative and non-innovative firms differ. It also asks how the activities of firms in each of these areas differs. Finally, it compares the performance of innovative and non-innovative firms. The study finds that innovative firms place a greater emphasis on management, human resources, marketing, financing, government programs and services, and production efficiencies. In most of these areas, innovative firms pursue activities more intensively. Finally, innovative firms are more successful than non-innovative firms.

Features of the volume: comprehensive strategic profiles representative of small-firm populations; information from business surveys and administrative data sources for a better understanding of how strategies and activities relate to firm performance; and an exploration of how small-firm strategies and activities vary across a diverse range of operating environments- from manufacturing to services to science-based environments.

This study of innovation - its intensity, the sources used for knowledge creation, and its impacts - is based on a comprehensive survey of innovation of Canadian manufacturing firms. Attention is paid to the different actors in the system, who both compete with and complement one another. The study investigates how innovation regimes differ across size of firm and across industries. Owing to the high degree of foreign investment in Canada, special attention is paid to the performance of foreign-owned firms. The innovation regime of Canadian innovators is compared with results of studies of other industrialized countries. The picture of a typical innovator is a firm that combines internal resources and external contacts to develop a set of complementary strategies. The study finds that innovating firms depend not only on R&D, but also on ideas and technology from various other sources, both internal and external to the firm.

Innovation is increasingly recognised as the key to successful competition in the global knowledge-based economy. In Knowledge, Clusters and Regional Innovation the authors illuminate the highly differentiated nature of the innovation systems found across the country and demonstrate that innovation can occur in a wide range of sectors and clusters, ranging from multimedia and biotechnology in large metropolitan areas to more traditional sectors such as wood products in rural settings.Written by members of the Innovation Systems Research Network (ISRN), a cross-national network of regionally oriented researchers from a wide range of disciplines, Knowledge, Clusters and Regional Innovation provides important insights into the varied nature of innovation in the Canadian economy. The members of the network have recently launched a major study of cluster development across Canada that promises to provide scholars and policymakers with continuing insights into the nature economic development in Canada.Contributors include Neil Bradford (Huron University College), Shauna Brail (Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, Ontario), John N.H. Britton (University of Toronto), Michael Gurstein (Technical University of British Columbia), J. Adam Holbrook, Cooper H. Langford (University of Calgary), Lisa Mills (Brown University), Jorge Niosi (Université du Québec à Montréal), Pierre Therrien (Marketplace Innovation Directorate, Industry Canada), Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay (Université du Québec), and David A. Wolfe.