About the Event
Innovation often involves combining heterogeneous resources within the firm.
Professor Pedro Mendi discussed his recent paper that takes a closer look at the way firms combine human resources from different departments by analyzing firm-level data obtained from a series of innovation surveys conducted in Colombia by DANE.
Mendi tests for the existence of complementarities between the involvement of R&D personnel and employees of any other department of the firm in innovation activities. As performance variables, he considers both the extensive and the intensive margins of innovation. In particular, he uses the propensity to innovate, as well as the number of new innovative products that the firm introduces, the proportion of sales coming from products new to the firm, and sales from new products as a percentage of current innovation expenditures.
Mendi allows for the possibility of different threshold effects in the classification of firms. He fails to find evidence of the existence of a complementarity relationship, and finds some evidence that suggests substitutability in the case of product innovations. He discusses a number of potential explanations for the results as well as extensions of the current analysis.
About the Nardone Family Seminar Series
Made possible by a gift from David R. Nardone, this seminar series brings scholars and practitioners to Northeastern University to share insights on emerging markets.