Dear Colleagues,
we are pleased to share with you the second issue of Industry & Innovation for 2025.
The articles in this issue offer insights into how firms and industries navigate technological, institutional, and economic transformations, focusing on the effect of automation on housing markets, industrial customer responses to institutional breaches, and the influence of organizational contingencies on the termination of inventions. The issue concludes with a target article revisiting Schumpeter and Marshall's foundational theories, which emphasizes their enduring relevance to contemporary debates on innovation and economic change.
We hope you will enjoy the reading:
Research Articles
The relationship between robotics and housing prices: evidence from housing markets in Chinese cities
Jiantao Zhou, Huiwen Peng, Eddie Chi-Man Hui & Qun Wu
Abstract
This study examines the effects of automation on the housing market through the adoption of industrial robots in Chinese cities. We argue that automation affects housing prices by influencing the labour market on the demand side of housing and land supply on the supply side. Empirical results confirm the validity of these hypotheses, indicating that one more unit of predicted robot deployment per 10,000 workers increases local housing prices by approximately 3%. Mechanism analysis shows that exposure to industrial robots attracts high-skilled migrants, pushing up house prices; meanwhile, land financing, playing a catalyst role, reinforces the impact of automation on house price increases. Additionally, exposure to industrial robots also exerts negative spillover effects on housing prices in neighbouring cities through the two above impact channels, confirmed by the empirical results of the dynamic spatial Durbin model. This study provides a new perspective on the potentially negative consequences of automation.
Transitioning through a crisis: industrial customer responses to a green technology innovation scheme
Amani M. Gharib, Mark Palmer, Devon Gidley & Min Zhang
Abstract
Government-driven innovation diffusions have addressed the intersections between technology, the environment and society, with far-reaching implications for both diffusors and adopters. In this paper, we introduce how industrial customers respond to a crisis using a case of a renewable heat incentive scheme that led to an elected government collapse. This crisis exposed institutional breaches, or an absence of functionalities in the scheme's governance systems. Our findings test and extend the theory of Etzioni (1975) on responses to market crisis conditions: (i) calculative responses during the scheme's initial diffusion; (ii) strategic responses during the surfacing of institutional breaches; (iii) distrustful responses after customer hardship was not addressed. We contribute a process model of the interaction amongst breaches and responses over time. Overall, this study brings forth insights on industrial customer responses to institutional processes and shows the evolved retorts amidst a crisis. It also identifies diffusion implications for policy makers.
Exploration and the termination of inventions: the role of the structure of the firm's knowledge base and its failure experience
Arusyak Zakaryan
Abstract
Firms manage their R&D portfolios by continuously evaluating and selecting which inventive paths to maintain and which ones to terminate. Prior research found that the extent of exploration in an invention increases the invention's likelihood of termination. We inquire about organisational contingencies that impact the evaluation and selection of exploratory inventions. We suggest that the structure of an organisation's knowledge base and its failure experience are particularly relevant for better comprehending the conditions under which exploratory inventions are more or less likely to be terminated. We find that the positive effect of exploration on patent termination is weakened with increasing level of decomposability in organisation's knowledge base and increasing failure experience but only up to the moderate levels of these moderating variables. Empirically, we examine patent maintenance decisions in the biopharmaceutical industry. We discuss the contributions of our study for the research on exploration, invention termination, knowledge networks and failures.
Target Article
On knowledge and economic transformation: Joseph Schumpeter and Alfred Marshall on the theory of restless capitalism
Stan Metcalfe, Anders Broström & Maureen McKelvey
Abstract
Joseph Schumpeter and Alfred Marshall pioneered the study of innovation and entrepreneurship as key forces of economic development. This article offers an overview of key ideas developed by these influential economists in works published between 1890 and 1944. We argue that while our own time presents a partly different set of challenges, opportunities and institutional conditions than those of that age, many insights championed in their work remain highly relevant for our time and day. Noting how analysis of markets is relatively absent from some of the strands of contemporary innovation research, we suggest that re-visiting the foundational work of Schumpeter and Marshall can help stimulate deep insights relevant to societal transformation and the potential role of technical innovations.
Best regards
Alessandra Perri and Vera Rocha
Co-Editors-in-Chief, Industry and Innovation
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Vera Rocha
Copenhagen Business School
Kilevej
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