Entrepreneurship
CIBRE research projects on entrepreneurship offer insight and analysis into
business trends that help new businesses mature successfully supporting the
transformation of Michigan’s economy. Some current examples include:
Risk, Confidence and Success:
Professor Mark Simon researches how entrepreneurs’ decision process influences
their choice of action and chances of success. Specifically, he has examined
entrepreneurial confidence, risk taking and venture performance. Some of his
research involves how to resolve the paradox that entrepreneurs need to develop
enough confidence in their ideas to act, yet remain open minded enough to make
needed adjustments as new information becomes available. Additionally, he is
conducting a five-state study, including Michigan, examining how the strategic
planning process relates to innovation success.
For more information, contact Simon at (248) 370-3295 or
simon@oakland.edu.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation:
Economics Professor Jonathan Silberman and Associate Professor of Economics
Nivedita Mukherji are focusing on the connection between entrepreneurship and
innovation. Their agenda is motivated by the fact that U.S. states can no longer
primarily compete on their natural research endowment, low-cost labor or tax
incentives; and innovation is the key to driving growth and prosperity. Through
their work, Silberman and Mukherji focus on understanding the knowledge economy
at a regional level. Their work has important policy implications since those
regional economies successful in the knowledge economy will maintain economic
competitiveness, leading to greater flow of ideas that generate innovation and
growth. This is especially relevant for Michigan as much of the technology
derived from the automobile industry has not resulted in an entrepreneurial
culture that converts new knowledge to economic growth. They have five projects:
Idea Generation: The Performance
of the U.S. States 1998-2007: Analyzes the production of ideas using patent data
and shift-share analysis to show that only a small concentration of states
demonstrated favorable structures to grow innovation, measured by patents, over
the most recent ten-year period.
Impact of Patent Production on State Economic
Growth: Unveiling important information about the sources and
weaknesses of state patent production, this study uses the results of a dynamic
shift-share analysis as measures of patents (innovation) in a model that
explains state variation in growth rates. The hypothesis is that the shift-share
measures of patents, the mix and competitive component, will be superior to the
summary measures of patents in explaining growth rates. The relative importance
of the mix and competitive components in explaining growth rates will be useful
to inform regional economic development policy.
Regional Absorption and Diffusion of Knowledge
in Regional Economies: This study measures the ability of a
regional economy to move existing knowledge produced in the metro area to new
knowledge or learning in the metro area. It is relevant for Michigan to
understand this process and develop policies to facilitate knowledge diffusion.
Michigan has a high concentration of patents in the automotive industry but has
not been able to move this knowledge into other industries to create new
companies, employment and economic growth.
Knowledge Spillovers: Empirical
studies tend to confirm that knowledge externalities are geographically bounded:
firms near knowledge sources show a better innovative performance than firms
located elsewhere. This study provides an alternative approach to measuring the
geographic boundary of knowledge spillovers by aggregating patent citations to
originating patents in a metropolitan area based on the residence of the
inventor. Preliminary data suggests about 30 percent of patent citations are in
the state that originated the patent, with 60 percent, a substantial majority,
from outside the state. These 60 percent are not concentrated in any single
location, but evenly distributed across the United States. The project
also will investigate how the geographic boundary of knowledge spillovers has
been influenced by the pervasive diffusion of information technology.
Biofuels Research: What States
Have the Advantage?: Given the emphasis on alternative energy as a policy
initiative of the Obama Administration and as a source of future economic
growth, these researchers use shift-share analysis to analyze biofuels patents
for the years 2002-2008. The results will identify those states and regions that
have a favorable mix of biofuels patents in technologies that are growing
rapidly in the U.S. and those states and regions with a competitive advantage in
the production of biofuels knowledge.
For more information, contact Silberman at (248) 370-4966 or
silberma@oakland.edu or Mukherji at
(248) 370-4087 or mukherji@oakland.edu.