Innovative start-ups, not start-ups in general, seem to be important drivers of economic growth. However, little is known about what such firms look like. As activities of start-ups are strongly related to firm founders, we investigate this question focusing on the innovation capability of firm founders. We find that the combination of different founder characteristics such as university education (at best a combination of technical and commercial education), prior experience in R&D, and strong motivation to realize own innovative ideas increases the likelihood that a start-up has innovative activities, especially the likelihood of R&D activities, by 440%.JEL classification: M13, L26, O30.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThere is growing evidence that firms increasingly adopt open innovation practices. In this paper we investigate the impact of two such external knowledge acquisition strategies, 'buy' and 'cooperate', on firm's product innovation performance. Taking a direct (productivity) approach, we test for complementarity effects in the simultaneous use of the two strategies, and in the intensity of their use. Our results based on large panels of Dutch and Swiss innovating firms, suggest that while both 'buy' and 'cooperate' have a positive effect on innovation, there is little statistical evidence that using them simultaneously leads to higher innovation performance. Results from the Dutch sample provide some indication, that there are positive economies of scope in doing external and cooperative R&D simultaneously conditional on doing internal R&D.3

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThis study investigates the factors that determine the inter-firm and intra-firm adoption rates of energy-saving technologies. These factors can be on theoretical terms firm-specific rank effects, inducement effects, adoption barriers as well as order, stock and epidemic effects that are related to different kinds of external effects. Data for 2324 Swiss firms for the year 2008 are used that contain information about four categories of energy-saving technology applications (electromechanical and electronic applications; applications in motor vehicle and traffic engineering; in building construction; and in power-generating processes) that are studied separately. The results show that there are significant differences with respect to rank effects and adoption barriers between inter-and intra-firm diffusion. In practically all cases positive epidemic and/or network effects outweigh potential negative stock and order effects. Inducement effects, particularly those traced back to intrinsic motivations for environmentfriendly technologies, show clearly positive effects on the adoption rates.Key words: energy-saving technologies; technology adoption JEL classification: O31; O33 3 IntroductionEnergy efficiency and energy policy have been high on the agenda of economic research in recent years. Moving towards an economy that uses energy in a more sustainable manner will remain a major challenge to enterprises and policymakers for the near and future and beyond, despite the obvious difficulties encountered by international politics to agree on binding reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions. It is clear that the implementation of technologies and practices that increase firms' and households' energy efficiency -that is to say, which enable to produce or provide given amounts of goods or services using less energy inputs -are of crucial importance to meet this challenge. Only then can we expect to maintain the high level of standard of living industrialised countries enjoy today and developing countries are striving to catch up with.This paper attempts to shed light on the driving forces of the diffusion of ready-to-use energy efficient technologies among firms. As remarked by Battisti (2008), much of the existing literature on new technology (and, specifically, green technology) solely focuses on the R&D and innovation stage, rather than the actual diffusion of such technology among final users. This seems od...