The impact of technology and innovation advisory services

Abstract

This report identifies and reviews literature that evaluates the impacts of technology and innovation advisory services. These services provide information, technical assistance, consulting, mentoring, and other services to support enterprises in adopting and deploying new technologies and in commercialising innovations. Examples include the: Manufacturing Advisory Service (England), the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (USA), and the Industrial Research Assistance Program (Canada). Technology and innovation advisory services are also provided by technology centres and other business assistance programmes. Such services are typically targeted at small and medium-sized enterprises. A defining capability of technology and innovation advisory services is the offer of expert one-on-one guidance to individual companies through extension staff, field offices, or dispersed technology centres. The available studies generally find that technology and innovation advisory services provide positive benefits for participating firms. The types of benefits achieved include reductions in costs, improved quality, reduced waste and improved environmental performance, higher productivity, and new product development and innovation. Net benefits achieved are typically relatively modest, although commensurate with the relatively small amounts of public funding usually invested in technology and innovation advisory services. More intense and customised services can improve results. Applying best practices in the operation and delivery of technology and innovation services, including attention to outreach, staff capability, long-term engagement, flexibility, organisational stability, and linkage with other services, increases the likelihood of programme effectiveness and impact. The Compendium of Evidence on the Effectiveness of Innovation Policy Intervention Project is led by the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR), University of Manchester, and sponsored by Nesta, an independent charity with the mission to make the UK more innovative. The compendium is organised around innovation policy topics categorised primarily according to their policy objectives. All reports are available at http://www.innovation-policy.org.uk. Also at this location is an online strategic intelligence tool with an extensive list of references that present evidence for the effectiveness of each particular innovation policy objective. Summaries and download links are provided for key references. Corresponding Author: Philip Shapira, Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, H Hankins Building, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL. Email: pshapira@mbs.ac.uk.The Nesta Working Paper Series is intended to make available early results of research undertaken or supported by Nesta and its partners in order to elicit comments and suggestions for revisions and to encourage discussion and further debate prior to publication (ISSN 2050-9820). © Year 2014 by the author(s). Short sections of text, tables and f...

Multilayer Network Analysis of Innovation Intermediaries’ Activities

“…Consortium participants would share the use of their research laboratories and facilities and second some of their staff to the poles so that they could carry out specific activities. Poles engaged in the provision of innovation advisory services [15], support to networking or to R&D activities, and other activities that are typically performed by intermediaries. The poles received public funding to provide these services for free to firms in the region.…”

Evaluating the Impact of Manufacturing Extension Services on Establishment Performance

“…These issues lead to difficulties in technological and business upgrading, contributing in turn to lagging productivity, innovativeness, and competitiveness among many of these establishments (National Academy of Public Administration, 2003;National Research Council, 2013). The MEP's underlying program theory seeks to bridge these gaps through services that directly provide expertise, diagnostics, mentoring, training, and other support to help upgrade manufacturing establishments and provide access and referrals to other public and private resources (Shapira & Youtie, 2014). The small and medium-sized firms that engage with the MEP do so because its services are customized to their needs: equivalent private sector sources are either more expensive or not available, the MEP's services are oriented to business outcomes (rather than to research), and it offers independent yet comprehensive access to a range of expertise.…”

“…A series of studies, using a broad range of methods, have examined various aspects of the performance and impact of the MEP in the United States, and other technology extension and advisory services outside of the United States (for reviews of these studies, see Shapira & Youtie, 2014;Youtie, 2013). In this study, we particularly focus on two earlier benchmark national studies of the effects of the MEP on client performance using nonassisted control groups.…”

Brokerage and Boots on the Ground: Complements or Substitutes in the Manufacturing Extension Partnerships?

“…They will tend to be services necessarily "coproduced" at least in part by consultant and client together. And we should then expect network failures to be rife, and that online and on-site approaches will be more complements than substitutes (Glasmeier, Fuelihart, Feller, & Mark, 1998;Kutzhanova, Lyons, & Lichtenstein, 2009;Shapira & Youtie, 2014).…”