The world is going green. Sustainable technologies, such as renewable energy and electric vehicles, are increasingly becoming part of our daily life. This dissertation fills the ensuing gap by providing an insight into the emerging German greentech industry, one of the largest in the world. It develops an integrated and interdisciplinary theoretical framework in which to assess the relationships between innovation, growth and financing from a firm-level perspective; it then tests this framework empirically. In essence, the study finds that: (1) Innovative activity and corporate growth depend heavily on the availability of capital. At the same time, it appears that particularly innovative firms are more likely to face financial constraints. (2) A lack of funds is very apparent for around a quarter of the firms investigated and seems most severe in the early part of the growth state, where firms focus on commercializing existing products. (3) Government support programs only partially offset these effects
This book presents the proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Integrated Science in Digital Age, which was jointly supported by the Institute of Certified Specialists (Russia) and Springer, and was held on May 1–3, 2020. The conference provided an international forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the latest innovations, trends, results, experiences and concerns in the various areas of integrated science in the digital age. The main goal of the conference was to efficiently disseminate original findings in the natural and social sciences, covering topics such as blockchain & cryptocurrency; computer law & security; digital accounting & auditing; digital business & finance; digital economics; digital education; digital engineering; machine learning; smart cities in the digital age; health policy & management; and information management.
WIPO GREEN is a global marketplace that promotes green tech innovation and diffusion. This short brochure outlines the benefits of joining WIPO GREEN in order to collaborate on projects and events, leverage its global network, increase visibility and join the fight against climate change.
This book features research presented and discussed during the Research & Innovation Forum (Rii Forum) 2023. As such, this book offers a unique insight into emerging topics, issues and developments pertinent to the fields of technology, innovation and education and their social impact. Papers included in this book apply inter- and multi-disciplinary approaches to query such issues as technology-enhanced teaching and learning, smart cities, information systems, cognitive computing and social networking. What brings these threads of the discussion together is the question of how advances in computer science—which are otherwise largely incomprehensible to researchers from other fields—can be effectively translated and capitalized on so as to make them beneficial for society as a whole. In this context, Rii Forum and Rii Forum proceedings offer an essential venue where diverse stakeholders, including academics, the think tank sector and decision-makers, can engage in a meaningful dialogue with a view to improving the applicability of advances in computer science.
Contemporary environmental problems represent complex societal challenges, and as these problems become increasingly global, the international diffusion of environmental technologies is essential. One way to diffuse technologies internationally is through export. Despite the potential benefits from the adoption of environmental technologies, their export is stifled by externalities and free-rider problems. From this background, the aim of this thesis is to analyse how to stimulate the diffusion of environmental technologies through export. This aim is operationalised using four research questions, which focus on governmental initiatives to promote environmental technology export and their perceived effectiveness among targeted firms, obstacles to and drivers for export among municipally owned companies, the use of international city networks to facilitate environmental technology export and components of business concepts for environmental technology export. These questions are explored in the Swedish context using document analyses, interviews and internet surveys in a compilation thesis which consists of a cover essay and an appendix of five scientifically peer-reviewed and published journal articles. The conclusions are that governmental export promotion initiatives are often generic for all kinds of exporters, including environmental technologies, and comprise financial support, information provision, education and training, and trade and mobility-related programs, often with little incorporation of the specific characteristics of environmental technologies which many exporters perceive as ineffective. Municipally owned companies experience different barriers to and drivers for engaging in international activities compared to privately owned companies, and are often involved in international projects which are not always commercial export. International city networks serve as important arenas for bi-directional information sharing and learning regarding market characteristics, environmental challenges and potential solutions, building legitimacy for technologies and their suppliers. Regarding components of business concepts for the export of environmental technologies, regulation, legitimacy and private-public partnership are identified as particularly important based on the complexity and systemic nature of environmental technologies. Altogether, this thesis makes a contribution by conceptualising the export of environmental technologies with emphasis on technology characteristics, the technology supplier including their business concepts, obstacles to and drivers for export, technology adopters and their characterisation, communication channels and the diffusion context. For policy makers, a dynamic approach to environmental technology export promotion, in which specific attributes of environmental technologies and their suppliers are considered along their international business development, is suggested as a complement to existing generic initiatives. The possibility to provide such support should be reconciled with resource effectiveness, heterogeneity among companies and the complementary role of governmental interventions to market initiatives. Finally, partnerships between publicly and privately owned companies are suggested as particularly relevant since they build on the long-term experience, functioning proof-of-concept and legitimacy of publicly owned companies together with the competitiveness and flexibility of privately owned companies. These attributes could help overcome the liabilities of foreignness and newness, as well as resource constraints which challenge environmental technology export.
In this book, Katrin Buchmann offers a fascinating and insightful account of the efforts of several European embassies to create alliances in the United States and in China to support the UN climate negotiations leading up to COP15.
