This report shows that policies can be adapted to stimulate innovation and boost productivity in service sectors, with economy-wide benefits for employment and growth.
The question of how to measure and improve productivity in services has been a recurrent topic in political debates and in academic studies for several decades. The concept of productivity, which was developed initially for industrial and agricultural economies poses few difficulties when applied to standardized products. The advent of the service economy contributed to call into question, if not the relevance of this concept, at least its definition and measurement methods. This book takes stock of the issues met by productivity in services on theoretical, methodological and operational levels. The authors examine various definitions of productivity and the main methods of its measurement. A survey of recent conceptual and methodological debates on the notion of productivity is also presented. A more operational and strategic perspective is then adopted in order to identify and analyze the main levers, factors and determinants for improving productivity and, more generally, the actual strategies adopted for this purpose in firms and organisations. Providing a deep understanding of the specific and underestimated performance processes within service industries, this book will be of great interest to those involved in industrial economics, management science and public administration.
This volume uses the study of firm dynamics to investigate the factors preventing faster productivity growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, pushing past the limits of traditional macroeconomic analyses. Each chapter is dedicated to an examination of a different factor affecting firm productivity - innovation, ICT usage, on-the-job-training, firm age, access to credit, and international linkages - highlighting the differences in firm characteristics, behaviors, and strategies. By showcasing this remarkable heterogeneity, this collection challenges regional policymakers to look beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and create balanced policy mixes tailored to distinct firm needs. This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO license.
This book presents the main results of the OECD Innovation Microdata Project -- the first large-scale effort to exploit firm-level data from innovation surveys across 20 countries in an internationally harmonised way, with a view to addressing common analytical questions.
Abstract: This book presents practical information on the conduct of American business and management. The author concentrates on innovation, entrepreneurship, and the development of participative management skills that encourage the use of new ideas arising from within the corporation itself. The organizational structures, corporate cultures, and specifics strategies of several major AMerican companies are examined.
Well-timed and targeted innovation boosts productivity, increases economic growth and helps solve societal problems. But how can governments encourage more people to innovate more of the time? And how can government itself be more innovative? The OECD Innovation Strategy provides a set of principles to spur innovation in people, firms and government. It takes an in-depth look at the scope of innovation and how it is changing, as well as where and how it is occurring, based on updated research and data.
Manufacturing-led development has provided the traditional model for creating jobs and prosperity. But in the past three decades the conventional pattern of structural transformation has changed, with the services sector growing faster than the manufacturing sector. This raises critical questions about the ability of developing economies to close productivity gaps with advanced economies and to create good jobs for more people. At Your Service? The Promise of Services-Led Development (www.worldbank.org/services-led-development) assesses the scope of a services-driven development model and policy directions that can maximize the model’s potential.
Written by some of the most distinguished authors in the field, this book elucidates the critical and complex relationships between services, production and innovation. The authors discuss the limitations of current theories to explain service productivity and innovation, and call for a conceptual re-working of the ways in which these are measured. They also highlight the important role of knowledge in the production system and in doing so make an important contribution to a key debate which has emerged in the social sciences in recent years.
Industry 4.0 and the subsequent automation and digitalization of processes, including the tighter integration of machine-machine and human-machine intercommunication and collaboration, is adding additional complexity to future systems design and the capability to simulate, optimize, and adapt. Current solutions lack the ability to capture knowledge, techniques, and methods to create a sustainable and intelligent nerve system for enterprise systems. With the ability to innovate new designs and solutions, as well as automate processes and decision-making capabilities with heterogenous and holistic views of current and future challenges, there can be an increase in productivity and efficiency through sustainable automation. Therefore, better understandings of the underpinning knowledge and expertise of sustainable automation that can create a sustainable cycle that drives optimal automation and innovation in the field is needed Driving Innovation and Productivity Through Sustainable Automation enhances the understanding and the knowledge for the new ecosystems emerging in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The chapters provide the knowledge and understanding of current challenges and new capabilities and solutions having been researched, developed, and applied within the industry to drive sustainable automation for innovation and productivity. This book is ideally intended for managers, executives, IT specialists, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students who are interested in the current research on sustainable automation.
'This book represents a significant step towards dealing with the lacuna constituted by the inadequacy of the literature on the services. And, as such, it approaches its task from a variety of directions.' From the foreword by William J. Baumol, New York University, US 'The Handbook of Innovation and Services is an exceptional volume. Its contributors, including Faïz Gallouj, William Baumol, Jean Gadrey, and Pascal Petit, are among the major thinkers in both the fields of the economics of services and the economics of innovation. Selected topics include the "cost disease", services innovation in the global economy, social innovation in the services, and innovation and employment in services. The book, I am sure, will become a standard reference volume in both these fields in the ensuing years.' Edward Wolff, New York University, US This Handbook brings together 49 international specialists to address an issue of increasing importance for the world's post-industrial economies; innovation as it relates to services. Contemporary economies have two fundamental characteristics. Firstly, they are service economies in as much as services account for more than 70 per cent of the wealth and jobs in most developed countries. Secondly, they are innovation economies as recent decades have seen an unprecedented development of scientific, technological, organisational and social innovations. This Handbook expertly links these two major characteristics in order to investigate the role of innovation in services, an issue that until now has been inadequately explored and one that poses many theoretical and operational challenges. This comprehensive volume encompasses the views of eminent scholars from a range of disciplines including economics, management, sociology and geography, and draws on a number of different analytical and methodological perspectives. With its multi-disciplinary approach this Handbook will be an invaluable reference source for academics and students in the fields of economics, management and the geography of services and innovation. Public authorities and managers in the service sector will also find this book fascinating.