International Journal of Technology Management & Sustainable Development - Volume 12, Issue 2, 2013

Finance capability as a firm-level technological capability has been neglected in debates on financing of increased sub-Saharan Africa local pharmaceutical drug manufacture, as it has in industrial development more generally. Finance capability has to date not been explicitly included in firm-level technological capabilities. Access to finance for African local pharmaceutical manufacture is not just about getting money. There are technological capabilities and complexities surrounding access to finance. Specifically for African pharmaceutical manufacture, there is little theorization and engagement with the specialist and knowledge-intensive capabilities needed by pharmaceutical firms and financial institutions. Based on fieldwork on the financing of antiretroviral drug manufacture in Zimbabwe in 2011, and interviews with pharmaceutical and financial institutions’ executives up to 2013, this article sets out to better understand financial capability development, especially skills, knowledge and learning by doing. This research generates empirical data on finance capability and uses it to extend theory on technological capability, and suggests how such inclusion can improve the firm-level technological capability framework.

The recent tendency among scholars in the discussion of the creation of innovative knowledge emphasizes the importance of intuition over learned (or informed) decisions. This new development, however, fails to instruct us how to train decision makers to be intuitive. Furthermore, in their new catchphrase of ‘consilience’, many scholars and practitioners fail to teach us how to generate new knowledge through interdisciplinary communication. We are not even sure as to how we can establish communication among different disciplines to begin with. This article is an attempt to bridge our classical understanding of clinical and symptomatic knowledge in western philosophy with the new type of knowledge creation through consilience. I first explain the big picture of how both clinical and symptomatic knowledge is closely linked to consilience as pivotal elements of new knowledge creation. The big picture will then be applied to a small picture of the entertainment industry where consilience is used to create new box office hits like Hollywood and South Korean Hallyu cultural products.

The creation of an academic spin-off represents one of the ways to implement the technology transfer process from university to firms. Although in Italy the preference for this form of valorization of scientific research has increased in recent years, the gap compared with the main EU countries remains wide. In our view, the main problem related to the development of academic spin-offs, concerns the concept of entrepreneurial commitment, here understood as the complex of decisions and actions which bind the would-be entrepreneur to the fate of his venture. Entrepreneurial commitment should be seen as a different concept from entrepreneurial intention which could be considered as the will of a person to start a new business. In our opinion, entrepreneurial intention has a role in the make-up of entrepreneurial commitment but other elements also have to be considered. Eventually, such elements may impede the formation of the entrepreneurial commitment of the would-be entrepreneur or at least weaken it. The article investigates the elements that qualify entrepreneurial intention and those which play a predominant role in developing the same into entrepreneurial commitment.

The study was conducted to explore the role of manufacturing firms’ investments in the development of their absorptive capacity on their innovative capabilities. Data were collected from 225 firms through reliable-tested structured questionnaires and were analysed principally by testing association and predictions relating to firms’ investment in absorptive capacity to innovative capabilities. In a composite manner, the study found that investments in exclusive innovation and R&D activities are the main drivers of innovative capabilities with subsidiaries exhibiting more pronounced capabilities than indigenous firms. This outcome raises hope for further progress in the condition of Nigeria’s innovation system.

The problem that information-technology specialists encounter is generally situated at the level of the interpretation of small and medium-sized enterprise needs. We propose a collective intelligence approach based on hybrid methodology to help professional actors manage the heterogeneousness of customers’ needs. The system of mediation takes into account the organizational context, human needs, as well as a technological dimension. This approach allows manager and consultants to better recognize how to extend their strategy space with the aim of identifying new collaborative managerial practices.