The Impact of Innovation Investment Volatility on Technological Innovation of Enterprises in Different Life Cycles

Empirical findings from the impact of innovation investment volatility on enterprise technological innovation are mixed. Based on the punctuated equilibrium theory, this study explores the impact of innovation investment volatility on enterprise technological innovation in different life cycles and whether innovation subsidy has expected effects on enterprises’ technological innovation. By using the 205 Chinese listed enterprises in strategic emerging industries from 2010 to 2019 as the research sample, the results show that the innovation investment volatility has a positive impact on technological innovation of enterprise in the growing stage, while it has no significant effect on enterprise technological innovation in the mature and declining stages. In addition, the negative moderating effect of innovation subsidy on the relationship between innovation investment volatility and technological innovation is the most significant for enterprises in the growing stage, weakly significant for enterprises in the mature stage, and insignificant for enterprises in the declining stage.

Between incrementalism and punctuated equilibrium: the case of budget in Poland, 1995–2018

Incrementalism and punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) have secured their standing in public policy research when studying change in budgetary data. On the other hand, however, new empirical evidence is constantly developed to confront it with theoretical assumptions. In line with the above, the aim of the paper is threefold. First, it is examined if budgetary outlays in Poland follow either incrementalism or PET's core premises. Second, the paper aims at facilitating discussion on identifying punctuations. It is claimed that any cut-off point should be data-driven, category-responsive, and generalizable across different types of outliers. And third, it is investigated which of the budget categories have the most punctuations. Methodologically, the study is based on descriptive and distributional statistics provided to tackle the above two issues comprehensively. Consequently, the paper aims at filling the gap in theory-driven literature on Polish budget shifts and their empirical rigorous explanations. Thus, it is claimed that the Polish case study contributes to the debate on the verification of empirical research on public policy agendas and public policy change.

Why We Should Use the Gini Coefficient to Assess Punctuated Equilibrium Theory

Punctuated Equilibrium Theory posits that policy-making is generally characterized by long periods of stability that are interrupted by short periods of fundamental policy change. The literature converged on the measure of kurtosis and L-kurtosis to assess these change patterns. In this letter, we critically discuss these measures and propose the Gini coefficient as a (1) comparable, but (2) more intuitive, and (3) more precise measure of “punctuated” change patterns.

Institutional inertia, local leadership turnover, and changes in the structure of fiscal expenditure

Taking the perspective of local party and government leadership change and using L-kurtosis to analyze provincial panel data in China from 1996 to 2018, this article identifies the structural change pattern of fiscal expenditures. We find that economic construction, science, education, culture, and health expenditures conform to the punctuated equilibrium pattern, while public security expenditures conform to the gradualism pattern. For expenditures under the punctuated equilibrium pattern, the longer the current local leader’s tenure is, the greater the friction with institutional inertia, and the larger the deviation from the average expenditure structure during the previous local leader’s tenure; however, for expenditures under the gradualism pattern, the local leader factor does not have a significant effect. This article also discusses the motivations of new local leaders for adjusting their expenditure structure. In terms of the proportion of economic development expenditures, in targeting expenditures, new leaders are more likely to “strive for the upper ends of the country,” while the expenditures for science, education, culture, and health are targeted to “converge to the national average.”

New Developments in Evolutionary Innovation

The publication of ‘An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change’ by Nelson and Winter has had a major impact on economics and related fields such as innovation and strategy. All of these fields have developed owing to recent re-examinations and extensions of evolutionary theory. A paradigm that underlies several studies in this tradition is the concept of neo-Darwinian evolution—the idea that the unit of the evolutionary process (e.g. a technological artefact) is subject to a dynamic of variation, selection, and retention leading to adaptation to a predefined function. This book refers to the frameworks of punctuated equilibrium, speciation, and exaptation, which, despite their significant influence in evolutionary biology, have been reflected only partially in evolutionary approaches to economics, innovation, and strategy. This chapter introduces the book’s aim to fill this gap, and outlines the approaches and perspectives of each of the chapters.

New Frontiers

Evolutionary thinking has grown significantly and has had a profound impact on various fields such as economics, strategy, and technological innovation. An important paradigm that underlies the evolutionary theory of innovation is neo-Darwinian evolution. According to this paradigm, evolution is gradualist and is based on the mechanisms of variation, selection, and retention. Starting from the 1970s, new theoretical advancements in evolutionary biology have recognized the central role of punctuated equilibrium, speciation, and exaptation in evolution and of Woesian dynamics. However, despite their significant influence in evolutionary biology, these advancements have been reflected only partially in evolutionary approaches to economics, strategy, and technological innovation. This chapter reviews these advancements and explores their key implications for innovation, such as the role of serendipity and unpre-stateability leading to disequilibrium in economics systems, and the importance of adopting an option-based logic during the innovation process.

Conclusions

We began this book by highlighting that, since the 1970s, several important developments have profoundly changed the field of evolutionary biology. Of particular interest here are the concepts of punctuated equilibrium, speciation, and exaptation and their centrality for understanding the emergence of novelty. Despite their influence in evolutionary biology, these advancements have received only limited attention in evolutionary approaches to economics, innovation, and strategy. By reviewing and contextualizing these advancements within the current evolutionary debate in economics, innovation, and strategy, our goal was to show how they can shed new light on some of the key assumptions of evolutionary theory, such as the idea that economic systems are in a continual state of disequilibrium. In much of the existing literature, for instance, innovation is treated as an activity that aims to respond to a direct type of question: given a problem, what is the solution? This implies that a new technology is usually ‘a working architecture of parts and modules that performs a specific function that permits the satisfaction of a predefined need’ (...