A comparative study of innovation behaviour in Singapore's KIBS and manufacturing firms

Poh Wong () and Zi-Lin He

The Service Industries Journal, 2005, vol. 25, issue 1, 23-42

Abstract: While most services innovation studies are concentrated on the OECD or EU countries, research on services innovation in the non-OECD context is still rare. This study investigates innovation behaviour of a certain group of services -- knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), compared with the manufacturing sector in Singapore. The main findings of this study are: (1) KIBS firms have higher innovating ratio than manufacturing firms, but innovating manufacturing firms are more likely to do R&D than innovating KIBS firms; (2) KIBS firms have higher human capital intensity, training spending intensity, innovation spending intensity, and R&D spending intensity than manufacturing firms; (3) KIBS firms and manufacturing firms have similar innovation objectives, although some delicate nuances do exist; (4) KIBS firms are less likely to have overseas partners for innovation collaboration than manufacturing firms; (5) there is a U pattern of innovation collaboration with geographic distance for both KIBS and manufacturing firms; (6) social capitals are important for KIBS firms' successful provision of innovation support to manufacturing clients; (7) the importance of spatial proximity varies over different phases of innovation support.

Date: 2005
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DOI: 10.1080/0264206042000302397

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The Service Industries Journal is currently edited by Eileen Bridges, Professor Domingo Ribeiro, Ronald Goldsmith, Barry Howcroft and Youjae Yi

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