Bram Timmermans

Authors: Christian R. Østergaard,  Bram Timmermans and Kari Kristinsson.

UPDATE (April 2009): Submitted to Research Policy

UPDATE (August 2009): As from today the paper, co-authored with Christian R. Østergaard and Kari Kristinsson, is availabe as a DRUID working paper under the title: Beyond Technological Diversification: The Impact of Employee Diversity on Innovation. Feel free to download the document by clicking here.

This paper uses combines the Danish Integrated Database for Labor Market Research (IDA) and the DISKO4 technology and innovation survey to analyse the effect of a diverse composition of firms on the likelihood to innovate. A firm’s innovative competence is connected to its ability to utilize its resources. How firms leverage their knowledge resources to increase innovative compentence still remains is an area open for more research. Some literature suggests that for firms to develop innovative competence they must maintain knowledge in a diverse range of technologies when searching for complentarities or novel solutions. As a critical part of the knowledge and skills needed for innovation resides with and is used by individuals, one promising line of inquire into firms innovative competences could be to focus on the employees composition and the diversity of knowledge, skills and cognitive frameworks available. Continue Reading…

Author: Bram Timmermans

Click here for the first draft of the paper which will be presented during the DRUID winter conference 2009. The presentation can be view here.

A paper I recently started on is one that looks at the effect of diversity in new start-ups and the effect this diverse composition has on their survival. Researchers in the field of entrepreneurship have recognized that entrepreneurial activity is more a collective than an individual activity. As a result, studies on entrepreneurial teams started to emerge, including those on diversity in entrepreneurial teams. However, these studies look at team diversity cross-sectionally thereby neglecting the dynamic characteristic of teams, i.e. the potential change of team composition, which leads to a possible change in diversity. Whether or not this results in an increase or decrease of diversity will depend on the personal characteristics of the members Continue Reading…