2023, Barjak, Franz, Heimsch, Fabian, Thees, Oscar

Der österreichische Weltraumsektor besteht aus mindestens 150 Organisationen, von denen 60% dem Unternehmenssektor, 30% dem Wissenschaftssektor und 10% dem öffentlichen Sektor und sonstigen Organisationen angehören. Er umfasst in der Summe mindestens 1200 Mitarbeitende, die vielfach in kleinen Einheiten (Unternehmen und Organisationseinheiten von Wissenschaftseinrichtungen) beschäftigt sind. Die Arbeitsstätten im Weltraumsektor konzentrieren sich überwiegend auf die Bundesländer Wien, Steiermark und Niederösterreich. Das Engagement der Unternehmen in Forschung und Entwicklung ist mit 70-80% der Vollzeitäquivalente sehr hoch. Wie auf europäischer und internationaler Ebene ist Weltraum auch in Österreich ein Hochtechnologiesektor. Der Weltraumsektor generiert Gesamteinnahmen von mindestens 184 Mio. Euro pro Jahr. Das Weltraumgeschäft ist primär, aber nicht nur, ein Exportbusiness für die institutionelle Raumfahrt. Die Unternehmen des Weltraumsektors sind zu 80% im Besitz von Inländern. Internationale Eigentümer sind in der Minderheit. Bei den Einnahmen dominiert das Upstream Business eindeutig gegenüber dem Downstream Business (88% gegenüber 12%). Auch wenn das Downstream-Segment von der Einnahmeseite her klein ist, ist trotzdem knapp ein Drittel der Unternehmen und Forschungseinheiten in ihm aktiv. Dies lässt sich auch durch positive Wachstumserwartungen erklären. Start-up Unternehmen mit Weltraumaktivitäten gibt es ebenfalls vor allem im Upstream-Segment. Im Downstream-Segment ist die Gründungstätigkeit derzeit schwächer sowohl hinsichtlich Unternehmenszahl als auch Einnahmen der neu gegründeten Unternehmen. Zwei Drittel der Weltraumeinnahmen fallen in den Teilsektoren Erdbeobachtung, Raumtransport und satellitenbasierte Telekommunikation an. Die Zukunftserwartungen der befragten Akteure hinsichtlich der Ausweitung des Portfolios an Gütern und Dienstleistungen sowie der Einnahmen sind für den Zeitraum der kommenden drei Jahre insgesamt sehr positiv.

2020, Barjak, Franz, Heimsch, Fabian

2022, Barjak, Franz, Heimsch, Fabian

Purpose – The relationship between corporate culture and inbound open innovation (OI) has been limited to two sub-constructs: a culture for openness and an innovation culture, but until now a richer conceptualization of corporate culture is missing. Design/methodology/approach – The authors apply Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s (1983) competing values framework and regress these together with company internal and external control variables on five measures of inbound OI, reflecting product innovation, process innovation and the sourcing of innovation activities. The authors use data from a survey of more than 250 Swiss companies, primarily SMEs. Findings – The importance of the firms’ market environments suggests that the results are affected by the specific situation in which the firms found themselves at the time of the survey: after a strong currency shock, inbound OI activities seem to be a reaction to external pressure that favored planning and rule-oriented (formal) cultures to implement cost-cutting process innovations. Practical implications – Companies should develop a vision and a strategy, ensure open and transparent communication, have suitable reward and support mechanisms in place, adjust structures and processes, and institutionalize and formalize any change whenever they are confronted with a situation that requires a quick reaction and an adjustment to their degree of openness. Originality/value – The paper clarifies the relationship between cultural traits and inbound OI, using a well-established understanding of corporate culture and differentiating between innovation types. It points to the importance of the external environment in order to understand the role of culture.

2019, Heimsch, Fabian, Barjak, Franz

The culture of open science that has governed communication and behaviour in academic organizations for a long time, above all in universities, has undergone changes in the light of the increasing importance of third mission activities, such as knowledge and technology transfer and commercialization of academic inventions. However, not all academic organizations have embraced this change and we still do not have a full understanding, how different organizational missions, internal incentives, and regulations of knowledge sharing activities relate to the performance und importance of different mechanisms of knowledge sharing. This contribution addresses this gap by drawing on a new data set of more than 900 institutes at Swiss academic organizations. We find that the mission and self-conception of an organization matters at the immediate level of the institute, as well as at the more remote level of the university or organization. What matters more depends on the mechanism of knowledge sharing in

2021, Barjak, Franz, Heimsch, Fabian

We still do not have a full understanding of how the different missions of academic organisations relate to their performance in knowledge sharing. This paper addresses this gap with a data set of more than 900 Swiss academic institutions and distinguishes between mechanisms of knowledge sharing, different levels and types of missions, and the strength of isomorphic processes. We find that the missions of organisations and fields are more important than the missions of institutes for knowledge exchange through commercialisation and teaching. The opposite is true for industrial PhD students, a research-based mechanism of knowledge exchange. Coercive and mimetic isomorphic processes in organisations and normative isomorphic processes in research areas have different effects: since commercialisation of knowledge is not the main activity in any discipline, low normative isomorphism leaves more freedom for institutes to decide how and by which mechanisms they share knowledge, which correlates positively with commercialisation performance.

2018, Heimsch, Fabian, Barjak, Franz, Bitran, I., Conn, Stefan, Huizingh, Eelko, Kokshagina, Olga, Torkkeli, M., Tynnhammar, Marcus

Different cultural traits of organisations, such as the orientation towards flexibility, risk toler-ance, and reflexivity have been found to influence their innovation performance. However, the relationship of corporate culture to openness of innovation activities has been largely over-looked, except for early studies on the so-called not-invented-here (NIH) syndrome and few newer studies. Our contribution aims at closing this gap. Drawing on a survey of more than 250 Swiss companies, we relate different constructs of organisational culture to the openness of technological innovation activities. We find that openness varies considerably by company size, age, and group membership. A complementary relationship between internal R&D and open-ness prevails. Out of six cultural constructs we find the strongest correlation between a rule and plan-oriented culture and the degree of openness of process innovations. Moreover, spontane-ous decision-making and action relates negatively to procuring innovation support act