Alfred Kleinknecht
is Professor in the Economics of Innovation at TU Delft since 1997. 1994-97 he was Professor of Industrial Economics at the Free University of Amsterdam. He graduated in economics at the Free University of Berlin in 1977 and obtained a PhD in economics at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1984. Kleinknecht was earlier connected to the Berlin Science Centre (1978-80), the Free University of Amsterdam (1980-84), the University of Maastricht (1984-88), and the metropolitan University of Amsterdam (1988-1994). In 2006 he was a Visiting Professor at Università La Sapienza at Rome. In 2009 he taught as a Visiting Professor at Université Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris I.
Alfred Kleinknecht was responsible for national enterprise surveys on industrial innovation in the Netherlands in 1983, 1988 and 1992. He belonged to the team that developed the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) that became part of the standard data collection program in statistical agencies all over the European Union. He also contributed to the OECD Oslo Manual on innovation measurement. In the early 1990s, he coordinated a European network for the development of 'Literature-based innovation output indicators' (LBIO), in cooperation with the EU Institute for Prospective Technological Studies.
Kleinknecht is known for his criticism of the Dutch policy of wage moderation ('loonmatiging') and flexibilization of the labour market, arguing that this has severely damaged productivity growth and innovation performance in the country. Since the mid-1990s, Kleinknecht received no more research contracts from Dutch government departments which says something about the practical policy relevance of his research.
Kleinknecht's produced 8 books and edited volumes, including:
- Kleinknecht, A.: Innovation patterns in crisis and prosperity. Schumpeter's long cycle reconsidered (with a foreword by Jan Tinbergen), London: Macmillan and New York: St. Martin's Press, first print: 1987 (paperback: 1990).
- Kleinknecht, A., E. Mandel & I. Wallerstein (editors): New findings in long-wave research, London: Macmillan & New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.
- Kleinknecht, A. & D. Bain (editors): New concepts in innovation output measurement, London: Macmillan & New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
- Kleinknecht, A. (editor): Determinants of innovation. The message from new indicators, London: Macmillan & New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.
- Kleinknecht, A. & P. Mohnen (editors): Innovation and firm performance. Econometric explorations of survey data, London: Palgrave (formerly Macmillan), 2002.
- Van Beers, C. van, A. Kleinknecht, R. Ortt & R. Verburg (editors): Determinants of innovative behaviour. A firm's internal practices and its external environment, London: Palgrave 2008.
Kleinknecht's list of publications comprises about a 130 titles in English, Dutch and German. Recent pieces include:
- Kleinknecht, A., K. van Montfort & E. Brouwer: The non-trivial choice between innovation indicators in Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Vol. 11 (2002), p. 109-121.
- Naastepad, C.W.M. & A. Kleinknecht: 'The Dutch productivity slowdown: The culprit at last?' in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Vol. 15 (2004), pp. 137-163.
- Kleinknecht, A. & C.W.M. Naastepad: 'The Netherlands: Failure of a neo-classical policy agenda' in European Planning Studies, Vol. 13 (2005), no. 8, p. 1193-1204.
- Kleinknecht, A., R.M. Oostendorp, M.P. Pradhan & C.W.M. Naastepad (2006): 'Flexible labour, firm performance and the Dutch job creation miracle' in International Review of Applied Economics, Vol. 20 (2006), pp. 171-187.
- Kleinknecht, A. & G. van der Panne (2008): 'Technology and long waves in economic growth', in: J.B. Davis & W. Dolfsma (editors), The Elgar Companion to Social Economics, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, p. 597-606.
- Lucidi, F. & A. Kleinknecht (2009): 'Little innovation, many jobs: An econometric analysis of the Italian labour productivity crisis', Cambridge Journal of Economics (Advance Access published online on April 17, 2009.
- Paananen, M. & A. Kleinknecht: Analysing innovative output in the CIS database: Taking account of some nasty details, in Economia e Politica Industriale (forthcoming).
- Dekker, R. & A. Kleinknecht: 'Picking winners and adding value? The impact of EU Framework Programs among German and Dutch innovators', in: Science and Public Policy (forthcoming).
- Kleinknecht, A. & G. van der Panne (2010): 'The propensity to patent an innovation: Comparing entrepreneurial to routinized innovators', in S. Heblich et al. (eds., 2010): Handbook of Research on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Aldershot: Edward Elgar (forthcoming).