Home Bias in Innovation Ecosystems: Relying on Local Users for Knowledge

Organization Background

PlanetFactory was established on January 1, 2000, in the garage of Bernat Casanovas in Cabrianes. The company specialized in creating educational applications and experienced very rapid initial growth. In 2007, the global financial crisis brought with it cost cuts in Spanish public administration. These cuts were especially hard on PlanetFactory, which relied on the public sector for 90 percent of its turnover. In an extremely critical moment, Bernat and his team decided to transform the company to minimize its exposure to fluctuations in the demand of intermediaries that they had suffered as a service company. They wanted to be able to reach the end user directly, and therefore planned to create a competitive proprietary product. Hence, the first objective they set was to develop an innovative product based on internal R&D. Once they had developed the product, the second objective would be to internationalize the company. The financial situation of the company is summarized in Tables 1 and 2.