Innovation in peripheral regions: Do collaborations compensate for a lack of local knowledge spillovers?

Markus Grillitsch and Magnus Nilsson

No 2014/33, Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: It is widely accepted that firms in peripheral regions benefit to a lesser extent from local knowledge spillovers than firms located in agglomerations or industrial clusters. This paper investigates the extent to which innovative firms in peripheral regions compensate for the lack of access to local knowledge spillovers by collaborating at other geographical scales. So far the literature predominantly suggests that collaborations complement rather than compensate for local knowledge spillovers. Using data on the collaboration patterns of innovative firms in Sweden, this paper provides evidence that firms with low access to local knowledge spillovers tend to collaborate more. This effect, however, depends on firm size and in-house capabilities. Our findings suggest that firms with strong in-house capabilities do indeed compensate for a lack of local knowledge spillovers with collaborations while firms with weaker in-house capabilities depend more on the regional knowledge infrastructure.

Keywords: Local knowledge spillovers; periphery; collaboration; innovation; geography; Sweden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O18 O30 O31 P48 R10 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2014-12-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ent, nep-geo, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-sbm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Innovation in peripheral regions: Do collaborations compensate for a lack of local knowledge spillovers? (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2014_033

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