Proximity, knowledge base and the innovation process The case of Unilever’s Becel diet margarine

Mila Davids () and Koen Frenken
Additional contact information
Mila Davids: School of Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology

No 2015/7, Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: The proximity concept refers to types of inter-organizational relationships that are expected to facilitate interactive learning and collaborative innovation. Different forms of proximity include geographical, cognitive, social, institutional and organizational proximity. Following an extensive case study of a new diet margarine developed by Unilever, we extent the proximity framework by theorizing how the relative importance of each proximity dimension depends on the type of knowledge being produced, where we distinguish between analytical, synthetic and symbolic knowledge. We argue that our theoretical framework in principle applies to product innovations in all science-based industries.

Keywords: innovation; proximity; knowledge; science-based industries; multinational enterprise; management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 L66 N30 O31 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2015-02-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-geo, nep-ino and nep-knm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://wp.circle.lu.se/upload/CIRCLE/workingpapers/201507_Davids_Frenken.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Proximity, knowledge base and the innovation process: The case of Unilever’s Becel diet margarine (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2015_007

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research, Lund University, PO Box 117, SE-22100 Lund, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Torben Schubert ().