The key dimensions of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) analysis: a decade of evolution

Emmanuel Muller and David Doloreux

No U1/2007, Working Papers "Firms and Region" from Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI)

Abstract: The importance of knowledge and innovation in modern economies justifies the in-creasing interest that scholars are taking in studying knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). The objective of this paper is to track the evolution of the key dimen-sions on which scholars have based their analyses through a literature review. More specifically, three main issues are addressed: (1) how KIBS are defined in the litera-ture; (2) how KIBS have been investigated empirically by researchers; and (3) how the analysis of KIBS has evolved over time. As a major assumption, the analysis catego-rises the research topic into three key conceptual dimensions: (i) knowledge; (ii) inno-vation and (iii) spatial proximity. The major hypothesis is that the way KIBS are seen, studied and perceived by the research community resolutely changed over time and that this evolution can be tracked by observing modifications in the key dimensions associated with the analysis of KIBS.

Keywords: KIBS; Knowledge; Innovation; spatial proximity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/29335/1/610017543.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:zbw:fisifr:u12007

DOI: 10.24406/publica-fhg-293358

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers "Firms and Region" from Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().