Growth in Knowledge-Intensive Business Services: Evidence from Lombardy

Nicoletta Corrocher, Lucia Cusmano and Camilla Lenzi

Industry and Innovation, 2013, vol. 20, issue 6, 563-584

Abstract: This paper studies the growth patterns in knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) in Lombardy on the basis of original firm-level survey data. The aim is to investigate in particular the role of and interplay between age and size of firms and the modes of innovation in the process of growth. Our findings indicate that younger firms tend to outperform incumbents for sales growth and that larger firms tend to grow more than smaller companies. However, the effects of firm size and age vary substantially according to the firm's specific pattern of innovation. In particular, highly innovative firms tend to outperform competitors regardless of their age or size, while for conservative KIBS, size is a prerequisite for growth. Investment in human capital and the service distribution network are important drivers of competition for growing KIBS.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13662716.2013.833376 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:indinn:v:20:y:2013:i:6:p:563-584

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CIAI20

DOI: 10.1080/13662716.2013.833376

Access Statistics for this article

Industry and Innovation is currently edited by Associate Professor Mark Lorenzen

More articles in Industry and Innovation from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().