Does 'Clustering' really help firms'innovative activities?

Catherine Beaudry and Stefano Breschi

No 111, KITeS Working Papers from KITeS, Centre for Knowledge, Internationalization and Technology Studies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy

Abstract: This paper examines whether location in strong industrial clusters translates into a higher probability of innovating. A firm-level analysis of the UK and Italy is performed. Innovative activities of firms (European patent data for 1988-98) are related to regional employment, other cluster-specific and firm-specific variables. Clustering per se does not explain all of a firm's inno-vative performance. While location in a cluster densely populated by innovative firms positively af-fects the likelihood of innovating, strong disadvantages arise from the presence of non-innova-tive firms, both in own and other sectors industries. Firms' innovative persistence and the regional knowledge stock are also important.

Keywords: Clusters; Innovation; Knowledge; Spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L10 O30 O40 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2000-02, Revised 2000-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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