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Abstract:Being able to launch new products internationally is critical for technology-based ventures to recoup the high costs of R&D and to exploit their innovations fully. Despite the widely recognized importance of networks within the innovation development process, there appear to be contrasting viewpoints as to whether local or foreign network partners contribute more in the race to internationalize. Drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of comparative advantage, we propose and empirically confirm that ventures pursuing a balance of local and foreign network connections for the development of an innovation are able to bring the product more rapidly into the international marketplace. Furthermore, both innovation complexity and industry clockspeed heighten the importance of geographic network balance to the speed of product internationalization.

There is a considerable amount of discussion, but still no consensus, about which indicator should be used to measure innovation. To participate in this debate, a unique innovation database, SFINNO, is introduced. Innovation counts from the database are used as the baseline, to show that innovation is a complex phenomenon which cannot be entirely explained through the use of proxy statistics, as the linkages between innovation input-and output-indicators are fuzzy.We also show that the strength of these linkages varies by field of technology. Furthermore, different innovation measures produce highly divergent rankings when they are used as benchmarking tools of regional innovative performance. Although the produced innovation indexes perform slightly better, their superiority is marginal. Therefore, caution should be taken before drawing too drastic policy conclusions depending on a single measure of regional innovative performance.