Collaboration networks, geography and innovation: Local and national embeddedness

Abstract

The relationship between collaboration, geography and innovation has been analysed in economic geography. However, little is known from a social‐network perspective about whether different geographical levels of embeddedness may determine the way networks affect innovation. To address this issue, we compare the effects of regional vs. country‐level Spanish networks on future patenting. If we consider the country‐wide network, our statistical analysis reproduces the findings of the previous literature. However, negative effects prevail at the regional level, while the influence seems to be rather positive at the country level. We thus conclude that the embeddedness at different geographical scales exerts differing influence on innovation.

The role of inventors’ networks and variety for breakthrough inventions

“…Creating links with cognitively distant actors is crucial for (radical) innovations and the acquisition of new knowledge. Some previous works have found that density is negatively correlated with overall innovation (Galaso & Kovářík, 2021; Innocenti et al, 2020). This could be also expected for breakthrough innovations where too much density of the network could impede knowledge transfer and exchange also for radical inventions.…”

Research on Technological Divisive Faultlines in Cliques: Evidence From China’s Biomedical Industry Innovation Network

“…At this point, as the intensity of TDF increases, the firms in the clique can devote more energy to conducting innovation in the sub-clique and share knowledge with clique partners outside the sub-clique. But this good situation is destroyed by GP because firms in cliques have to divert some of their efforts to maintain relationships with geographically proximate firms, which may result in relationship redundancy and even local knowledge homogenization [38][39], thus impeding innovation. After all, GP weakens the positive correlation between low TDF and CIP.…”

“…As the intensity of TDF increases, the sub-clique becomes more closed and there is less knowledge flow within the clique, which is negative for innovation. It can be inferred that there is a negative correlation between the intensity of TDF and CIP [37] [38]. In combination with the influence of GP, the geographical closeness between firms within a clique and other firms reduces the cost of cooperation and promotes the flow of knowledge.…”

“…At this point, as the intensity of TDF increases, the sub-cliques within the clique become more closed and the intra-clique knowledge flow becomes less, but this poor situation is ameliorated by GP. GP alleviates the situation where firms can only confine their innovation activities to be accomplished within sub-clique, and although it may cause knowledge homogenization [38][39], it provides new knowledge intake paths for cliques and weakens the negative correlation between high intensity of TDF and CIP. In other words, GP weakens the inhibitory effect of high intensity of TDF on CIP.…”

Roads to innovation: Evidence from Italy

“…We then explore inventors' collaboration patterns by following a social network analysis (SNA) approach, as the structure of research collaborations can be viewed as a network composed of links and nodes (Galaso & Kovářík, 2021). In particular, we investigate whether highways regional endowment favors regional embeddedness into a wider interregional innovation network, as proxied by different measures of node centrality (e.g., Wanzenböck et al, 2014).…”