Culture and knowledge spillovers in Europe: New perspectives for innovation and convergence policies?

Abstract

Using European patent citations, we examine the geography of knowledge flows within Europe. We aim at analysing whether technologies flow more rapidly among countries that share similar economic, geographic, technological or cultural characteristics. The specificity of our approach consists in integrating indicators of culture and cultural similarity. The empirical results suggest that cultural distance has only a mitigated and moderate impact in comparison with other proximities. On the contrary, cultural belonging is shown to influence the geography of knowledge flows and innovation. More precisely, if some populations develop thanks to external knowledge exploitation, others rather explore internal new ideas and knowledge. In such a differentiated context (we find three types of culture), the efficiency of innovative policy seems to be culturally dependent.Culture, Knowledge spillovers, Proximity, Europe, Innovation policy,

Radical Innovation Across Nations: The Preeminence of Corporate Culture

“…In particular, the presence of markets for venture capital enables entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial firms to gain access to capital for radical innovations, though at a steeper rate than in the stock market (Gompers and Lerner 2001). 3 Second, recent years have witnessed an increased convergence across developed and emerging nations in the extent to which labor and capital are accessible to firms (Demirgüç-Kunt and Levine 2001;Krugman, Cooper, and Srinivasan 1995) and the extent to which government policies are synchronized across nations (Gong and Keller 2003;Hussler 2004;Lemola 2002). Although far from easy, negotiations across governments have led to some agreements on market and capital access across borders.…”

Cultural Proximity and Local Firms’ catch up with Multinational Enterprises

“…The larger the technology gap between the firm or country and the world innovation frontier, the faster the catch up. In this sense, CPH is also known as the technology gap hypothesis (TGH) (Hussler, 2004).The traditional catch-up literature is descriptive, focusing on historical analysis of cross-country income convergence (Fagerberg, 1995). Recent literature contains econometric analysis of convergence or catch-up mainly at the macro level (e.g.…”

Innovation, institutions and cultures: Exploring the European context

“…Similarly, Shane using Hofstede's definition of culture (Shane, 1993) shows that specific cultural dimensions provide crucial support for innovation performance: in particular, he finds that individualistic societies which accept uncertainty and which exhibit a low level of power distance are those who attain better innovation performance. Hussler (2004) by looking at European patent citations shows how culture -if compared to other drivers such as geographical proximity, technological proximity and economic proximity -strongly affects the geography of knowledge flows and innovation performance. Hussler in particular introduces a culture-based taxonomy of innovation performance, according to which societies which accept uncertainty and which exhibit a low level of power distance are those who attain better innovation performance.…”

“…The existing research on innovation that had an international focus has primarily focused on different corporate and professional cultures (Ulijn, Nagel, & Tan, 2001;Pivoda, 2001), as well as organisational culture (Feldman, 1988) while generally overlooking the importance of national culture as a means to explain and predict innovation performance in a global context (Herbig & Dunphy, 1998). Although it appears that no real substantial effort has been made to study whether innovation is, or should be, managed differently in different national cultures (Hofstede, 1980;Shane, 1993;Hussler, 2004;Authors, 2009) we believe that national culture is equally a relevant lens through which the systematic comparison of similarities and differences would considerably improve our understanding of the innovation performance of European firms. Drawing on our existing work on innovation (Crowe, Vecchi, Brennan, & Coughlan, 2007;Vecchi & Brennan, 2009a, 2009bVecchi, Della Piana, & Cacia, 2013), by adopting a cross-cultural perspective (Della Piana & Vivacqua, 2012;Capaldo, Della Piana & Vecchi, 2012a;Vecchi et al, 2013) and by endorsing an institutionbased view in this paper we present an important yet understudied field in crosscultural management -the innovation performance of firms across European countries.…”

“…In particular, innovation is likely to be affected by national cultures (Hofstede, 1980;Shane, 1993;Hussler, 2004). The existing research on innovation that had an international focus has primarily focused on different corporate and professional cultures (Ulijn, Nagel, & Tan, 2001;Pivoda, 2001), as well as organisational culture (Feldman, 1988) while generally overlooking the importance of national culture as a means to explain and predict innovation performance in a global context (Herbig & Dunphy, 1998).…”