Relatedness, external linkages and regional innovation in Europe

Abstract

This paper analyses if the generation of new knowledge benefits from the combination of similar or dissimilar pieces of existing technologies, in terms of their technological content (related versus unrelated variety), for the case of European regions. Specifically, it analyses the relevance of variety in the case of local knowledge as well as in the case of the knowledge coming from other regions. At the local level, it shows that, while related variety is conducive to regional innovation, unrelated variety does play a role too when it comes to radical innovations. Conversely, it also shows that external knowledge flows have a higher impact, the higher the similarity between these flows and the extant local knowledge base.

Knowledge networks and industrial structure for regional innovation: An analysis of patents collaborations in Italy

“…The few empirical works aimed at disentangling the effect of unrelated diversification on the innovativeness of an area lead to different results. Tavassoli and Carbonara () find positive effects of unrelated variety in terms of absolute production of patents, while other authors (Castaldi et al, ; Miguelez & Moreno, ) find no evidence of this association but strong evidence of the positive impact of diversification into unrelated industries on the production of superstar patents (breakthrough innovations). The studies on the effect of variety also highlight the way in which more technologically diversified regions will yield better performances as a result of the transmission of innovations and knowledge between firms belonging to different sectors.…”

“…In this context, several authors suggest that there may be an interplay between network structure and the variety of technologies or industries in the region (Boschma & Frenken, 2010;Broekel & Boschma, 2012). Until now, large numbers of studies have focused their attention on the role of variety in innovation (Aarstad, Kvitastein, & Jakobsen, 2016;Castaldi, Frenken, & Los, 2015;Miguelez & Moreno, 2018) and particularly the role of industrial variety (Leppälä, 2019;Tavassoli & Carbonara, 2014), but very few studies have focused on both network structure and variety (van der Wouden & Rigby, 2019) and even fewer on the role of industrial variety.…”

Knowledge space oddity: How to increase the intensity and relevance of the technological progress of European regions

“…Our first research question (RQ1) is as follows: What types of preexisting knowledge are best suited to new knowledge creation in European regions? Some recent studies (Kogler et al, 2013;Tavassoli and Carbonara, 2014;Castaldi et al, 2015;Rigby, 2015;Miguelez and Moreno, 2018), grounded on evolutionary economic geography theory, have tried to investigate the features of the knowledge produced within a region that improve the chances of knowledge recombination and new knowledge creation. In these contributions, the knowledge space is often approximated with measures of innovation input and output (such as research and development (R&D) expenditures and patents).…”

“…In the literature on regional innovation, the majority of studies have focused on innovation intensity, which is a stock measure of innovation output (Acs et al, 2002;Rigby, 2015;Paci and Usai, 2009). Recently some research works have devoted attention not only to innovation intensity, but also to the quality of the innovation output, in terms of type of innovation (radical vs. incremental -Castaldi et al, 2015) and technological impact (Jaffe and de Rassenfosse, 2017;Miguelez and Moreno, 2018) or technological importance (Benson and Magee, 2012;Nemet and Johnson, 2012). We build upon these contributions, sharing the goal of increasing the understanding of differences in the determinants of general innovation and breakthrough innovations.…”

Study on the Spatial Pattern of Innovation Output and Influencing Factors in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area

“…The third aspect is regional innovation and the influencing factors of innovation ability. Miguelez and Moreno (2018) analyzed the relevance of variety in the case of local knowledge as well as in the case of the knowledge coming from other regions [34]. At the local level, it shows that while related variety is conducive to regional innovation, unrelated variety does play a role, too, when it comes to radical innovations.…”