The Geographic Sources of Innovation: Technological Infrastructure and Product Innovation in the United States

Abstract

Annals oi rhr Asaoc r.~r!un o1 Amriican Geogrdphrr'. 8421, 7994, pp 270-229 0 Copyirght 7494 by A\rocratmn of American Geographers Publiihed by SlJckwell Publrshm, >38 M a n Srreel, Cmbndge, M A lILI?L and 708 CuMley Rod, Oxiord, OX4 716 UK

Using Affiliation Networks to Study the Determinants of Multilateral Research Cooperation: Some Empirical Evidence from EU Framework Programs in Biotechnology

“…Proximity to universities allows for many interactions, likely to ease collaboration between agents (use of academic consultants, recruitment of young doctors, library use, informal communications at conferences or social activities, etc.). Second, geographical proximity may act as a facilitator for face-to-face interactions and promote transmission of tacit knowledge (Feldman and Florida, 1994;Anselin, Varga, and Acs, 2000;Balland, 2009); and hence, increase the amount and the scope of knowledge that can be accessed. Geographical proximity may also facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas (Feldman and Florida 1994), pointing out a higher potential of knowledge that could be co-created.…”

“…Second, geographical proximity may act as a facilitator for face-to-face interactions and promote transmission of tacit knowledge (Feldman and Florida, 1994;Anselin, Varga, and Acs, 2000;Balland, 2009); and hence, increase the amount and the scope of knowledge that can be accessed. Geographical proximity may also facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas (Feldman and Florida 1994), pointing out a higher potential of knowledge that could be co-created. In addition to that, it may enable timely inflows of information (Feldman, 1993) or reduce the cost of collaboration (Hoekman et.…”

Measuring Regional Innovativeness - A Methodological Discussion and an Application to One German Industry

“…The usual approach is to define one index or a number of indices that represent the innovation output of the spatial unit considered. Most commonly, patents are used as approximations for the number of innovations generated within a region (see, e.g., Feldman, 1994;Feldman and Florida, 1994;Fritsch, 2002). To capture the size of regions, many approaches use criteria, such as patents per inhabitants (Stern et al, 2002) or patents per employee (Bode, 2004).…”

“…Although researchers have not yet a consensus as to the 'definitely' important factors, some 'core' factors are commonly employed in such analyses. Most of them were proposed by Feldman and Florida (1994) who defined a region's 'technological infrastructure' and by Griliches (1979) and Jaffe (1989) in their seminal works. Following this research, we define a 'German regional technological infrastructure' as consisting of factors with a purely regional effect and factors with an inter-regional effect.…”

Firm-level knowledge accumulation and regional dynamics

“…The first comprises economies of scale, scope and transaction, all kinds of cost advantages that accrue from firms locating close to each other (for example, Marshall, 1920;Richardson, 1978). The second category consists of technological or knowledge spillovers, intellectual gains through exchange of information for which a direct compensation to the producer of the knowledge is not given, or for which less compensation is given than the value of the knowledge (Marshall, 1920;Audretsch and Feldman, 1996;Feldman and Florida, 1994;Caniëls, 2000). Knowledge spillovers are real gains, not pecuniary advantages.…”