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How does accessibility to knowledge sources affect the innovativeness of corporations? - evidence from Sweden

Author

Summary, in English

This paper studies the innovative performance of 130 Swedish corporations during 1993-1994. The number of patents per corporation is explained as a function of the accessibility to internal and external knowledge sources of each corporation. A coherent way of handling accessibility measures, within and between corporations located across regions, is introduced. We examine the relative importance of intra- and interregional knowledge sources from 1) the own corporation, 2) other corporations, and 3) universities. The results show that there is a positive relationship between the innovativeness of a corporation and its accessibility to university researchers within regions where own research groups are located. Good accessibility among the corporation's research units does not have any significant effects on the likelihood of generation of patents. Instead the size of the R&D staff of the corporation seems to be the most important internal factor. There is no indication that intraregional accessibility to other corporations' research is important for a corporation's innovativeness. However, there is some indication of reduced likelihood for own corporate patenting when other corporate R&D is located in nearby regions. This may reflect a negative effect from competition for R&D labor.

Department/s

Publishing year

2005

Language

English

Pages

741-765

Publication/Series

Annals of Regional Science

Volume

39

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Social Sciences Interdisciplinary

Keywords

  • Sweden
  • spillovers
  • patents
  • accessibility
  • private and university R&D

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1432-0592