Networking,context and firm-level innovation: Cooperation through the regional filter in Norway

The paper assesses the role for innovation of one aspect which has been generally overlooked by evolutionary economic geography: context. It analyses how context shapes the impact of collaboration on firm-level innovation for 1604 firms located in the five largest city regions of Norway. Specifically, the analysis shows how the benefits to firms of collaborating within regional, national, and international innovation networks are affected by the knowledge endowments of the region within which the firm is located. Using a logit regression analysis, we find, first, that only national and international networking have a significant positive impact on the likelihood of innovation (the former only for process innovation), whereas the regional knowledge endowments have no direct effect. Second, regional cooperation is particularly effective in regions with high investments in R&D, whereas international cooperation is important in regions with an educated workforce – and regional and national collaboration may be ineffective in such cases. We conclude that, in the case of Norway, context is essential in determining the capacity of firms to set up networks and innovate. Regions with an educated workforce can use the resulting absorptive capacity to successfully assimilate knowledge being diffused through global pipelines from faraway places. However, this absorptive capacity is likely to be heavily filtered if regional firms mainly rely on internal connections within Norway.     

试论工业区工业企业成组布局的经济效果和最佳规模的确定

分析了工业区工业企业成组布局与分散布局相比较的经济效果,并采用年费用指标作为评价成组布局经济效果的基本指标。本文还分析了工业成组布局的经济效果与工业区规模之间的关系。本文以年费用最小为目标函数,以成组布局工业区的一些主要企业(基本企业)和与其相应的具有替代关系的分散布局企业(对比企业)为变量,建立了工业成组布局经济效果及最佳规模优化模型。     

Geographic clustering of firms and urban form: a multivariate analysis

This paper provides an empirical framework that applies spatial statistics methods to assess the relation between the change in the geographical clustering of firms and the emergence of urban form. We contend that where firms locate and eventually cluster give rise to the way commercial and industrial land uses are organized over space, which in turn defines the shape of urban form. Accordingly, the objectives of our work are twofold: (1) to identify the extent and shape of firm clustering and co-location at the intra-metropolitan level, and (2) examine how the change in the geographic clustering of different industries contributes to decentralization and the evolution of urban form. Spatial statistics methods and tools were vital and helped to fulfill these objectives.