Regional Innovation and the Geography of Research Collaboration in Science-based Industries

Abstract

The presence of knowledge spillovers is generally considered to be a strong force behind the spatial agglomeration of knowledge intensive, science-based industries. However, the understanding of the geographical scale and scope of knowledge spillovers is limited. This study provides insights in the role of geographical proximity for one mechanism of knowledge spillovers by analysing the geographical dimension of collaborative research and the relationship between collaborative research and innovation in science-based industries in the Netherlands. Collaborative research between academic organisations and firms is found to be an important mechanism for knowledge spillovers in science-based industries that contributes to the innovative performance of regions and firms. This study also shows that geographical proximity is more important for collaboration between between academic and non-academic organisations than for collaboration between similar type of organisations. This suggests that geographical proximity can play an important indirect role in overcoming possible difficulties resulting from differences between organisations in incentive structures and institutional backgrounds. However, this does not imply that academic-industry collaboration is a regional phenomenon. Within the Netherlands, the role of geographical proximity is more pronounced for collaboration between academic and governmental organisations than for academic-industry collaboration where the national scale seems more important. As such, academic knowledge spillovers through research collaboration are mainly occuring at the national and international scale, whereas knowledge spillovers through other mechanisms, such as informal knowledge exchange, appear to be more geographically localized. The main conclusion therefore holds that knowledge spillovers in science-based industries occur at different spatial scales simultaneously. These results imply that the spatial concentration of firms in science-based industries around universities cannot directly be explained from the advantages of spatial proximity for collaboration and knowledge exchange with these universities.