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Networks and innovation: the role of social assets in explaining firms' innovative capacity
- Publication Year :
- 2009
- Publisher :
- Jena: Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics, 2009.
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Abstract
- The claim of a positive association between a firm’s social assets and its inno-vative capacity is a widely debated topic in the literature. Although controversial, such an argument has informed recent innovation policy across Germany, increasingly di-rected to cluster formation. In the light of the growing attention and financial efforts that cluster-based innovation policies are receiving, it is worth answering two main ques-tions. First, are firms with a relatively high level of social capital likely to be more in-novative? Second, do companies pursuing innovation in partnership innovate more? This paper empirically answers these questions by exploring a cross-sectoral sample of 248 firms based in the Jena region. On the one hand, the extent to which a firm is inte-grated in its community life does not contribute to an explanation of its innovative per-formance. On the other hand, directed cooperation with the specific goal of innovating shows a positive impact on innovative performance. However, the correlation between the extent of the network of co-innovators and firms’ innovative capacity presents an inverted U-shaped relation: there is a threshold in the number of co-innovators justified by the costs of innovating by interacting. A policy lesson can be drawn from these find-ings: cluster-based policies are to be treated with caution as firms face costs of network-ing and not merely benefits.
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.od......1687..c0df1c7cfaffe584af1b35c798c17cf5