How do firms perceive interactions with researchers in small innovation projects? Advantages and barriers for satisfactory collaborations (original) (raw)
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In this paper, we demonstrate how regional economic policies to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation, can lead to successes. More specifically, through a detailed theoretical and empirical analysis, we discuss the critical ingredients that can lead to regional innovation and economic success. These critical ingredients consist of a balanced mix based on the presence of research institutes, a texture of endogenous knowledge-intensive start-ups coupled to larger R&D-intensive incumbents, all of them embedded in a professional environment that supports business advice and services. We illustrate the effects of this mix using empirical material from various innovative regions around the world.
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Metaphors matter. Conventional wisdom argues that best practices in developing a regional innovation system dictate a bottom-up focus that emphasizes innovators and entrepreneurs, yet we see considerable resources deployed in top-down approaches that emphasize institutional actors. The rise of a potent metaphor, the "Triple Helix" has contributed this seeming disconnect. We argue here for a more bottom-up Double Helix model by re-visiting a larger qualitative study aimed at developing a regional innovation system in Scandinavia to increase growth venture development, one that has chosen an approach more consistent with the "triple helix" metaphor. Results based on in-depth interviews show that entrepreneurs and potential innovators (scientists and researchers) feel excluded, or even avoid, involvement with governmental actors. Technology-based business concepts are not emerging and new firms are not being created. The study questions the existing top-down Triple Helix model of innovation systems as, by necessity, it discards the entrepreneurs, as opposed to the competing model, a true bottom-up (or supervenient) double helix model.
The role of research in regional innovation systems: new models meeting knowledge economy demands
International Journal of Technology Management, 2004
Today, innovation systems are being elaborated in ever-wider areas of national space-economies. Of particular interest is the growth of academic study and practical policy towards assisting formation of regional innovation systems. Over 100 of these empirical studies have been documented worldwide and in the EU over 100 regional innovation strategies were implemented in the past decade. But new pressures upon existing innovation systems are coming from a globalising knowledge economy that favours metropoles and eschews peripheries. Now, new approaches to tackling innovation deficits are emerging ground-up in Europe that give insight into the real nature of competitiveness and the interlinked roles of science, research and innovation for the future.
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Role of regional policies in promoting networking and innovation activity of firms
2004
The success of firms and regions is increasingly defined by their innovation and learning capabilities. It has been emphasized in several studies that a local operational environment may have a positive impact on innovation activity of firms. From policy point of view, the relationship between firms and their local environment is an important research topic. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether there is a demand for regional policy makers in promoting innovative and networking activity of firms, and what are the appropriate strategies in this regard. The concept of innovative milieu provides a theoretical base for this study. The data used is based on personal interviews representing 30 high tech firms located in Jyväskylä Science Park in Finland. The results show that the firms appreciate an individual-level approach by policy makers which enables them to take the real needs of firms into consideration. A developed service structure, that is planned to meet the demand of new and established firms as well as possible, is an essential part of the well functioning operational environment. Supporting contacts with service providers and experts from different fields and organizing collective meetings for firms are important targets for the policy makers. In the innovation process, a commercial view of external part is considered very crucial. The small advances which alternate between the development of the innovation process and networks among firms and their interest groups could form a favourable path towards an operational environment with efficient innovative networks.