The role of geographical proximity in fostering connections and knowledge flows between innovative actors ranks among the most controversial themes in the research of innovation systems, regional networks and new economic geography. While there is ample empirical evidence on the constituent...

Various forms of interaction during the process of research and innovation constitute a global network of knowledge generation and diffusion. Countries and their research organizations and individual scientists need to be embedded in this network to participate in global knowledge ows and to...

We analyze the role of universities or, more generally higher education institutions (HEIs), in terms of their regional and international embeddedness for regional knowledge base renewal. We assume that the introduction of radical patents in the sense of novel technological combinations...

Cluster studies have shown that innovation can be understood as the result of an inter- organizational process, where a division of labor with regard to exploration and exploitation exists among the actors inside the cluster. A cluster is ambidextrous if it manages to balance innovative...

Cluster policies aim at improving collaboration between co-located actors to address systemic failures. As yet, cluster policy evaluations are mainly concerned with effects on firm performance. Some recent studies move to the system level by assessing how the structure of actor-based knowledge...

The concept of Bridging Technologies (BTs) refers to technologies which are important for the regional knowledge base by connecting different fields and thereby enabling technological development. We provide analytical tools to identify BTs and study their evolution over time. We apply these...

The last decades saw a pronounced shift in innovation policy in Germany and many other countries towards increased funding of cooperative R&D. Over the last years, competitions between regional initiatives pushed this trend even further by adding a regional perspective, by increasing the scope...

Economists pay more and more attention to knowledge networks and drivers of their development. Consequently, a rich literature emerged analyzing factors explaining the emergence of intra-organizational links. Despite substantial work focusing on the dyad level, only little is known about how and...

Technological change and gains in efficiency of renewable power generation technologies are to a large extent driven by governmental support. Various policies that can broadly be categorized as technology push, demand pull or systemic constitute a policy mix for renewable energies. Our goal is...

The flow of knowledge through interaction between innovative actors is central to the systemic view of innovation. We review the literature on interaction and innovator networks with a focus on regional aspects. To illustrate the relevance of these relations, we apply social network analysis...