How do firms acquire knowledge in different sectoral and regional contexts?

Author(s)
Michaela Trippl, Franz Tödtling
Abstract

The chapter provides a review and discussion of recent conceptual and empirical contributions on the nature and geography of firms’ knowledge acquisition activities. The authors offer a systematic conceptual view of the pattern of knowledge sourcing, bringing into focus and combining the notions of industrial knowledge bases (sectoral contexts), which are supposed to vary considerably with respect to the transferability of their key knowledge types, and regional innovation systems (regional contexts), which are supposed to differ substantially in terms of the availability of knowledge sources. The empirical part of the chapter draws on cases from Austria, Finland, Germany and Sweden and provides an analysis and comparison of knowledge-sourcing activities in analytical, synthetic and symbolic industrial sectors in metropolitan, specialized industrial and peripheral regional contexts.

Organisation(s)
Department of Geography and Regional Research
Pages
142-154
No. of pages
13
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4337/9781784710774.00017
Publication date
2016
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
507026 Economic geography
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/how-do-firms-acquire-knowledge-in-different-sectoral-and-regional-contexts(5ac9cb84-bf7b-472b-b80d-bf03ba0c90c1).html