Industrial Knowledge Bases as Drivers of Open Innovation?

The article presents an analysis of a large-scale survey with the aim of understanding differences in the open, interactive and distributed nature of external innovation relations amongst firms belonging to different industrial knowledge bases. The thesis is that the source of critical innovation relevant knowledge differs between industrial knowledge bases, making the character and the need of openness contingent on these specificities. Accordingly, we anticipate that we will observe systematic variations in how industries access and combine innovation-related external knowledge. In our analyses we attempt to address a gap in the literature by examining how industrial knowledge bases affect the recombination of knowledge by analysing the different extents, forms (formal and informal) and geography of inbound open innovation. The article illustrates that features and structures of inbound open innovation align, to a large extent, with the industries' knowledge bases and that there is a interplay between an industry's knowledge base, the internal organisation of innovation processes and the channels and geography of inbound open innovation

Innovation, knowledge bases and clustering in selected industries in the Oslo region

This report is the result of six industrial studies performed for the RITTS Oslo project (Regional Innovation Infrastructure and Technology Transfer Systems in the Oslo region). The project was initiated by Oslo and Akershus Business Council in 1998, with financial support from the Commission of the European Union.Our main task within the Oslo RITTS project has been to map existing interactions between business activities and research and technology environments in the region. More specifically, the objective of our industry studies has been to analyse how technological knowledge creation and diffusion in the region take place, and relate such processes to innovation. The main focus has been on the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the region. The industries studied are printing and publishing, food, machinery and equipment, electronics and the electrotechnical industry, and offshore engineering.An important aim of the project has been to give policy makers insight into the ways innovation performance in the region could be improved. We hope that this report may be helpful in the ongoing work to formulate and implement a more powerful public innovation policy in the region.The present report is in reality several reports bound into one volume. STEP researchers carried out five industry studies during the summer and autumn of 1999. These are all presented here, as self contained and relatively independent analyses. The different studies were carried through in parallel, and the authors’ ambition was to make studies that would be comparable in scope and which would be complementary with respect to choice of industry, but containing much common analytical substance. We introduce this report with a short, synthesizing overview of the main findings of all the industry studies.The subsequent industry analyses are based on three main sources: First, a range of in-depth interviews with people in the industries (managers, market directors, researchers and operators), in unions and other organisations working in the Oslo region, and from institutions in research and higher education in the area. Second, information has been gathered through the screening of research publications, annual reports, web-sites, etc. Third, information on the industries, on employment, innovation patterns and technological co-operation, etc. has been obtained from a number of data-sets, some of which are maintained by STEP.