Purpose
Despite the importance of innovation in and the growth of the wine industry in recent years, empirical research devoted to innovation in this industry remains scarce. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to filling this gap by exploring innovation among Canadian wine firms.
Design/methodology/approach
The data used in this paper are drawn from an original firm-level survey conducted between April and July 2018 to study the business and innovation strategies of Canadian winery firms over the 2015–2017 period.
Findings
First, the study has identified four innovation modes which are distinct in terms of firms’ strategy, innovation activities, and knowledge sourcing and openness. The second finding is that these different innovation modes are associated with different innovation outputs. The third finding is that there here is a tendency for certain innovation modes to better reflect firms in some regions, although all innovation modes are represented to different degrees in each of the three wine regions.
Originality/value
Empirical research devoted to innovation in this industry remains scarce. This paper contributes to filling this gap by exploring innovation among Canadian wine firms. These firms deal with several challenges and opportunities arising from the production and transformation of cool-climate grapes that impact on business innovation approaches.
The supercluster is a new initiative promoted by the Canadian federal government to strengthen Canada’s most promising clusters and allow innovative firms to operate more productively in sourcing inputs and accessing information, knowledge, and technology. This paper contributes to the scientific research on superclusters and pursues two objectives. First, we discuss the origins of the supercluster initiative and trace its roots back to major research traditions on regional agglomerations and territorial innovation models, in particular the cluster theory, the regional innovation system, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem approaches. Second, we conduct a critical analysis and identify four critical questions (or challenges) that need to be addressed to clarify the scope and objectives of the policy.
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