Innovation and Proximity

Abstract

The article focuses on the relationship between technological and organizational innovation, and territories. This relationship is connected to interactions between learning processes, institutions and spatial patterns of innovative activities. Starting from a conception of the economy as a learning and evolutionary process instead of a static allocative mechanism, we analyse the role of several types of proximity in innovative processes. If one considers innovation as a problem-solving oriented process, it may be analysed as grounded on non-market inter-actions, and knowledge-based. The article shows how geographical, organizational and institutional proximities relate to the operation of localized innovation systems. The institutional framework is of particular importance in this context owing to the fact that such innovation systems are grounded on collective action at a territorial level and rely upon shared patterns of behavioural and cognitive rules. The analysis of institutional proximity raises the problems of the embeddedness of interrelations between actors in a territorial framework, and the transferability of tacit knowledge. This framework is extended to the analysis of spatial patterns in the emergence and diffusion of industrial models. In our conception, the emergence of an industrial model has territorial foundations, but it is also dependent upon an institutional learning process. However, once stabilized and diffused, its relation to geography and territories evolves and transforms. We illustrate this analysis by referring to the emergence and diffusion of industrial models in the automobile industry. Finally, the framework is used to analyse the spatial effects of organizational changes in product development. These changes are both institutional and technological.

Innovation, knowledge creation and systems of innovation

“…Geographic proximity indicates the positioning of actors within a given spatial framework, while technological proximity pertains to the association with the set of vertical or horizontal interdependencies within the scope of production relationships. The transformation of these two types of proximity into a territorially based system of innovation assumes that they be institutionally organized and structured (Kirat and Lung 1999). Thus, territorially defined systems of innovation are grounded in collective action at a territorial level.…”

“…The cohesiveness of a territorially based system of innovation is provided by a spectrum of informal institutions, i.e. the territorially prevailing set of rules, conventions and norms (Kirat and Lung 1999).…”

Technological Centers as a Negotiated Context to Combine Technological Capabilities

“…It has been frequently underlined that those institutions can go well beyond firms, for example, in the studies on innovation systems (e.g. Lundvall 1992) or industrial agglomerations (Kirat and Lung 1999;Maskell 2001;Romero-Martínez and Montoro-Sánchez 2008). Additionally, as knowledge is partially tacit, limited and dispersed in nature (Hayek 1945;Polanyi 1966), firms, which are often conceived as fixed entities that control and decide about given resources, can instead be seen as dynamic and idiosyncratic entities with unique capabilities that underlie the extraction of services from the resources they control (Penrose 1959(Penrose /1995.…”

A Systemic Approach to Innovation

“…Geographic proximity indicates the positioning of actors within a given spatial framework, while technological proximity pertains to the association with the set of vertical or horizontal interdependencies within the scope of production relationships. The transformation of these two types of proximity into a regional system of innovation assumes that they be institutionally organised and structured (Kirat and Lung 1999). Thus, regional systems of innovation are grounded in collective action at a territorial level.…”

“…The cohesiveness of such a system of innovation is provided by a spectrum of informal institutions, i.e. the territorially prevailing set of rules, conventions and norms (Kirat and Lung 1999).…”