Abstract
Recent literature on technological changes has highlighted the role of knowledge recombination in innovation. Evidence suggests that the production of scientific and technological knowledge is becoming an increasingly collective phenomenon. Thus, in rapidly developing industries, it is almost inevitable to develop inter-organizational collaborations to identify new opportunities for new technologies.
The aim of this chapter was to explore the innovative activities and networks in European regions (EU 27 plus Norway and Switzerland) from 1980 to 2010. Specifically, we analysed the most innovative sectors: environmental (green), biotechnology (biotech), laser and optic technology and nanotechnology (nanotech). This longitudinal study relies on European Patent Office (EPO) patents and inventors’ data by year and region, as provided by OECD-Regpat database. Our main findings emphasize the rise of co-inventions in intra-regional and inter-regional inventive networks, the concentration of innovations in central regions and peripheral regions’ reliance on external knowledge flows to compensate for their technological weaknesses.
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Notes
- 1.
Reg_share is less than 1if the inventor is assigned to different regions because of moving in the three years preceding the patent’s priority year. Inv_share is less than 1 when patent is co-invented.
- 2.
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
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This EU research project was funded under the FP7 grant number 320131, SMARTSPEC.
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Belussi, F., De Noni, I., Orsi, L. (2018). Mapping Inventors’ Networks to Trace Knowledge Flows Among EU Regions. In: Isaksen, A., Martin, R., Trippl, M. (eds) New Avenues for Regional Innovation Systems - Theoretical Advances, Empirical Cases and Policy Lessons. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71661-9_9
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