Papers in Innovation Studies,
Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: This paper investigates the structure of the intra-firm innovation networks (IntraINs) and the inter-organisational innovation networks (InterINs) of six leading manufacturing companies in the Great Zurich Area of Switzerland and the Sichuan province of China. It assesses the regional institutional environments (RIEs) of these two regions and explores their impact on the connectedness of both the IntraINs and InterINs of the case companies. It finds that RIE has no apparent impact on the case firms’ IntraINs. The impact of RIE on the InterINs is mainly manifested through its impact on the connections among the outside organisations rather than the direct connections between the focal firms and their outside collaborators. It is suggested that for helping big companies to build up innovation networks, public policy should be deployed to improve the RIE instead of directly bridging firms and the outside organisations which the firms can do it well by themselves.

Keywords: Innovation network; Regional institutional environment; Intra-firm; Inter-organisational; Chin; Switzerland

JEL-codes: O30

30 pages, October 21, 2011

Full text files

201107_Liu.pdf  

Download statistics

• Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research
• Home page for this series

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Torben Schubert ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

This page generated on 2024-02-05 17:12:33.