Knowledge relations and innovation from a regional perspective

Innovation is of key importance for the competitiveness of firms in the knowledge economy and is widely regarded as an open and interactive process nowadays. However, the potential for sourcing knowledge and for interacting with external partners seems to depend on the characteristics of the regional innovation system (RIS) among other factors. Focussing on the ICT sector in three different regions of Austria, we investigate, therefore, whether firms in metropolitan, less urbanised or industrial RIS exhibit different patterns of innovation and knowledge sourcing. We expect that companies in a metropolitan "thick" RIS rely to a higher extent on local knowledge sources in particular from universities and research institutes and use more interactive transfer mechanisms than firms located in a less urbanised "thin" RIS. In industrial RIS, firms often exhibit a less diverse regional knowledge sourcing pattern than those in a metropolitan RIS, i.e. leading to more incremental innovations. The paper builds on the concepts of knowledge bases and knowledge links, as well as on types of regional innovation systems. Empirical evidence is assessed in this respect for ICT firms from metropolitan Vienna representing a "thick" RIS, from less urbanised Salzburg standing for a "thin" RIS and industrial Upper Austria being an example of a networked RIS.