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Knowledge Spillovers in Regional Innovation Systems pp 195–218Cite as

The Role of FDI in Regional Innovation and Its Influence on the Emergence of Knowledge Spillover Effects

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Part of the book series: Advances in Spatial Science ((ADVSPATIAL))

Abstract

Innovation plays a crucial role in regional development. There are a lot of ways how regional innovation could occur. One of them, important specially for less developed countries, is through foreign direct investment (FDI). Still, how these external flows of knowledge and innovation can influence regional growth and which policies are relevant to support them are not yet fully understood. This is especially important for CEE regions, which still show limited local knowledge and innovation endowment compare to European research area. We approached these issues by concentrating on the successful development of the automotive sector in Western Slovakia. Vast majority of companies in the sector are foreign owned, so the regional capabilities to utilize FDI as a most important source of knowledge and innovation are investigated. We chose the case study methodology based mainly on interviews with different actors in the industry. We showed the reasons and preconditions for the successful sector’s development from adaptive to an endogenous innovation pattern. As result, evidence suggests that national policies’ effectiveness very much depended on being tailored to regional and sector conditions for innovation creation or acquisition.

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Acknowledgments

Main part of this research was previously published by Šipikal and Buček in Regional Policy and Practice (2013). Research was conducted with support of ESPON (project “Knowledge Innovation Territory”) and VEGA (project n. 1/0098/15).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of National Economy, University of Economics in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Miroslav Šipikal & Milan Buček

Authors
  1. Miroslav Šipikal
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  2. Milan Buček
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Correspondence to Miroslav Šipikal .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pardubice, Pardubice, Czech Republic

    Jan Stejskal

  2. University of Pardubice, Pardubice, Czech Republic

    Petr Hajek

  3. Technical University of Kosice, Kosice, Slovakia

    Oto Hudec

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Šipikal, M., Buček, M. (2018). The Role of FDI in Regional Innovation and Its Influence on the Emergence of Knowledge Spillover Effects. In: Stejskal, J., Hajek, P., Hudec, O. (eds) Knowledge Spillovers in Regional Innovation Systems. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67029-4_7

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