Innovation Activities and Networks in Metropolitan Systems of Innovation: Empirical Findings from Barcelona, Vienna and Stockholm

Abstract

Metropolitan regions are increasingly coming to be seen as regional development engines in a globalising world (Huggins 1997). On the one hand, as traditional approaches have explained, metropolitan regions are able to facilitate agglomeration economies in the form of urbanisation and localisation economies for their actors. On the other, they function as gateways to other regions, thus linking the local actors with national or international ones. With respect to innovation, these two aspects are becoming more and more meaningful, as the innovative capacity of firms depends not only on their own R&D capabilities. The opportunity of a firm to co-operate with external partners, such as customers, industrial suppliers, producer service firms, research institutes and competitors during innovation processes becomes an important locational factor which reduces risks and uncertainties and leads to collective learning (De Bresson and Amesse 1991; Lakshmanan and Okumura 1995; Malecki and Oinas 1999; Hudson 1999, Crevoisier 1999). Due to their size, metropolitan regions offer a variety of potential network partners to local firms, ensuring synergies creating new knowledge and resulting in technological progress. For these reasons such regions can be interpreted as metropolitan innovations systems (MIS), as an example of a regional innovation system as described in Revilla Diez (forthcoming) and Fischeret al.(2001).