Collaboration networks, geography and innovation: Local and national embeddedness

Abstract

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The relationship between collaboration, geography and innovation has been analysed in economic geography. However, little is known from a social-network perspective about whether different geographical levels of embeddedness may determine the way networks affect innovation. To address this issue, we compare the effects of regional vs. country-level Spanish networks on future patenting. If we consider the country-wide network, our statistical analysis reproduces the findings of the previous literature. However, negative effects prevail at the regional level, while the influence seems to be rather positive at the country level. We thus conclude that the embeddedness at different geographical scales exerts differing influence on innovation.