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There is an increased need of understanding organizational and institutional underpinnings of firms' global knowledge search. This paper addresses thick and diversified RIS in two different territorial contexts and explores firms' use of physical and virtual space in their search of innovation relevant knowledge. Through interviews with ICT and new media SMEs from Scandinavia (Oslo, Malmö) and Beijing, findings show that low-cost and virtual search space is very important for innovation; furthermore, regional, global and virtual space co-evolve and mutually reinforce each other. Global search strategies differ between the two contexts, emphasizing the importance of a regional institutional-organizational framing supporting trust, collaboration and motivation for global search. In order to reap the benefits of the regional-global-virtual dynamics, being thick and diversified is not enough to have global reach and attractiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways by which organizational and institutional features of regional innovation systems shape smart specialization practices in less-developed, intermediate and advanced regions. Drawing on research from 15 European regions, it shows that the implantation of smart specialization creates challenges in all three types of regions. At the same time, there is evidence that smart specialization supports policy-learning and system-building efforts in less-developed regions and facilitates policy reorientation and system transformation in more advanced regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, the notion of institutional thickness has become a key reference for a large body of work that has sought to provide profound insights into the link between institutions and regional development. However, only few attempts have been made to reassess the concept, to improve its methodology, and to reflect on its empirical application. The aim of this article is to revise the original concept of institutional thickness. We draw on and seek to contribute to current work in economic geography and related disciplines on the role of organizations and institutions in regional development. We identify some crucial limitations and provide suggestions for how they can be addressed. It is argued that much can be gained by (1) explicitly elaborating on the relation between the organizational and institutional dimensions of thickness, (2) moving beyond overly static views on thickness, (3) developing a multiscalar approach to thickness, and (4) identifying features for assessing thickness in absolute and relative terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore the relation between the critical knowledge base of firms and how firms respond to incentives embedded in the institutional framework surrounding them. The analysis gives us a better understanding of the complex development of the food sector in Southern Sweden in the past decades. Theoretically, the paper combines concepts of path dependency and knowledge bases, and applies this framework to a set of development trajectories of firms in the Scanian food sector. Three development paths are identified—path extension, path renewal and new path creation. Findings illustrate that these are rooted in different knowledge base combinations of firms, which make them respond differently to similar place- and sector-specific institutional conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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This paper analyses the role of university knowledge in the innovation processes of cultural industries. Most studies of cultural industries highlight the importance of locally clustered firms in innovation processes. Those that analyze university-industry collaboration focus on technological development or industrial R&D, but neglect cultural industries as objects of analysis. The paper addresses this gap in the literature while analyzing collaboration with university patterns and innovation processes of new media firms in Scania, Southern Sweden. The findings reveal that innovation, influenced by industry-academia collaboration, takes place not only in technology-based industries. Collaborative aspects of innovation processes go beyond R&D transfer and include joint competence building, changes in market concepts and new social corporate responsibility actions. This paper adds to the understanding of innovation processes in cultural industries by introducing the university as one more important actor in the knowledge exchange networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]