نوآوری شرکت : تأثیر همکاری R & D و جغرافیای ورودی های سرمایه انسانی

This paper investigates the role played by the geography of labor inputs in the promotion of innovation. Knowledge can be transferred between firms by inter-firm interactions and inter-firm cooperation. In addition, knowledge can also be transferred between firms by human capital mobility. In order to examine these issues we employ a unique innovation dataset from Finland. This dataset provides information about a firm's innovation performance along with information regarding the origins of a firm's recent labor acquisitions. The origins of the labor are defined according to both the industry and the region. Analyzing these data allows us to identify the different roles which the geography of knowledge exchanges and the geography of labor markets play in the innovation process.

Over the last two decades the relationship between innovation and geography has become an important theme for research into economic growth. While the links between innovation and growth have long been discussed (Nelson and Winter, 1982), more recently the work of Porter (1990), Scott (1988), Acs (2002) has focused attention on the ways in which localized knowl- edge and technology spillovers may promote innova- tion. In particular, it is argued that face-to-face contact between local firms and organizations promotes knowl- edge exchanges, which in turn are assumed to facili- tate innovation (Storper and Venables, 2004). However, knowledge can also be transferred by the movement of human capital embodied in labor mobility. Yet, the type of knowledge transfers associated with labor mobility are largely absent from the innovation literature within urban economics. Little is therefore known about the importance for innovation of human capital mobility. In this paper we aim to identify the particular role which the mobility of human capital plays in promot- ing innovation. In order to do this we employ a unique dataset from Finland on firm innovation behavior. This dataset combines firm-specific information about inno- vation, with information about the nature of inter-firm R&D cooperation, and also the pattern of a firm’s la- bor recruitment. The role played by labor mobility in promoting innovation is estimated using nine different probit models. Our results suggest that human capi- tal inputs acquired from other regions can be impor- tant for innovation. On the other hand, human capital inputs acquired locally appear not to promote innova- tion. As such, our findings appear to lend support to the human-capital migration literature rather more than the innovation-agglomeration arguments. The paper is organized as follows. In the next sec- tion we provide a brief overview of the key theoretical features of the relationship between innovation, face- to-face interaction and labor markets. In Section 3, we discuss the data employed and our methodology. In Sec- tion 4 we examine the issues empirically using nine different probit models of innovation, and Section 5 provides some conclusion.

The results reported here are estimated on the ba- sis of a unique innovation dataset. No previous work has employed such detailed data on innovation, R&D cooperation behavior, and human capital acquisition. For Finnish high technology sectors our results sug- gest that R&D cooperation with other establishments within the same firm grouping is almost always signifi- cantly associated with innovation. The only other form of R&D cooperation which always plays a significant role in innovation is that of cooperation with external re- search institutes, and this is important only for process innovations. Our findings would suggest that face-to- face knowledge exchanges between firms may therefore be rather less important for innovation than many au- thors would assume. As such our findings are rather different to those from other recent research on high technology industries (Henderson, 2003). Further evi- dence against localization explanations for innovation also comes from our local labor market results. We find that local population density is consistently negative or insignificant with respect to innovation. We also find that human capital inputs acquired locally are never pos- itively related to any form of innovation. On the other hand, we do find that labor acquired from other regions with either sector-specific experience or research expe- rience can be important for product and process inno- vations, respectively. As such, our observations appear to be more consistent with the human-capital migration literature rather than with the innovation-agglomeration literature.