Between bonding and bridging: Regional differences in innovative collaboration in Norway

Abstract

The objective of the article is to investigate innovation collaboration among firms in different types of regions in Norway. Informed by literature on innovation network and regional development, the authors examine whether firms in some regions participate more frequently in innovation collaboration than firms in other regions. They also discuss regional differences in type of innovation collaboration. The analysis is based on data from the Sixth Norwegian Community Innovation Survey (CIS), collected by Statistics Norway in 2008, which provided both descriptive statistics and could be used for logistic regression analysis. Key findings are that the likelihood of innovation collaboration is inversely related to region size, and innovation collaboration is especially prevalent among firms in rural regions. A further finding is that firms in rural regions are more involved in bridging linkages (collaboration with different type of actors) than firms in the capital and metropolitan regions. These differences are attributed to the ‘organizational thinness’ of rural regions, which indicate as lack of specific resources in the regions and therefore creates a need for external collaborators.

Keywords:

• bonding linkages
• bridging linkages
• innovation collaboration
• regions

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for valuable comments and suggestions from the editors, two anonymous referees, and Jarle Aarstad. The research was made possible by a grant from the Research Council of Norway.

Editors: Bjørnar Sæther, Michael Jones, Catriona Turner

Notes

1 A random search means selecting combinations of variables without any argument or any link to theory, whereas data-mining implies an automatic analysis of data by including data until significant relationships are identified.