The Role of Regional Policies in Promoting Networking and Innovative Activity: Evidence from Small Finnish High-tech Firms

Abstract

The success of high-technology firms is strongly dependent on their innovation capacity and network relationships. There is a growing recognition that few firms are able to innovate in isolation. Cooperation can provide access to a complementary knowledge base and resources, and speed up the innovation process of firms. Regional developers are criticized for their inadequate ability to integrate themselves into the regional networks and innovation processes of firms and their ability to determine firms' needs for innovation and networking. The research topic of this study concentrates on the possibilities of regional developers of influencing the operational environment of high-tech firms through the development of networks and innovation activity of firms. Of particular interest are the micro-level policies and concrete actions by regional developers for meeting the needs of firms. The data used are based on interviews addressed to high-tech firms located in Jyväskylä Science Park in Finland.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Jari Ritsilä, Hannu Tervo and the anonymous referees for their helpful comments. She is also grateful to Jyväskylä Science Park for enabling the collection of the data for this study. Financial support from the Local Development Foundation of Finland and the Academy of Finland (project number: 127049) is also gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

The company structure of the Jyväskylä Science Park changed after gathering the data for this study. Today, the facility services are provided by Technopolis JSP Ltd, business development services by Technopolis Ventures JSP Ltd and industry development services by Jyväskylä Innovation Ltd. In this study, however, the “old” terms are retained.

Jyväskylä Regional Development Company Jykes Ltd is a business development company in the Jyväskylä region. Its operations are focused more on firms representing traditional industries, whereas the Jyväskylä Science Park specializes in high-tech firms.

The data were collected as part of a larger study that evaluated the effects of the Jyväskylä Science Park's interventions on their target groups.

The IT sector in the Jyväskylä region is large compared with the other high-tech sectors. Thus, at the time of these interviews, the IT firms formed the majority in the Jyväskylä Science Park.

Four response categories: 1 = no importance, 2 = minor importance, 3 = fairly important and 4 = very important.

The coefficient of contingency is a χ ²-based measure of the relation between two categorical variables. It varies from 0 to 1 (where 0 signifies complete independence). Values above 0.3 indicate a moderate association, and those exceeding 0.6 a strong dependence. The disadvantage of this statistic is that its specific upper limit is “limited” by the size of the table.