Heidi Wiig Aslesen

Knowledge Intensive Business Services and Urban Industrial Development

This paper analyses the role of knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) as innovation agents for other firms and industries with empirical evidence from the capital region of Oslo, Norway. It focuses in particular on the role of two sectors (software industry and organisational consultants) in stimulating innovation and growth, showing that firms in the two KIBS sectors mainly provide products and services tailored to individual clients and have frequent face-to-face meetings, relationships that may stimulate innovation. Moreover, data reveal that Oslo firms are more frequent users of consultancy services than firms located outside urban areas, suggesting a gap between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’.

A Comparative Study of the Aquaculture Innovation Systems in Quebec's Coastal Region and Norway

This paper examines the actors and activities and the institutional–spatial dynamics that characterize innovation and knowledge processes within the aquaculture industry and its support organizations in the coastal region of Quebec, Canada. It aims to identify the main features and components of such support organizations and their roles in entrepreneurial and knowledge processes. Comparing this Canadian case with the more developed Norwegian innovation system in aquaculture, the paper concludes that the market possibilities for the products of aquaculture are almost the same in Norway and Quebec. However, it is the policy and institutional settings, as well as the historical trajectories of the respective innovation systems, which seem to explain the growth of the aquaculture industry in Norway and its less successful development in Quebec. The paper also investigates the conditions and institutional arrangements that may stimulate the building and development of a more mature aquaculture innovation system support in Quebecs coastal region.

Knowledge-Intensive Business Service as innovation agent through client interaction and labour mobility

Theoretical propositions often maintain that the Knowledge-Intensive Business Service (KIBS) sector is important in stimulating innovation activity in other industries. Empirical results from quantitative innovation surveys on the other hand generally regard KIBS as less important innovation partners for other firms. Such results may rely on the fact that quantitative surveys do not seize all the roles KIBS firms have as knowledge sources. The paper thus demonstrates that many workers left the KIBS sector in Norway to start working in other sectors during parts of the 1990s, signifying a flow of knowledge following the workers out of the KIBS sector.

Encounters between cluster theory, policy and practice in Norway: Hubbing, blending and conceptual stretching

For more than two decades, cluster theory has served as a basis for widespread implementation of regional development policies in several countries. However, there are still persistent struggles in academia towards agreement on clear operational definitions of a cluster. In this article, we argue that this definitional haziness, reflected by difficulties in demarcating the scale and scope of clusters, leads to a stretching of the cluster concept when put into practice. We show how actors, through cluster projects, are utilizing strategies of “hubbing” and/or “blending” to develop their own understandings of both what clusters are and what they might or should be. Through studies of three Norwegian cluster projects, we argue that national cluster policies, through translation of an academically vague concept, facilitate a stretching of the original definition of clusters, giving regional stakeholders leeway to integrate other theoretical rationales instead. We argue that this is not taken into account in current policies.

The effect of local and global linkages on the innovativeness in ICT SMEs: does location-specific context matter?

Abstract Countries differ significantly with regard to the location-specific contexts in which they are embedded. The aim of this paper is to extend the discussion on the effects of local and global innovation collaborations on the degree of novelty of innovation by considering this context. Our main question is: Does embeddedness in the developed or emerging country context affect the likelihood of benefiting from local or global linkages for innovations with higher novelty? The paper is based on data gathered through a survey of firms in the ICT sector in an emerging economy (India) context and from two Scandinavian countries (Sweden and Norway). The findings of this study show that global linkages do indeed impact the degree of novelty of innovation. However, country context does have a moderating effect. While the effect of global linkages is highly positive on the innovativeness of Scandinavian firms, for the Indian SMEs, the linkages that give novel innovations are the regional ones.

Extra-regional linkages through MNCs in organizationally thick and specialized RISs: a source of new path development?

ABSTRACT This paper explores how global innovation networks (GIN) within multinational companies (MNCs) act as extra-regional sources for path development in a regional innovation system (RIS) specializing in the oil and gas sector. We combine the literature on intra-firm knowledge dynamics in MNCs’ GIN with the literature on RISs to better understand their interrelatedness and their dynamics. Based on interviews with 15 MNCs located in the south-west of Norway, we find that firms are highly dependent on competence throughout the MNCs’ entire networks, as well as interaction with the overall RIS. The findings expose that MNCs’ GINs can act as extra-regional sources for path ‘extension’ in thick and specialized RISs through intra-firm mobility, observation and sharing of routines and best practice, mainly resulting in incremental innovations. We find some signs of potential path ‘renewal’, including radical innovation ideas. However, there are hampering factors linked to strong internal competition for innovation projects, pressure for local profitability and ownership motivation. At the level of RISs, new initiatives going beyond existing cluster initiatives and specializations need support.

Knowledge Intensive Business Services and regional development: consultancy in city regions in Norway

Today, the study of regions is central to academic analysis and policy deliberation on how to respond to the rise of the knowledge economy. Regional Economies as Knowledge Laboratories illustrates how newer types of regional analysis – utilising scientometrics, knowledge services measures and university networks, and concepts such as knowledge life cycles, experimental knowledge creation, and knowledge ethics – are leading to a perception that regional economies increasingly resemble knowledge laboratories.

Entrepreneurial firms in STI and DUI mode clusters: do they need differentiated cluster facilitation?

ABSTRACT This paper elaborates on the types of knowledge sources, actors and geographical space that are involved in innovation processes among small entrepreneurial firms located in two distinct city-based clusters in Norway with firms characterized as typical STI mode innovators (Oslo Cancer Cluster) and DUI mode innovators (Subsea cluster in Bergen). The aim of the paper is to see how, when and why firms source distinct knowledge and to what degree this aligns with their initial knowledge base and STI or DUI innovation mode. Findings show that the knowledge base and innovation mode approach hold for describing the early stages of the innovation process, suggesting cumulative path-dependent knowledge dynamics. However, at later stages, firms combine STI and DUI mode innovation logics and activate different types of sources, actors and geographical scales through combinatorial knowledge dynamics, largely pushed forward by the need to solve unforeseen challenges, to understand markets and by the need to reduce risks associated with the newness of innovations. Furthermore, we find that rigid regulatory regimes influence the dynamic interplay between sources, actors and geographical scales in the process of creating and transmitting knowledge. Based on these findings, the paper proposes cluster roles and facilitation initiatives.

Clusters initiatives, open innovation and knowledge bases

The chapter studies the relationship between companies’ knowledge bases and their sources, channels and geography of innovation-relevant knowledge. It questions whether some types of cluster initiative are too oriented towards establishing regional cooperation. Indeed, regional clusters and innovation systems assume that geographical agglomerations and regional cooperation stimulate firms’ innovation activity and value creation. However, companies are becoming increasingly integrated into global value chains and knowledge networks, suggesting that extra-regional resources are also important for innovation. Further, the geography of knowledge sources also varies between the types of knowledge that are central to firms’ innovation activity. The analysis shows that firms have innovation collaboration with many different types of partners, and that firms with different knowledge bases use partners differently. Analytical knowledge firms have more cooperation with universities, technology centres and suppliers than firms with a symbolic knowledge base. The geography of knowledge sources also varies as firms with an analytical knowledge base collaborate internationally, while companies in symbolic industries collaborate more with proximate actors. Informal channels for obtaining innovation-relevant knowledge are frequently used by firms, and the source of informal knowledge also varies between firms with different knowledge bases. Based on this, cluster initiatives should have a national and international perspective, and the design of cluster policy should enter a new ‘radical phase’ that takes more into account the geography of innovation sources and types of innovation channels of relevance to different cluster types.

Heterogeneity and Knowledge-Intensive Business Services in the City

The key message of this book is that heterogeneity should be seen as an intrinsic and indispensable element of knowledge systems. The authors address the concept of heterogeneity in a multi-disciplinary fashion, including perspectives from evolutionary economics and innovation system studies, and relate this approach to existing theories in a broad range of fields.