European Regional Science Association
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European Regional Science Association
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The abstract for paper number 501:
Xavier Vence, Manuel González, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Services and Innovation in European Regions: An Approach of the Geography of Innovative Services
Studies on economic innovation have been traditionally focused on manufacturing activities and particularly on intensive R&D industries such as pharmaceutical, chemical or electronic ones. This “manufacture bias” is probably the main reason that explains the relative lack of studies on service innovation. Only recently some authors have initiated research on the specific process of innovation in services (Metcalfe and Miles, 2000; Sundbo and Gallouj, 2000, etc). The lack of interest on the analysis of innovation in services is even more paradoxal if we take into account that these activities are nowadays the most important ones in terms of production and employment. In fact, the so-called “knowledge economy” is largely based on the increasing importance of services with high intensity of knowledge. If not much research has been done on innovation in services, almost nothing has been made on its spatial dimension. Although there is an important amount of literature that analyses the spatial dimension of both R&D activities and high-tech manufacturing, little has been said on the spatial dimension of innovative and knowledge intensive services. In this paper we approach this aspect using data on employment in Knowledge Intensive Services and High-Tech Services for the EU regions (Nuts 2) provided by REGIO-Eurostat. We explore whether they follow or not a pattern of concentration and what may be the factors explaining such a tendency. We also try to see if their presence is related to the regional innovation pattern in the EU (measured by R&D expenditure, Patents intensity, etc).
Unfortunately full paper has not been submitted.