Recent Research II: Who is More Likely to Advance the Exchange of Knowledge within and between Regions?

Within economic development literature, many researchers believe the success of regional industry clusters is dependent on the strength and quantity of local “gatekeepers” – the organizations, firms and individuals that both draw knowledge from outside the region and distribute knowledge within the region. But what are the characteristics of these gatekeepers that may lead to a more productive exchange of knowledge?

 

In a recent paper, Gatekeepers in Regional Networks of Innovators, Holger Graf investigates the actions of these entities within four economically diverse regions of Germany. Graf gauged the relationships inside and outside of a region by analyzing information about the patents filed. He used the number of patents filed by an entity as a proxy for its size, and concluded size was not a major reason for being a gatekeeper. However, the number of distinct inventors that appear on an entity’s filed patents, known as the absorptive capacity, was found to be a very important predictor of being a gatekeeper.

 

Throughout the paper, the physical location of the collaborators for the filing of a patent was used to judge if any entity had internal connections within the region in addition to external connections outside of the region. As admitted by the author, the use of patent data to measure the amount of interaction may be an imperfect metric, as there are many other forms of interaction and communication that can occur. Nevertheless, the patent data represents a way to quantify the relationships that can be tracked and then analyzed statistically. Within the sample population used in the paper, a gatekeeper was defined as an entity that had both at least one relation internal to the region and one relation outside of the region. The author also concluded that public research institutions perform more like gatekeepers compared to private firms, perhaps due to the willingness of public organizations to share their knowledge when compared to incentive-seeking private firms.

 

While the paper did not investigate if gatekeepers create more economically successful regions, it did explore how to identify gatekeepers and their characteristics. From a practitioner’s perspective, if one accepts that increasing the number and quality of local gatekeepers impacts the economic potential of a region, then the information provided in the report may influence strategies to strengthen the connectivity of firms, organizations, and individuals to other entities both inside and outside a region.

 

The paper also provides a window into social network theory, analyzing the complex linkages between the various patenting entities within a region. The paper gives some examples on how to graphically observe and investigate these connections within the selected regions of Germany – two of which are considered to be economically booming while the other two are more economically stagnant.

 

Gatekeepers in Regional Networks of Innovators is available at:

http://ideas.repec.org/p/jrp/jrpwrp/2007-054.html