Agglomerations and firm performance: is every company gaining the same?

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Jose Luis Hervás Oliver
Dpto. de Organización de Empresas. UPV
Thursday, 10 July 2014 - 12:00

The study integrates economic geography literature with the strategic management strand, providing a cross-fertilization framework in order to explore the relationship between agglomerations and innovation. Competitors’ agglomerations may create benefits in forms of externalities which render extra sources of external (to the firm) knowledge. When such externalities exist, then who gains from whom? Despite an important body of research on this topic, the evidence is inconclusive and mostly based on few particular industries. We examine the moderating role of localization externalities on a firm’s combination of internal and external sources of knowledge to innovate. Using a large-scale dataset of 6,697 firms integrated with a regional agglomeration-related dataset, our results show that externalities moderate the innovation outcome, producing asymmetric results. 

Keywords: agglomerations, absorptive capacity, innovation, firms

Place: 

Ciudad Politécnica de la Innovación
Edificio 8E, Acceso J, Planta 4ª (Sala Descubre. Cubo Rojo)
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia | Camino de Vera s/n

Short CV: 

Dr. Jose Luis Hervas Oliver is associate professor at the UPV. His research interest lies at the intersection between strategic management, innovation and economic geography. Dr Hervas-Oliver is especially active in clusters and innovation, basically working with SMEs and low-tech industries. His research has been published in management and economic geography journals such as Journal of Economic Geography, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Papers in Regional Science, European Planning Studies, Technovation, Journal of Business Research, Small Business Economics, Journal of Technology Transfer, Research-Technology Management, Economics of Innovation and New Technology, among many others.