Does regional proximity still matter in a global economy? The case of flemish biotech ventures

When internal knowledge bases are insufficient for developing innovations, companies tend to collaborate with external R&D partners. According to a long-standing literature on ‘clusters’, ‘industrial districts’, ‘local production systems’ and ‘regional innovation systems’, geographical proximity between innovation partners is considered a precondition for inter-organizational collaborations: Proximity is said to facilitate trust, the transfer of tacit knowledge, and the intensity of interactions. This article investigates the importance of geographical proximity for R&D collaborations... Mehr ...