The Geography of Small Firm Innovation / Edition 1

by Grant Black

Overview

It has long been recognized that advances in science contribute to economic growth. While it is one thing to argue that such a relationship exists, it is quite another to establish the extent to which knowledge spills over within and between sectors of the economy. Such a research agenda faces numerous challenges. Not only must one seek measures of inputs, but a measure of output is needed as well to estimate the knowledge production function. The identification of such a measure was a compelling goal for Zvi Griliches, if not the holy grail: “The dream of getting hold of an output indicator of inventive activity is one of the strong motivating forces for economic research in this area.” (Griliches 1990, p. 1669). Jaffe (1989) made a significant contribution to estimating the knowledge production function when he established a relationship between patent activity and R&D activity at the state level. Feldman and coauthors (1994a, 1994b) added considerably to this line of research, focusing on innovation counts as the dependent variable instead of patent counts. This work was particularly important given that many innovations are never patented. Feldman’s work also differentiated by firm size and showed that knowledge spillovers from universities play a key role as sources of knowledge for small firms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780387241845
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	01/14/2005
Series:	International Studies in Entrepreneurship , #1
Edition description:	2004
Pages:	180
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.02(d)

Table of Contents

The Small Business Innovation Research Program.- Geography and Innovation.- Evaluating Innovative Activity.- Metropolitan Sbir Activity in the 1990s.- Agency Effects in Federally Funded Innovation.- Metropolitan Patent Activity in the 1990s.- Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

"(The Geography of Small Firm Innovation) provides an interesting review of the research done on the economic impacts of agglomerations and an in-depth look at the SBIR program. This is benificial to researchers across countries working on entrepreneurial firms and government programs leading to policy interventions. Black's research ...gives us deeper insights to the impact of anchors in agglomerations."

-Barak S. Aharonson, University of Toronto

Journal of International Entrepreneurship 3:1, March 2005

From the Publisher