Innovation networks of industry and business‐related services—relations between innovation intensity of firms and regional inter‐firm cooperation

The hypothesis is put forward in this paper that the innovation activity of a firm also reflects its ability to interact with other partners. It is assumed that innovation intensive manufacturing and service firms, defined by a share of innovation expenditures in turnover of above 3.5%, strongly interact with other partners in the innovation process and that by learning effects, accumulated knowledge and a higher absorption capacity the spatial search radius for potential cooperation partners is increased, resulting in a wide spatial range of networking relations. Using data from a German regional innovation survey, probit models reveal that innovation intensive firms do indeed exhibit a stronger emphasis on interregional networking. Access to external knowledge sources seems to be more important for service than for manufacturing firms, for which a clear knowledge contributing effect of service assistance in the innovation process could not be detected. Interregional differences in networking behaviour exist in a way that firms in central regions show a higher probability for interregional interactions, while in rural areas intraregional contacts dominate.