OECD Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) Working Papers

ISSN :
2079-4797 (en ligne)
DOI :
10.1787/20794797
Cacher / Voir l'abstract
A series of working papers from the OECD Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) Programme. The LEED Programme identifies, analyses and disseminates innovative ideas for local development, governance and the social economy. Governments work with the LEED Programme to generate innovative guidance on policies to support employment creation and economic development through locally based initiatives.
 

Knowledge Networks and Their Impact on New and Small Firms in Local Economies

The Case Studies of the Autonomous Province of Trento and Magdeburg You or your institution have access to this content

Auteur(s):
Alessandra Proto1, Simone Tani2, Joerg Bühnemann3, Olaf Gaus3, Mathias Raith3
Author Affiliations
  • 1: OCDE, France

  • 2: Municipality of Florence, Italie

  • 3: Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Allemagne

Date de publication
31 jan 2012
Bibliographic information
No:
2012/02
Pages
239
DOI
10.1787/5k9gs1cr080x-en

Cacher / Voir l'abstract

New and small firms can be important engines of job creation and local development when they identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. We live in an economy more and more characterised by open innovation methods, where new companies and SMEs are benefitting from innovations, technological and non technological available on the market or from other companies and organisations part of their networks. Knowledge networks, understood as a three-component construction of (i) knowledge generation, (ii) knowledge transfer, and (iii) knowledge application, can play a crucial role in boosting companies performance. As many OECD researches shows, there is often a major networking gap, however, between knowledge sources in universities and research organisations and industry exploitation in new spin-off enterprises and SMEs. The analysis of the actors of the knowledge networks and the way they behave and interact with other component inside and outside the networks is a fundamental support to local policy making in entrepreneurship and innovation.

The OECD LEED Programme in cooperation with the University of Trento has prepared this paper to analyse in deep the behaviour of knowledge networks in two specific local contexts: the Autonomous Province of Trento in Italy and the Magdeburg Province in Germany.

The aim of this research project is to analyse the relevance of knowledge networks to entrepreneurship and the growth of young and small firms, the role of the different components and their interplay for network effectiveness, impeding and favouring factors, and the role of public policy.