In an era of intense globalization, the critical role of the region as a center for economic development has sometimes been overlooked. Moreover, innovation is increasingly being recognized as being a critical driver of economic growth and development. However, innovation is no longer being seen as a function of research and development; nor is R&D being seen as being sufficient for the creation of technology-intensive industries and the valuable economic spillovers that result in high value-added jobs and exports. Indeed, much more than ever before, it is the combination of factors that contributes to innovation - ranging over skills, finance, production, user-producer linkages, the capacity of organizations to learn, and multilayered government policies - that make local regions the favorites of fortune. Using an evolutionary economic perspective, and drawing on a range of disciplines and accomplished scholars, Local and Regional Systems of Innovation explores important issues at a conceptual, methodological and comparative level concerning how successful locations actually construct their comparative advantage.

This paper analyses the determinants of different innovation types. Beside a wide range of firm characteristics also the effects of regional factors are estimated using three-level random effect logit models which account for the clustered and longitudinal structure of the data. The analyses contain three regional variables: the unemployment rate, the assessment of the region with reference to proximity to research and technology centres and universities and the rate of graduates in mathematics, informatics, natural sciences and technological sciences (MINT-graduates). The empirical basis is the IAB-Establishment Panel Survey 2006 to 2010. Process and radical innovations are significant affected by the unemployment rate and the share of MINT-graduates. The unemployment rate has also for some of the innovation combos a significant effect. The proportion of MINT-graduates is relevant for the probability of all 4 innovation types simultaneously.

Regional innovation processes, regional innovation systems, RIS, regional knowledge networks, social network analysis, SNA, network structures. - Regionale Innovationsprozesse, regionale Innovationssysteme, regionale Wissensnetzwerke, soziale Netzwerkanalyse, Netzwerkstrukturen