Rune Dahl Fitjar

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Stavanger

The geographical sources of innovation of firms have been hotly debated. While the traditional view is that physical proximity within city-regions is key for the innovative capacity of firms, the literature on ‘global pipelines’ has been stressing the importance of establishing communication channels to the outside world. This paper uses a specific...

Implicitly or explicitly, much innovation policy treats investments in research and development (R&D) as the main input to innovation. A large body of literature in innovation studies has challenged this, highlighting the role of external sources of innovation and of innovation based on learning by doing, using and interacting (DUI). Nonetheless, t...

The third mission of universities is often conceived as a regional one, encompassing contributions to regional development and engagement with regional actors. Yet, universities are increasingly global institutions with internationally mobile faculty. This raises the question of how the embeddedness of academics in their regions shapes engagement a...

This article examines which economic domains regional policy makers aim to develop in regional innovation strategies, focusing in particular on the complexity of those economic domains and their relatedness to other economic domains in the region. We build on the economic geography literature that advises policy makers to target related and complex...

A growing literature has shown that greater diversity among immigrants offers material benefits in terms of higher wages and productivity. One limitation of existing work is that it has considered immigrants from a given country to be homogenous. However, immigrants differ in various ways, not least in their level of assimilation. This article cons...

Non-metropolitan regions are considered more exposed to external shocks than their metropolitan counterparts, while having lower capacities to change. However, there is considerable variation among non-metropolitan regions. We argue that this variation can be captured theoretically by modelling the dynamic interplay between perceived and real oppor...

This paper examines the complex relationship between political and social trust, government quality, and economic development across 208 regions in the European Union (EU). We use a pooled data generalized structural equation model (GSEM) to show that political trust serves as a fundamental driver of regional economic development in the EU. Politic...

This paper adds a multidimensional perspective to the study of related diversification. We examine how regions diversify into new jobs – defined as unique industry-occupation combinations – asking whether they do so from related industries or related occupations. We use linked employer-employee data for all labour market regions in Norway, covering...

This paper explores the extent to which firms perceive to benefit from university‐industry collaborations in their innovation processes, building on survey data from 232 Norwegian firms. We find that firms experience not only direct innovation benefits from collaborations, but also indirect benefits in the form of closer proximity to universities,...

Although digital innovation is increasingly important for all types of firms, studies of the drivers of digital innovation rarely cover all sectors. Furthermore, organisational and individual factors are often overlooked. To address these gaps, we use data from a purpose-built cross-industry survey of 1,201 firms in Norway to examine how various ty...

Engagement in knowledge exchange (KE) with external actors has become widely accepted as an integral mission of universities. However, research and teaching performance remain more important for career progression, while engagement activities are more weakly institutionalized. This raises the question of why academics participate in knowledge excha...

As part of the third mission of universities to promote innovation and economic development, the popularity of science and technology parks (STPs) as a policy tool is increasing. The co-location of innovative companies and universities should be conducive to knowledge exchange between universities and industry, thus leading to more innovation. Howe...

This paper investigates the role of human agency in 40 phases of regional economic development in 12 Nordic regions over 30 years. It contributes with a theoretical framework to study agency over time and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis based on a unique dataset combining over 200 interviews, with printed and online sources, and quanti...

Research and innovation policy aims to boost research output and university-industry collaboration (UIC) in part to allow firms access to leading scientific knowledge. As part of their mission, universities in many countries are expected to contribute to innovation in their regions. However, the relationship between research output and UIC is uncle...

Academics have different motivations for external engagement, including to acquire external resources for research (research advancement motivation), to contribute to society (prosocial motivation), or to acquire monetary benefits (pecuniary motivation). Universities also have varying policies for rewarding external engagement. This paper examines...

Universities have a special role, some would say a unique role, in their cities and regions in meeting a diverse set of needs, and, in doing so, contributing to the economic and social development of those cities and regions. No other organisation in the region has quite such a scale and diversity of engagements and impacts. This book examines the...

This paper examines which economic domains regional policy-makers aim to develop in regional innovation strategies, focusing in particular on the complexity of those economic domains and their relatedness to other economic domains in the region. We build on the economic geography literature that advises policy-makers to target related and complex e...

Regional growth models leave a large share of variation unexplained. While we should continuously aim to improve these models, the unique combination of conditions and human agency in each region will also invariably lead to region-specific growth trajectories. Theoretically, we should thus expect systematic deviations from growth predictions. We p...

Social capital is an important factor explaining differences in economic growth among regions. However, the key distinction between bonding social capital, which can lead to lock-in and myopia, and bridging social capital, which promotes knowledge flows across diverse groups, has been overlooked in growth research. In this paper, we address this sh...

This paper examines the extent to which firms perceive different dimensions of proximity to be important for the formation of their interactions with universities. Furthermore, it investigates whether the importance of the different types of proximities varies depending on the type of interaction—be it about knowledge exploration, knowledge exploit...

Existing research has emphasised various mechanisms for knowledge exchange in industry clusters, including inter-firm collaboration, labour mobility, and monitoring of other firms. However, these mechanisms are normally studied in isolation, and we know little about how they interrelate. This paper examines which firms collaborate within a cluster....

This article develops a model for a regional responsible research and innovation (RRI) policy, integrating existing European Union policies on RRI, and on research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3). RRI and RIS3 are central concepts in the EU’s innovation policy agenda, but there are tensions between the two approaches. The...

The role of cities in fostering innovation has for long been taken for granted. Agglomeration and the knowledge spillovers generated in dense urban environments have been considered fundamental drivers of innovation. This view has, however, become challenged by research questioning the returns to physical agglomeration and local networking, placing...

Understanding the causes of regional growth has been of key concern for policy makers and scholars in economic geography and regional science. Regional growth models estimate the effect of various regional factors on the growth of an average region. However, these models leave a large share of regional growth unexplained. This is to be expected, as...

The administrative boundaries of the central city almost universally cover a smaller area than its functional boundaries. Hence, central cities often supply public goods beyond their own residents. Mergers with neighbouring municipalities offer an opportunity for central cities to internalize more of these externalities. However, suburban municipal...

Product innovation is widely thought to benefit from collaboration with both scientific and supply-chain partners. The combination of exploration and exploitation capacity, and of scientific and experience-based knowledge , are expected to yield multiplicative effects. However, the assumption that scientific and supply-chain collaboration are compl...

The effect of decentralisation on regional economic growth is a hotly debated topic. In theory, decentralisation should entail welfare benefits by bringing government closer to the people. In practice, the benefits of decentralisation have been hard to prove. A problem is that the quality of regional governments is often lacking, or at least varies...

Literature in evolutionary economic geography has emphasized knowledge spillover benefits of co-location with related industries. We draw on resource curse literature to demonstrate that relatedness also comes with costs in the form of labor market competition. Using a case study of a growth period in the Norwegian petroleum industry, we show that...

This paper examines the engagement of different regions in Norway in the EU's environmental programmes. The aim is to explore the programmes' potential for supporting green restructuring through branching and new path creation. The paper assesses which regions participate in the programmes, which international networks they build, and which organis...

Universities are increasingly expected to provide contributions to regional innovation and economic development processes. Despite much work on how universities can contribute to regional growth processes, there is much less consideration about why universities might choose to engage in regional development. Even though they may receive public fund...

The chapter examines collaboration with universities from the perspective of firms, drawing on survey data from 1200 Norwegian firms. Around one in five firms collaborate with a university. The firms provide various motives for collaborating, including access to knowledge, access to students and staff, and improving their reputation. The collaborat...

Tidlegare studiar viser både positive og negative samanhengar mellom utanlandskfødd arbeidskraft og innovasjon. Desse studiane har ikkje teke høgde for kjønn. Derfor undersøker vi samanhengen mellom andelen utanlandskfødde menn og utanlandskfødde kvinner og produkt – og marknadsretta innovasjon. Vi ser òg på om samanhengane er ulike mellom føretak...

Two ideas have emerged as central in evolutionary economic geography in recent years: First, innovation is often the result of meetings between related ideas, and regions are therefore best served by hosting a variety of related industries. Second, innovation often comes from the combination of different knowledge bases. However, there have been fe...

Cluster policy is often ineffective in peripheral regions with weak institutions and significant barriers to knowledge production and exchange. Nonetheless, many peripheral regions have pursued such policies in recent years, an example being technology districts in Southern Italy. This paper examines one such district, the aerospace district in Apu...

This paper examines why firms sometimes collaborate locally rather than with higher-quality universities at a distance. Existing research has mostly relied on the localized knowledge spillover (LKS) model to explain this. This model holds that knowledge transfer across distance is costly, and collaborating locally reduces the risk of information lo...

Foreword This paper is written with support from the FORINNPOL program of the Research Council of Norway, under the project title 'Innovation policy beyond myopia'. The project was coordinated by Professor Bjørn Terje Asheim. Paying particular attention to transformative change, it intends to identify and reflect on the principles and practices of...

Studies of the effects of specific policy measures for innovation have focused mainly on actions based on direct R&D support. However, the innovation studies literature sees innovation as an interactive process, emphasising the role of knowledge exchange for successful innovation. Furthermore, it is increasingly accepted that co-location is not suf...

It has often been argued that “there is something in the air” which makes firms in high-density environments—such as cities or clusters—more innovative. The co-location of firms facilitates the emergence of serendipity and casual encounters which promote innovation in firms. We assess this hypothesis using data from a survey of Norwegian firms enga...

Background This PhD thesis aims at combining different perspectives from the literature on organizational theory, innovation, and economic geography and addresses how firms1 communicate and connect within the contexts of innovation processes. The literature concerned with organizational theory has had a tendency to overlook the significance of exte...

This paper analyses how the formation of collaboration networks affects firm-level innovation by applying the ‘Goldilocks principle’. The ‘Goldilocks principle’ of optimal distance in innovation networks postulates that the best firm-level innovation results are achieved when the partners involved in the network are located at the ‘right’ distance,...

This paper proposes a novel index of regional skill-relatedness and calculates this measure for all Norwegian labour-market regions. Studies of regional related diversification rely on measures of related variety, which build on the industry classification hierarchy. However, the growing literature identifying similarities in knowledge and competen...

Regional innovasjonspolitikk kan handle om en politikk som er regionalt utformet, som er differensiert for å tilpasses de lokale forholdene i regionen, eller som er opptatt av å stimulere til regionalt samarbeid og kunnskapsutveksling. Når man snakker om en regional innovasjonspolitikk, er det viktig å forstå hvilke(n) av disse dimensjonene regiona...

Although Michael Porter's popular marketing campaign took place a while ago, many policy makers still appear to be captivated by the idea of increasing competitiveness through clustering. While there appears to be a certain degree of saturation to the idea of clusters among academics, the role and functioning of spatial concentrations of firms in t...

The contemporary economy is marked both by the growth in international trade and the increasing importance of the creative industries. However, these activities are dominated by big firms and big cities, spurring a large body of research into creative cities in the last decade. Going against this trend, this paper examines how small creative firms...

It has often been argued that "there is something in the air" which makes firms in high-density environments-such as cities or clusters-more innovative. The co-location of firms facilitates the emergence of serendipity and casual encounters which promote innovation in firms. We assess this hypothesis using data from a survey of Norwegian firms enga...

While there is a wealth of empirical research examining the potential relations and effects of foreign workers, immigration and cultural diversity on wages, employment, economic growth, and—in recent years—innovation, very little of this research has provided a convincing empirical demonstration of the mechanisms through which foreign workers would...

Fitjar R. D. and Rodríguez-Pose A. Interaction and innovation across different sectors: findings from Norwegian city-regions, Regional Studies. This article examines how different types of interaction are related to the capacity of firms to innovate in different sectors. Using a sample of 1604 Norwegian firms with more than ten employees, it analys...

The paper assesses the role for innovation of one aspect which has been generally overlooked by evolutionary economic geography: context. It analyses how context shapes the impact of collaboration on firm-level innovation for 1604 firms located in the five largest city regions of Norway. Specifically, the analysis shows how the benefits to firms of...

It has been argued that not only geographical proximity but also cognitive, organisational, social and institutional proximity may be important for innovation networks. However, excessive proximity can also be harmful as it reduces the scope for learning. Hence, one possible solution is that collaboration with partners for innovation should follow...

ᅟ This paper assesses the extent to which the organization of the innovation effort in firms, as well as the geographical scale at which this effort is pursued, affects the capacity to benefit from product innovations. Three alternative modes of organization are studied: hierarchy, market and triple-helix-type networks. Furthermore, we consider tr...

Using data on 418 Norwegian firms, the results confirm the hypotheses that innovative/radically innovative firms tend to be more involved in international personal and formal networks than non-innovative/incrementally innovative ones. While regional and national networks are much more widespread than international ones, they are not significantly p...

The Scottish Unionist Party won a majority of the Scottish votes at the 1955 Westminster elections, and Scotland’s relationship to the union was barely on the agenda. Half a century later, Scotland has considerable autonomy resting in its own Parliament and is staging a referendum on independence in 2014. What has happened in Scotland during this h...

This paper looks at the geographical dimension of firm networking in Norway, by examining the impact of manager-level, firm-level and regional-level variables on the decisions of firms to collaborate with partners at different levels of geographical distance. Using data stemming from a survey of 1604 businesses in five Norwegian city-regions, we mo...

How does the EU affect policy making by regional governments in Norway, a unitary nonmember state? We address this question through examining the impact of participation in the Interreg programme on Norwegian county councils’ regional development policies. We examine forty-four acts of participation by Norwegian counties in Interreg projects, track...

In this paper, a survey of more than 1600 firms in the five largest city regions of Norway is described in order to examine how a firm's innovative capacity is affected by three types of factors: factors related to the manager, the structure of the firm and the broader geographical location. By combining perspectives from the fields of management a...

In a world where large urban agglomerations are increasingly regarded by scholars and policy-makers alike as the engines of economic development, the options at the disposal of intermediate and peripheral areas are dwindling. Doing nothing is, according to the dominating theories, likely to result in a steady decline which may jeopardize their very...

As social communities, regions are built through discourses that convey images of what the region is. Regions are built for a variety of reasons, including political and economic ones. This implies that changing economic circumstances have the potential to change the discourses on regional identities. Petroleum discoveries represent such a potentia...

This paper examines the sources of firm product and process innovation in Norway. It uses a purpose-built survey of 1604 firms in the five largest Norwegian city-regions to test, by means of a logit regression analysis, Jensen et al.’s (2007) contention that firm innovation is both the result of ‘science, technology and innovation’ (STI) and ‘doing...

Norsk innovasjonspolitikk har i den senere tid lagt stor vekt på å stimulere til samarbeid mellom bedrifter i geografisk konsentrerte klynger. Samtidig ser vi at bedriftene i stadig større grad konkurrerer på et internasjonalt marked og er avhengige av et bredt tilfang av ideer, også fra kilder som befinner seg utenfor regionens og landets grenser....

This paper examines the sources of firm product and process innovation in Norway. It uses a purpose-built survey of 1604 firms in the five largest Norwegian city-regions to test, by means of a logit regression analysis, Jensen et al.'s (2007) contention that firm innovation is both the result of science, technology and innovation (STI) and doing, u...

How do peripheral and relatively isolated regions innovate? Recent research has tended to stress the importance of agglomeration economies and geographical proximity as key motors of innovation. According to this research, large core areas have significant advantages with respect to peripheral areas in innovation potential. Yet, despite these trend...

This article examines the drivers and barriers for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the Norwegian graduate uniform industry, which is a market devoid of large corporations, consisting entirely of two small businesses. It finds that these small businesses' CSR activities are not particularly well explained by the existing literature on CSR i...

Who participates in the European Capital of Culture? This article analyses participation in Stavanger, European Capital of Culture (ECOC) in 2008, drawing on data from a survey conducted among a cross-section of the population of the city and its closest surrounds. It examines whether there is systematic variation in the number and type of events a...

While national identities emerged as the dominant source of territorial identification during the twentieth century, sub-state regional identities are becoming increasingly important in some Western European regions. However, this is not a uniform development. In some regions, nearly half of respondents in Eurobarometer surveys claim a stronger att...

During the past 40 years, regions have become increasingly important in Western Europe both as units of government and as sources for political mobilization. This book examines why regional identities are stronger in some regions than in others, and why regional elites attempt to mobilize the public on a regionalist agenda at certain points in time...

How do peripheral and relatively isolated regions innovate? Recent research has tended to stress the importance of agglomeration economies and geographical proximity as key motors of innovation. According to this research, large core areas have significant advantages with respect to peripheral areas in innovation potential. Yet, despite these trend...

The study aims to explain differences in the levels of regionalism both between different regions and within individual regions over time. The existing literature focuses on globalisation and European integration as the main causes of changes in regionalism across time, treating the phenomenon mainly as a part of broader political developments. By...

This article presents a political economy perspective on the growth of regionalism in Rogaland, where ever more political issues have been viewed through a regional lens over the last fifteen years. Rogaland has also experienced an economic boom since the 1970s, when it became the hub of Norway's oil adventures in the North Sea. The question is whe...

So far, most research on regionalism has applied qualitative research methods. However, a quantitative methodology would be an important complement, allowing researchers to test hypotheses and reach more general conclusions about the causes and effects of regionalism. The main problem facing the would-be quantitative researcher is the lack of data...