Connecting local entrepreneurial ecosystems to global innovation networks: open innovation, double networks and knowledge integration

Abstract

Corporate research and development (R&D) and knowledge networks of large and small firms are responding to widespread availability of talent and diverse knowledge. Much of this dispersed knowledge arises from entrepreneurial activity, originating in universities, research institutes and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Three important approaches have been introduced recently to understand R&D strategy in the context of global or metanational networks: open innovation, knowledge integration and a double network structure. The contribution of this paper is to analyse these approaches as affecting and affected by the presence of regional innovative ecosystems and their attraction as locations of R&D. This suggests a simultaneous need for local and global, as well as internal and external, knowledge integration.