Personality and regional innovativeness: An empirical analysis of German patent data

Abstract

This paper brings together the literature on regional variability in innovation activity with studies on the role of personality for regional innovativeness. Building on regionally aggregated levels of individual Big Five personality traits obtained from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the Big Five Project, we find that only extraversion has a positive effect on patenting in German regions. This effect is particularly strong in the case of lagging regions. We interpret this finding as an indication of the compensatory role of collaboration for the innovativeness of lagging regions characterized by low levels of business research and development (R&D) and a dominance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which demonstrates the need for place-sensitive policies that consider different modes of innovation and emphasize interregional and intraregional learning.