Technological Novelty, Knowledge Bases, and Regional Differentiation: towards a Regional Typology of Radical, Breakthrough, and Discontinuous Innovations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Exceptional innovations have recently been investigated in the literature as they may change the trajectories of field or regional development and thus impact their innovation and economic performance. However, there still lacks empirical evidence as to the impact of different types of knowledge bases on the emergence of discontinuous, breakthrough, or radical innovations. This study addresses this research gap and investigates the impact of analytical, synthetic, and symbolic knowledge bases on the share of different types of exceptional innovations in the Central European regions during the 2010–2018 period. Results indicate the positive impact of the symbolic knowledge base on the share of radical and discontinuous innovations, whereas the analytical knowledge base has a negative impact on the radical and synthetic knowledge bases – on discontinuous innovations. Contrariwise, none of the knowledge bases were relevant to the emergence of breakthrough innovations.