Tatsushi Waragai

This study examines how collaboration with diverse external partners contributes to different types of innovation. While prior research highlights partner diversity as beneficial for innovation, it provides limited understanding of which partner types located where contribute to which forms of innovation. Drawing on the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2018 for European firms, this study analyzes the joint effects of partner function and geographical position on radical and incremental innovation. The results show that collaboration patterns differ according to innovation type. Radical innovation relies more strongly on geographically distant partners, particularly foreign customers, whereas incremental innovation relies on proximate partners, especially universities within domestic and EU/EFTA regions. Moreover, governments and public sector organizations emerge as important partners for both radical and incremental innovation. These findings indicate that the benefits of proximity and distance coexist and that the optimal combination of partner type and location varies by innovation type. The study contributes to research on open innovation and collaboration portfolios by clarifying partner heterogeneity within diversity measures and by identifying effective partner-location combinations. The results offer managerial implications for selecting collaboration partners strategically.

Abstract This study demonstrates the effects of business service inputs on the export share of high-quality products. It uses data covering 12 manufacturing sectors in 31 countries during 2000–2014 and constructed using the subsystem approach. The main finding is that the effect is positive and large, and reduces gradually as product quality declines. By manufacturing sector, the effect is higher on low-tech sectors than on high-tech sectors. Business services can potentially contribute to the dynamic transformation of comparative advantages.