07/07/2021 - 13:10 hrs
Expone: Cristián Géldes, Universidad Alberto Hurtado.
Título paper: An exploration of the role of personal proximity. The case of cooperation for innovation in the tourism sector in an emerging economy.
Resumen paper:
Increasingly, firm innovation is seen as a collaborative process. It involves firms and other organizations as the government, universities, buyers, and suppliers. In this study, the proximity approach from economic geography is used to explain the networking of companies to innovate, including a new measure for personal proximity, highlighted as a new critical dimension of proximity, in addition to the five dimensions of proximity: geographic, social, cognitive, organizational and institutional, which are generally used. A structural equation model is developed to explain the inter-organizational collaboration of companies to innovate and the effect on innovation. The data come from a survey of 257 companies in the tourism sector in Chile as an example of an emerging economy with low levels of collaboration. The results and theoretical and practical implications are discussed.