Analysis of SMEs partner proximity preferences for process innovation
基于362家丹麦中小企业调查，研究它们在合作流程创新中选择伙伴时对地理、认知、组织和社会邻近性的偏好，发现企业偏好地理开放而非区域集聚，且技术邻近比社会邻近更重要。
This paper explores small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) proximity preferences when selecting partners for collaborative process innovation. Drawing on a survey of 362 Danish SMEs, we address four partner proximity characteristics: geographic, cognitive, organizational, and social. The results show that SMEs prioritize geographic openness over regional clustering. Furthermore, to simultaneously facilitate collaboration and ensure innovation, firms tend to collaborate with partners that are characterized by cognitive similarity at a technological level and knowledge distance at a market level. Technological proximity is also found to be more relevant than social proximity when it comes to bridging the potential geographic and market distance between the collaborative partners. Finally, the results indicate that the tendency of organizational proximity to facilitate informal interactions with partners enhances process innovation only at two of four process innovation levels. Thus, the results highlight the fact that the value of partner proximity characteristics change with the level of process innovation considered.