IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/growch/v32y2001i1p3-22.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Location and the Innovation Performance of Commercial GIS Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Valerie Hartung
  • Alan MacPherson

Abstract

This paper looks at the role of firm size, location, and in‐house research and development (R&D) in the innovation performance of U.S. firms in the commercial geographic information systems (GIS) industry. Data from a survey of 300 GIS firms are presented. The results suggest that innovation‐intensity varies directly with in‐house R&D spending (scaled as a proportion of company sales), but inversely with company size (total employment). Significant regional variations in the innovation performance of GIS firms are identified. It is argued that the geography of innovation is influenced by the spatial distribution of young and/or small firms, in that R&D‐productivity is found to vary inversely with company size. An important finding is that creative inputs to support innovation are almost evenly divided between internal and external sources. A surprising result is that the academic community is not viewed as a particularly important source of new ideas for innovative firms. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the survey data for future empirical work on the GIS sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Valerie Hartung & Alan MacPherson, 2001. "Location and the Innovation Performance of Commercial GIS Companies," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 3-22.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:growch:v:32:y:2001:i:1:p:3-22
    DOI: 10.1111/0017-4815.00147
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/0017-4815.00147
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/0017-4815.00147?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:growch:v:32:y:2001:i:1:p:3-22. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0017-4815 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.