Public Research in Regional Networksof Innovators: A Comparative Study ofFour East-German Regions

Universities and public research organisations play a vital role not only in thegeneration of new technological knowledge, but also in its diffusion. We analyse fourEast German local networks of innovators which differ in structure and innovativeperformance and investigate the characteristic role of public research within these localsystems of innovation by applying methods of social network analysis on patent data.Our results show that public research organisations are key actors in all regionalnetworks of innovators both in terms of patent output and in terms of centrality of theirposition in the networks. Further we find the ‘thicker’ networks to have more centralpublic research organisations...