Knowledge Intensive Business Services And Regional Competitiveness

Research interest in the service sector has boomed in recent years as deindustrialisation became entrenched. Instead of being regarded as merely supplementary to traditional industry and manufacturing, services have generated progressively rising levels of growth in developed economies while at the same time coming to be recognised as major drivers of innovation. Among the factors which have helped service companies notch up swifter growth rates than all other sectors are the outsourcing of such services by other sectors, including the development of information and communication technologies, and changes to the regulatory, legal and market frameworks as well as globalisation and internationalisation. The result is a cluster of highly innovative firms which can loosely be grouped under the heading of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS). Knowledge Intensive Business Services and Regional Competitiveness charts the development of these firms and explores their success through four mutually linked parts: KIBS and industrial dynamics; KIBS and their context; KIBS and their contribution to regional competitiveness and economic development; and finally, KIBS and public policy. This book is suitable for researchers and policy makers interested in the rise of these influential actors and their influence on regional competitiveness.

Over the last decade, there has been an increasing amount of research on knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) and innovation. This book brings together current thinking on this subject from geographic and territorial perspectives. Researchers from across Europe and North America present contributions from a wide range of disciplinary approaches including management studies, innovation studies and geography. They explore areas such as innovation related cooperation between KIBS firms and their industrial partners, how KIBS firms mediate business knowledge and the impact that KIBS make in local, regional and international contexts. The book offers a timely exploration of the role played by the geographic and institutional environment in the processes that link KIBS, innovation and territory across different contexts.

The acquisition and management of information is central to the operation and marketing of many service-providing firms and other organizations. Their varied knowledge requirements influence approaches to organizational structure, relationships to other organizations, the location of operations, and entry into new markets. In this book, an international and interdisciplinary team of leading scholars examines the attributes of knowledge acquisition and diffusion within and across service-providing organizations. Using a variety of case examples, they pay particular attention to the processes of internationalization and the ways in which service-providing organizations affect regional economic development.

Provides an updated view of knowledge management strategies of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) by focusing on how those firms manage innovation in their value chains and at the territorial level. Offers an original analysis of key processes of KIBS, specializing in design, professional firms and information technology.

This book contributes to an improved understanding of knowledge-intensive business services and knowledge management issues. It offers a complex overview of literature devoted to these topics and introduces the concept of ‘knowledge flows’, which constitutes a missing link in the previous knowledge management theories. The book provides a detailed analysis of knowledge flows, with their types, relations and factors influencing them. It offers a novel approach to understand the aspects of knowledge and its management not only inside the organization, but also outside, in its environment.

The book provides convincing findings against the hypothesis of KIBS as a factor of cognitive convergence or loss of diversity within our economies. On the contrary, KIBS are active agents of divergence and there is no universal pattern of the nature and the evolution of KIBS, but national varieties. It also shows that in order to well understand the inter-organizational collaboration between KIBS and their clients and more generally KIBS dynamics and their performance, transaction cost economies and agent theory should be complemented by other perspectives such as knowledge-based approaches, network theories, modularity theories, etc. This book, which is strongly oriented towards both policy and theoretical questions, is a valuable addition to a body of literature which is still too scarce. No doubt that it will stimulate further research in this field. It is undoubtedly a high level, knowledge intensive service provision about knowledge intensive business services. Faïz Gallouj, University of Lille, France This book focuses on the development of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and the associated market characteristics and organisational forms. It brings together reputed scholars from a mix of disciplines to explore the nature and evolution of a range of Knowledge Intensive Business Services. Through an examination of KIBS sectors such as computer services, management consultancy and R&D services, the contributions in this book argue that the evolution of KIBS is strongly associated with new inter-organizational forms and that different country institutions shape the characteristics of these organisational forms. The book provides a strong contribution to theory and empirical evidence on fast-growing KIBS and their implications for innovation. The book will be of interest to final year undergraduates and postgraduate students and scholars in the field of innovation studies, organisation studies and comparative business systems, across Europe.

Innovation networks are a major source for acquiring new information and knowledge and thus for supporting innovation processes. Despite the many theoretical and empirical contributions to the explanation of networks, many questions still remain open. For example: How can networks, if they do not emerge by their own, be initiated? How can fragmentation in innovation systems be overcome? And how can can networking experience from market economies be transferred to the emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe? By presenting a selection of papers which address innovation networking from theoretical and political viewpoints, the book aims at giving answers to these questions.

Provides an updated view of knowledge management strategies of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) by focusing on how those firms manage innovation in their value chains and at the territorial level. Offers an original analysis of key processes of KIBS, specializing in design, professional firms and information technology.