DRIVERS OF INNOVATION A Comparative Study on Innovation in European Cities by Means of Multicriteria Analysis

This paper addresses the issue of innovative behaviour of firms in an urban European context. It aims to identify key factors for innovation at the local level, based on micro survey information from firms. In seeking for prominent explanatory variables for entrepreneurial innovation in various classes of European cities, a particular multivariate method- i.e., Regime analysis- is employed. This special type of multicriteria method appears to be a fruittil tool for comparative analysis and generates a wide range of interesting empirical results on innovation factors in European cities. Pn890ar 1. Setting the Scene There is a growing recognition that economic development is not “manna from heaven”, but the result of a transformation process induced and governed by economic actors who respond to competitive, institutional and political challenge. The currently popular endogenous growth theory argues that investments in innovation, education and infrastructure provision are critical success factors for economic progress (see for a review also Nijkamp and Poot, 1998). The present paper will focus in particular on innovative behaviour of firms in relation to their locational profile (including their needs for R&D facilities and accessibility). Innovation has become a popular field of research in many disciplines, ranging from technology to economics or political science. Apart from macro studies on innovative competitiveness of countries and the related growth impacts, there have been numerous studies on individual entrepreneurial behaviour and attitudes vis-a-vis innovation. The spatial configuration of innovation has extensively been investigated in regional economics and geography. However, the linkage between individual innovation motives and their geographical location has less intensively been studied in the past decade (see among others, Nakicenovic and Griibler, 199 1; Karmeshu