Local Factors and Innovativeness – An EmpiricalAnalysis of German Patents for Five Industries

A growing body of work emphasizes the role that the spatial component plays in the in the innovationprocess. These perspectives brought the region’s infrastructure and its endowment withcrucial factors into the focus of research. Given that these factors do significantly influence theinnovativeness of local firms, it is important to identify precisely which regional characteristicsmatter.The aim of this paper is to identify a number of key influences out of a multitude of structuralfactors that are thought to influence the firm’s innovation activity. We examine more than eightyvariables that approximate the financial, geographical and social-economic factor endowmentof a region...