New Cooperation and Novel Innovations: The Role of Regional Brokerage and Collaboration Intensity

Along with the increased importance of technology innovation, the importance of collaboration has been highlighted for conducting the innovation. This study discusses the importance of brokerage role of regions in co-inventor collaboration for establishing novel innovation and new collaboration. In addition, we address how regional collaboration intensity interacts with the brokerage role, highlighting its mediating effect. For this purpose, empirical analysis has been conducted with EPO PATSTAT database and European Regional Database (ERD) covering the European regions between 1986 and 2015. Our finding shows that the brokerage roles contribute to the extension of collaboration network, but are not efficient for the creation of new invention. Collaboration intensity, however, helps both novel innovation and new collaboration, and especially it positively interacts with brokerage role indicating that a region can take the benefit from being broker in collaboration.